Installing Xen Hypervisor as a direct to metal hypervisor

xen
Richard Smith picture Richard Smith · Nov 4, 2011 · Viewed 8k times · Source

I want to install Xen hypervisor as a bare metal hypervisor without first installing an operating system. Is this possible, everything I read seems to imply that it was, but I can only find instruction on how to install it on an existing operating system such as windows or linux. Does one need an OS simply to get it on the machine, after which it operates directly as dom 0 ?

Answer

Badmaster picture Badmaster · Nov 25, 2011

I'm reading multiple questions here so let me get at them one after the other:

1. is it possible to install Xen to any (existing) OS such as Windows or Linux?

No. Xen employs a model where it relies on a privileged Domain (Dom0 [1]) for certain services the hypervisor cannot do itself. To run more than one Guest, Dom0 must emulate certain things like the BIOS and manage shared hardware such as the sound-card.

Currently there is no way to simply Boot windows from xen, since Xen will not provide the necessary Boot parameters to the Windows bootloader (which is not multiboot[2] compatible).

2. Do you need an OS simply to get it on the machine?

No you can/could install xen directly from a Linux Live CD, then again technically this is an OS, so yes with limits.

[1] http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/Dom0 [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot/multiboot.html

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