How To Utilise Xen Hosts For Your New Cloud Project | The Communication Blog

Friday, January 20, 2012

How To Utilise Xen Hosts For Your New Cloud Project

By Bert Sparks


Xen is a software owned by Citrix systems that is used for server virtualization with many web site hosting services. This is combined with cloud servers hosting which combines the computing and storage resources of many machines in a dynamically adjustable pool. This combination is finding favor with many large providers such as Amazon due to its flexibility and scalability.

When using virtualization software you create a digital mirror image of a server with an operating system. Once this copy is made it can be treated for all practical purposes the same as a physical server that is set up in the same way. You would have full administrator access to the system and security to match what you would have in a dedicated system.

The advantages of a virtual machine over a physical server are in the areas of recovery and availability. If there is a problem in a data center that takes your hosting server offline you would normally have your site be unavailable for the time it takes to repair the machine. A virtual machine can be switched quickly to another server in the pool or restored from an earlier image in minutes.

When using the Xen software the management of virtual machine is done by software agents called hypervisors. The software itself connects directly between the processors, hardware and the images on the server. For some special cases a technique using a modified operating system called paravirtualization can be used.

The software itself includes several features for workload balancing and automatic recovery which allows your server to be up and working at peak efficiency any time. In addition almost any operating system can be made into a virtual machine for your use. This includes windows, several distributions of Linux and Unix and other operating systems including older or legacy environments.

When your first set up your new account you can have a new install of an operating system of your choice. Once the image is created and ready for use the virtual machine can be treated the same as a regular dedicated server that you have full administrator rights to. Anything you could do through a regular administrators dashboard you can do to your newly created image. You would also have the same level of security as you would on a dedicated machine.

Combine Xen with cloud computing and hosting and you have a combination you can grow with now and in the future. Hosting you site on the cloud allows your website to tap into additional memory, hard drive space and other computing resources as needed. This can be done as needed for the short term or as a permanent change due to growth.

Combining the Xen software with cloud hosting provides a platform that can expand to meet current and future need. The cloud can provide resources as needed or long term as your website grows. While Xen itself gives you all of the advantages of a dedicated server with the flexibility of a virtual image.




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