Hello everyone, I just wanted to see if anyone has experience running Xen on: Dell 2950 III 2 x Quad 2.0 Ghz 1333Mhz FSB 32 GB DDR2 (8x4GB) 2 Disk Perc RAID 1 (7200 RPM SAS) Broadcom Dual Gigabit Ethernet LOM & TOE The requirements of each VM are not that high (and are all identical). I just want to run remote desktop and 1 other application at any given time (either a web based IE application built on javascript, or a local client app that is basically a questionnaire, nothing processor intensive). Just looking for some insight into how this would work or some kind of benchmarks or rules of thumb to go by when determining what type of hardware I need to run Xen on to achieve this. Thanks a lot Nick _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Fábio M. Catunda
2008-Aug-25 17:52 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Dell 2950 III for Xen virtualization
Nick, I have a 2950 running Xen very well. I don''t have SAS disks, just 800GB SATA ones, but everything is running well until now. I have only 4GB RAM memory, but thats ok for only 5 VMs. My instalation is a tipical Debian setup, nothing special. By now I have this running: vm1debian 11 256 1 -b---- 6555.8 vm2debian 12 128 1 -b---- 5096.7 vm4debian 14 256 1 -b---- 5973.8 vm5centos 15 512 1 -b---- 5757.4 win02 16 512 1 -b---- 30637.5 If you want to know something specific, just ask. Regards, Fábio Catunda. Nick Jones escreveu:> Hello everyone, > > I just wanted to see if anyone has experience running Xen on: > > Dell 2950 III > 2 x Quad 2.0 Ghz 1333Mhz FSB > 32 GB DDR2 (8x4GB) > 2 Disk Perc RAID 1 (7200 RPM SAS) > Broadcom Dual Gigabit Ethernet LOM & TOE > > The requirements of each VM are not that high (and are all identical). > I just want to run remote desktop and 1 other application at any > given time (either a web based IE application built on javascript, or > a local client app that is basically a questionnaire, nothing > processor intensive). > > Just looking for some insight into how this would work or some kind of > benchmarks or rules of thumb to go by when determining what type of > hardware I need to run Xen on to achieve this. > > Thanks a lot > > Nick > > _______________________________________________ > 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
On 2008-08-25 17:45, Nick Jones wrote:> I just wanted to see if anyone has experience running Xen on: > > Dell 2950 III > 2 x Quad 2.0 Ghz 1333Mhz FSB > 32 GB DDR2 (8x4GB) > 2 Disk Perc RAID 1 (7200 RPM SAS) > Broadcom Dual Gigabit Ethernet LOM & TOE[snip] Xen works well on a similar configuration I use (2.83GHz CPUs, 16GB memory, 6-disk RAID 5). You might feel a little tight on I/O bandwidth with only a 2-disk 7.2KRPM RAID 1. If you''re using slower disks, it''s better to have more of them. Note also that the new PERC 6 controllers support RAID 6 (dual parity). One thing I would recommend is to leave the first NIC port dedicated to IPMI so it can live on a management LAN. With IPMI you can remotely control power and boot priority, monitor system temperatures, and access the console. This is all provided by the baseboard management controller; you do *not* need a DRAC for all of this, although a DRAC also has a built-in KVM. The KVM is mostly superfluous though once you get the IPMI serial console working. It''s good to keep the IPMI interface on its own network with restricted access, though, for better security. If you need more than one NIC, I recommend the dual- or quad-port Intel NICs. -- Jefferson Ogata : Internetworker, Antibozo <ogata@antibozo.net> http://www.antibozo.net/ogata/ -- Jefferson Ogata : Internetworker, Antibozo _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Hi Fabio, I''ve been told that 1 GB per VM is a good rule of thumb. It seems that you are following this guideline. I guess I''m interested in first hand experience attempting to use xen as a sort of terminal server. Since the resources can be managed pretty effectively I don''t see a problem with this approach other than a need for lots of RAM and a good number of CPU cores. What I really need to know is what happens when I run 30 VM''s under this kind of setup. Each VM will be XP and a typical web browsing scenario in terms of compute resources, nothing else. I guess I''d like to know if 30 VM''s is unreasonable, impossible, or not a problem at all. Hi Nathan, As far as just using a terminal server, I would need Windows Terminal Server to be able to run windows based applications (this is a requirement). The cost and complexity of licensing seems prohibitive and not worth the reduced complexity of management, if such a thing exists with terminal server compared to xen. I''m sure that learning curve aside, xen is pretty straightforward to manage once it''s up an running. That said, to answer your question, no I have not really looked into terminal server that much but I''m interested to hear about the advantages over xen for my particular situation (cost is a big consideration for us). Thanks for the responses. Nick On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 12:52 PM, "Fábio M. Catunda" <fcatunda@contactnet.com.br> wrote:> Nick, > > I have a 2950 running Xen very well. I don''t have SAS disks, just 800GB SATA > ones, but everything is running well until now. > > I have only 4GB RAM memory, but thats ok for only 5 VMs. > > My instalation is a tipical Debian setup, nothing special. > > By now I have this running: > vm1debian 11 256 1 -b---- 6555.8 > vm2debian 12 128 1 -b---- 5096.7 > vm4debian 14 256 1 -b---- 5973.8 > vm5centos 15 512 1 -b---- 5757.4 > win02 16 512 1 -b---- 30637.5 > > If you want to know something specific, just ask. > > Regards, > > Fábio Catunda.> Have you considered just using a terminal server, to reduce complexity? > > Thank you, > Nathan Eisenberg > Sr. Systems Administrator > Atlas Networks, LLC_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users