building a XEN system

[Joe O]

There are some scribblings at http://ian.blenke.com/ that cover what is 
strictly needed for Xen.  The VT/Pacifica stuff is not specifically needed 
unless you need to generally be able run unaltered kernels as DomU's (eg. 
Windows).

In AMD land you're guaranteed to have the necessary VT stuff with any AM2 
socket CPU (AMD has stated this).  With Intel CPU's that have that 
functionality you'll need to make sure the BIOS of the motherboard knows 
how to flip the VT stuff on at power on (the AMD chips don't need it 
specifically enabled at boot).

On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Dan Langille wrote:

> After a talk on XEN at a local LUG <http://www.oclug.on.ca>, I spoke
> with the presenter about putting together a small server to run XEN.
> He said my best bet was to ensure the CPU could handle
> virtualization, that is, it was VT- enabled.  To check this, read the
> box the CPU comes in.  Look for the word virtualization.
>
> I checked prices at OEM express (prices are rounded and in $CAD):
>
> Antec Sonata II w/smartpower 2.0 450w - $110
> ASUS M2N-E AM2 PCI-e GBLan SATA  - $115
> AMD Athlon64 3800+ (2.4Ghz) 640Kb AM2 - $130
> 2x DDR400 PC3200 1GB Azen RAM - @$110  = $220
>
> So for about $650 including taxes, you've got a decent beefy system.
>
> HDD not included (I have plenty of HDD here so I wasn't pricing
> them).
>
> The AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ Dual Core AM2 is just $20 more, but I was
> unsure as to whether or not a dual core would be an advantage under
> XEN, but for $20 more, what a deal!
>
> He figured this was my best bet for getting FreeBSD installed and
> running as guests.  Someone else suggested using NetBSD as domU.
>
> -- 
> Dan Langille : Software Developer looking for work
> my resume: http://www.freebsddiary.org/dan_langille.php
> PGCon - The PostgreSQL Conference - http://www.pgcon.org/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-chat at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-chat
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-chat-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>