I think this post bets fits the networking forum. here is the setup I currently have for my home network: 15mb/s cable modem, brazil firewall linux router, netgear managed switches.

I would like to add a second or maybe third server on a dmz off the router, but I would like to do this without adding the extra hardware using more electricity. I'm trying to keep the whole setup efficient. the linux router is running on an amd 400mhz and the hard drive turns off 1 minute after booting has finished. I was thinking about upgrading to something like a 2ghz system with 1 or 2gb ram and a 200gb hard drive, then do some kind of virtualization on linux so I can run brazil firewall and a centos server on the same hardware.

does this all sound practical? performance on the router is still priority over efficiency, although it doesn't use much of the resources. can I still get the hard drive to shut down after not being used for so many minutes? what virtualization software would you recommend?

I've still been checking into this. will anyone offer a hand? I would like to find a free open source solution. virtualbox works really well for me on my desktop, but I'm not sure how well it would work for a server. I'm guessing it would complicate things trying to run the host machine without a gui. I'll have 1gb ram in the server, so it should be enough to run a few virtual servers.

I tried running xen free edition on virtualbox under xp, but it just hangs. is it worth burning xen to disk to try it out? my server is 32 bit. it was complaining about that right before hanging.

I'll be messing with brazilfw on virtualbox tonight. I'd like to see if I can get the multiple nics working without any major security holes.

i read this originally but didn't think i had all that much to offer overall... but let's see...

you've tried xen under virtualbox? two layers of virtualization? ouch!! and the free version? xen is always free...

i would say run centos5 as a host system as that has Xen fully integrated into it, and if you are buying kit, make sure you get an intel VT or AMD equivalent chip to allow full virtualization not software only.

in terms of hard disks shutting down, i don't see any reason that wouldn't still be totally valid.

the vmware ESX server looks like exactly what I'm looking for. it has a nice interface for networking set up, and it has virtual switches. does xen have anything like this? for some reason, I always end up with some kind of kernel panic when I try to boot vmware. I have xen working with centos 5, but the gui for it looks very limited at what it can do and types of installs it can use.

merry christmas everyone.

there are no (afaik) official ui's for XEN. the one you have in centos is a redhat / fedora management interface, made by them. There are less UI options for XEN certainly, but then that's not really what you're worrying about. Generally VMware is a product on top of an operating system, whilst XEN is part of the operating system. things like networking around the VM's are just part of the operating system. create vlan's wherever you want on the host machine as if you were using vlan's normally and such.

can I install things like brazilfw or trixbox as a xen guest? the gui that came with centos looked like it only works with preparatory installer packages. I'd like to do something like how I can with virtualbox. just mount an iso image and boot and install from that.

it's of no concern to Xen what you do with a VM it's running... those are just linux servers to the outside world. and installing from an iso is simple, depends what tools you are using though, and to be honest i've not done it. http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Sl...ight=%28iso%29 for example.

I think xen will work great for my server. it looks like I just need a better gui tool for it. there are few features in the gui that came with centos, but everything I would need is available in xen itself.