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Virtualization is one of those things that is intriguing for a desktop user and can prove to be a valuable tool. I use Virtualbox on my Core Networks laptop loaded with XP and windows 7. It is priceless for assisting customers with those operating systems without having to dual boot anything other than my Ubuntu OS that I love!
The desktop experiment with Virtualbox was so successful I contemplated using it for the server side as well. Although it would have been adequate, it has none of the features that something like ESX server does (VMware). ESX server supports a whole host of options such as live migration and template deployment. Although some of the Vmware options are free, I knew that I had to try the open source product Xen and test that. My research led me to the “Floss Weekly” podcasts on the TWIT network, these guys had done a podcast on Xen and listening to that I was sold on the stability and feature set of Xen which is as good as or better than ESX server. In the end, we have gone with the combination of Xen server and the Linux GUI management tool “Convirture”.
See the Wiki page here for the install and enjoy!
Xen really needs a 64bit machine, something like an AMD64 works best
apt-get install xen-linux-system-2.6.26-2-xen-686 xenwatch xen-tools
Reboot the machine and make sure it restarts properly with the Xen Kernel listed at the top of the GRUB menu
adjusted the network settings in /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp. Enabling the network bridge: (network-script network-bridge netdev=eth0)
Restart the Xen service
/etc/init.d/xend restart
This completes the Xen setup and there are a few command line tools we can use to create and run virtual machines. We will do one by command line first then install the Convirture GUI after that.