From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1RhTiM-0004xv-Ps for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:17:15 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B050F21C1D2; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 22:16:46 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.desaster-games.net (dns1.desaster-games.net [188.40.122.227]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B23A21C1BC for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 22:13:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.desaster-games.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3AC0010285A4 for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 23:15:54 +0100 (CET) X-Virus-Scanned: Amavis at mail.desaster-games.com Received: from mail.desaster-games.net ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mail.desaster-games.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 8wzx0N2J5feS for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 23:15:54 +0100 (CET) Received: from [10.159.0.4] (notebook.felix.desaster-games.net [10.159.0.4]) by mail.desaster-games.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 106AA102859E for ; Sun, 1 Jan 2012 23:15:54 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <4F00DA87.80107@desaster-games.com> Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:13:27 +0100 From: Felix Kuperjans Organization: Desaster Games e.V. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111211 Thunderbird/8.0 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Xen vs Citrix XenServer References: <4F008738.4060200@libertytrek.org> <4F009A7E.60502@libertytrek.org> In-Reply-To: <4F009A7E.60502@libertytrek.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 93ae78e7-e2f4-4939-bf96-2ad0dab553b0 X-Archives-Hash: c208d1a61e973e7e4ccac403c27432c4 On 2012-01-01 18:40, Tanstaafl wrote: > Thanks for your response Michael... > > On 2012-01-01 11:51 AM, Michael Mol wrote: >> On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Tanstaafl wrote: >> While I haven't played with XenServer, I have played with its >> open-source clone, XCP, and was very annoyed by it. I'd rather run a >> Gentoo dom0. > > I just thought that running a bare metal hyperviser would be more > stable/reliable, and running it on a thumb drive would be much more > convenient. With Xen (or XenServer) the hypervisor always runs on bare metal, and the domain-0 and its kernel is a special kind of a virtual machine (it has virtual RAM and virtual CPUs as any other Xen domain, but additionally full hardware access especially to all PCI devices and ACPI / sensors etc.). Separating it on a thumb drive will not change a lot, the hypervisor gets loaded into RAM any way and does not require any disk access. However, the domain-0 operating system will usually use a disk (but could also be run by NFS root file system or anything else). > >>> First - I want to use a bare metal hypervisor that supports the >>> following: >>> >>> 1. Can be installed on a USB FLASH drive (I have some Dell >>> Poweredge 2970 servers with the internal USB slot for just this >>> purpose), and > >> I don't think I've heard of anyone doing this, but I don't see why >> it'd be a problem. > > Definitely not a problem for XenServer (although v6 isn't officially > supported on a thumb drive yet), so I was mainly wondering about Xen > itself... > >>> 2. Fully supports both Windows Server 2008 (our Domain Controller), >>> and Gentoo Linux (our mail and web servers). > >> The xen supports hvm, where it emulates hardware; in a full hvm VM, >> *any* operating system comfortable on x86 should run. >> >> There's also paravirtualization, which is faster, and is likely what >> you're thinking of wrt 'bare metal'. Signed drivers for paravirt >> mode for hardware (such as your network, disk or system clock) are >> available for current versions of Windows. > > Yes, PV is what I was thinking of, thanks - and apparently this > wouldn't be a problem with gentoo either? I'm using a Gentoo domain-0 and domU systems productive for more than 2 years now. I have never used a virtual machine with Windows Server running, but it's fully supported by both, open-source Xen and XenServer. > >>> I can't seem to find an ebuild for the xenserver tools, and when >>> looking found out about Xen (I had thought that it went away a long >>> time ago)... > >> * app-emulation/xen-tools >> Available versions: 3.4.2-r3 ~3.4.2-r5 ~4.1.1-r5 4.1.1-r6 >> ~4.1.2-r2!t {acm api custom-cflags debug doc flask hvm pygrub qemu >> screen xend} >> Homepage: http://xen.org/ >> Description: Xend daemon and tools > > Hmm... so will these tools work with XenServer? Or are they just for Xen? > > Also, I ran across an article on the gentoo wiki that said that the VM > images for Xen and XenServer are NOT compatible, which I find odd if > XenServer is just Xen with some additional tools provided by Citrix. > > The article also said that the single biggest advantage of XenServer > is the amount of time required to get something up and running - > minutes for XenServer, compared to days for Xen - is this dated info, > or still true? I don't know about the setup of XenServer, but it should be rather straightforward. XCP is also meant to be a quick way to setup Xen just as VMWare ESXi or something similar. Setting up Xen in a Gentoo domain-0 is much more work for sure, but (as always with Gentoo) gives you lots of possibilities for customization. > >> * sec-policy/selinux-xen >> Available versions: [M]2.20110726 >> Homepage: >> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/selinux/ >> Description: SELinux policy for xen >> >> * sys-kernel/xen-sources >> Available versions: >> (2.6.18-r12) 2.6.18-r12!b!s >> (2.6.34-r3) ~2.6.34-r3!b!s >> (2.6.34-r4) ~2.6.34-r4!b!s >> (2.6.38) ~2.6.38!b!s >> {build deblob symlink} >> Homepage: http://xen.org/ >> Description: Full sources for a dom0/domU Linux kernel to >> run under Xen > > I though that xen-sources were no longer needed as of kernel 2.6.33+? 2.6.37+, but the first *really* usable kernel is 3.1, because earlier ones didn't have blockback support (virtual disks), up to 3.0, and 3.0 had a serious bug with VGA output. In addition, there may be performance problems with those kernels in some applications (but I didn't experience any yet). > > Thanks again Michael, > > Charles > > Regards, Felix