Virtual Multi-OS Server

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 03 June 2006 23:07, David Abrahams wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm about to get a compute/testing/file server on which I plan to
> run several OSes in virtual machines.  I thought I'd start with
> Ubuntu as the host OS (no I won't have VT or Pacifica).  I have a
> feeling that there are myriad issues to consider and I probably
> don't even know where to start asking questions.  Is there anyone
> out there with experience in this sort of thing who can give me a
> few pointers?  Or is there a forum dedicated to these problems
> where I should be posting?

Which virtual machine type technology do you want to work with?

There's vmware - some versions free of charge - which performs quite 
nicely and the workstation version is dead easy to use. It takes a 
bit of a hit on heavy disk IO loads, but you have really load the 
machine to notice

There's Xen which runs a virtual machine at about 98% throughput of 
the base OS regardless of what you throw at it, but this requires 
patched kernels. Getting it working can be ... interesting

But these are itty-bitty points. What you need is RAM and *lots* of it 
- add up the RAM requirements for each virtual OS and add 512M for 
the host.

If you need some pointers on how to start off, download or install 
vmware and read the excellent docs that come with the product.

-- 
If only me, you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five