[Xen-users] Hi: Newbie intro.

[Ken <kr.xen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I'm grass-green new to Xen.  The only virtualization I've used is VMware
(most recently server) on Linux, Windows and Mac, and Parallels on Mac.
I've used VMware for years as a testing mechanism.  I'm not a VMware
expert, but have used it in all the ways I intend to use Xen.

I've been reading through the Xen documentation and have some questions
that don't seem to be clear.  I'm not afraid of the documentation.  I
haven't waded through it all, but I have not yet found the answers to
some burning questions and can't concentrate on the topic at hand
because of it.  Some things just seem to be missing, and I don't know if
it's because I just haven't read that far or if that entire issue is
handled by Dom0.  If something I'm asking about is best described by the
docs, I would love to see a link to that section rather than make you
guys type in a description.


First, my hardware:
I have an Intel i7 920 on an Asus P6T with 12G RAM.  The processor
supports VT-x but not the vpro version.  I'm still not clear on the
differences between these.

The drives are SATA, 4xWD750gx10000rpm (WD7500AADS) configured as Linux
kernel-based RAID with LVM2 on top.  Mostly RAID 1 in 2 volume groups,
two drives per group.  The /boot drive is 4 drives RAID 1, grub boot
loader.  I also have a removable SATA drive with 1.5 Tb as a backup
drive.  Currently all this space is mostly empty, but by the time I get
done that probably won't be the case.

I have an nVidia GT200 video card with dual monitors, if that matters.
I also have some other hardware (mostly sound and video hardware) but
that's not pertinent at this point I think.  A full hardware profile is
included at the end of my message in case it's pertinent to one of the
questions.


My intent:
This is my home workstation.  I currently run Gentoo on it.  I also want
to work from it, and I'm a software developer.  Here are the VMs I want:
  1 Gentoo stable.  This is probably going to be where I live most.  It
will have video and sound and will probably use the most CPU of
everything.
  2 Gentoo ~arch.  This may be a chroot of stable, or maybe a full
image.  This is primarily for testing and experimentation with
unreleased software.
  3 Windows 2003 converted from a VMware disk.  This has Microsoft SQL
Server on it, and everything is using legitimate developer licenses.
This is used as a database and as a web browser for testing, and has a
couple other end-user tools on it, but very little human interaction.
  4 Some random flavor of operating system.  I sometimes try out a
distro just to see what's going on.
  5 Possibly one or two other stand-alone server images, usually a
minimal Linux.
  6 I may also have Ubuntu on it.  For some reason I'm fixated by this
distro.

Stable and Windows 2003 will probably start at boot.  Everything else
will probably be a manual start-as-needed arrangement.



My questions:

1.  Board issues.
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo shows a line which causes me
concern:  
ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58 chipset) requires (currently non-public) BIOS
update to correct DMAR-table issue

My board is P6T, not deluxe.  It has the X58 chip set, the BIOS is set
to allow VT-d, but I'm not sure if this board has the broken BIOS like
the Deluxe, or if it has a good BIOS, or if it is missing the feature
which requires the fix altogether.  Can this board run VT-d in a proper
way?  Do I need to get a different board in order to make this work
well?

2.  Dom0 strategy:
I'm a bit confused as to the entire role of dom0.  Is this supposed to
be just a minimal command-line distro for drivers and Xen admin, or is
it a full-blown distro which also has Xen admin?  Do I want flexibility
or stability?  Rolling release or conservative non-rolling release?
Admin-only or do I live here?

3.  Partitioning:
I'm currently using RAID per linux-only schemes.  Does Xen have its own
requirements and abilities for that, or is that entirely handled by
Dom0?

Do I assign logical volumes directly to the DomUs with the proper
partitioning scheme or do I store everything on XFS in a big file and
let the DomU partition that file?

Does it make sense still to segment the system out to different
partition types for performance, or what?  What's the strategy?


Thanks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hardware details:
/proc/cpuinfo:
processor       : 7
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 26
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         920  @ 2.67GHz
stepping        : 5
cpu MHz         : 1600.000
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 8
core id         : 3
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 7
initial apicid  : 7
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 11
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx
rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology
nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16
xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
ept vpid
bogomips        : 5344.67
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

---------------------
/proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       12321128 kB
MemFree:         9958988 kB
Buffers:          316368 kB
Cached:           604180 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:          1268860 kB
Inactive:         552456 kB
Active(anon):     907640 kB
Inactive(anon):       16 kB
Active(file):     361220 kB
Inactive(file):   552440 kB
Unevictable:          16 kB
Mlocked:              16 kB
SwapTotal:      31487368 kB
SwapFree:       31487368 kB
Dirty:                40 kB
Writeback:             4 kB
AnonPages:        900820 kB
Mapped:            96912 kB
Shmem:              6888 kB
Slab:             428268 kB
SReclaimable:     381632 kB
SUnreclaim:        46636 kB
KernelStack:        3032 kB
PageTables:        18288 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:    37647932 kB
Committed_AS:    1260788 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:      356972 kB
VmallocChunk:   34359358460 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:       18944 kB
DirectMap2M:    12554240 kB

---------------------

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (rev 12)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express
Root Port 1 (rev 12)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express
Root Port 3 (rev 12)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express
Root Port 7 (rev 12)
00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management
Registers (rev 12)
00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch
Pad Registers (rev 12)
00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and
RAS Registers (rev 12)
00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers
(rev 12)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #5
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #6
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2
EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio
Controller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express
Port 1
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express
Port 3
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express
Port 4
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express
Port 5
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2
EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface
Controller
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port
SATA IDE Controller
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port
SATA IDE Controller
01:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. Hauppauge
Inc. HDPVR-1250 model 1196 (rev 04)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT200 [GeForce GTX
260] (rev a1)
04:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. 20360/20363 Serial ATA
Controller (rev 03)
04:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. 20360/20363 Serial ATA
Controller (rev 03)
05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. Device 3403
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)
08:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB X-Fi

-----------------------
lsusb
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 051d:0002 American Power Conversion
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 003: ID 04b3:310b IBM Corp. Red Wheel Mouse
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 058f:9410 Alcor Micro Corp. Keyboard
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub



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