[Fedora-xen] Best practices questions

[Markus Armbruster]

"Lopez, Denise" <dlopez at humnet.ucla.edu> writes:

> Hi all,
>
>  
>
> I am in the process of building a new Xen server from scratch and wanted
> to ask a couple of questions about best practices.  
>
>  
>
> First, should the guest domains be image files or LVM's or just regular
> ext3 partitions? What are the pros and/or cons of each?

Image files are slow.  Sparse image files lead to *nasty* domU data
corruption when you run out of space in the filesystem containing the
image file.

LVM vs. regular partitions is the usual deal: LVM gives you more
flexibility.  You might find that you appreciate the flexibility even
more when you run guests.

> Second,  since the Dom0 is supposed to be kept secure, and most of my
> servers I don't install any X11 server on, is there any security risk
> installing an X11 server on the Dom0 in order to take advantage of the
> virt-manager GUI interface?

X is network transparent.  Why not use a remote display?  You don't
need an X server in dom0 for that.

> Thank you in advance for any thoughts and or opinions.
>
>  
>
> Denise Lopez