Re: [Xen-users] Citrix Xen Server

[James Pifer <jep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2010-02-09 at 13:33 -0300, Fernando Berretta wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm new in virtualization technologies and have found Citrix Xen Server 
> seems to provide a free GUI tool for administration of Virtual Machines, 
> etc. based on Xen. Is Citrix Xen Server the best way to start trying xen 
> ? what limitations has the "Free" licence ?
> 

Hi Fernando. We've been running SLES10/SLES11 xen servers for quite some
time. We use ocfs2 for our storage. I've always had some nagging issues
with memory, but the last two weeks I've had some major outages and
problems. I have a couple tickets open with Novell right now. I think my
issues are mostly ocfs2 related. 

In the mean time I decided to try XenServer. At first it looks really
great. The management gui is excellent, and easy to use. Once you have
their xs-tools installed it extremely easy to moving a VM to another
host without shutting it down. I have yet to get this working on my
servers. 

The major drawbacks I've come across this week compared to what we do
now on sles are:

-setting up a suse linux paravirtualized machine seems like major pain.
converting my current sles VMs seems impossible, or at best very
difficult.

-we use a Xiotech SAN and although you can setup shared storage, you
cannot use sparse files, so your storage requirements are a lot higher.
As far as I can tell, the only way to use sparse files on XenServer is
by using NFS. 

-I feel like I lose a lot of flexibility, especially with linux VMs. on
my current servers I can mount the disk files and access the files in
them if needed. I can easily copy a disk file and then create a new VM
based on that file. On XenServer I have copied a Windows VM and created
another one, but I haven't figured out how to take a disk and create a
VM using that existing virtual disk. 

-getting help on the citrix forum is very hit and miss. you're lucky to
get an answer very quickly as opposed to here where you typically get
some kind of answer within hours, if not sooner.

It could be that I'm just missing some important aspects of XenServer
that I have yet to figure out. You should try it and see if it fits for
you.

Now, back to my problems....

James


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