Luke S Crawford wrote:
russ@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
If you only have 512mb of ram, there's almost no reason to virtualize. Windows needs a minimum of 128-512MB to run stable. I highly suggest that you get more RAM - its very cheap these days.
seconded. my standard server has 8G unbuffered ecc. Newegg sells
2x2Gb packs of unbuffered ECC kingston brand ddr2 for under $100.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134312
No reason, really, to not fill your motherboard with ram.
If you want to dedicate a box to virtualization, and won't be using more then 4GB of ram for your virtual machines - I highly recommend xenserver express. Its free, but has much better performance then vmware.
the free (closed) xensource product is good... I also wanted to point out
the new gpl windows pv drivers:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindowsGplPv/
you could use them with the standard open-source Xen, or even with the
Xen support distributed with CentOS 5, and avoid the ram limits all together.
(well, there is a limit to the open-source xen, but it's ridiculous; most
of us won't hit it for several years, at least.)
still kinda beta, but something to watch.
Yea, I've been playing around with this. The performance seems on par
with the XenSource drivers, but like you said, it's pretty beta. James
has been great in fixing the bugs, but it's just not ready for
production use right now. Without using the GPLPV drivers, Xen is not
ready for production use, the IO throughput sucks, and there is no
graceful shutdown.
If XenServer Express would only allow for 8GB, it would be perfect. The
administrative interface is really polished and fully featured (except
things like migrations, which understandably come with the enterprise
version).
Once the GPLPV drivers mature a little bin and someone makes some decent
admin tools for Xen, Xen will be ready for the enterprise. I bet a
company can make good money just developing and selling the admin tools
for Xen.
Russ
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