HOWTO_Xen_and_Gentoo/New

Introduction

Xen is a hypervisor or para-virtualizer for the x86 architecture. Xen can offer near-native performance to a native Linux system, with the maximum slowdown of less then 8%. Xen offers enterprise-grade functionality, including:

• Near-native performance
• Migration between different physical hosts
• Up to 32 virtual CPUs per virtual machine
• Intel VT-x (Virtualization Technology) and AMD Pacifica support for unmodifed guests (such as Microsoft Windows, etc)

Usage of Xen

Xen can be used in several different scenarios, including:

Server Consolidation

With Xen, you can move several servers to a single physical host with the performance fault isolation provided at the virtual machine boundaries.

Multiple OS configurations

With Xen, you can run several different operating systems simultaneously, allowing for easier development and testing.

Xen Lingo

Domains - These are the virtual machines in Xen. Domain-0 - This is the first domain loaded, and is considered the "privledged" guest. The domain-0 can control other domains, and usually directly accesses the hardware. Domain-U - These are the guest virtual machines

Installing Xen

Now, enough about what Xen is, and let's get on to installing it! (yeah how?!)

Checking profile

We need to check and make sure you are using the current profile, which, at the time of this writing, is 2006.0.