Panix is offering Xen-based virtual servers. I mention same here only because I've seen almost no discussion of virtualized servers, and hope to learn from the surely-resulting flameware.... http://www.panix.com/corp/virtuals/ -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Once upon a time, David Lesher <wb8foz@nrk.com> said:
Panix is offering Xen-based virtual servers. I mention same here only because I've seen almost no discussion of virtualized servers, and hope to learn from the surely-resulting flameware....
unixshell.com claims more service (RAM, disk, monthly transfer) for less per month: http://www.unixshell.com/ -- Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 04:51:09PM -0600, Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> wrote a message of 17 lines which said:
unixshell.com claims more service (RAM, disk, monthly transfer) for less per month:
Apparently, it is no based on Xen which you may find a good or a bad thing, depending on your requirments. (For instance, Unixshell's offer is limited to Linux, while Panix allows NetBSD.) Virtualization solutions are very different and comparing RAM and disk is not sufficient.
On 4/3/06, Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr> wrote:
On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 04:51:09PM -0600, Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> wrote a message of 17 lines which said:
unixshell.com claims more service (RAM, disk, monthly transfer) for less per month:
Apparently, it is no based on Xen which you may find a good or a bad thing, depending on your requirments. (For instance, Unixshell's offer is limited to Linux, while Panix allows NetBSD.)
Virtualization solutions are very different and comparing RAM and disk is not sufficient.
According to Unixshell's website, it is, in fact, Xen. Their technology link goes to: http://www.unixshell.com/xen.html Of which the first line is "unixshell# is powered by the Xen hypervisor engine. "
Once upon a time, Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr> said:
On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 04:51:09PM -0600, Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> wrote a message of 17 lines which said:
unixshell.com claims more service (RAM, disk, monthly transfer) for less per month:
Apparently, it is no based on Xen which you may find a good or a bad thing, depending on your requirments. (For instance, Unixshell's offer is limited to Linux, while Panix allows NetBSD.)
Both unixshell and Panix are using Xen. Both have a limited set of OSes they offer. It looks like Panix includes some support, while unixshell charges extra for support.
Virtualization solutions are very different and comparing RAM and disk is not sufficient.
No, but for companies offering similar services (e.g. Fedora on Xen if that is what you are looking for), that's a significant thing to note. -- Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
On Sat, 1 Apr 2006, David Lesher wrote:
Panix is offering Xen-based virtual servers. I mention same here only because I've seen almost no discussion of virtualized servers, and hope to learn from the surely-resulting flameware....
Xen and similar solutions are gaining popularity because they work on a similar model as that used for ADSL: most users don't use all the resources all the time. By virtualizing, the provider can offer "dedicated colocation" at a somewhat lower cost to the user, and a *much* lower cost to the provider. If properly provisioned, by distributing more heavily loaded virtual machines appropriately, you can probably attain virtualization of 20-30 or more per 2-way or 2-dual-core SMP box and still have CPU left over. Note that Xen in particular has major advantages over some similar products because it eliminates CPU-consuming system trap hackery needed to emulate hardware devices and page-table mappings. Xen is not, however, backed with extensive commercial support (XenSource is still evolving at the moment), lacks easy integration into popular UI/control-panel products, and requires special kernels for the contained OS's (not such a big deal in practice). The current problems haven't stopped some early adopters from trying out Xen. By and large, those who were once using UML[*] and have now tried Xen have switched and not looked back. [*] User Mode Linux, which I went out of my way to heckle (with technically sound arguments, mind you) at an IETF when it was proposed as a method of virtualization. The sad part is, some folks bought the drivel and actually set up businesses using UML as a virtualization layer. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
Once upon a time, Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> said:
Xen is not, however, backed with extensive commercial support (XenSource is still evolving at the moment),
Red Hat has announced that the next rev of their commercial OS offering, RHEL 5, will include Xen as a major component.
lacks easy integration into popular UI/control-panel products, and requires special kernels for the contained OS's (not such a big deal in practice).
With the right CPUs (late model Intel only at the moment), you can run an OS unmodified with a little higher overhead. This means you can run Windows on the same box as Linux on the same box as *BSD, all at the same time. Later this year, AMD's CPUs will add a similar (but different) extension. -- Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Chris Adams wrote:
Xen is not, however, backed with extensive commercial support (XenSource is still evolving at the moment),
Red Hat has announced that the next rev of their commercial OS offering, RHEL 5, will include Xen as a major component.
The point is that decent commercial support is evolving and not quite Here Right Now.
lacks easy integration into popular UI/control-panel products, and requires special kernels for the contained OS's (not such a big deal in practice).
With the right CPUs (late model Intel only at the moment), you can run an OS unmodified with a little higher overhead.
It's still some overhead because it's emulating hardware devices, but thanks to VX, it's not as bad as the classical virtualization trap hacks. Once AMD releases their counterpart version of the virtualization extensions en masse, this will probably get more steam from providers. If a Xen-instrumented kernel is available for the desired OS, that would still be preferable, of course. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
Hi, Speaking of commercial support, I have been looking really closely at using Solaris 10 which includes Zones. I am not so much concerned about the OS games, but very much concerned about the HW % utilization issue that this could help solve. From what I have found with Solaris Zones it is VERY easy to setup and configure. The question that I got flamed on a while back for being off topic, how do you get two different DHCP addresses from difference sources on the same interface, can be solved by using Zones for example. But there has been so much press lately about Xen. And from what I read in Linux mag recently there is HW support that totally changes how efficient Xen can be. So one thing I am wondering, with Zones you can setup a new instance that is a copy of another pretty much instantly. Does Xen offer the same thing? Or do you still have to go through an install process for example? I am esp wondering about this with something like XP.. Thanks, Eric At 07:00 AM 4/3/2006, Todd Vierling wrote:
On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Chris Adams wrote:
Xen is not, however, backed with extensive commercial support (XenSource is still evolving at the moment),
Red Hat has announced that the next rev of their commercial OS offering, RHEL 5, will include Xen as a major component.
The point is that decent commercial support is evolving and not quite Here Right Now.
lacks easy integration into popular UI/control-panel products, and requires special kernels for the contained OS's (not such a big deal in practice).
With the right CPUs (late model Intel only at the moment), you can run an OS unmodified with a little higher overhead.
It's still some overhead because it's emulating hardware devices, but thanks to VX, it's not as bad as the classical virtualization trap hacks. Once AMD releases their counterpart version of the virtualization extensions en masse, this will probably get more steam from providers.
If a Xen-instrumented kernel is available for the desired OS, that would still be preferable, of course.
-- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On Mon, 03 Apr 2006 08:50:51 PDT, Eric Frazier said:
Speaking of commercial support, I have been looking really closely at using Solaris 10 which includes Zones. ... But there has been so much press lately about Xen. And from what I read in Linux mag recently there is HW support that totally changes how efficient Xen can be.
Solaris shops are going to find Zones useful. Linux shops are going to find Xen useful. However, I severely doubt that Zones are going to attract any Linux shops, or that Xen will be enough to make Solaris shops convert. And the shops that are so totally Java/PHP/Perl/whatever that it doesn't matter if they're on Solaris or Linux will end up choosing whatever hosting solution costs them the least per month...
On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
Solaris shops are going to find Zones useful. Linux shops are going to find Xen useful. However, I severely doubt that Zones are going to attract any Linux shops, or that Xen will be enough to make Solaris shops convert.
Xen's bigges strength really is in the colocation business. With VX-enabled machines, it is capable of running instrumented OS's (Linux, Free/NetBSD) at almost native speeds, and non-instrumented OS's (Windows, Solaris) with a couple-% hit. It's that flexibility that leads to colo as the market where Xen shines. If it really were an OS-specific issue, then "Linux shops" might as well use UML. (<cough> <shudder>) -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
Xen's bigges strength really is in the colocation business. With VX-enabled machines, it is capable of running instrumented OS's (Linux, Free/NetBSD) at almost native speeds, and non-instrumented OS's (Windows, Solaris) with a couple-% hit. It's that flexibility that leads to colo as the market where Xen shines.
People seem to be thinking that Xen is only for sharing a colo machine with somebody else. But it could just as well be used for one organization to isolate each major application to a single virtual server, i.e. email server, general web server, wiki server, hot web app server, Asterisk server, etc. This way, when one of the applications justifies its own server, migration is somewhat simpler because it is not entangled with other applications. -- Michael Dillon
On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 08:50:51AM -0700, Eric Frazier wrote:
Xen can be. So one thing I am wondering, with Zones you can setup a new instance that is a copy of another pretty much instantly. Does Xen offer the same thing? Or do you still have to go through an install process for example? I am esp wondering about this with something like XP..
Xen itself: no. But LVM is a wonderful thing. - Matt
TV> Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:25:40 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) TV> From: Todd Vierling TV> Note that Xen in particular has major advantages over some similar products TV> because it eliminates CPU-consuming system trap hackery needed to emulate TV> hardware devices and page-table mappings. Xen is not, however, backed with TV> extensive commercial support (XenSource is still evolving at the moment), For those not following Xen closely, Google with quotes for "xensource gets new ceo, direction" This should be interesting. Hardly MS/Novell/IBM, but that's not all inherently bad... Eddy -- Everquick Internet - http://www.everquick.net/ A division of Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - http://www.brotsman.com/ Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita ________________________________________________________________________ DO NOT send mail to the following addresses: davidc@brics.com -*- jfconmaapaq@intc.net -*- sam@everquick.net Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked. Ditto for broken OOO autoresponders and foolish AV software backscatter.
participants (10)
-
Chris Adams -
David Lesher -
Edward B. DREGER -
Eric Frazier -
Jamie Norwood -
Matthew Palmer -
Michael.Dillon＠btradianz.com -
Stephane Bortzmeyer -
Todd Vierling -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu