[Cialug] Xen vs Vmware vs ? was: vmware ESXi 4 64 bit

[Todd Walton]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:
> I guess I was wondering if anyone cared to tell why they preferred one
> system vs another. KVM for me simply because it's the default for
> Ubuntu. That's not necessarily the best reason though. Remote
> management is something I should consider,

I'm running KVM on Fedora 10.  I'm having some teething problems, but
the plan right now is to stick with it.

I chose KVM essentially as a bet that KVM has a strong future on
Linux.  It's supported by Red Hat, which has a pretty good track
record on supporting apps, and it integrates well with the operating
system.  It loads via a kernel module, for example, instead of Xen's
method of using special kernel sources.  It uses qemu in some way that
I don't understand.

I'm not sure that it's ready for production use just yet, but I expect
it soon will be and I have the time to wait while I'm learning the
ropes.  I don't have need for any fancy features yet.  No remote
management or failover or anything.

Xen would be nice.  I'm a little afraid of Microsoft doing something
nasty to it.  Citrix and Microsoft have a pretty strong relationship.
And Xen has the whole special kernel problem.

VMWare has quite a reputation, and you'd get paid support if you need
it.  I tried installing VMWare and got frustrated trying to figure it
out, and the instructions weren't helpful, and Googling wasn't
helpful.  But that's closed source for you.

VirtualBox installs and runs quite well.

--
Todd