[K12OSN] Xen in FC5...what does this mean for us?

[Petre Scheie]

Virtualization is good for hardware consolidation; if you need two OSs you can do it on 
one box, whereas it used to be that you needed one box for each OS.  Considering that 
the problem most people on this list encounter is that the number of clients starts to 
exceed the hardware's ability to support all those clients, I don't see much value for 
this group in virtualization, not for a few years anyway*.  Virtualization is multiple 
OSs on one box, clustering is using multiple boxes to form one OS.  I think clustering 
will be of more interest to LTSP.

*If you had a mainframe with multiple processors and, say, 512GB of RAM, it might make 
sense to run multiple virtual servers, each dedicated to one application used in your 
LTSP environment.  You get the advantage that you can add and remove apps without 
potentially breaking the user environment or other apps.  It's the same as using 
dedicated app servers now, as Largo, FL does, but without all the 'extra' hardware of a 
separate box for each application.  That way, a bad or piggish app is even more 
separated from all the other apps and the desktop environment; in short, a more solid 
architecture.  But machines of this caliber aren't cheap, and I don't know that 
virtualization on Intel/x86 architecture is solid enough that I'd be willing to bet my 
whole environment on it.

Petre

David Trask wrote:
> Hey folks....
> 
> I see now that XEN virtualization is built in to Fedora Core 5.....I'm
> curious as to folks ideas and suggestions on how this can be leveraged to
> help us in K12LTSP......ideas?   Thoughts?
> 
> David N. Trask
> Technology Teacher/Director
> Vassalboro Community School
> dtrask at vcsvikings.org
> (207)923-3100
> 
> 
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