Re: [Xen-users] New Install Planning

[chris <tknchris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Do your research before investing money. If you intend to only do HVM guests, then video isolation isnt really very well supported unless you buy very high end video cards with specific drivers which are passthrough aware or you are ok with using emulated 2d video via vnc. Most motherboards do support basic virtualization VT/SVM however you will need a capable CPU and BIOS needs to give you the option to turn it on. If you plan to do passthrough of devices to your HVM guests you should be looking for IOMMU support, which is also a feature which requires matching motherboard/cpu support. Intel calls it VT-d, not sure what AMD calls this.

I agree with Miles though that Xen can take some tuning to get everything running how you want. If you aren't very comfortable with any distro of Linux then you most likely won't be that comfortable with Xen, as even when running Xen, 90% of your day to day tasks and interaction will be just like a plain Linux box.

chris 

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 7:19 AM, <ray@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:37:36 -0500
From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject: Re: [Xen-users] New Install Planning

To: xen-users <xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <4EB7DF20.3020506@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

ray@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> That sounds great. I am not very familiar with debian. Can you
> suggest 'whatever you need ssh etc'.
> ray
>
>
Not to be negative or anything, but if you're "not very familiar with
debian" - you're just asking for a world of hurt in trying to get Xen
working.

I've found Xen to be fairly touchy to get up and running, and there are
quite a few subtle interactions with the host operating system (e.g.,
getting grub startup configurations and kernel variables set up right).

With that said:

- for Xen on Debian, be sure to look at http://wiki.debian.org/Xen

- you might consider installing XCP (the bare metal hypervisor version
of Xen) - not sure if it would run on your hardware or not (note:
haven't tried it myself)

- if you're more familiar with another Linux distribution, you might
want to go with its Xen package (OpenSuse, in particular comes with Xen
pre-configured)

- depending on what you're actually trying to accomplish, you might
consider another virtualization environment (e.g., KVM under CentOS,
VirtualBox, VMware, Parallels)

For a production server environment, Xen is the best of the bunch
(IMHO), but if you're just trying to maintain a few separate images on a
desktop system, it might be more trouble than it's worth.

FYI: For ANY virtualization, make sure you have a fast CPU (multiple
cores are even better), lots of memory, and lots of extra disk space.
And make an informed choice between hardware-assist vs.
paravirtualization.

Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In<fnord> practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

------------------------------
Miles,

Thank you very much for all the info.  I have read up on XCP now and I
see several places where it is said to make sure your hardware supports
virtualization or Windows OS may not work correctly.  I have not found
anything that says what hardware supports virtualiation as neccessary
for XCP.

I plan to buy hardware to match.  I am expecting an AMD 4 core and an
ASUS motherboard.  My local supplier says that today, all motherboards
support virtualization.  I have contacted Asus and Gigabyte and have not
gotten a clear answer.

My goeal is to multiple video, NIC ports, and SATA ports all isolatable.
 I do not intend to address paravirtualization.  I wonder about usig SSD
for dom0 and possibly another SSD for one guest.

ray

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