Professional Xen Virtualization

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 405 pages
• Published by: Wrox January 29, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0470138114
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0470138113
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Description

• With typical Wrox thoroughness, this book covers every aspect of virtualization on the Linux platform for administrators seeking to optimize the use of enterprise hardware, create virtual environments geared toward specific tasks, or establish a testing environment
• Provides a complete foundation in virtualization, XEN, and competing approaches with in-depth discussions of installing, configuring, and using XEN, including detailed examples of XEN configuration files, system configuration files, and system-level configuration information
• Offers details that help system administrator adopt XEN and justify its selection
• Covers optimizing XEN, XEN hosts, and guest operating systems for maximum performance and reliability; using XEN in enterprise data centers; procedures and considerations for building custom guest operating systems to run as virtual machines on a XEN host; and much more

Back Cover Copy
Professional Xen Virtualization

Xen is an open source virtualization technology that allows multiple operating systems to run on a single physical computer system, providing cost savings and increased efficiency. This book presents you with a complete foundation on this exciting technology and shows you how Xen virtualization offers faster response times for new server and service requests, a simplified system administration for multiple systems, and better availability for critical computing resources.

You'll begin by looking at the basic concepts of Xen as you also explore how to successfully make the most of today's virtualization technologies. You'll discover how virtualization with Xen allows for simpler and less expensive disaster recovery planning and affords increased productivity in system and software testing groups. Packed with detailed examples of Xen configuration files, system configuration files, and system-level configuration information, this book will show you why Xen virtualization is among the leading emerging technologies on the Linux platform and is being integrated into virtually every commercial distribution.

What you will learn from this book

• How Xen offers significant savings in infrastructure costs, such as power and cooling
• Ways to better document system configuration and characteristics
• How to build Xen from source code and the software requirements for building Xen
• Techniques for building virtual machine filesystems
• How to troubleshoot Xen configuration files and virtual machines

Who this book is for
This book is for administrators and developers who are seeking to optimize their use of enterprise hardware and create virtual environments geared toward specific tasks.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world requirements of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

Reader Reviews
I really enjoyed reading Professional Xen Virtualization (PZV). The book answered exactly the right questions for me, a person who had no Xen experience but wanted to give the product a try. If you are looking for a book on Xen internals, you should read The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor by David Chisnall. If you are less concerned about source-code-level details but still want to learn a lot about Xen, you will definitely enjoy PZV. William von Hagen is an excellent writer. I found it easy to follow his thought process and he delivers technical material very well. I found his coverage of Xen to be thorough and actionable. To try Xen I followed von Hagen's suggestion to boot Xenoppix, a live CD version. I used knoppix_v5.1.1CD_20070104_xen3.1.1_vbox-20071101.iso but as of this writing knoppix_v5.1.1CD_20070104_xen3.2.0_vbox-20080213.iso is available from the unit.aist.go.jp/itri/knoppix/iso/ FTP server. I am confident I could have installed Xen on dedicated hardware following the author's directions. Several aspects of the book made it very useful to me. First, I liked the comparison to other virtualization products that appeared in part of Ch 2. That section gave me a better idea which product would be appropriate for my needs, especially when considering hardware support for virtualization and the differences between paravirtualized VMs and hardware virtualized VMs. Second, von Hagen often explains how and why a feature operates, rather than just listing what a feature offers. I appreciated this level of insight. Third, I liked seeing instructions for a variety of Linux distributions and the background on various Linux capabilities that could influence Xen deployment. These included logical volumes in Ch 6, initial RAM disks (initrd) vs initial RAM filesystems (initramfs) in Ch 4, and more. I subtracted one star from the review for three factors. First, I would have liked some coverage on using NetBSD for Xen dom0 and domU. NetBSD has supported Xen in some fashion for many years and seems a priority for the OS. Second, one of the selling points for certain Linux distributions is their inclusion of tools for managing Xen VMs. While these are part of commercial distros (Red Hat, SUSE), the author could have described them more fully, or perhaps looked at Fedora's offering. Third, I could see how some of the background material on relevant but not Xen-specific Linux features might not be welcome in a book on Xen. For example, if I really want to know how to back up a system, I probably don't need to read about it here. Overall, I was very pleased with PZV. I found earlier books on Xen to not provide enough detail to warrant reading and reviewing them. PZV, on the other hand, has all the material required to install and use Xen in production. I highly recommend it if you want to give Xen a try in your environment.