David Guest wrote: > Tim Churches wrote: >> With Linux the cost of a test >> system is just a few hundred dollars for a second low-end PC, or you can >> even dual-boot workstation as a test server. With the arrival of >> virtualisation, you don't even need a second physical machine. >> > and if you're free next month ... snip
And if you are not try Xen Express (http://www.xensource.com/products/xen_express/index.html) The installation is a standard linux install and the CD has the tools to also install the xensource java control panel. There is a standard exe for Windows users and for linux there are rpms that readily convert to debs with alien. This shot, http://ozdoc.mine.nu/xen/xenserver.png, shows my ubuntu laptop connected to the Duo Core xen server running an instance of sarge with the text console visible (graphic console docked and hidden) and the detached Win2k server console running iexplore 6 connected to the ozdocit home page. The sarge (gnome GUI) install takes about 20 minutes to install from the CD. The Win2k server took about an hour following the usual Windows install procedure involving multiple reboots. Now for the hard part; getting a MS SQL server installed. :-( David ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.xensource.com/support/3.1/xenserver-userguide.html#install_server_setup_rhel-enable_remote_access-http The Virtualization Imperative The case for server virtualization is now well understood - the compelling TCO advantages of hosting multiple /virtual servers/ on a single physical machine come not only from savings in computing infrastructure costs, but also from reduced management overhead, lower power consumption, lower deployment costs, even lower real estate costs. But virtualization has now become an economic imperative for other, equally important reasons: * /Flexible IT infrastructure/: The ability to instantly provision new pre-packaged virtual servers onto a virtualized infrastructure gets new applications up and running in the data center in minutes, as opposed to weeks or months * /Improved business continuity/: Being able to quickly move virtual servers from one machine to another, or more readily restart a failed server dramatically improves resilience to failures. Today, fewer than 10% of servers are virtualized. The potential benefits resulting from a fully-virtualized infrastructure are enormous. Yet businesses today have little choice when it comes to virtualization infrastructure software. Today's offerings are constrained by poor performance, are too expensive to use widely, and lock customers into a proprietary software stack that limits integration with data center infrastructure and existing management tools. XenSource, founded by the creators of the open source Xen hypervisor, delivers all of the benefits of virtualization for a much lower cost. Xen virtualization offers near "bare metal" performance, compared to the typical 20-30% performance overhead for virtualization of proprietary offerings. Xen is an open industry standard for virtualization and is backed by over 20 of the industry's major enterprise IT solution vendors. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
