[Xen-users] Hard Problem /w XenSource / XenEnterprise.

["Jim Burnes" <jvburnes@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Our group would really like to use XenSource to run a very large number of parallel Windows XP VMs, but there are several issues we need to overcome or else we'll have to use ESX instead.  This is pretty high priority so if there is a high-level tech at XenSource who knows how to solve this, we would be really grateful.

(1) We want to start-up using a post-boot save of Windows XP and the run a software test envrionment in the VM where any file write to the boot drive (misc, registry etc) is written to a spool/log (similar to a file system journal) so that writes don't corrupt our common XP image.

(2) When we shut down the VM we still need access to the journal so we can do a "diff" on what happened during testing.  I know its possible to use some sort of system shim to catch OS writes, but we want to keep OS modification to a minimum.

Whether we do this via some sort of shim into an OS callgate we still need to make various read/writes to the common shared image transparent / non-corrupting of the shared image.

I know how to do that in Linux.   You use variously overlay file systems.  How do you do it in Windows.

In other words, we have a very nice potential demonstration system for XenEnterprise/XenSource.  I'd like to talk to a senior tech about the deep tech issues.  As much as I like to talk to Sales people about this, these are *very deep* technical issues.  I would appreciate a pointer though if you know the engineer to talk to.

Jim Burnes

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users