Xen Virtualization

[Michael McNamara]

I'm getting ready to rebuild my home development server and thought about deploying Xen to help alleviate the need for multiple development environments. I utilize VMware at work but I was thinking of using Xen at home so I can become more familiar with it. I only have a single server and only local storage.

What Linux distribution should I use as the host operating system? It seems that RedHat (CentOS) and Ubuntu are moving toward KVM from what I've read although I'd like to try my hand at Xen first and down the road potential give KVM a test run.

It seems like Debian and Fedora are the only really easy solutions.

Anyone else using Xen?

[Michael McNamara]

Well it was a disappointing day for me. I started with a CentOS 6.1 x64 server but thought I would try Xen on Ubuntu 11.10. I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my server and spent about 90 minutes trying to get it to recognize eth0, it would recognize eth1 fine. I also had issues with the console resolution being too high from video card and monitor I was using. I gave up and through my research I read how easy it was to install Xen with Fedora 16 so I went and installed Fedora 16 only to have other issues. I eventually re-installed CentOS 6.1 and I managed to built myself an 32bit CentOS 6.1 client, although it hung when booting up the first time after installation.

I downloaded XenServer (free version) from Citrix but I decided to give KVM a try after doing some research.

It was a vacation day today... a professor once told me the quest for knowledge doesn't take a vacation.