[CentOS-virt] Xen/VMWare Server comparison and "best Xen practices"?

[Kai Schaetzl]

Daniel de Kok wrote on Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:45:22 +0200:

> It depends on what you want to run as a domU. Paravirtualization is very
> fast (e.g. for running domU CentOS 4/5 kernels). On the other hand, some
> devices are very slow if you use Xen HVM for running systems that do not
> have a kernel that functions as a Xen domU. As long as we don't have
> paravirtualized network/display drivers for those systems,
> network/graphic performance will not be very good.
> 
> So, what do you plan to run as a virtual machine?

Strictly CentOS 5. CentOS 5 host and CentOS 5 guest. The testing machine 
doesn't have a CPU with virtualization support, so they will run 
paravirtualized. The most likely production machine I want to put Xen on has 
an X2 from last year (X2 3800+ EE because of temperature in a 1U box) where 
I'm not sure if it might support virtualization, but I plan to do 
paravirtualization, anyway. Usage will be for web/mail server related tasks 
(especially heavy MySQL usage with several GB databases), no desktop and no 
fileserver tasks. There will be only two or three DomUs.

> Did you try to connect to the VM virtual framebuffer with vncviewer,
> rather than virt-manager? What loads do you get then?

I didn't know I can do that. I haven't enabled vncserver on the host machine 
as I couldn't really get it going, if I want to VNC in I connect to the 
vino-server that's automatically coming with Gnome. Would this allow me to 
connect to the VM frame buffer as well? On the production machine I wouldn't 
be using/installing Gnome at all. But for getting acquainted to the stuff it's 
much easier to install and manage a new VM with virtual machine manager.

Kai

-- 
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com