Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

System Requirements

To run the tools covered in this chapter you should have at minimum:

• A processor that supports virtualization technology (Intel VT or AMD-V). Support should be enabled in the system BIOS.

• At least 2 GB of memory.

• At least 6 GB of disk space.

Xen can run paravirtualized guests without virtualization technology in the CPU, but it requires it for full virtualization. You can check whether your existing CPU supports virtualization by grepping /proc/cpuinfo as follows:

$ egrep '(vmx|svm)'  /proc/cpuinfo

If nothing shows up, your CPU does not support virtualization. If something does appear, you may still need to enable it in BIOS to use it.

Each solution has additional requirements or limitations. Before making a hardware purchase you should check the requirements and supported hardware for the solution you plan to use.

If you want to support migration (moving a running guest from one host to another) you will also want some kind of shared-storage solution. That might be an iSCSI or SAN volume to which all servers have access. You don’t need that to get started though.