XenExpress Makes Xen Easy

As regular readers of this blog know (all two of you), I am a huge fan of Xen. It has never been easy to configure or install Xen, but that hasn't really stopped me from using it when ever I have had the chance.

Well recently I was pointed to XenExpress, and XenExpress is about to make Xen a whole lot easier for the average user to install and use.

XenExpress is an all in one ISO that you can download from the makers of Xen (for free). It is an ISO that you burn to a CD, and then boot a server off that CD to install Xen. While this isn't really that big of a deal, what it offers in management of Xen is where it truly shines.

Once you have XenExpress installed on the server, you can then install the Windows Xen Admin interface and use that to monitor the Xen server, as well as create new Xen virtual machines. To say that it is easy is an understatement.

Here is a screen shot of the admin interface at work:
















In this picture I am in the process of installing Windows 2003 as a virtual machine, via the XenAdmin interface.

Here are some of the monitoring features of the XenAdmin interface:



XenExpress is about to make Xen a whole lot easier to use and manage.