Xen project Mailing List

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 10:01 PM, <ray@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] New Install Planning
From: chris <tknchris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, November 06, 2011 6:08 pm
To: ray@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: xen-users <xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 5:50 PM, <ray@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I am planning a new installation of hypervisor. I have read many of the examples but I am have not been able to determine how to start. While the user manual is succinct in its presention, I there were explainations as to why any particular step is performed - I do not know enough to read between the lines.

I have seen how to install when starting from a Linux installation. I would like the Xen install to be independent. Is that possible? My intent is to build a machine for running daily tasks and experimenting with applications on VMs to facilitate testing and manage configurations. Some of these VMs will be running, not heavily loaded, while doing daily tasks.

I would like to hear comments on this configuration plan. I would like to have bootable disk for a Windows OS, a Debian, and a Xen. I expect to mainly use the Xen and perform daily activities in a VM. The other two bootable partitions would be as backups.

The difficulty I saw with the examples of installing Xen was that the boot was directly tied to a Linux installation. So I am wondering if there is a way to install Xen so it is isolated. And where might I find an installation process to achieve this.

I would appreciate any comments that will help me learn more about the process.

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The hypervisor is not something you interact with directly you need a privileged domain to aka dom0 to communicate with the hypervisor. You can install xen from pretty much any distro and your existing installation will act as dom0. You can then have a windows domU which you can interact with rather than have a boot disk, as well as a debian domU.

>>>>

Chris,

Thank you very much. I saw those ‘words’ in the guide but did not understand them. You clear it up great.

This brings two questions (for now):

1) If I upgrade the Debian version, does the Xen installation require reinstallation? And if so, what does it do to all the associated VM images?

2) Is there a minimal installation for debian domU? Where can I get a description or ‘how to’?

ray

Of course theres a million answers to this and a million opinions so there is no "right" answer. I also use debian and I find the best way to start is to grab the netinstall for your arch, install debian, when you get to package selection, uncheck everything and when you boot up the first time install whatever you need ssh etc. Then you have a very very minimal os and from there you can grab the xen packages and tune things to your needs. Make sure you have a proper firewall in place and only the the absolutely necessary things in dom0 as it needs to be as secure as possible and should really be used only for administration.

In regard to upgrading debian, if you do a upgrade then the xen packages would also upgrade along with it. The disk images for your VM/domU's would not be touched.

chris