Xen is a paravirtualization technology available for the Linux kernel that lets you enclose and test new upgrades as if running them in the existing environment but without the worries of disturbing the original system. This article shows you how to install a Xen system that will give administrators a valuable sandbox for testing system upgrades (as well as a playground for running multiple virtual machines on the same Linux box).
A moment of Xen: Virtualize Linux to test your apps
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Nice one Eugenia! Thanks for posting this, i’ve been itching to play with Xen for a while now.
Dave
I am hanging back for the moment but will be trying Xen out soon. Its not as neat and tidy as the common Virtual Machine software but the performance is impressive apparently. Still reasonably early days. It will be significant in the OSrc future. Strange no one else here seems very interested…everyone must be filling out OSNews surveys hehe
Given the fact that Xen’s performance is likely to emtpy the present low-end (and less I/O strong) zSeries market, it is very surprising that it is IBM, who is actually posting this.
How is the performance when only one OS (the domain0 OS) is running on Xen? (vs the same OS running on the h/w directly)
I’m interested in using Xen with NetBSD.
Performance running just dom0 should be really close to native performance.