[olug] Xen 3.0 LiveCD recommendation

[Bill Brush]

Where'd you hear they were making GSX free?  We've got 2 GSX servers
at work, and I haven't heard anything about that.

The big limitation with XEN at this point is that it will only do
guests that have a kernel modified to work with it, so no Windows or
basically anything that's not *nix.

We actually use VMware more for Windows to make upgrades, service
packs, and such easier.  If Windows wasn't so fragile it wouldn't be
so attractive to virtualize it.  IMO.

Bill

On 2/3/06, Mat <olug at phpconsulting.com> wrote:
> 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
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