Hello,
I'm thinking of consolidating around 10 linux machines onto a single machine using either Xen or VmWare server (not ESX because I need it to be free of charge). The physical machine has an Areca raid card with raid 5. Some of these VM's will share files-- what is the best way to do this? Should I set up one VM as a file server (NFS?) and have all other VM's access it? Should I set up a file server on the host machine? Or should set up a separate NAS on GigE?

Hi -

If this is a production environment, I'd definitely consider ESX server (*despite* the price). If it's just a home lab, you probably don't need to run 10 linux's at a time (or, alternatively, you probably won't be running them all in graphics mode, all at once).

IN ANY CASE...

There is no one-size-fits-all, "right" answer.

The only truthful answer is:

"It depends".

SUGGESTION:
1. Make sure you've got as much disk, as much RAM and as much CPU as you can get (80++GB free should be a good starting point; I'd go local disk to start off with).

2. See how many VM's you can run concurrently (whichever program you prefer: Xen or VMWare)

3. Take it from there

If you do not need HA whats about ESXi ?
It`s free, easy to install.

Alternative:

- Virtualbox
- XEN