[CentOS-virt] Issue with dom0 xen ballooning

[Daniel de Kok]

On 2/20/08, Tim Verhoeven <tim.verhoeven.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> I did not see the problems you are having but I have a set of Xen
>  hosts and by default I limit the memory usage of the dom0 to 512MB
>  using the dom0_mem option that you mentioned. In my case the dom0's
>  are not doing anything so why do they need the memory in the first
>  place ? That is why I've limited my dom0's like this by default, I
>  consider this a good practice for these kinds of setups

I can only agree. Except for a desktop setup dom0 should do nothing
except acting as an administrative domain. Besides the potential
memory issues that were mentioned, it gives increased security. If a
dom0 is compromised, all other domains are also tainted. On my
machines dom0s get fairly little memory and doesn't run much besides a
heavily protected SSH daemon.

-- Daniel