What is Xen ?
Xen is a bare metal Hypervisor which is able to run different and multiple operating systems on a single physical machine. The concept of running an operating system over another operating system is known as Virtualization.
Xen is an enterprise level production ready Virtualization Hypervisor which is able to run OS’s like Windows, RHEL, CentOS, BSD and OpenSUSE.
Xen is called HyperVisor because Xen itself is a special kernel which starts the base OS. The base OS in Xen Virtualization is usually called as Dom-0 and the Virtual Machines which run on Xen Hypervisor are known as Dom-U.
Running Mac OS on Xen ?
Running Mac OS on xen is not possible as Xen does not emulate the hardware. Unlike Xen, VmWare can emulate hardware and so it is able to run Mac OS on it.
Steps to install xen 4.1 on CentOS
You will need to have a CentOS with GUI installed ( KDE / GNOME )
# yum groupinstall "X Window System" "KDE (K Desktop Environment)" # wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/GitCO.repo "http://www.gitco.de/repo/GITCO-XEN4.1.0_x86_64.repo" # yum install xen.x86_64 Use pic=nomsi iommu=off as kernel and module parameters. Above step is very crucial as the reboot in Xen 4.1 might hang your system later. # yum install virt-manager
You are now ready with Xen 4.1 + CentOS and with help of virt-manager you can create new VMs.
Originally posted 2011-07-14 10:27:52.