In terms of hardware, what matters most is the RAM. Memory basically dictates how many domU's you can have. Juggling of the CPU(s) as a resource seems to work pretty well, but memory allocation is not dynamic. Sure, you can use mem-set or play around with balloons, but what RAM you give to a domU is no long available to the system.
As far as disks hard concerned, IDE drives are really slow. If one domU's doing disk intensive stuff, disk access from other domains is painfully slow. But then, that's the nature of IDE. It seems to get that much worse if you add abstract layers like software RAID and LVM on top of it. This is where the superiority of SCSI really shows. I haven't tried SATA, but IDE's got to be the worst if you're running a bunch of domains.
I tried a bunch of distros bootstrap the dom0. In my opinion, the distro had to provide:
1. a stable system (kernel + utilities); 2. have a good method of package management (for, as you mentioned, upgrading purposes); 3. quick, efficient install method 4. have a small footprint.
Many distros provide fairly stable systems, but in terms of package management, i wanted to use yum, apt-get or emerge - meaning Red Hat derivative (FC, RHEL, CentOS), Debian or Gentoo. FC doesn't strike me as a stable system, Gentoo takes way too long to install, and CentOS, while great, kept leaving a large footprint. It was tough for me to get it down to less than 700MB.
Debian Sarge is a quick, efficient install and with just a few key presses, I can get a Xen development-ready setup in about 15 minutes. The size is about 400MB. Grab the Netinstall ISO, do the base install, boot it up, and run:
apt-get remove exim4 exim4-base lpr nfs-common portmap pidentd pcmcia-cs pppoe pppoeconf ppp pppconfig
apt-get install iproute bridge-utils python-twisted gcc-3.3 binutils make zlib1g-dev python-dev transfig bzip2 screen ssh debootstrap libcurl3-dev libncurses5-dev
Download the Xen source and you're in business!
S
On May 24, 2006, at 6:46 PM, CS - Ronald Wiplinger wrote: I got two machines to setup:
A. existing one: AMD Athlon, 2GB RAM, C: used for Windows XP (40 G), D: used for Windows data two partitions, each 40 G are not used yet
I would like to use the two partitions to setup XEN and within XP, SuSE Linux 10.1, Puppy Linux 1.09CE and Puppy Linux 2.0alpha. SuSE should be my main window, while XP will be used only if there is no Linux counterpart, Puppys are used for developments.
Q.: 1. Which distribution should I use for XEN (SuSE 10.1 minimal system with development?) I worry, that if no development is included I cannot upgrade, and since XEN is still in a development status, it might be necessary. (Maybe I am wrong at all in that point, please correct me!) 2. Can I use the existing partition (C: = Windows) within a new virtual machine? (as well as the data partition d:)
B. New machine It should get XEN, XP, SuSE, Puppy 1.09CE and Puppy 2.0alpha on a fresh hard disk.
Q: What advice would you give me to select the right machine? Which processor, processor speed, how much RAM? others I should take care of?
Thanks for your help!
bye
Ronald
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