OT: Best virtual machine server?

[Julian Field]

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I've been badly bitten by VMWare, so that's out. No discussion there. It 
can't even keep its clock running to time :-(

I've used Parallels quite a bit, but not suited to a server environment, 
it's a workstation tool.

I've used Microsoft Virtual Server quite a bit, well suited to servers, 
dead easy to manage, I already have a VM in MVS that I will need to move 
to the new physical system. We get it free (as in beer). Big 
restriction: only supports 32-bit guests, no 64-bit guests at all :-(

Xen?
Never used it, have been reading the RedHat docs on it, looks like it 
needs a lot of text editing, but there also appears to be "virt-manager" 
that does a lot of the hard work for you. I want a system that is easy 
to get up and running, and easy to do everything with the host and the 
guests without physical access to the host hardware, once the host is setup.
One question: what is the difference between domain0 and the host 
physical system?

Any others I should be seriously considering?

Basically what I'm doing is this: I am often asked to run a service for 
someone in a research project that doesn't have (yet) the hardware they 
need, and want to borrow a server for a month or two. So I'm spending 
some of my toy budget on a cheap 1U Dell server to do this in an 
organised way.

So I'm looking for your thoughts and advice, as I know some of you use 
virtualisation in quite a big way.

How can I move a Microsoft Virtual Server guest machine to the new 
server setup? And the same from a VMWare guest? I've two I have got to 
move, and don't want to have to totally reinstall from scratch if I can 
avoid it.

Thanks folks!

Jules

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