Most commonly people use the xen-tools package for creating virtual servers for Xen in Debian and Ubuntu. My major complaint with xen-tools is that the virtual servers are created with 1 file per partition rather than 1 file per disk. Using 1 file per disk allows users controlling the domains to resize their partitions if they wish to do so and is far more compatible with other virtualization solutions. For these reasons I have standardized on 1 file per disk. It is still possible, and perhaps preferable, to use xen-tools and then simply convert the file after the creation process. However I set out to avoid using xen-tools and came up with this method. I’m not sure if I will continue to use it as xen-tools handles a lot of setup tasks that this does not but it is a good method to be aware of in making the decision about what process is best.