British publisher Packt has published a book that promises to help Linux administrators use Xen virtualization for development, testing, virtual hosting, and training. Written by Prabhakar Chaganti, Xen Virtualization is billed as a practical guide for using the Xen hypervisor.

(Click for larger view of the cover of Xen Virtualization)

In Xen Virtualization, Chaganti explores the open-source version of Xen, a paravirtualization technology that provides a platform for testing, deploying, and running multiple operating systems (OSes) on one isolated physical hardware resource. Xen supports FreeBSD, Windows, NetBSD, and Linux. Linux 2.6.23 added major improvements to its Xen support.

Xen is increasingly used to consolidate servers, as well as lower hardware and maintenance costs and minimize downtime, says Packt. Vendors such as IBM, Sun, HP, RedHat, and Novell are said to be integrating Xen into their Linux servers.

Using Fedora Core as its example OS, the book is designed as a “user-friendly” reference for server administrators, offering “bite-sized walkthroughs” for common virtualization tasks. Topics include security, storage, running guest domains, managing remote Xen instances, and connecting domains via bridged and routed networking.

Chaganti is CTO of HelixBrain, a consultancy and incubator for software-as-service applications that are being built on the Ruby on Rails open source Web platform.

Availability

The 150 page Xen Virtualization is available now for $36 at the Packt site.

 
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