thelinuxlink.net

hi,

Have You guys done a show about Virtualization !

I have Just been fooling around with Vmware !

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

Yeah i know, it's not open source like Xen, but i really like Vmware, i have used quite a lot in the past - and now it is free and available for Linux, I guess thanks to Xen !

I really like the idear of Xen, however i haven't tried it yet !

question is, will big companies have the guts to use Xen, instead of using Vmware ESX/GSX.

is Xen stable enough for the Corporate enviroment ?

/IceMan

I haven't used Xen but from what I understand it does not support Windows which really hinders it since if you are going to use virtualization most of the time you will be using two totally different operating systems and not something like RedHat and SUSE or FreeBSD and Debian etc.

IceMan wrote:question is, will big companies have the guts to use Xen, instead of using Vmware ESX/GSX.

Xen offers much much better performance than VMware as it can take advantage of Intel and AMD's new x86 virtualization, VT and Pacifica respectively, that they're building into their processors.[/quote]

IceMan wrote:is Xen stable enough for the Corporate enviroment ?

i trust Novell when they say it's stable enough, afterall they included Xen in a big way in their new heavy-ass enterprise server product, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, and from what I've heard, the QA that was done on that product was nothing but amazing.

CptnObvious999 wrote:I haven't used Xen but from what I understand it does not support Windows which really hinders it since if you are going to use virtualization most of the time you will be using two totally different operating systems and not something like RedHat and SUSE or FreeBSD and Debian etc.

That's really not what you primarily would Xen for in my opinion, if I were to use Xen on a big-ass server, it would be for running multiple instances of the same operating system to cause less idling for the hardware to utilize the CPU to it's full potential.

Xen can't run Windows on a "normal" CPU as it in that case requires modification to guest OS's kernel, but if you have a CPU with Intel or AMD's x86 virtualization you can run anything in it, as this is hardware virtualization that don't care about the OS.

IceMan wrote: I really like the idear of Xen, however i haven't tried it yet !

question is, will big companies have the guts to use Xen, instead of using Vmware ESX/GSX.

is Xen stable enough for the Corporate enviroment ?

When I went to the Ohio Linuxfest last year, IBM and HP were both talking a lot about the virtues of virtualization and Xen. Do IBM and HP qualify as "big companies" in your book? Big companies have been using Solaris for years, which has virtualization bulit in.

As far as I've seen Xen is pretty stable and mature. It's only recently become usable and easy to set up.

Tsuroerusu wrote:

CptnObvious999 wrote:I haven't used Xen but from what I understand it does not support Windows which really hinders it since if you are going to use virtualization most of the time you will be using two totally different operating systems and not something like RedHat and SUSE or FreeBSD and Debian etc.

That's really not what you primarily would Xen for in my opinion, if I were to use Xen on a big-ass server, it would be for running multiple instances of the same operating system to cause less idling for the hardware to utilize the CPU to it's full potential.

Correct. Virtualization is (primarily) used to isolate multiple copies of an OS. That way a web hosting company can have one server farm and run many virtual machines across it. Every customer appears to have their own box. If one VM gets hacked, you dump it an reload without affecting everyone else. You can also move a running VM to a bigger box if it's getting hammered. You can also offer hosting on Red Hat, Debian and Suse all on the same server.

In a corporate environment, if every department has it's own server, each server has to be big enough to handle the peak load of that department. If they use one server with virtualization, the server has to be big enough to handle the combined peak load. Chances are all departments won't hit peak at once. So you can buy one bigger server rather than many smaller ones, and that server gets used more efficiently.

As you pointed out, Xen can run Windows on newer hardware, so that is no longer an issue.