vps suggestions

[richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Richard Pieri)]

On Oct 8, 2010, at 11:57 AM, Tom Metro wrote:
> 
> Which, if any, VPS providers let you load your own image, as opposed to
> picking an OS from a menu?
> 
> That would seem to be the more powerful way to go. That way you could
> easily port your setup from an in-house server to vendor A, or vendor B,
> etc.

"Easily"?  It ain't easy.  It's a lot of work and it's a pain in the ass.

My first example is converting a running Scientific Linux 5.4 system into a Xen domU on Debian lenny.  This required, among other things, reconfiguring the network and disk device files (fstab) to match the virtual controllers, getting the correct kernel installed on the dom0, and building an initrd against it all so that the domU would boot.  It took me the better part of 2 days to figure out how to get all the pieces right.

My second example is converting a Xen domU to Linux KVM.  I don't have bridged networking right, yet, after a couple of goes poking at it.  Once I get that working I experience the joy of converting the Xen image to a KVM image and reconfiguring the KVM image to actually boot since Xen images have no /boot to speak of.

--Rich P.