[COLUG] Xen vs. VMWare

[Josh]

> Is there anyone on the list who has experience with both of these
> virtualization tools that can give a (brief) pros & cons of each?

I have some limited experience with both.

Xen Pro's: Far superior performance, especially on boxes with limited 
resources.

Xen Con's: Networking isn't straightforward (good luck getting 
firewall-enabled VM's on the same box talking to each other), you have to 
set up an install repository via HTTP (if you just use the virtmanager 
present in CentOS or RedHat), you can only virtualize Linux unless you 
have certain VM-Enabled processors.

VMWare Pro's: Easy to set up

VMWare Con's: Performance lower.

I'd still go with Xen, just for the performnace benefit.  When I played 
with Xen a few years ago (using CentOS 4.4) I was able to get two VM's 
running acceptably fast, with NX-based graphical sessions, in less than 
512 MB of RAM.

Cheers,
-J