Which Linux distribution should I use as a Xen host?

Question

I ordered a server for the home office and I would like to partition it with Xen. I think this will keep things clean and easier to maintain. I will be running things like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Tomcat, and my own code.

What freely available Linux distribution has the best Xen hosting facilities?

Answer 1

define "best"

right off the bat, I'd say the major contenders are Debian, Red Hat and Gentoo, depending on management preferences and needs.

Answer 2

Any of the major distributions should work fine. Pick the one you're most comfortable with.

Answer 3

I highly recommend Debian or Ubuntu (server) for domain-0. Here's why:

1. Setting up complex networking (bridges, bonded devices, etc) is simple. One file, easy syntax, easy to have scripts do it for you if need be. Do not use the 'network-bridge' script that comes with Xen on a production box, you may need to re-start Xend, which would break all networking (dom-0 and guests)
2. Debian and Ubuntu use the apt package manager. Apt is notorious for resolving dependencies very well, letting you search for libraries that you need to compile new tools for Xen (or Xen itself from source, which I recommend).
3. Shorewall, which is wildly popular in the Xen community for routed configurations is very easy to use on a Debian based system. Moreover, you can get Steve Kemp's Xen tools as well as the dozen or so that I wrote.

I would not recommend this to someone who wanted Desktop virtualization, I would recommend Fedora. However, as a Xen host with 300 Xen servers in production, I HIGHLY recommend something Debian based. Of course, use what you are comfortable with .. however it might be worth your time to get comfortable with a Debian based distro on dom-0.

Answer 4

Debian is very good choice. You may also use xen live cd to test everything and if everything is ok, install it on HDD.

Answer 5

Red Hat EL5 (or Centos) is one of the easiest to set up Xen on OOB, and RH is fully behind xen as their virtualization tool; debian and ubuntu look to be moving toward KVM. Fedora 11 has a pvops enabled kernel by default I think. Just my 2c worth, I prefer Red Hat based but like they said, whatever youre comfortable with will work.

Answer 6

@pbs sorry but, you're wrong. RHEL 6 beta drops xen. CentOS is an easy platform for a Xen hypervisor however, I have to agree that a .deb based system would be better in terms of package support.

Answer 7

I happen to view this question. I have deployed Xen virtual machines across lots of servers in our cluster. The platform is Fedora 12. We have done lots of tests on it and plenty of computation is done on these VMs. It's quite stable. The only pain is that you need to compile the kernel by yourself:

http://pkill.info/blog/post/setting-up-xen-pvops-dom0-on-fedora-xen-3-4-2-kernel-2-6-31-with-paravirt_ops-in-fedora-12.html