Antoine Benkemoun
2008-Jul-19 11:11 UTC
[Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Hello, Now that I finally have been able to get Xen running in a pre-production environment and soon in a production environment. I am looking to extend my use of Xen. To set the background, I work for a French hosting company and in our office we have a shelf full of old and crappy servers that are just rotting away. The health and reliability of the machines are becoming pretty doubtful. What we would like to do is throw all these old machines in the trash and replace them with a single server running Xen. The thing is that it would take absolutly forever to reinstall the machines since they all have really old and obscure technologies (I found some Cold Fusion 4). What we would like to do is migrate them to Xen but without reinstalling them... Is this possible ? Having a machine with a bunch of disks is viable but making disks images would be the best option. Thank you in advance for your help, Antoine -- Antoine Benkemoun Tel : 03.51.53.57.00 Port : 06.32.88.59.35 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Antoine Benkemoun
2008-Jul-19 11:12 UTC
[Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Hello, Now that I finally have been able to get Xen running in a pre-production environment and soon in a production environment. I am looking to extend my use of Xen. To set the background, I work for a French hosting company and in our office we have a shelf full of old and crappy servers that are just rotting away. The health and reliability of the machines are becoming pretty doubtful. What we would like to do is throw all these old machines in the trash and replace them with a single server running Xen. The thing is that it would take absolutly forever to reinstall the machines since they all have really old and obscure technologies (I found some Cold Fusion 4). What we would like to do is migrate them to Xen but without reinstalling them... Is this possible ? Having a machine with a bunch of disks is viable but making disks images would be the best option. Thank you in advance for your help, Antoine -- Antoine Benkemoun Tel : 03.51.53.57.00 Port : 06.32.88.59.35 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Stefan de Konink
2008-Jul-19 11:18 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Antoine Benkemoun schreef:> Is this possible ? > > Having a machine with a bunch of disks is viable but making disks images > would be the best option.If you have enough IDE/SCSI ports you can get away with it. You might need to disable TLS. But it is worth the try :) Stefan _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Antoine Benkemoun
2008-Jul-19 11:58 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Thank you for your answer. Would it be possible to make an image of these disks to use with Xen ? Anyways, would you have a tutorial or something along those lines that shows how to do such a thing ? Antoine On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 1:18 PM, Stefan de Konink <skinkie@xs4all.nl> wrote:> Antoine Benkemoun schreef: > >> Is this possible ? >> >> Having a machine with a bunch of disks is viable but making disks images >> would be the best option. >> > > If you have enough IDE/SCSI ports you can get away with it. You might need > to disable TLS. But it is worth the try :) > > > Stefan >-- Antoine Benkemoun Tel : 03.51.53.57.00 Port : 06.32.88.59.35 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Stefan de Konink
2008-Jul-19 12:01 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Antoine Benkemoun schreef:> Would it be possible to make an image of these disks to use with Xen ?dd is your friend :)> Anyways, would you have a tutorial or something along those lines that > shows how to do such a thing ?No, but this is trivial. Just dump the disk to an image file. Setup a kernel, try this thing to boot, and have fun. Stefan _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Antoine Benkemoun
2008-Jul-19 12:08 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Ok I knew that dd was able to make copies of disks bit per bit but not that it could make images for Xen. By setup a kernel what do you mean ? I would like to avoid having to mess with the original system. Could I just do this with full virtualization ? I was planning to get a system with Intel VT anyways. If anyone has a tutorial or a page that explains a few things as to how this would happen, I would still be interested. Antoine On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 2:01 PM, Stefan de Konink <skinkie@xs4all.nl> wrote:> Antoine Benkemoun schreef: > >> Would it be possible to make an image of these disks to use with Xen ? >> > > dd is your friend :) > > Anyways, would you have a tutorial or something along those lines that >> shows how to do such a thing ? >> > > No, but this is trivial. Just dump the disk to an image file. Setup a > kernel, try this thing to boot, and have fun. > > > Stefan >-- Antoine Benkemoun Tel : 03.51.53.57.00 Port : 06.32.88.59.35 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Stefan de Konink
2008-Jul-19 12:11 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Antoine Benkemoun schreef:> Ok I knew that dd was able to make copies of disks bit per bit but not > that it could make images for Xen.What do you think a raw image is? Magic?> By setup a kernel what do you mean ? I would like to avoid having to > mess with the original system. Could I just do this with full > virtualization ? I was planning to get a system with Intel VT anyways.No need for VT, it is a mess anyway. Just set it up with a linux kernel (outside the image) inside Xen, and try if it works. If you get a big #$(*& warning about TLS, disable it. And read the XenFAQ!> If anyone has a tutorial or a page that explains a few things as to how > this would happen, I would still be interested.Use google. Stefan _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Antoine Benkemoun
2008-Jul-19 12:15 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Ah thank you. Didn''t know Xen images were raw. So to make sure I understand you right. I just start my Xen Linux and Xen Hypervisor then I just edit the files to get it to use the image I pulled from a previous server ? Are there any setting to activate to use full virtualization ? Is the performance impact really much bigger ? Antoine On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Stefan de Konink <skinkie@xs4all.nl> wrote:> Antoine Benkemoun schreef: > >> Ok I knew that dd was able to make copies of disks bit per bit but not >> that it could make images for Xen. >> > > What do you think a raw image is? Magic? > > By setup a kernel what do you mean ? I would like to avoid having to mess >> with the original system. Could I just do this with full virtualization ? I >> was planning to get a system with Intel VT anyways. >> > > No need for VT, it is a mess anyway. Just set it up with a linux kernel > (outside the image) inside Xen, and try if it works. If you get a big #$(*& > warning about TLS, disable it. And read the XenFAQ! > > If anyone has a tutorial or a page that explains a few things as to how >> this would happen, I would still be interested. >> > > Use google. > > > Stefan >-- Antoine Benkemoun Tel : 03.51.53.57.00 Port : 06.32.88.59.35 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Stefan de Konink
2008-Jul-19 12:22 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Antoine Benkemoun schreef:> Ah thank you. Didn''t know Xen images were raw.Xen accepts all sorts of images. tap:aio prefixes with raw images are probably the most stable if you don''t use solutions like iSCSI.> So to make sure I understand you right. I just start my Xen Linux and > Xen Hypervisor then I just edit the files to get it to use the image I > pulled from a previous server ?You edit a configuration file to start an image that points to your disk. Don''t forget to set up the right partition scheme if required by the previous installation. If you dump the entire disk then then the partitions will be ok, otherwise you need to edit /etc/fstab inside the image or your configuration file outside the image.> Are there any setting to activate to use full virtualization ?Not required by your setup> Is the performance impact really much bigger ?Yes. Stefan _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Antoine Benkemoun
2008-Jul-19 12:32 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Thank you for your answers. I''ll be trying this out ! Antoine On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Stefan de Konink <skinkie@xs4all.nl> wrote:> Antoine Benkemoun schreef: > >> Ah thank you. Didn''t know Xen images were raw. >> > > Xen accepts all sorts of images. tap:aio prefixes with raw images are > probably the most stable if you don''t use solutions like iSCSI. > > So to make sure I understand you right. I just start my Xen Linux and Xen >> Hypervisor then I just edit the files to get it to use the image I pulled >> from a previous server ? >> > > You edit a configuration file to start an image that points to your disk. > Don''t forget to set up the right partition scheme if required by the > previous installation. If you dump the entire disk then then the partitions > will be ok, otherwise you need to edit /etc/fstab inside the image or your > configuration file outside the image. > > Are there any setting to activate to use full virtualization ? >> > > Not required by your setup > > Is the performance impact really much bigger ? >> > > Yes. > > > Stefan >-- Antoine Benkemoun Tel : 03.51.53.57.00 Port : 06.32.88.59.35 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Nico Kadel-Garcia
2008-Jul-20 18:00 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Migration from a regular system to Xen
Antoine Benkemoun wrote:> Hello, > > Now that I finally have been able to get Xen running in a > pre-production environment and soon in a production environment. I am > looking to extend my use of Xen. > > To set the background, I work for a French hosting company and in our > office we have a shelf full of old and crappy servers that are just > rotting away. The health and reliability of the machines are becoming > pretty doubtful. What we would like to do is throw all these old > machines in the trash and replace them with a single server running Xen.Much depends on the base OS of your old and crappy servers. The overall cost and intricacies are heavily system dependent. There are companies that know how to do this on a commercial scale, such as almost any of the consultants on the Xensource listed pages.> The thing is that it would take absolutly forever to reinstall the > machines since they all have really old and obscure technologies (I > found some Cold Fusion 4). What we would like to do is migrate them to > Xen but without reinstalling them... > > Is this possible ? > > Having a machine with a bunch of disks is viable but making disks > images would be the best option. > > Thank you in advance for your help, > > AntoineMuch depends on your resources. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
hi I try to install the xen3.2.0 in federa6 with virtualization,that is ,I have installed a copy of federa6 with virtualization support,in fact ,a xen3.0.3in it ,and everything seems to be ok until trying to start xend ,and in tact ,xend could not boot up with no error printed in screen,but there are some error in the log file as follow, does some one have the similar experience or not? could some one give me a help Thanks in advance [root@testxen ~]# vim /var/log/xen/xend-debug.log domctl operation failed -- need to rebuild the user-space tool set? Exception starting xend: (13, ''Permission denied'') _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users