[Xen-users] Longtime *nix user/admin planning on making the move to Xen

[Braindead <Braindead@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been meaning to change my local home server to several virtual machines 
running under Xen.  Primarily to better serve my home/office network needs.  
I've been running a Gentoo server that's become rather cluttered 
(smtp,imap,pop,http,https,ossec-hids,firewall,router,packet 
inspection,workstation, backup server....... bloody everything!) so if I want 
to work on anything or need to reboot everything goes down of course.

My first thought was to make my life simple and go with the XCP iso 
installation, however according to this: 
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_/_XCP_/_XCP_on_Linux_Overview that doesn't support 
64-bit and I've got 16GB ram. I could install from packages it seems but once I 
get to that point I'm thinking I might as well install Xen rather than XCP and 
have the latest hypervisor.  

As a current Gentoo user I'm tempted to stick with that though I'm not against 
Debian/Ubuntu or other distros either.  Perhaps there are other compelling 
reasons to go with another distro?

I'm planning on moving a mythtv backend into a domU, so I'll need to compile 
kernel support for the pcHDTV HD-5500 tuner card. Which I suspect means custom 
kernel build anyway? Presumably I can use the PCI passthrough feature to make 
the domU system see the 5500..hopefully.

I have a lot of experience with virtualization (VMWare and Hyper-V) just none 
with Xen.. I've been reading the wiki and I'm fairly sure I can get setup 
without any trouble.

Kinda hoping for a gut check/tips/advice from users that might help me avoid 
doing the wrong things.  I'm not in a big hurry and pretty much prepared to 
have to redo things if I go down the wrong path ;-)

Thanks for any tips/advice/hints...

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