I haven’t tried KVM yet as I’ve been too busy and Xen is more mature – but many of the accounts I’ve read seem to indicate that for Linux its performance is very good maybe better in some cases than Xen. Management is another issue, but that is just a matter of time and development enegry.

From lwn.

• Thread: Howto for migration from VMWare ESX
• Virtual Disk Migration Utility 1.1
• Converting a Physical Disk to a VMWare Virtual Disk
• Thread: VMware Linux guest to Xen
• VMWare to Xen Migration
• Thread: Migrate VM under VMWare Workstation 6 to XenServer
• Thread: v2xva failure in converting .vmdk files? – phantom disks in vmx can make v2xva fail.
• VMware KB #1308 – Cleaning Up After Incomplete Uninstallation on a Windows Host- removing Vmware Tools can be troublesome. Check this kb article and also note the following location in the registry.
• VMware server memory controller service failed to start

The vmmemctl.sys driver is missing from your system or the registry contains the wrong image path. The \??\ is normal in the path.

If you selected the default path for the VMware Tools, your registry imagepath should look like the example below.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMMEMCTL]

Throughout the whole period it has been a constant struggle to get Opensolaris working, figure out ancient Solaris ideas about system management. Sort out a kernel bug that caused crashes when running bonnie++.

Being held ransom by the idea of needing a Sun support contract at some future unknown date due to a bug in zfs seems to me as a losing position. Being forced into that position I think misses the point of opensource. Zfs provides striking advantages with checksums and simple snapshots, easy offline remote replication. But without the idea that your data is safe there is no point.

I can put together a Linux storage system without thinking and manage it without much thought. The lack of constant time snapshots is going to hurt, but at least I know the exact same system will still work in 2 years without any changes.

In September, possible with a launch at VMworld 2007, VMware will announce a new promotion called Foundation, bundling together three ESX Servers Started Edition and one VirtualCenter (capped to manage those three virtualization hosts) for $3,000.

VMware have three versions of VI3, so it will be interesting to know which is being offered as part of the package. VirtualCenter also requires a fourth machine to operate, and is probably the big saving. It currently starts at $5000 as is required to “enable distributed virtualization services such as VMware VMotion, VMware High Availability and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler”. Both XenEnterprise and VirtualIron do the same without the fourth computer, but are probably not as mature as VI3 in this area.

If the VMware SME package offers shared storage and vmotion then it will certainly cut the legs out from under XenSource in a key market. In that situation it will be 3000USD and 4 machines vs 7500USD and three machines. If it does not offer those extra features then it likely to be comparable to XenServer and a very similar 3000USD vs 2250USD. In that situation it is likely to be purely a case deciding between management tools, upgrade path and brand.

Either way it is a classic market position play against a new entrant. Given that virtualised servers have only 1% of the total market, and now both main players have similar channels and technological value in the long run I think it will be a tight interesting race. Can only be good for the end customer.

The XenSource acquisition opens up the possibility that virtualisation, under Citrix sponsorship, will shift into delivering full desktops–a combination of an operating system and user application set–as virtual machines that are refreshed frequently. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, say Citrix officials, that one day such virtual machines will follow mobile workers around via the Internet, converting any available PC into a personal desktop. Virtualisation so far has been mostly a consolidation play in the data center or in the developer’s test bed, where one piece of hardware can be virtualized into several different test environments.

It is interesting in the context of the above comment that an original goal of the Xen project was global mobile computing. Maybe the XenSource-Citrix link isn’t so complicated after all, and driven by strong vision on both sides.

You will need to attach the VDI to dom0 (Please refer to “xe vbd-create”). This will mount the VDI as a device in dom0, which you can then “lomount” to get hold of the exact partition on that disk.

What does this mean exactly? It could be a spin-off, if the comments from XenSource CEO, Peter Levin, are taken literally. “We’ll be working on an independent body to take over some of the Xen project,” he said.

Something like this would help a lot to sustain the community.

It’s good that the XenSource guys have realised their work. Although of course that now leaves us wondering what next for XenServer as a platform.

Some comments indicate that Citrix have paid too much. That is possible as a purchase is not only defined by how much you pay, but also by how well you can use the it. Only value to a fast cat in NZ is looking good, but in Germany you can actually drive it fast. The ability of Citrix can turn this 500 million purchase into something of greater value to themselves, their current customers and their new customers remains to be seen.

It is worth considering this also in the context of the VMWare IPO. 20 billion market cap for a VMWare owned by EMC which has a market cap of 38 billion. Share markets are funny places.

Regardless as this commentary notes:

Vmware will NOT settle far below the price from yesterday. Less than 5% of all x86 servers are running in a virtual environment. That leaves 95% of the servers as candidates for Vmware.

There is still a lot of grow in the virtualisation market. And that is just the server market. Desktop virtualisation is just as interesting – VMWare’s ACE is quite a cool little addition to Workstation 6. Citrix is a massive player in the desktop market, but without some one XenSource they had nothing, now they have a chance.

For current and users in the last stages of planning it does complicate matters. How is the XenServer stack now going to evolve under Citris. Will they build on the strength of the open source platform? Can they actually understand it? Or will XenServer as a product simply disappear into their stack.

Given today is basically the last chance to make a decision about whether to buy additional licenses before the price goes up it is a tough choice.

Buying XS today at $99 vs Monday at $750, is probably a worthwhile consideration if you have a small Xen project in the near future.

Apart from the long delayed new features, tucked at the bottom is new pricing:

XenEnterprise v4 will be available on August 20, and includes as standard features: XenMotion, XenCenter, a 64-bit hypervisor and XenAPI. Pricing for XenEnterprise starts at $1,599 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $2,499 perpetual license per dual socket server. XenSource’s midrange product, XenServer v4, includes as standard features: XenCenter, a 64-bit hypervisor and XenAPI. XenServer v4 does not include XenMotion, but the previous limits on guest VMs and memory will be removed. Additionally, XenServer will now have the ability to manage both Linux and Windows guest VMs. Pricing for XenServer starts at $495 for an annual subscription license per dual socket server, and $750 perpetual license per dual socket server.

The pricing for XE3.2 was $495 or $750 – a 333% increase, and XS3.2 was $99 – which is now a 750% increase. I will have to do some investigation on the license upgrade path, and the annual maintenance fee.

In terms of features, XenServer will now allow both Windows and Linux domains with support for two sockets and 32Mbs. It however does not get share storage support. Personally I’m not greatly interested in XenMotion, but lack of share storage makes the XenServer option less than useful. Basically without shared storage, you only get consolidation and not basic DR. ie offline without n(Live/Xen/V)|Motion DR. This I think, missed entirely one of the strongest strengthens of virtualisation: flexible computing spaces.

While I’m not adverse to price increases, regardless of the (delayed) new feature set this is rather dramatic.

XenEnterprise is still a great product, but this change will effect people’s decisions. VI3 is now only twice as expensive, ignoring the cost of the management server. And there are increasing additional options: PV driver pack from Novell, KVM, and of course Virtual Iron.

I might be off-base in saying this, but with the rumors about Citrix looking to buy XenSource and the comment from Citrix in this Press Release, it makes you wonder if this is partial move by XenSource to boost their earnings model and justify the sale price that is floating around at the moment.