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<htmlet>fedora</htmlet>
Virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer system.
There are a number of ways to implement virtualization on Fedora. Options include VMware and KVM. One of the most popular technologies on Fedora is called Xen. Red Hat engineers have invested considerable effort into making Xen easy to install, configure and manage on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora. Many of these improvements appeared in Fedora 7. For these reasons, this chapter will focus on Xen Virtualization in Fedora and will assume you are using Fedora 7 or Fedora 8.
Unfortunately, support for running Xen based virtualization on Fedora releases 9, 10 and 11 is not supported. Whilst it is possible to run these versions of Fedora inside Xen virtual machines (as a domU), these newer Fedora releases cannot be used to host Xen based virtual machines (dom0). It is hoped that this support will return with the introduction Xen 3.4 in Fedora 12. If you are using one of these versions of Fedora we recommend using KVM virtualization as outlined in the chapter entitled [[Installing and Configuring Fedora KVM Virtualization]].
For a complete online book dedicated to Xen based virtualization we recommend [[virtuatopia:Xen Virtualization Essentials|Xen Virtualization Essentials]].
== Checking Xen Hardware Compatibility ==
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Before using Xen, it is important to ensure that your current hardware configuration is suitable to support Xen.
Each guest operating system installed will reside on the existing filesystems of the host Fedora system. It is important, therefore, that there is enough disk space available to install your choice of guest operating system. As a guideline, a command line version of Fedora Linux requires approximately 600Mb of disk space. A full installation of Fedora (including graphical desktop) requires around 3Gb 4GB of disk space.
Of further concern is physical memory. Sufficient memory is required to run both the host operating system and the guest operating systems. If the guest operating system is not using a desktop environment, then it is possible to allocate 256Mb of memory to the guest OS. A full, graphical desktop Linux installation will require considerably more (a minimum of between 300 - 400Mb will provide reasonable, but not spectacular, performance).
This command will install all the required packages, and configure the boot loader to provide a Xen virtualization option when the system is next booted.
At this point, reboot the system. When the boot screen appears hit any key to enter to boot menu and select the Fedora Xen boot option. During the boot phase you will notice some different messages appearing from previous boots. This is a good sign that the kernel with Xen support is loading. If a Xen boot option is not provided, boot using the standard Linux kernel and execute the following commands before rebooting once again:
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The next chapter will focus on [[Managing and Monitoring Fedora based Xen Guest Systems]].
<htmlet>fedora</htmlet>