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Re: [Xen-users] Re: Which distro to use for Dom0

To: "Bart Coninckx" <bart.coninckx@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Re: Which distro to use for Dom0
From: brian@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2011 13:53:57 -0600
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Regarding SLES as a Dom0, how well are those features when used with
Centos domUs?

My objectives would be;

1) Better VM management in terms of snapshots as now I use snapshots via
logvols and rsync of the OSs (rsync within the DomU) as well as the DomU
images (rsync within the Dom0).  I had a bad image once which pretty much
credited me with a few awww shits.  All I did was reboot it bayam!  But
thats another story.

2) Pass through features like VGA and USB.  Seems like to really take
advantage of this I must have a DomU capable of this either by 2.6.18hg
kernel or the pv2.6.32 kernel?

It never seemed like RHEL/Centos had good VM management tools and now that
I am contemplating KVM, it probably even has less due to it maturity
level.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
- Brian



>
>
> Christian Zoffoli wrote:
>>
>> debian and xen are actually in different planets ...live migration is a
>> pain and there are many problems in general.
>>
>> If you whant something stable, updated and so on, suse sles 11 sp1 is
>> the way.
>>
>> Here are the main reasons:
>> - it's based on xen 4.0 + many interesting additions (for example
>> virtual machines snapshots --> **not only disk snapshots**)
>> - it's integrated with the new cluster stack (pacemaker and friends)
>> - it's integrated with OCFS2 (with many interesting patches in the tree)
>> - it's integrated with CLVM (on pacemaker & friends)
>> - it has pv over hvm drivers for linux and windows (in linux pv over hvm
>> for 64bit VMs is better performing)
>> - it has a fully working and certified infiniband stack
>> - it's more lightweight than redhat (it's possible to make very light
>> installations comparable in size/occupied resources to debian)
>> - suse xen kernel is also the starting point of the citrix xenserver
>> ...so it's not something different  / unmaintained etc
>>
>>>From a performance perspective I suggest you to directly use CLVM for VM
>> images storage because I've seen poor performances in QCOW2 over OCFS2
>> setups.
>>
>> The only big problem I can see in the future of suse is the acquisition
>> by a microsoft controlled company of novell ...by the way also citrix is
>> very microsoft dependant ...so the soup is almost the same.
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Christian
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Xen-users mailing list
>> Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>>
>>
>
> Christian,
>
> I am particularly interested in the new snapshotting features you mention.
> I
> could not find anything in the SLES11SP1 Xen documentation about it
> though.
> Is this about the following out of the Xen 4.0 docs?:
>
>     114 Snapshots:
>     115
>     116 Pausing a guest will also plug the corresponding IO queue for
> blktap2
>     117 devices and stop blktap2 drivers.  This can be used to implement a
>     118 safe live snapshot of qcow and vhd disks.  An example script
> "xmsnap"
>     119 is shown in the tools/blktap2/drivers directory.  This script will
>     120 perform a live snapshot of a qcow disk.  VHD files can use the
>     121 "vhd-util snapshot" tool discussed above.  If this snapshot
> command
> is
>     122 applied to a raw file mounted with tap:tapdisk:AIO, include the -m
>     123 flag and the driver will be reloaded as VHD.  If applied to an
> already
>     124 mounted VHD file, omit the -m flag.
>     125
>
>
> thx,
>
> B.
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://xen.1045712.n5.nabble.com/Which-distro-to-use-for-Dom0-tp3338309p3353111.html
> Sent from the Xen - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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>


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