I just bought two refurb bi-Alpha servers 3 days ago, and I am givent the idea to use them as share servers; for that, the best way and also most secure would be to use Xen ... problem is that when I search Alpha in ML archives, I mostly get ''alpha release'' answers, as opposite to beta release ... Alpha cores are said to be partly Pentium-Pro compliant; SRM on my servers also include several BIOS emulators to help detection of PCI32 and PCI64 daughter cards ... so I mostly think my bi-alpha servers could somehow be used as bi-pentium boxes ... from that: would actual version of Xen2.0 or Xen3.0 be source complatible with Alpha processors (I have CPUS revision 56, 533MHz, 4Mb cache, professionnal edition, and could dump you compleet specs from /proc within 24h if asked). If not, how long would the port take for the team ? how long for 4y experience C programmers ? (let say a team of 3 friends). I found those Alpha servers for very cheap; I now need to keep them buzy/hot, and some society would need them to support an existing dedicated web server. Gentoo and Debian user, C developper, knowledges in several ASM (PPC, 68hc11, 68hc08, ARM9) -- DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/ \_o< If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work >o_/ _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
I just bought two refurb bi-Alpha servers 3 days ago, and I am givent the idea to use them as share servers; for that, the best way and also most secure would be to use Xen ... problem is that when I search Alpha in ML archives, I mostly get ''alpha release'' answers, as opposite to beta release ... Alpha cores are said to be partly Pentium-Pro compliant; SRM on my servers also include several BIOS emulators to help detection of PCI32 and PCI64 daughter cards ... so I mostly think my bi-alpha servers could somehow be used as bi-pentium boxes ... from that: would actual version of Xen2.0 or Xen3.0 be source complatible with Alpha processors (I have CPUS revision 56, 533MHz, 4Mb cache, professionnal edition, and could dump you compleet specs from /proc within 24h if asked). If not, how long would the port take for the team ? how long for 4y experience C programmers ? (let say a team of 3 friends). I found those Alpha servers for very cheap; I now need to keep them buzy/hot, and some society would need them to support an existing dedicated web server. Gentoo and Debian user, C developper, knowledges in several ASM (PPC, 68hc11, 68hc08, ARM9) -- DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/ \_o< If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work >o_/ _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> I just bought two refurb bi-Alpha servers 3 days ago, and I am givent the > idea to use them as share servers; for that, the best way and also most > secure would be to use Xen ...Alpha''s are nice machines, it''s a shame they disappeared *nostalgia, violin music plays*> from that: would actual version of Xen2.0 or Xen3.0 be source complatible > with Alpha processors (I have CPUS revision 56, 533MHz, 4Mb cache, > professionnal edition, and could dump you compleet specs from /proc within > 24h if asked).Xen has quite a high proportion of arch-dependent code, simply because it''s such a low-level piece of software. Making the generic code (the scheduler, the sHype security stuff, some of the domain management stuff, etc) compile on Alpha should be easy enough but there''ll still be a lot of machine-specific stuff that needs writing.> If not, how long would the port take for the team ? > how long for 4y experience C programmers ? (let say a team of 3 friends).A good basis for the arch-dep code is probably the Linux Alpha architecture code - that should at least provide you with a decent starting point. You''ll need to get hold of an Alpha architecture manual and grok through all the lowlevel code in the kernel: firstly, you''ll need to be familiar with this to get Xen itself to run on Alpha, secondly you''ll need to modify this for the Alpha port of XenLinux. A good understanding of the Linux memory management code would be useful too. It''ll probably be a nicer architecture to virtualise than x86 (which is really hard) but you should still expect it to be a rather major project.> I found those Alpha servers for very cheap; I now need to keep them > buzy/hot, and some society would need them to support an existing dedicated > web server.I assume you''ve thought about UML but want better performance? If you need to get the server up and running soon, you might also like to consider Linux Vserver http://linux-vserver.org/. This is a kernel patch that gives you virtual machine functionality similar to FreeBSD jails / Solaris Zones. You can''t do live-migration or run multiple difference operating systems but you *can* give several people "root" on virtual servers (running multiple distributions), with near native performance. For a simple way to install a vserver, you could try using "debootstrap", or just untar the Gentoo base tarballs (if there''s an Alpha port of Gentoo???). Cheers, Mark _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> You''ll need to get hold of an Alpha architecture manual and grok through all > the lowlevel code in the kernel: firstly, you''ll need to be familiar with > this to get Xen itself to run on Alpha, secondly you''ll need to modify this > for the Alpha port of XenLinux. A good understanding of the Linux memory > management code would be useful too.that is gonna be the hard part for me.> It''ll probably be a nicer architecture to virtualise than x86 (which is really > hard)thats my point :)>From theory, I think it ought to be easier to code Xen for Alpha first, rather thanreverse engineer the x86 source, then try to make things smarter for Alpha ...> but you should still expect it to be a rather major project.An other topic which leads me to time dependency ... a dep which is not to be discussed in here.> I assume you''ve thought about UML but want better performance? If you need to > get the server up and running soon, you might also like to consider Linux > Vserver http://linux-vserver.org/. This is a kernel patch that gives you > virtual machine functionality similar to FreeBSD jails / Solaris Zones. You > can''t do live-migration or run multiple difference operating systems but you > *can* give several people "root" on virtual servers (running multiple > distributions), with near native performance. > > For a simple way to install a vserver, you could try using "debootstrap", or > just untar the Gentoo base tarballs (if there''s an Alpha port of Gentoo???).no; I found vserver hard to install on Gentoo, hard to conf on Debian, and several friends told me that they are not that much secure. I really think that xen on Alpha would be EFFICIENT /and/ SECURE. *** so answer to my question is: yes it is feasable, but nobody planed it yet. -- DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/ \_o< If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work >o_/ _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> You''ll need to get hold of an Alpha architecture manual and grok through all > the lowlevel code in the kernel: firstly, you''ll need to be familiar with > this to get Xen itself to run on Alpha, secondly you''ll need to modify this > for the Alpha port of XenLinux. A good understanding of the Linux memory > management code would be useful too.that is gonna be the hard part for me.> It''ll probably be a nicer architecture to virtualise than x86 (which is really > hard)thats my point :)>From theory, I think it ought to be easier to code Xen for Alpha first, rather thanreverse engineer the x86 source, then try to make things smarter for Alpha ...> but you should still expect it to be a rather major project.An other topic which leads me to time dependency ... a dep which is not to be discussed in here.> I assume you''ve thought about UML but want better performance? If you need to > get the server up and running soon, you might also like to consider Linux > Vserver http://linux-vserver.org/. This is a kernel patch that gives you > virtual machine functionality similar to FreeBSD jails / Solaris Zones. You > can''t do live-migration or run multiple difference operating systems but you > *can* give several people "root" on virtual servers (running multiple > distributions), with near native performance. > > For a simple way to install a vserver, you could try using "debootstrap", or > just untar the Gentoo base tarballs (if there''s an Alpha port of Gentoo???).no; I found vserver hard to install on Gentoo, hard to conf on Debian, and several friends told me that they are not that much secure. I really think that xen on Alpha would be EFFICIENT /and/ SECURE. *** so answer to my question is: yes it is feasable, but nobody planed it yet. -- DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/ \_o< If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work >o_/ _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users