RE: [Xen-users] New xen user, basic inquiries

[Jeff Sturm <jeff.sturm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of fmb fmb
> Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:53 AM
> To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Xen-users] New xen user, basic inquiries

> I wanted to make 5 domu instances, so I made 10 logical volumes -5
root (1G each) and 5 swap (256 MB each).

Our setup is very similar to yours.  We've been running with it for
about two years, and find the one-logical-volume-per-domu-filesystem
approach very flexible and practical (as long as you don't need HVM
guests).  Resizing a volume is easy.

> For my current setup, is this the best scenario? 

"Best" depends on your needs.  The main downside here is that you can't
use the CentOS installer out of the box.  But you've already figured out
how to work around it.

Are you using pygrub to boot, or do you boot from a kernel/ramdisk that
live outside the domU filesystem?

> I am thinking of adding a new hard dive for domu only, but I read
somewhere that having the swap partitions
> on a separate hard drive is better, would you comment on this please?

Truthfully, most of our domU instances don't have any swap configured.
Even if we have it, it's only a safety net to buy some time before the
OOM killer destroys a runaway process, so top performance from swap
isn't really a consideration.  RAM is cheap and plentiful nowadays.
Alternatively, you can always create a swap file if you prefer not to
create a dedicated swap volume.

> Ive had some messages during the boot time (4gb seg fixup...) and to
remove them I was told to remove the
> tls libs, but I noticed that tls is already empty, so I am curious if
this indicates improper installation of the domu
> instances?

As already alluded to on this thread, a 64-bit kernel is superior to a
32-bit kernel.  With a bit of care, you can even boot and run a 32-bit
distro from a 64-bit kernel, so there's little reason to suffer with the
tls workaround unless you have ancient hardware that isn't 64-bit
capable.

-Jeff



_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users