SOLVED Linux and Xen - which distro is best -

[lisapisa2]

Hi guys,

I came here because we are starting to look at possibly using Xen as a hpervisor on our systems at work. It is an all windows shop and yes I know this is a Linux forum. What we want to do is evaluate Xen. Now that said it is all Windows admins. So I need an evironment that we can quickly bring up Xen in and start evaluating the hypervisor. We do not have the time to learn Linux inside out, that is the reality of where we are at. We had looked at Opensuse but that was a pretty hostile user forum. It completely drove my coworker away. He said (and he pulls the $$$ strings) that he will never deploy Opensuse. So I know enough about Linux to install and troubleshoot. I am not a command line expert although I can find my way around and understand the Linux architecture. The competition of course is MS with Hyper-V and VMWare. So if anyone could help me out with some ideas on what to install on - should we use mint? Other? It is just for some evals that will run over the next 3 months. Thanks in advance. The goal is to learn a bit about Xen and we are already started to look at deploy some of our systems into cloud based solutions.

[gold_finger]

Don't know anything about this myself, but here is an extensive post on Xen with Mint:
HOW-TO make dual-boot obsolete using XEN VGA passthrough

Hope it is along the lines of what you're looking for.

P.s. You might also want to try using the search engine listed below in my signature line to find more information.

[lisapisa2]

Thanks for the reply but my question is more of which distro is better suited for the Xen Hypervisor. I have worked with HyperV which is pretty cool but is MS proprietary. There is VMware which is probably the most powerful and robust but again proprietary and many others. One thing that kind of peeves me is that each Hypervisor vendor is trying to get you headed down a track that supports their cloud solutions. This is why where I work we have held off on any large scale Hypervisor deployments. Once you head down a road the solutions start to get pretty limited and the cost of backing out or switching to a different vendor are pretty steep. Take MS HyperV as an example - you must run windows as a host. The tools are all intended to get you into Azure. Very limited Linx support in HyperV. And then there are questions about data secuirty. If the solution is US hosted then the NSA by law gets acces to the data and this question is not yet answered completely. And then there is the question of pricing. What you do today may come back to bite you on the backside tomorrow.

What I have been tasked with is looking at Linux, the hypervisors and what thye pros and cons of each are in our environment which is a heavy windows shop looking to ditch a lot of desktops and virtualize the infrastructure. and of course the admins dont want virtualization because then theree jobs are at risk.