Xen users - May 2006 - Hardware suggestion and XEN selection

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


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Hi,
> 1. Which distribution should I use for XEN (SuSE 10.1 minimal system 
> with development?)
SL 10.1 seems to be a very good choice, Xen is running out of the box!

 > I worry, that if no development is included I cannot upgrade, and
 > since XEN is still in a development status, it might be necessary.
If you use only SuSE-update-rpm for getting new Xen-versions you don''t 
need compiler and development.
> 2. Can I use the existing partition (C: = Windows) within a new 
> virtual machine? (as well as the data partition d:) 
Does your AMD already support Pacifica? If not Windows will NOT run!

Anyway I would not use a shared, physical partition for using Windows 
native or in a VM. The real and VM-hardware is too different, may be you 
need "accelerators" in the VM for getting it run better and finaly the
handling of just an image-file instead of a real Windows-partition is 
much easier!
-- 

Chau y hasta luego,

Thorolf

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