Having played around a bit with Xen in the past few days, I'm interested in knowing what sort of host/guest network issues you've faced. I found the networking to work fine both ways, but then I haven't done any rigorous applications yet.
Issues has been mostly due to the cumbersome process. Suppose i have 2 linux machines and 1 WINXP; virtual machine A,B and C respectively.
I want to process a document from A in C, i will have to copy from A to B and then from B to C before i actually begin work. Then i have to save and go back from C to B to A. This is a pain when you have to transfer many files back and forth.
If you choose to access files in B directly from an application in C (since C is a VM in B), the whole system slows down.
This is assuming you have all access/rights related issues sorted out.
The printer often went unrecognized and had to be setup again after each VM boot. We had to save it into the host computer then print from there. But the host
does not recognize .dwg files(Autocad)!!
Another option i have to setup everyone else on linux except the design and accounts department but we are too small to come up with something like this. plus everyone wants interoperability especially with autocad drawings.
Needless to say to use a VM box for production is a big NO NO for now though am hopeful things would ease up in the future.
SG