PUBLIC MARKS with tags setup & xen

Xen is a GPLed virtualization solution available in Debian 4.0 Etch repositories. This article help you to create a coherent Xen installation, with backups and minimum security enhancements. This guide fits my vision of a Xen setup. If it does not fit yours, you are free to adapt it to your needs, or to not use it. For information In this guide, i use the term "virtual host". Be aware that Xen use its own terminology. In a Xen setup, instanciated (aka. started) virtual hosts are called "Domains". Once your computer configured for Xen, all the operating systems run in "domains". The original operating system, where the Xen's control tools are installed, is called "dom0" (for domain No zero). All the guest operating systems are said to be installed in a "domU" (for User domain). As i'm a little lazy (well, yeah... very lazy), i don't want to endure this mind twisting, and i will mainly use the "virtual host" term in this guide. So, if you read this guide, don't by angry at me because of the terms i use.

After my last post on limiting bandwidth usage on a Xen node I thought I would follow up with how to monitor the bandwidth usage of a Xen node. I chose to use netacct-mysql to monitor bandwidth and store the results into a mysql database. This isn't the only way of monitoring the bandwidth but it was easy to set up and stores the information directly into mysql without needing any extra scripts. On the Xen setup I'm using for an example there are 3 nodes and a bucket for each node will be created in the mysql database by netacct. Setting up netacct can be tricky so you will want to check to make sure traffic for each node is going into the correct bucket.

I have tried to run both Debian Etch and Ubuntu 8.04 Server on the cluster nodes, in Dom0. I started my tests with Debian, but I had some issues with slow samba performance in one VM that I couldn't fix so I decided to try Ubuntu Server, for the first time. Both installation went OK, the main difference was that I used mainly source code in Debian, but only packages in Ubuntu. I actually ran into more problems with Ubuntu due to some early bugs in the 8.04 release, will describe them below as I go along. And I have still to prove that running this setup in Ubuntu is stable.

there are many ways to setup xen, but i've put together a simple step-by-step guide to get a working xen system based on debian etch. easy as pie.

Nous verrons dans cet article comment installer Xen sur une machine n'ayant pas les instructions matérielles de virtualisation (VT) en utilisant LVM pour partitionner avec flexibilité nos différentes machines virtuelles. Le tout est réalisé grâce à Debian Etch avec les bons noyaux qui vont bien. J'ai aussi utilisé le noyau officiel de chez Xen afin d'avoir quelque chose de propre (enfin dans la limite du possible). Attention, mon tutoriel prends de véritables adresses IP, je n'ai donc aucun besoin de NAT. Si tel est votre problème, achetez le numéro 100 de GLMF, il contient le serveur parfait et un setup bien plus avancé que le miens :)