[plug] Xen is magic

[Craig Ringer]

Hi all

I haven't noticed Xen mentioned much here, so I thought I'd throw in my
experiences. I've recently converted the core server at work (2x2.4GHz
Xeon, 1.5TB storage, 2GB RAM, usually >500 procs and 20+ users) to Xen
2.0 . Based on results so far it looks like something I can heartily
recommend to anyone. It's now two virtual servers - the base server
doing mail, virus scanning, mac and Windows file sharing, and misc
network services, plus a  virtual server with XDMCP services for LTSP
clients. 1 2.4GHz Xeon and 1GB RAM each.

Xen's really impressive. It didn't take all that long to convert over
from the chroot hack I was using, and works *much* more smoothly. Xen +
iSCSI, ATA-over-Ethernet, and/or GFS is looking more and more attractive
for zero-downtime server maintainance.

If you're frustrated by trying to pack several roles with different
needs onto one server, I strongly suggest you check out Xen. The only
problem I had was the default kernels being a bit crippled with regards
to drivers, but that's easily fixed.

Now I can't wait for Xen 3.0 (and VT/Pacifica hardware), so I can
finally retire the NT4 and SCO OpenServer hardware.

Any others here tried out Xen in production environments? Thoughts /
comments?

--
Craig Ringer