ESXi 4 or XenServer 5.5?

Major_Disaster · 29 Jun 2009 at 15:15

Hey,

Im interested in playing around with virtualisation (having a copy of VMware player and workstation before it became mainstream) and am now looking at bare metal solutions.

Ive managed to get both of the above products running on my Inspiron 1525 and am wondering which i should focus my time on? ESXi seems to be much more widely used in the real world, but looking at the Citrix site, XenSever seems to offer an awful lot for free.

What are you experiences / recommendations?

Cheers.

Ringiho · 29 Jun 2009 at 15:16

XenServer is fully functional. Its an awesome piece of kit.

ESXi is pretty cut down from ESX. Go with Xen, you won't be dissapointed!

SMN · 29 Jun 2009 at 15:26

Xen also. ESXi is good but its not very scalable.

dhill · 29 Jun 2009 at 15:44

I will be installing a Citrix solution myself in the very near future.

Major_Disaster · 29 Jun 2009 at 16:17

Thanks for the advice. Just wondering why there is so much Xen love, when real world seems to be dominated by VMware?

J1nxy · 29 Jun 2009 at 16:52

XenServer 5.5 was a big step forward and has just been rated as Enterprise ready along side ESX. VMware has had a product which has been in a market leading position for a number of years, with functionality which nobody else was able to deliver reliably. With XenServer 5.5 and XenEssentials this has effectively changed with XenServer being able to deliver an almost identical set of features for either nothing or a significantly lower cost point than VMware ESX.

York · 29 Jun 2009 at 20:55

Personally we're deploying XenServer 5.5 with Essentials Enterprise because for us it's working out at 1/3rd the price of VMWare, while giving us the same feature set.

iaind · 30 Jun 2009 at 07:50

VMware is always several steps ahead, there are plenty of features that Xenserver cant come close to...

The free versions of each are easier to compare though - you do get more with Xen.

So thats why the real world is dominated by VMware, but if you're looking for a free solution Xen is probably the one to reccomend

Witor · 30 Jun 2009 at 07:53

Anybody tried out the Hyper-V release in Windows 2008 R2 along with MS's System Center Virtual Machine manager? Any improvements, differences?

(Wondering since we use Hyper-V at the moment with some basic servers, and in terms of accumulated knowledge it would be best for my place of work to potentially carry on this path...)

#Chri5# · 30 Jun 2009 at 09:07

I don't suppose any knows of a matrix or comparision between ESX 4 and Xen 5.5?

Major_Disaster · 30 Jun 2009 at 09:51

#Chri5# said:
I don't suppose any knows of a matrix or comparision between ESX 4 and Xen 5.5?

Not really an impartial comparison:

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939

madman045 · 30 Jun 2009 at 10:02

Major_Disaster said:
Not really an impartial comparison:

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939

It's also out of date since the release of V4 ESX/I as it's now 64bit

s0ck · 30 Jun 2009 at 19:37

I just glanced over the whitepaper for Xen... jesus! Why is anyone using VMWare?
What's the catch??

madman045 · 30 Jun 2009 at 19:40

s0ck said:
I just glanced over the whitepaper for Xen... jesus! Why is anyone using VMWare?
What's the catch??

This was posted in April of this year

http://roidude.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/04/vmware-esx-vs-citrix-xenserver.html

Main reason is vmware is the market leader in enterprise virtualisation, but I have to say the free version of Xen Server has an impressive list of features compared to ESXI

J1nxy · 30 Jun 2009 at 20:10

madman045 said:
This was posted in April of this year

http://roidude.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/04/vmware-esx-vs-citrix-xenserver.html

Main reason is vmware is the market leader in enterprise virtualisation, but I have to say the free version of Xen Server has an impressive list of features compared to ESXI

That report doesn't state product versions and pre-dates 5.5 which was released in June. 5.5 has been a big update along with essentials.

iaind · 30 Jun 2009 at 21:54

s0ck said:
I just glanced over the whitepaper for Xen... jesus! Why is anyone using VMWare?
What's the catch??

Fundamental features like memory overcommitment/page sharing and ballooning. Then big features like live storage migration, continuous availability and management that so much better than the competition its not even funny

J1nxy · 30 Jun 2009 at 22:19

iaind said:
Fundamental features like memory overcommitment/page sharing and ballooning. Then big features like live storage migration, continuous availability and management that so much better than the competition its not even funny

Just an FYI, Memory overcommit and balloning is coming in the next release of Xen.

Live storgae migration is a nice to have agreed, continuous availability? do you mean HA? and the management interface is better in VMware but then you do have to pay rather a lot for it...

There are as always arguments for either, particularly when you actual determine if you need the additional features and if they are worth the 75%+ cost differential between Xen and VMware.

iaind · 30 Jun 2009 at 22:53

Nope, I mean continuous availability although I think its known as fault tolerance in vSphere.

It basically keeps the machine running on 2 hosts at the same time by copying memory pages (think they call it "vLockStep technology") - its so up to date you can move the mouse around on one and see it move on the other. Then if a host fails, the guest keeps running with no downtime. Obviously has a memory overhead but for critical servers it's fantastic.

I see the VMware/XenServer/Hyper-V thing as a bit like Citrix/RDP etc. Sure RDP is getting better but so is Citrix, so they're always a few steps ahead and thats what you're paying for

s0ck · 1 Jul 2009 at 13:39

Thanks for that, Iain.

It looks like the 'essentials' pack is not free though; I assume it comes with a base client (ala vsphere client) to manage all these wonderful free features?

J1nxy · 1 Jul 2009 at 18:15

s0ck said:
Thanks for that, Iain.

It looks like the 'essentials' pack is not free though; I assume it comes with a base client (ala vsphere client) to manage all these wonderful free features?

No the essentials pack is not free its just a damn site cheaper than a VMware license. The question thou is do you need the features it includes?

Xenserver is managed by a client which installs on a desktop. There is no management server in Xenserver unlike vCenter in VMware.