Installing Xen 3.3 With Kernel 2.6.27 On Ubuntu 8.10 (x86_64)

This tutorial shows how you can install Xen 3.3 on an Ubuntu 8.10 host (dom0). Xen 3.3 is available from the Ubuntu 8.10 repositories, but the Ubuntu 8.10 kernels (2.6.27-x) are domU kernels, i.e., they work for Xen guests (domU), but not for the host (dom0). Therefore we need to build our own dom0 kernel. This guide explains how to do this with a 2.6.27 kernel.

Back Up LVM XEN Guest Containing LVs

In my day-job all our Linux boxes (bar 3) are Xen VMs. I wanted a way to take a backup of these with out the risk of the files changing underneath. For performance reasons I am running all of them on Logical Volumes.Within these VMs the DomU OS is once again using LVM for various reasons. This does create some headaches for taking the backup.

Virtualization With Xen 3.3.1 On Debian Etch

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on a Debian Etch (4.0) system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one.

Virtualization With Xen On Debian Lenny (AMD64)

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on a Debian Lenny (5.0) system (AMD64). Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one.

How To Convert Physical Systems And Xen VMs Into OpenVZ Containers (Debian Etch)

This guide explains how you can convert physical systems (running Debian Etch) or Xen domUs (also running Debian Etch) into an OpenVZ container. This procedure should also work for converting VMware VMs, VirtualBox VMs, or KVM VMs into OpenVZ containers, but I haven't tried this. It should work for other Linux distributions as well, with minor modifications (for example, the network configuration is not located in /etc/network/interfaces if you're not on Debian/Ubuntu).

Using Xen With LVM-Based VMs Instead Of Image-Based VMs (Debian Etch)

This guide explains how you can set up LVM-based virtual machines on a Xen host running on Debian Etch instead of virtual machines that use disk images. Virtual machines that use disk images are very slow and heavy on disk IO.

Creating Virtual Machines For Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, and VMware Server With vmbuilder On Ubuntu 8.10

vmbuilder is a tool (introduced on Ubuntu 8.10) that allows you to build virtual machines (with Ubuntu as the OS) for multiple virtualization techniques. Currently it supports Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, and VMware Server. You can afterwards copy the virtual machines to another system (a Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, or VMware Server host) and run them there.

Installing Xen On CentOS 5.2 (i386)

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 3.0.3) on a CentOS 5.2 system (i386). Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one.

Virtualization With XenServer Express 5.0.0

This Howto covers the installation of XenServer Express 5.0.0 and the creation of virtual machines with the XenCenter administrator console. XenServer Express is the free virtualization platform from Citrix, the company behind the well known Xen virtualization engine. XenServer Express makes it easy to create, run and manage Xen virtual machines with the XenCenter administrator console. The XenServer Express installation CD contains a full Linux distribution which is customized to run XenServer Express.

The Perfect Load-Balanced & High-Availability Web Cluster With 2 Servers Running Xen On Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

In this howto we will build a load-balanced and high-availability web cluster on 2 real servers with Xen, hearbeat and ldirectord. The cluster will do http, mail, DNS, MySQL database and will be completely monitored. This is currently used on a production server with a couple of websites. The goal of this tutorial is to achieve load balancing & high availability with as few real servers as possible and of course, with open-source software. More servers means more hardware & hosting cost.