Citrix XenServer in VirtualBox

If you just like to test out and evaluate XenServer but do not have hardware to install it on, an easy way is to just install it as a VirtualBox VM. Granted there will be no hardware virtualization support so you will not be able to build any real VMs in XenServer, but you will still be able to use XenCenter and get a feel managing a XenServer pool.

To install XenServer as a VBox VM, the VM needs to have adequate resources. I successfully tested installing XenServer 5.5u2 on a VM using Linux 2.6 template with 1GB RAM and 20GB hdd. Anything less than that will screw up the installation.

Edit: Tried to install XenServer 5.6FP1 in a VBox VM but failed miserably, installation will always hang at bootloader even though I tried with different VM memory and hdd configurations. Would like to know if anyone has better luck than me.

Edit: Finally got it installed in VBox successfully. I realized that the problem is with the console device when the installation starts and then got hung. So what I have to do is to enter "menu.c32" at the welcome screen, which shows the install options. Select "install" and press tab to edit the option.

> mboot.c32 /boot/xen.gz dom0_mem=752M com1=115200,8n1 console=com1,vga ---
/boot/vmlinuz xencons=hvc console=hvc0 console=tty0 --- install.img
The above is the original command. What I have to do is to change "console=com1,vga" to "console=tty0".

> mboot.c32 /boot/xen.gz dom0_mem=752M com1=115200,8n1 console=tty0 ---
/boot/vmlinuz xencons=hvc console=hvc0 console=tty0 --- install.img

Source: http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2011/01/23/XenServer+in+VirtualBox
Citrix Installation Guide: http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/XenServer_Quick_Installation_Guide.pdf