Re: Is Xen for Stable/Unstable distro a good idea?
On Wednesday 28 June 2006 09:48, Angel L. Mateo wrote:
> El mar, 27-06-2006 a las 18:01 +0300, David Baron escribió:
> > > 1. Is Xen mainly for sharing multiple operating systems running
> > > together, or are there some other really interesting uses?
> >
> > Xen is an advanced virtual machine. You can run one version of linux or
> > such inside your installed version. Useful for testing the new version
> > out, running things in a protected environment. I am no expert but I do
> > not believe "sharing" is going on.
> >
> > Less advanced, easy to set up and use is qemu (using the kqemu
> > accelerator kernel module).
> >
> > Both run off disk images, not real file systems.
>
> This is not true. I don't qemu well, but I think it could use a real
> filesystem. And I am sure that xen can use it. It could you the
> filesystem type you want (a file, a real filesystem in a partition, a
> filesystem in a logical volumen, an iscsi disk, etc.). All you need is
> that your kernel support it.
Qemu is a fairly simple virtualizer. Since a virtual machine sport differing
"hardware" (emulated) than the real one, running off a real filesystem is
kind of dangerous. Feeding qemu the real thing is rejected. It will play off
diskettes and live CDs.
Xen (which I have not tried and do not fully understand) is a much more
complex and capable virtualizer. I have read that it will not do Windows.
There are a bunch of linux kernel images around which it will play. Whether
they correspond to "unstable" as such I do not know.
A vritualizer that runs the actual hardware, playing traffic cop between the
real session and the virtual sessions?? Real native speed and effective
multimedia? (I have reasons for wanting to run a Windows session off the real
hardware for music production. Qemu and such will not cut it here, though
Windows, Knoppix CDs (not running the KDE), and Dynebolic run very nicely
with it.)
>
> There is a real very interesting use: the use of virtualization to
> consolidate servers. One of the problems of organizations is the number
> of infraused (is this the english word?) servers. With virtualization
> you can use one physical servers to deploy several virtual servers (one
> server as email server, another for web, another...). For this kind of
> use, xen is a good solution. Another (non-free) solution could be vmware
> esx. qemu is not a solution. In fact, there are service providers that
> offers virtual servers for renting.
This is what I have seen suggested in various bulletins. Speed is not a
significant problem and the internet runs just fine.
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