Xen is becoming a de facto solution for virtualization with low performance overhead. Virtualization features include optimization
in resources utilization, server consolidation, improved security and fault tolerance. Server consolidation is currently one
of the main attractions of virtualization for enterprises. It enhances the scalability of a regular IT infrastructure, enabling
the utilization of an amount of servers larger than the available physical machines. However, deploying and managing virtual
machines in such environment can be a complex task. It is first necessary to install the virtualization layer, represented
by the VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor), on each physical machine. After that, the virtual machines can be deployed. Due to the
possibility of having several virtual machines inside a single physical machine, an efficient management of the environment
in order to enhance overall system performance and resources utilization is required. Considering these issues, we present
in this paper the Xen Site Manager (XSM), a tool to facilitate the deployment and management of virtual sites based on Xen.
It interacts with standard services and tools, such as SystemImager, DHCP, PXE and Ganglia, in order to provide high flexibility.
We provide a detailed description of XSM architecture and present a performance evaluation of its deployment feature.
This work was developed in collaboration with HP Brazil R&D.