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Tag: vm

Migrating Virtual Machine (VM) FROM esx to xen server

by on Jul.09, 2009, under linux/ubuntu

There seems to be a lot of posts and resources on how to migrate the other way around – but WHY?! Why would anyone want to migrate from Xen to ESX? I’ve had so many issues with ESX I’m spending thousands to create another server and migrate TO Xen!

At the time I needed a relatively quick deployment of a server which I could easily manage virtual machines etc. (Well ESXi seemed like the answer). With only about a week to get the hardware, install and send off, I managed to get it working (I can’t say installation was that easy considering the limited hardware support ESX offers).

Needless to say, after deployment I was noticing VERY poor disk performance. (Yes I installed vmware tools and all that garbage). I tweaked, re-tweaked, re-installed virtual machines, resource pools, etc etc… weeks and months go by trying to fix the piss poor performance. No one on the community forums could help – It seems everyone is running windows guests and suggesting a bunch of stuff that would never make a difference anyways. If i’m getting crappy performance with freshly installed Linux guests, something is wrong with the hypervisor (ESXi).

In any case, I can’t take it anymore – ESX has to go! Reluctant to spend another $3,000 in order to mirror the server (extended downtime to rebuild is not an option). Plus the fact that on ESX I had to install a VM specific to being the firewall for the machine. Why ESX doesn’t have iptables or any firewall/routing built in is beyond me. It’s very insecure without adding additional overhead with another virtual machine appliance.

So while I build a new server and install Xen, It’s so much better! WOOWWW! Not only does it have better features, the performance is about 4x better! I love being able to “template” a VM of a base install, then deploying it quickly and easily as a new machine. The performance is near native (I can’t tell the difference opposed to if it was a single server installed on bare hardware). Where as with ESX, I could notice the sluggishness.

Now onto the main point of this article: Converting a VM from esx to Xen!

This portion coming soon – please leave a comment if you’d like it sooner than later.

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