[COLUG] Linux on VMware

[Steve Roggenkamp]

Duane wrote:
> Scott Merrill wrote:
>   
>> Duane wrote:
>>     
>>> Steve Roggenkamp wrote:
>>>       
>>>> My company, OCLC, has recently started to make significant use of Linux
>>>> on VMware.  We now have dozens of Linux servers running on VMware VI 3. 
>>>> I'm looking for others with significant number of servers to exchange
>>>> experience, best practices, etc.  Perhaps get together for lunch for
>>>> discussions.
>>>>         
>>> If you don't mind me asking, I'm curious as to the reasoning for going
>>> with VMware.
>>>       
>> >From a business perspective, it can be nice to have a company to call
>> when seeking support, as opposed to trawling through support forum
>> message postings.
>>
>> VMWare also offers VMotion through their VirtualCenter product, which
>> allows you to move a running virtual machine between physical hosts.
>> That's a fairly big advantage for services for which downtime is
>> intolerable.
>>     
>
> Perhaps my original question was worded well enough, but I'm currently
> looking into deploying Xen and I'm interested in the advantages of
> VMware over Xen.
>
> With the respect to the above comments, both features/options are
> available from Citrix (Citrix bought out XenSource) but I'm not sure at
> what cost.
>
>   

 From my perspective we were involved with VMware before Xen was a 
product, so there really wasn't too much of a choice at that time.  From 
there you build up a certain expertise with a particular package and 
develop your business and management processes around it.  Then it 
becomes somewhat difficult to dislodge, unless you have significant 
reasons to do so.

I would say that VMware is stronger in the enterprise management area 
where you have clusters running several dozen virtual machines 
simultaneously along with storage pools, networks, etc.  They have had a 
few years to develop their product.  In my opinion the two hypervisors 
have more or less equivalent performance according to the published 
studies, which, in any case, you have to take with a grain (big block?) 
of salt.  Of course, always remember your mileage WILL vary.  Test your 
own applications on your hardware.  A ten percent performance difference 
won't be enough to dislodge an entrenched application unless you're up 
against hard performance constraints.

Having said that, there's a lot of energy going into Xen these days, 
especially, I think, in the grid computing world.  Check out papers from 
* First International Workshop on Virtualization Technology in 
Distributed Computing at

*http://workspace.globus.org/vtdc06/VTDC_files/programdraft.htm

for some interesting reading.

As an industry we're still in the early stages of moving into 
virtualization, much like the Internet ten or twelve years ago.  Stay 
tuned, we're in for more exciting times.

Steve