Virtual Server Query
 

Couple Of Things:
I want the security of a virtualised server setup , but, i have a couple of questions.
1.Whats the best host environment and the best virtualization software for running basically any OS, *nix, BSD, Winblowz, Solaris etc.
2.On the server i plan on using for this, there are multiple network interfaces, is there a way using whichever Viz software i use to assign one card to the host os, one to one VPS, and another to another VPS.
3.How screwed is the performance of my 2 processor 533MHz 1Gb Ram, multiple RAID server going to be?

I have been menaning to try this for ages but thought I'd better ask for some world weary advice first.

Thanks for the help guys.

Answers:

1. The more flexible setup right now is the VMware server environment. This is a free download and will let you virtualize practically anything without having to get clever about either installation or drivers. Xen is probably a "better" way of doing things, but installation of guests (especially guests like Solaris or Windows) is not trivial. If I was doing this today I would probably use CentOS 5 with a minimal install, then run VMware Server on that.
2. VMware will let you bind the virtual server's interface (or interfaces) to whichever physical or logical interface you want it bound to. I presume Xen will as well.
3. Very. You probably need a more modern CPU to do this (I'm using a Intel 930 with 2GB of RAM; I routinely run a WinXP/Pro VM with 512M and a Solaris VM with 512M). That said I've done virtualization on a P3/733, but it was slow. There's no substitute for lots of CPU horsepower and lots of real RAM because if the real host starts swapping a VM's RAM, the VM is screwed as far as getting anything done.

thanks for the reply, the plan is to keep the host system as a commandlinedriven beast. If anyone has any experience with vmware thru the commandline or through a remote web interface that'd be great.

VMware Server does not require an X component. You can either run the vmware-console app on another system and connect to the VMware Server system, or manipulate it through the command line. You want to look into the vmware-vdiskmanager and vmware-cmd commands.