BozemanLUG - After the meeting

Ten people attended the meeting last night. As always, thanks to Ken Dyke for drving in from Helena to make the meeting.

We had a lively discussion on Virtualization. Before the meeting I wrote up the various virtualization methods that were in play on the whiteboard. After the meeting had started and the ice broken... I went over my experience with XenExpress, Xen in RHEL 5, what I had learned about VMware ESX from a co-worker, and some about OpenVZ. There were quite a few questions.

[Update] Ken emailed me the link to the P2V Converter he mentioned at the meeting... Convert Physical Windows Systems Into Virtual Machines To Be Run On A Linux Desktop.

One topic that was asked about but not really covered in much depth was KVM. As you may recall, KVM is the Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux that was added to the 2.6.20 kernel. Since I haven't used any distros that have that new of a kernel, I haven't had a chance to check out KVM. Well, there is another reason... it requires CPU VT support... and I don't currently have access to any computers that have that.

Anyway, I just happened to be downloading the Fedora 7 Test 3 DVD iso during the meeting and when I got home it was done. I burned it and gave it a try on my wife's computer... and noticed that it has a Virtualization section which includes KVM. Oddly enough, Xen seems to be missing but I haven't really had time to look F7T3 over closely. In any event, anyone who has a machine with a CPU that has VT support is advised to check out F7T3 and give KVM a try.

Starting with Fedora 7, they are going to have a Test 4 release that they want the entire community to participate in as much as possible... before they release the Final version. I'm guessing that with the release of Fedora 7, KVM will see a lot more activity on the end user side.