[Cialug] Xen or VirtualBox

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 5:43 PM, L. V. Lammert <lvl at omnitec.net> wrote:

> Getting ready to build a new production server, .. we have used VB for
> some time due to it's flexibility and now phpVirtualBox.
>
> I just realized that Xen has Xen Orchestra - supposedly a parrallel WebUI
> for the Virtual Environment.
>
> We run OpenBSD all the time with VB, so any input would be appreciated:
>
> > Does OpenBSD run well under Xen (indications are yes)?
>
> > Is Xen Orchestra comparable to phpVirtualBox?
>
> > Are there any other +/-s Xen/VB?
>
>

I use these both. I use VB on my laptop and Xen on a couple servers. I have
to say the command line interface for Xen is better than the one for
VirtualBox. So much so that I started writing my own python library to
control VB since I tend to use it a lot. I've never used the php interface
though so maybe that is the big equalizer.

One other potential benefit of Xen is it's support for LVM. That way you
don't have to create a disk image which effectively is a file system within
a filesystem. Instead you just create an LVM volume which can be resized or
whatever LVM feature you want to use.

The disadvantage of Xen for *me* is that Ubuntu is not a great host for Xen.
Therefore I tend to run Debian on the host and then Ubuntu guests.

One other thing to consider is KVM. RedHat and Ubuntu have both embraced it
as the future of virtualization on Linux. As long as you have hardware
virtualization support, it's a pretty slick system.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter

♫ You're never fully dressed without a smile! ♫
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