[CentOS] Server Virtualization

[Timothy Selivanow]

On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 11:20 +1200, Clint Dilks wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I work for a school in a New Zealand university and we are wanting to 
> implement Server Virtualization for both CentOS and Windows systems.  So 
> I thought I would ask here what experience people have had with this and 
> what issues that you all think should be considered?
> 
>  From my own research it seems that VMWare or Xen are really the two 
> major products to be considered, are there any others I should be 
> considering ?
> 
> Is anyone running Linux "Guest" O/S's inside a Windows host ??  And if 
> so can you share your reasons for this?
> 
> Anyway thank you for your time and any experiences / knowledge you are 
> willing to share :)

I use Xen personally and at work I work with VMware.  I don't have any
machines personally that have hardware virtualization extensions in the
processor, so I'm only doing para-virtualization with CentOS 5 as host
and guests.  Documentation seems a little sparse if you want to deviate
from the default configuration too much in Xen.  Other than that I've
been very happy with Xen.

At work we've been playing with VMware Infrastructure 3.  If you are
going to go the VMware route, this is by far the best bang for your
buck.  You are able to manage several VM hosts under one interface, and
if you are running Windows as a guest you can do some pretty neat things
(coming soon for the Linux side).  I've also used the free version,
VMware Server (also called GSX, Infrastructure comes with the version
called ESX) on both Windows and Linux...prefer using Linux though as the
host (much better stability and low-level options if you are into
customizing the environment).

Any more questions, like specifics, please ask.  I've been using Xen and
VMware for several months now.


-- 
Timothy Selivanow <timothys at easystreet.com>
Linux System Administrator
EasyStreet Online Services, Inc.  http://www.easystreet.com