[olug] Xen 3.0 LiveCD recommendation

[Sean Kelly]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 07:28:24PM -0600, Bill Brush wrote:
> 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.

It is all over the news sites today:
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6034615.html?part=rss&tag=6034615&subj=news

A VAR has also told me that they believe this to be true. This VAR, so I
don't get anybody busted, was not MSI or anybody with presence in Omaha.

> 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.

I've been looking at blades and ESX recently. I'm really liking what I see
with IBM's BladeCenter offerings. In the right setup, ESX would accompany
that beautifully as well for certain systems.

> 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.

I can see how that'd be an attractive use of it.

What kind of overhead do you see introduced by GSX? If it becoems free on
Monday, it will become my new testing toy for a while to further evaluate
virtualization. What kind of host systems do you use?

Thanks

> 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > OLUG mailing list
> > OLUG at olug.org
> > http://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
> >
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-- 
Sean Kelly         | PGP KeyID: D2E5E296
smkelly at zombie.org | http://www.zombie.org