Re: [Xen-users] xen admin interface

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I am a newbie when it comes to Xen so please excuse my low level of
> knowledge.

No problem.  Welcome ;-)

> We are looking at replacing our vmware esx servers and xen seems to be
> an interesting choice, but after having installed an ubuntu server
> with xen which seems to work fine but daily administration seems to be
> a night mare, is there any gui that is simple to use and access, the
> internal joke in the company is that the cleaning lady must be able to
> use it :) and also how can we take snapshots easily preferably from
> the same gui (if any) ?
>
> Does anyone have any pointers for me?

My experience of Ubuntu's Xen support (and that I've heard from others) hasn't 
been that great, to be honest.

CentOS 5.1 / RHEL 5.1 / Fedora <whatever> include an administrative tool 
called "virt-manager" to make creating and administering guests nicer.  I've 
used it quite a bit; it's a bit rough in some places, and some functionality 
is not available yet.  Nevertheless, it's actually a pretty nice tool.

Various other folks do open source Xen management tools.  If you're switching 
from ESX, though, you could probably afford one of the commercial Xen-based 
hypervisor products (from XenSource, VirtualIron, Sun or Oracle) that are now 
available or going to become available.  RedHat's offering is like RH Linux + 
Virtualisation, whereas the other products are "hypervisor appliance"-style.  
Suse Enterprise Linux and OpenSuse offer Xen solutions too but I don't really 
know what these are like from a user perspective.

Various manufacturers (RedHat?, Novell, XenSource, VirtualIron) already offer 
Windows driver packs to improve Windows guest IO performance - as part of a 
subscription from their paying customers, I think.  Some community developers 
(and a guy from Oracle, I think) are working on some GPL-licensed Windows 
drivers which should be stable at some point in the future.

Final suggestion: there's always the option of something like the free VMware 
Server.

This isn't an inclusive list but I hope I've helped give you some ideas.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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