Q:

Home workstation cloud computing solution on Ubuntu

I want to make a cloud computing testing environment on my in-house network.  I'm using Ubuntu (just to work on; i don't want to watch Gentoo compile screens all time:) and I plan to make an Eucalyptus installation for a cloud platform.  I want to get the most of my Core2Quad and Core2Duo machines:) What I need a cloud for? 

Mysql replication and sharding
Load ballancing testing
Gearman web application scaling
... and another multi-machine solutions

I'm on my way to select a hypervisor for this solution between Xen, KVM and probably OpenVZ.  I'd like to hear all you advises concerning this technologies.  Possible requirements:

Support virtual machine creating from templates
Support several virtual machines running with ssh access
Ability to load both from HDD images and raw disk partitions
Not very long learning curve
It would be very good if one had some kind of GUI (both desktop and web interfaces are acceptable)

As for my previous searches: found this http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/ tool available.  and this tutorial http://www.howtoforge.com/kvm-guest-management-with-virt-manager-on-ubuntu-8.10-p2 - some kind of relevancy present.  Some good info was found here - http://lwn.net/Articles/330872/ and here - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Eucalyptus-Jaunty
Feel free to say your thoughts about it and provide additional information you concern relevant.  Thank you. 

A:

If you plan to use Ubuntu or in fact, the eucalyptus packages, take into account that by default they now have moved from Xen to KVM.  KVM requires your machines to support hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V), so check first your processor capabilities before going with KVM.  If you prefer/require Xen, I would suggest to move to Debian Lenny + eucalyptus compiled from source.  AFAIK, OpenVZ is not supported by eucalyptus by default.