Re: [Xen-users] Re: Considering Xen for Ubuntu VPS environment

["Matthew Law" <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, September 2, 2010 8:36 pm, Michael Lueck wrote:
> Oh, so does Xen indeed use the official Ubuntu kernel, or does the kernel
> come from Xen and happens to work with Ubuntu?
>
> All right, sounds exciting / interesting! :-) So any recommendations as to
> providers that are running the current Xen code and provide good Ubuntu
> support?

Best to check the Xen wiki for a better description, but basically Xen is
a hypervisor -a very thin layer between the running VM and the real
hardware.  Xen uses a control domain called dom0 to manage the
unprivileged guest domains.

Basically, as long as the hypervisor and Xen tools support the kernel you
are trying to boot, you are in with a good chance of getting it all
working.  Upgrading VMs can be a pain regardless of the virtualisation
technology you use.

For VPS use many of us also mount rescue CDs in our guests to allow
customers to fix any mess they get themselves into.  Depending on your
environment this can either be a graphical CD or a live CD with console
access.  The xen console works well and access to the VM's boot menu is
easy.

Separation of VM resource utilisation in xen is very good -CPU and RAM is
excellent, network and disk I/O is a little harder to accomplish but still
usable.

The most difficult part is getting yourself setup with a stable xen host. 
Older xen versions come with RHEL/CentOS and debian (these are lacking
latest features but are known to be stable and dependable).  Xen Cloud
Platform is a promising open source xen appliance distribution.  We
haven't moved our domUs to it yet as it is still early days for that
projecy, IMHO, but it looks very good indeed.


Good luck,

Matt.


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