[olug] Xen 3.0 LiveCD recommendation

[Mat]

Omaha Linux fans one all:

Seems like everyone in Omaha is jumping on the virtualization
bandwagon with VMWare these days:
	http://www.msiinet.com/casestudies/infrastructuresimplification/fnbo/
	http://tinyurl.com/dchxt
	http://www.securityposture.com/

Not one to just go with the flow, I just had to give Xen a try.
My only previous experience with Xen was at the OLUG mtg where
Michael Hoesing displayed a running setup with SuSE, see:
  www.olug.org/index.php?option=com_weblinks&task=view&catid=18&id=26

So I downloaded, well torrented anyway, the Xen 3.0 Test CD which is a
bootable Linux distribution that has a test version of Xen all set up and
working.  The two guest operating systems (both Linux) on the CD were the
latest Centos and a pre-release of Debian etch.

Everything just worked straight from the CD.  You could fire up instances
of both Centos and Debian and then either virtually network them and/or
run VNC X sessions.  This all worked on a budget Pentium-M laptop with 1G
of RAM and was reasonably fast, excepting intensive disk access which is
limited by CDROM throughput.

One can only guess that the recent decision by EMC to make the GSX edition
of VMWare free (ESX remains a spendy enterprise-targeted option) might be
in reaction to the progress that Xen has made recently.

So even if you're into the commercial OS virtualization tools these days,
you owe it to yourself to give Xen 3 a look.  Although Scott McNealy isn't
exactly a Wall Street lovechild these days, he's right on when he says
that you not only have to watch the barriers to entry, but the barriers to
exit.  VirtualPC and VMWare fans take note.

If you want to save the trouble of downloading and burning the Xen 3.0
test CD yourself, email me directly and I'll burn a copy for you to bring
with me to the OLUG meeting on Tuesday.




Mat Caughron, CISSP
PHP Consulting
mat at phpconsulting.com
(402) 968-1332