Re: [Xen-users] Xen + RHEL5 + 64/32 bit

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Does anyone have experience with the Xen that's built in to RHEL5?
> > Does it have most of the feature set of the open source version xen 3.04
> > or is it an older version?  Has it proved to be stable?

It's based on Xen 3.0.3.  Amongst other things this means that its HVM support 
is not quite so advanced (the specific thing that comes to mind is SMP HVM 
guest support is not quite there, but I'm sure there are other fixes to HVM 
and other code too in 3.0.4).

I believe the RHEL 5.1 update is slated to include a newer Xen, possibly 3.1.

> > For a new Xen system would you recommend installing RHEL4 (or clones)
> > and then downloading the xen rpms and tarballs from the Xen site,
> > or picking RHEL5 and using the Xen that comes with that?

I'm running my test machines with CentOS 4 and a xen-unstable compiled from 
source.  Obviously you wouldn'twant to do that for production machines, but 
it works well for me.

RHEL5 has the advantage of being nicely integrated into the system.  There's 
SELinux support for Xen (if you organise your VMs the way it expects, that 
is!), there's the nice virt-manager GUI, etc.

You could always try this out using CentOS 5.

> > Also, has anyone tried, under either of those modes,
> > to have an x86_64 host OS and i686-based virtual clients?
> > Are there any docs online of how to do that?

ON a 64-bit Xen you can run 64-bit, 32-bit/PAE and 32-bit nonPAE guests under 
HVM mode.  On Xen 3.1 you can also run both 64-bit and 32-bit/PAE guests in 
PV mode.

Cheers,
Mark

> > Thanks
> >
> > Steve Timm
> >
> > --
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Steven C. Timm, Ph.D  (630) 840-8525
> > timm@xxxxxxxx  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
> > Fermilab Computing Division, Scientific Computing Facilities,
> > Grid Facilities Department, FermiGrid Services Group, Assistant Group
> > Leader.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users



-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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