Re: [Xen-users] Server Compatibility Advice Request

["Fajar A. Nugraha" <list@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 1:34 PM, Ted <tiruchirapalli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> We are planning to virtualize existing 4 old server that we used in a
> project. The server is 4 years old but

Are they still covered by warranty, or do you have some kind of
support contract or backup plan to keep it working?

Sometimes it's more effective to just sell those, and buy or lease new
ones, with full HW warranty coverage.

> Intel® Xeon® Processor 5160 (4M Cache, 3.00 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB)
> PC2-5300, 333 Mhz, DDR2 (we can upgrade the RAM to much as you recommend,
> max 16GB)

16GB is not much these days.

But then again, if your application doesn't use much, it should work.
General rule is to get as much RAM as you can afford while still being
economical. e.g. if it turns out that buying that amount of old DDR2
is more expensive than trade-in to a new server with DDR3, the choose
trade-in.

> Can we use this machine effectively to run
>
> 1. Xen Hypervisor - any known limitation, issues etc with the above HW
> 2. Xen Cloud - any known limitation, issues etc with the above HW

Not sure what you mean by Xen Cloud. Did you mean XCP? My best advice
is try and see. It should work.

> The other major question is, does Xen fully support Ubuntu Server 11.10 x64.
> We are planning to use Ubuntu in ALL our planned 10 virtual machines on
> these 4 physical servers.

11.10, while being the latest stable, is not LTS. If you can wait I
highly suggest you wait until 12.04 (precise) LTS is out.

That being said, IIRC the main problem with some old version of xen
and ubuntu in PV mode is that pygrub/pv-grub might not support ext4.
If you use ext3, you should be fine. If you use ext4, just try it and
make sure the xen version you use supports it.

Also, don't expect magic here. If your old applications each need one
of those kinds of server to perform correctly, and they have high
cpu/disk/network utilization, don't expect you can just jam all of
them in one server using virualization and expect it to work fine.

> Do we need any other 3rd party tools?
> Anything else that we should be aware of ?

Based on your questions, I highly suggest you try appliance type
first, e.g. XenServer or XCP.

Also, if you just want it to work and don't have previous knowledge in
Xen anyway, try broaden your options. For example, vmware esxi (a.k.a
vsphere hypervisor) is more newbie-friendly. Or, if you're comfortable
with Redhat or Oracle, they have free virtualization appliance that
you can use as well.

-- 
Fajar

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