VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘XenServer’

Burton Group analysts Chris Wolf and Richard Jones have recently both blogged about certification of Citrix XenServer 5.5 combined with Citrix Essentials Platinum Edition as an enterprise ready solution. Citrix XenServer 5.5 is available as a free download, but managing XenServer via Citrix Essentials requires the purchase ($5000 per host list price) of the Essentials Platinum Edition product.

It’s Official – Citrix XenServer 5.5 with Citrix Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition is Enterprise-Production Ready is a post by Chris Wolf from his personal blog announcing the certification of Citrix XenServer 5.5 managed by Citrix Essentials Platinum Edition as “worthy of the demands of large scale enterprise environments.”

Citrix has an enterprise-grade virtualization platform says the Burton Group is a post by Richard Jones also from his personal blog that declares “This is a great milestone for the industry as it marks the first time that the x86 market has more than one vendor (VMware) offering an enterprise production worthy virtualization solution.”

Read both posts for more details.

The Burton Group report requires a subscription to access, but Wolf promises to detail the findings at the upcoming Catalyst Conference where he will speaking.

Jones’ blog provides an interesting caveat to the enterprise ready comparison of VMware vSphere and XenServer Platinum:

“However, this is not to say that Citrix XenServer 5.5 exceeds VMware vSphere 4 in features and function.  Burton Group’s production class hypervisor requirements specify technical and product features that fall into three buckets:  Required, Preferred, and Optional.  While Citrix now meets 100% of the Required features, it still falls behind the x86 virtualization leader in the Preferred and Optional criteria.”

Some of the new automation and life cycle management technology for both XenServer and Hyper-V announced today by Citrix will be provided by an integration of VMLogix LabManager and StageManager products with Citrix Essentials. This partner feature integration follows a similar strategy used by Citrix in the past with Marathon Technologies to provide High Availability for guests on XenServer hosts. VMLogix LabManager and StageManager are very similar in name to VMware VI 3.5 Enterprise products that provide basically the same automation and management features.

In the official announcement today, VMLogix explains: Read the rest of this entry »

5 Linux-based Virtualization Companies to Watch on Ken Hess’s Linux Blog is a post about the 5 main server virtualization platforms based on Linux. Ken also mentions the only non Linux based hypervisor, Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

“There’s only one company that doesn’t use Linux for its server virtualization platform. Can you guess which one it is? If you guessed Microsoft, you’re correct. Microsoft is a newbie in the virtualization space but wants in and may make significant dents in the already well-established market that is significantly owned by VMware. For Windows-only virtualization, there may be some validity to the switch to Hyper-V.

For the rest of us, who are either too stubborn or too smart to make the shift to Hyper-V, what are our choices? The following is a list of 5 of the main players in Linux-based virtualization.”

Use the link above to read all of Ken’s original post for some brief info about each platform, but I am listing the 6 products and the links to their free versions for quick reference here. Ken does not discuss nor am I including free hosted platforms such as Microsoft Virtual PC or VMware Server. Read the rest of this entry »

Everybody talks about running VMware ESX on VMware Workstation, but how come we don’t see more about running ESX on VMware Server 2.0? I’ve tried and been semi successful. This post is sort of a “how to” and kind of “need help” post about this topic.

First, Duncan Epping over at yellow-bricks.com made a quick post to remind himself of the configurations necessary to run ESX/ESXi 3.5 on VMware Workstation 6.5. There are numerous other posts about how to do this, but the post ESX in Workstation contains just the basic information to remember. If you’ve never done this before and you need pictures and a good explanation then I recommend the .pdf from Xtravirt.com titled VI 3.5 in a box.

Trying to take this a step further, I have moved the ESX 3.5 VMs I created on Workstation 6.5 to a VMware Server 2.0 running on a 64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop. I can start the ESX server VMs just fine, but unfortunately I can’t run the VMs (hosted on the ESX VMs). It’s still a convenient option for learning, testing and configuring the latest builds and features even without running VMs.

Using basically the same configuration settings I’ve also been able to install and run Citrix XenServer 5.0 and Microsoft Hyper-V on both VMware Workstation and VMware Server 2.0. Here is a screenshot of my VMware Server Summary tab. Click on it for a larger view. Read the rest of this entry »

There were 2 messages from the Citrix Summit 2008 conference in Orlando this week that really stuck with me. I’ve already posted about the first, “XenServer 5 is ready for the enterprise“. The other message was “Use XenServer to host XenApp”.

Virtualizing XenApp is a concept to get on board with in general, but it’s also logical to assume Citrix can best support and optimize their products when they are used together.

The message is that virtualizing existing and future implementations of XenApp (or Presentation Server) on XenServer can

• Reduce physical server count
• Increase availability
• Increase flexibility
• Improve performance

Let me explain how it was explained to me during a hands on lab. Read the rest of this entry »

XenServer 5 is ready for the Enterprise. That’s been one of the flavors of the partner “kool aid” flowing here at Citrix Summit 2008 this week. Customer adoption will gauge this statement over the next year, but from a feature stand point Citrix’s latest version of XenServer now has the “bells and whistles” necessary to compete for market share in the number one strategic technology for 2009 (according to Gartner), virtualization. Citrix is not just promising future releases and roadmaps either (although there is some of that happening here too), but partners are seeing demos and participating in hands on labs for product capabilities already available.

I was told over 100 new features and enhancements have been added to XenServer 5.0. I can’t say that I have experienced all 100+ of them this week personally, but I’ve seen enough to know the changes are obvious and impressive.

Click through this SlideShare.net presentation for new feature technical details and images provided by Barry Flanagan on his Citrix Community blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Like almost all of the virtualization vendors these days, Citrix has their own set of technologies in development that will enable a highly scalable and dynamic cloud server infrastructure. I attended a Citrix Summit 2008 breakout session yesterday about one of the new Citrix products at the heart of the Citrix Cloud Center (C3) portfolio; Citrix Workflow Studio.

Citrix describes Workflow Studio as an orchestrator of products and processes that allows all the technologies in Citrix’s version of the cloud to be automated and controlled. Combined with the virtualization and consolidation made possible by Citrix XenServer, Workflow Studio will enable administrators to turn virtual infrastructure into a dynamic delivery platform by: Read the rest of this entry »