The main intention is to have one distro as a game server, one as a LAMP server which I can easily reinstall when something goes wrong and another as an Ubuntu repository for my house (not really that useful but I plan on using a lot of capacity and I have unlimited bandwidth;-) Also it would be neat to hav another as a dedicated filesharing server that can be set to download ditros and do video conversion etc.<div>
<br></div><div>I will ensure that the server has plenty of ram and it will get a quad core phenom processor + some extra network cards if I need them (in rackspace).</div><div><br></div><div><div>Regards,</div><div><br></div>
<div>Callum</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 12:26 AM, Jethro Carr <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jethro.carr@jethrocarr.com">jethro.carr@jethrocarr.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Fri, 2008-11-28 at 00:02 +1300, Callum Grant wrote:<br>
> Hi all,<br>
<br>
> I've recently come to the conclusion that since I need to run many<br>
> different linux operating systems at once, I need to build a beefy<br>
> virtualisation machine. Can anyone recommend an open source virtual<br>
> machine tool that I could use( not something like virtualbox though,<br>
> e.g. geared to having at least 3 machines going at once).<br>
<br>
</div>hi Callum,<br>
<br>
What's your intended use? That will affect the recommendations people<br>
can give you. :-)<br>
<br>
<br>
For server deployments and using virtualisation for production systems,<br>
Xen is ideal.<br>
<br>
I have used Xen quite a bit with CentOS/RHEL systems and it's a<br>
fantastic piece of software - Redhat have integrated it with their OS to<br>
make it easy to deploy out-of-the-box and my experiences with it have<br>
found it to be extremely reliable.<br>
<br>
The number of virtual machines will simply be limited by how much free<br>
RAM and CPU that you have. Rather than emulating fake hardware like<br>
other VM products, Xen uses paravirtualised guests which don't require<br>
all the slow x86 emulation features which reduces overhead.<br>
<br>
Paravirtualisation may cause you some problems - all the Xen guest OSes<br>
need to be running a linux kernel compiled to run on Xen, which will<br>
make it an unsuitable option if you are wanting to run various distros<br>
of different ages, or for testing.<br>
<br>
This can be avoided with new CPUs that support hardware virtualisation<br>
on the CPU, which allows you to run almost any OS, including Windows<br>
using Xen.<br>
<br>
Do a bit of googling and you will find plenty of information on Xen. (I<br>
would have explained a bit better, but I need sleep) :-)<br>
<br>
<br>
regards,<br>
jethro<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Jethro Carr<br>
<a href="http://www.jethrocarr.com/index.php?cms=blog" target="_blank">www.jethrocarr.com/index.php?cms=blog</a><br>
<a href="http://www.amberdms.com" target="_blank">www.amberdms.com</a><br>
</font><br><br>
--<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Callum Grant<br>
</div></div>