Installation guide

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Chapter 2. System Requirements
XenServer requires at least two separate physical x86 computers: one to be the XenServer Host, and the
other to run the XenCenter application. The XenServer Host machine is dedicated entirely to the task of
hosting VMs and is not used for other applications. The computer that runs XenCenter can be any gen-
eral-purpose Windows computer that satisfies the hardware requirements, and can be used to run other
applications simultaneously.
2.1. XenServer Host system requirements
The XenServer Host is a 64-bit x86 server-class machine devoted to hosting multiple VMs. This machine
runs a stripped-down Linux operating system with a Xen-enabled kernel which controls the interaction be-
tween the virtualized devices seen by VMs and the physical hardware.
The following are the system requirements for the XenServer Host:
CPUs One or more 64-bit x86 CPU(s), 1.5 GHz minimum, 2 GHz or faster multicore CPU
recommended
To support VMs running Windows, an Intel VT or AMD-V 64-bit x86-based system with
one or more (up to 32) CPUs is required.
Note
To run Windows VMs, hardware support for virtualization must be enabled on
the XenServer Host. This is an option in the BIOS. It is possible your BIOS
might have virtualization support disabled. Consult your BIOS documentation
for more details.
To support VMs running supported paravirtualized Linux, a standard 64-bit x86-based
system with one or more (up to 32) CPUs is required.
RAM 1 GB minimum, 2 GB or more recommended
Disk space Locally attached storage (PATA, SATA, SCSI) with 16 GB of disk space minimum, 60
GB of disk space recommended
General disk space requirements for VMs:
• Product installation creates two 4GB partitions for the XenServer Host control
domain; remaining space is available for VMs
• VMs based on the Debian templates are allocated a 4GB root device, and a 512MB
swap device
• Linux VMs are allocated a root device of 8 GB