[K12OSN] Xen

Les Mikesell les at futuresource.com
Wed Mar 22 18:13:44 UTC 2006


On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 09:35, rmcdaniel at indata.us wrote:
> Has anyone in this group used Xen?  Any problems running multiple OS on
> one server?  It sure seems like a great way to support both Linux and
> Windows environments.  It could provide a way to slowly ween users off
> of Windows.  Seems like something worth trying.

Xen requires a modified kernel for the guest OS while the
modification to windows is possible it is not available. However,
VMware has released a free version of VMware server that will
run under Linux and support windows guests.  If your server is
already CPU bound with thin clients it probably won't work
well anyway.  The place I expect it to be useful is to allow
getting rid of any old windows boxes you have around running
some rarely used program.  For one or a few users you could
run a dedicated virtual machine using the included remote
console for access.  The memory isn't shared between machines
so it probably wouldn't be practical to give many clients
their own virtual machine.  However if you have a server that
only handles a few thin clients you could also run a windows
server under vmware with terminal services providing access
to window apps, using rdesktop on the client.

The VMware server is currently a beta release but seems pretty
solid and is supposed to remain free even after general release.
http://www.vmware.com.  If nothing else, it is a great tool for
trying experimental software since the things you install in a
guest don't affect the host.  You can even create a new virtual
machine and without installing anything it will network boot
as a thin client.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com





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