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Book of Xen
A Practical Guide for the System Administrator
by Chris Takemura and Luke S. Crawford

October 2009, 312 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-59327-186-2

"If you know your way around Linux and want to deploy Xen in production, The Book of Xen is the book for you."
—Richard Bejtlich, TaoSecurity (Read More)

"A very useful book and, for such a deep tech topic, one that is actually readable. Highly recommended."
—Network World (Read More)

Xen, the open source virtualization tool, is a system administrator's dream. Xen is a free, high-performance virtual machine monitor that lets you consolidate your hardware and finally put those unused cycles to use—without sacrificing reliability, performance, or scalability.

The Book of Xen explains everything you need to know in order to use Xen effectively, including installation, networking, memory management, and virtualized storage. You'll also learn how to use Xen and standard Linux tools to take snapshot backups, perform QoS operations on network traffic, and limit over-aggressive disk users.

Authors Chris Takemura and Luke S. Crawford show you how to:

  • Provide virtual hosting for dozens of users, each with their own individual needs
  • Install and manage multiple guests, including various flavors of Linux, NetBSD, Solaris, and Windows
  • Choose the right virtual storage options for your needs
  • Migrate your systems seamlessly and create new images
  • Tune and benchmark your systems to make them as fast as possible
  • Troubleshoot Xen's most common problems like network and memory management

Expert advice is priceless when it comes to running a complicated open source virtualization technology like Xen. You'll get the advice you need in The Book of Xen.

About the Author

Chris Takemura is a longtime *nix sysadmin, Perl hacker, and technological hobbyist. He's been using Xen from its early days, and helped to build prgmr.com's reputation as "hosting for the technically adept."

Luke S. Crawford has used virtualization in production since before it was cool, virtualizing hundreds of servers for large and small corporations. He launched the prgmr.com VPS service in 2005, selling virtual servers based on FreeBSD jails before switching to Xen in an effort to more fairly allocate resources.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Paul Vixie
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Chapter 1: Xen: A High-Level Overview
Chapter 2: Getting Started
Chapter 3: Provisioning DomUs
Chapter 4: Storage with Xen
Chapter 5: Networking
Chapter 6: DomU Management: Tools and Frontends
Chapter 7: Hosting Untrusted Users Under Xen: Lessons from the Trenches
Chapter 8: Beyond Linux: Using Xen with Other Unix-like OSs
Chapter 9: Xen Migration
Chapter 10: Profiling and Benchmarking Under Xen
Chapter 11: Citrix XenServer: Xen for the Enterprise
Chapter 12: HVM: Beyond Paravirtualization
Chapter 13: Xen and Windows
Chapter 14: Tips
Chapter 15: Troubleshooting

Appendix A: xm Reference
Appendix B: The Structure of the Xen Config File

View the detailed Table of Contents (PDF).

View the Index (PDF).

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Reviews

"If you know your way around Linux and want to deploy Xen in production, The Book of Xen is the book for you."
—Richard Bejtlich, TaoSecurity (Read More)

"A very useful book and, for such a deep tech topic, one that is actually readable. Highly recommended."
—Network World (Read More)

"The Book of Xen is almost certainly a time-saver for anyone looking to implement Xen of virtualization with Linux."
—Slashdot (Read More)

"This is definitely the book to keep on your shelf."
—Clockfort's Tech Blog (Read More)

"This is a great book packed with useful information."
—ComputorEdge Online (Read More)

"This book is absolutely essential for anyone using Xen on two or more computers."
—Red Hat Linux Es (Read More)

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