Hi, First post so please be gentle! ;) I am looking to switch to Xen from using VMware but would like a little help with my understanding. My current setup is a CentOS5.1 server with a VMWare server instance installed on top of it. Am I able to install Xen and make my current CentOS installation the default domain without losing anything ? If this is possible then I would setup two additional domains 1) for the applications that were running in the default ie. www, smtp and the 2) moving the VMware server which runs Zimbra to a Xen domain. This would leave the default domain as the management domain. Is my thinking correct ? TIA. Regards, -- --[ UxBoD ]-- // PGP Key: "curl -s http://www.splatnix.net/uxbod.asc | gpg --import" // Fingerprint: F57A 0CBD DD19 79E9 1FCC A612 CB36 D89D 2C5A 3A84 // Keyserver: www.keyserver.net Key-ID: 0x2C5A3A84 // Phone: +44 845 869 2749 SIP Phone: uxbod@sip.splatnix.net -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Feb 1, 2008 2:38 AM, --[ UxBoD ]-- <uxbod@splatnix.net> wrote:> Hi, > > First post so please be gentle! ;) > > I am looking to switch to Xen from using VMware but would like a little > help with my understanding. My current setup is a CentOS5.1 server with a > VMWare server instance installed on top of it. > > Am I able to install Xen and make my current CentOS installation the > default domain without losing anything ?You can install the Xen packages without losing anything yes.> If this is possible then I would setup two additional domains 1) for the > applications that were running in the default ie. www, smtp and the 2) > moving the VMware server which runs Zimbra to a Xen domain. This would > leave the default domain as the management domain. >for 2) I assume you mean the Zimbra application and not VMware server. The default domain is generally referred to as Domain 0 or more commonly dom0, and yes, it is used for management. Welcome to Xen ;) Best regards, Todd> Is my thinking correct ? TIA. > > Regards, > > -- > --[ UxBoD ]-- > // PGP Key: "curl -s http://www.splatnix.net/uxbod.asc | gpg --import" > // Fingerprint: F57A 0CBD DD19 79E9 1FCC A612 CB36 D89D 2C5A 3A84 > // Keyserver: www.keyserver.net Key-ID: 0x2C5A3A84 > // Phone: +44 845 869 2749 SIP Phone: uxbod@sip.splatnix.net > > -- > This message has been scanned for viruses and > dangerous content by MailScanner, and is > believed to be clean. > > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users >_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> First post so please be gentle! ;)Hi :-)> I am looking to switch to Xen from using VMware but would like a little > help with my understanding. My current setup is a CentOS5.1 server with a > VMWare server instance installed on top of it.OK.> Am I able to install Xen and make my current CentOS installation the > default domain without losing anything ?You can install the Xen hypervisor and the -xen Linux kernel. Install virt-manager at the same time, it''s good ;-) This will just give you an extra grub boot option to boot into Xen rather than into native Linux. It''ll probably boot into Xen by default from then on, but you can always use the Grub menu to boot without Xen, then uninstall Xen from your system. You won''t be able to run Xen and VMware server at the same time. Your existing CentOS installation will become "domain 0", which is the privileged management domain. It''ll still own the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor and all the other devices.> If this is possible then I would > setup two additional domains 1) for the applications that were running in > the default ie. www, smtpYou can easily create new CentOS, RHEL and Fedora domains using a handy virt-manager GUI. It can either create fully virtualised or paravirtualised guests. Paravirtualised has better performance, fully virtualised is needed to support Windows, etc (and is only available if your hardware is new enough).> and the 2) moving the VMware server which runs > Zimbra to a Xen domain.If you actually want to move the virtual disk from VMware server to a Xen domain, you might need to do some conversion steps to get it to work.> Is my thinking correct ? TIA.Yep, that seems like a reasonable plan. Cheers, Mark -- Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/) _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Yep, that seems like a reasonable plan. Cheers, Mark -- Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/) Mark, CentOS5 has a build of Xen but it is a early 3.01 version. Would I be better to install the latest 3.2 ? If I try and install libvirt from the repo it also pulls in Xen and Xen-libs anyway. Any help from somebody who has done this would be appreciated. Regards, -- --[ UxBoD ]-- // PGP Key: "curl -s http://www.splatnix.net/uxbod.asc | gpg --import" // Fingerprint: F57A 0CBD DD19 79E9 1FCC A612 CB36 D89D 2C5A 3A84 // Keyserver: www.keyserver.net Key-ID: 0x2C5A3A84 // Phone: +44 845 869 2749 SIP Phone: uxbod@sip.splatnix.net -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> CentOS5 has a build of Xen but it is a early 3.01 version. Would I be > better to install the latest 3.2 ?CentOS 5.0 included a Xen based on the 3.0.3 release. CentOS 5.1 (which you get automatically by software updates from 5.0) includes a Xen based on the 3.1 release (the package name is still 3.0.3-something but that''s lying -it''s 3.1 really ;-). 3.1 isn''t quite the latest release but it''s a recent one and it''s natively supported by CentOS. I think that''s a reasonable one for you to try anyhow. Are you planning on doing HVM domains or just PV domains or a combination of both?> If I try and install libvirt from the > repo it also pulls in Xen and Xen-libs anyway. Any help from somebody who > has done this would be appreciated.Yeah, it''s difficult to separate the libvirt / virt-manager stuff from the Xen stuff. My advice would be to try out the default Xen of CentOS 5.1 and see if it works OK for you - if it does, then stick with it for the moment. There are (or will be) CentOS 5 RPMs of Xen 3.2 on the Citrix / XenSource website but these will not be updated regularly with security and bug fixes, whereas the real CentOS RPMs will be. The CentOS RPMs will also be better tested, so I still think they''re better to start off with. Cheers, Mark -- Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/) _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users