Discussion of the installation and of use of Xen.

--[ UxBoD ]-- | 1 Feb 2008 08:38

Moving to Xen

Hi,

First post so please be gentle! ;)

I am looking to switch to Xen from using VMware but would like a little help with my understanding.  My current
setup is a CentOS5.1 server with a VMWare server instance installed on top of it.

Am I able to install Xen and make my current CentOS installation the default domain without losing anything
? If this is possible then I would setup two additional domains 1) for the applications that were running in
the default ie. www, smtp and the 2) moving the VMware server which runs Zimbra to a Xen domain.  This would
leave the default domain as the management domain.

Is my thinking correct ?  TIA.

Regards,

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Mark Williamson | 3 Feb 2008 04:16

Re: Moving to Xen

> First post so please be gentle! ;)

Hi 

> I am looking to switch to Xen from using VMware but would like a little
> help with my understanding.  My current setup is a CentOS5.1 server with a
> VMWare server instance installed on top of it.

OK.

> Am I able to install Xen and make my current CentOS installation the
> default domain without losing anything ?

You can install the Xen hypervisor and the -xen Linux kernel.  Install 
virt-manager at the same time, it's good 

This will just give you an extra grub boot option to boot into Xen rather than 
into native Linux.  It'll probably boot into Xen by default from then on, but 
you can always use the Grub menu to boot without Xen, then uninstall Xen from 
your system.

You won't be able to run Xen and VMware server at the same time.

Your existing CentOS installation will become "domain 0", which is the 
privileged management domain.  It'll still own the keyboard, the mouse, the 
monitor and all the other devices.

> If this is possible then I would 
> setup two additional domains 1) for the applications that were running in
> the default ie. www, smtp

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--[ UxBoD ]-- | 3 Feb 2008 11:27

Re: Moving to Xen

Yep, that seems like a reasonable plan.

Cheers,
Mark

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Mark,

CentOS5 has a build of Xen but it is a early 3.01 version.  Would I be better to install the latest 3.2 ? If I try
and install libvirt from the repo it also pulls in Xen and Xen-libs anyway.  Any help from somebody who has
done this would be appreciated.

Regards,

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Mark Williamson | 4 Feb 2008 05:18

Re: Moving to Xen

> CentOS5 has a build of Xen but it is a early 3.01 version.  Would I be
> better to install the latest 3.2 ?

CentOS 5.0 included a Xen based on the 3.0.3 release.  CentOS 5.1 (which you 
get automatically by software updates from 5.0) includes a Xen based on the 
3.1 release (the package name is still 3.0.3-something but that's lying -it's 
3.1 really .

3.1 isn't quite the latest release but it's a recent one and it's natively 
supported by CentOS.  I think that's a reasonable one for you to try anyhow.

Are you planning on doing HVM domains or just PV domains or a combination of 
both?

> If I try and install libvirt from the 
> repo it also pulls in Xen and Xen-libs anyway.  Any help from somebody who
> has done this would be appreciated.

Yeah, it's difficult to separate the libvirt / virt-manager stuff from the Xen 
stuff.  My advice would be to try out the default Xen of CentOS 5.1 and see 
if it works OK for you - if it does, then stick with it for the moment.

There are (or will be) CentOS 5 RPMs of Xen 3.2 on the Citrix / XenSource 
website but these will not be updated regularly with security and bug fixes, 
whereas the real CentOS RPMs will be.  The CentOS RPMs will also be better 
tested, so I still think they're better to start off with.

Cheers,
Mark

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Todd Deshane | 2 Feb 2008 02:38

Re: Moving to Xen

On Feb 1, 2008 2:38 AM, --[ UxBoD ]-- <uxbod <at> splatnix.net> wrote:

Hi,

First post so please be gentle! ;)

I am looking to switch to Xen from using VMware but would like a little help with my understanding. My current setup is a CentOS5.1 server with a VMWare server instance installed on top of it.

Am I able to install Xen and make my current CentOS installation the default domain without losing anything ?

You can install the Xen packages without losing anything yes.

If this is possible then I would setup two additional domains 1) for the applications that were running in the default ie. www, smtp and the 2) moving the VMware server which runs Zimbra to a Xen domain. This would leave the default domain as the management domain.

for 2) I assume you mean the Zimbra application and not VMware server. The default domain is generally referred to as Domain 0 or more commonly dom0, and yes, it is used for management.

Welcome to Xen ;)

Best regards,
Todd

Is my thinking correct ? TIA.

Regards,

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