A few Xen questions

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 12:26 -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 12:11:47PM -0500, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
> > 1. Uh ... so where are the Xen control tools?  I suspect these are
> >    forthcoming, I just wanted to double check.
> 
> Correct

  Cool.  I just got this in a personal reply, too:
http://people.redhat.com/riel/

> > 2. On a somewhat related note, Red Hat at one time bundled a UML kernel
> >    but later stopped (even in an errata kernel for that same release).
> >    What were the reasons for this?
> 
> At the time UML wasn't in the base kernel and it got very hard to maintain.

  Ah.  Makes sense.

> A lot of people are very excited about Xen right now. Virtualisation is a big 
> thing and you need the tools to do it well. 

  I'll say.  It only just showed up in the dev tree recently and there's
an article in CRN about it already:
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml?
articleId=54201647


> Not in the short term although getting to the stage where you do
> "insmod virtualisation" is obviously desirable.

  Now *that's* what I'm takin' about!

> UML and Xen solve different problems. Xen is an extremely efficient secure
> virtualisation system, UML is a fantastic research, debugging and prototyping
> system but is unlikely ever to be as efficient.

  With my quick testing of the ttylinux sample, I can give this a big
nod.  The first time I tried UML (on a dual 700MHz PIII), my initial
impression was, 'people actually find this usable?'  It was terrible
performance-wise.  I know it's probably come a long way, and it is
probably better suited on higher end machines, but as you say, it's
really meant for prototyping and the like, not deployment.

> > 7. What do people think of the idea of porting Anaconda to run under Xen so

[snip]

> "Send patches"

  Well, I'll have to learn python first, I suppose :-/

> Its obviously a key part of the thing that you can provision Xen guests 
> efficiently, manage them, update them and the like. Stateless linux obviously
> helps there but anaconda on Xen guests > guest0 also has value.

  Hmmm, interesting.  I wasn't thinking stateless linux at the time, but
now that you mention it that sounds like a great idea.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
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