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An Overview of Virtualization Technology
Jane Walker writes to tell us that TechTarget has a short writeup on virtualization and some of the ins and outs of using this technology effectively. From the article: "Virtualization is a hot topic in the enterprise space these days. It's being touted as the solution to every problem from server proliferation to CPU underutilization to application isolation. While the technology does indeed have many benefits, it's not without drawbacks."
From TFA:
.... [summary]'. That's a really broad and sweeping statement to make.
:) This is not a pro Xen rant but I'd like to point out that it does install effortlessly on most Debian systems in under an hour, the TFA sort of indicated otherwise.
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Novell is investing lots of effort in optimizing Xen specifically for running a virtualized copy of NetWare on top of Linux. The company's goal is to provide its customers with a migration path over to the Linux platform without giving up NetWare.
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One of the many un-sung uses for Xen is a swiss army SAN. I'm glad to see someone touch on this.
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If you want to use Linux as your host OS, you'll definitely have to go with VMware.
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That wasn't so cool. I appreciate the fact that there are just too many products available to touch on everything in one short summary article / writeup, and while the majority of the article was informative even to the lay person, you need to end a sentence like that with a 'Because
Or perhaps even "I recommend VMWare" would have been better.
It looks like the author lost interest in what they were writing near the end of the article. They talk about IRC or newsgroups being the only support options available for OS products [another sweeping statement], however have you checked out the wiki at xensource.com lately?
Just seems like TFA lost coherency after 'What's best?' It went from really informative to misleading rather quickly. If your going to go to a virtualized platform you owe it to yourself to spend a month trying each candidate to see what works best for you, not the author of whatever article you read
With VMWare Server (ex-GSX) switching to free status, frankly I don't think they had a choice. I've been working with, and beta-testing for years, with both and the VMWare product still wins in my opinion. No win situation for MS.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Microsoft has made their server virtualization software available for free.
Isn't this the opening phase of what Computer Business Review calls 'Netscaping' the competition? I wonder if that word will ever make it's way into the Microsoft system spelling dictionaries?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
6 copies of patches to apply? Um no. Any admin working with that kind of setup SHOULD know about WSUS server and be rolling out patches (after he's evaluated them on a test rig to make sure they don't break any of his company-specific software) automatically.
And no, it's not 11 reboots. That's a really really dumb way to do it. You set a group policy to prevent the machines from automatically rebooting after patch installation. When it's time for the scheduled maintenence you shut down all the VM's, reboot the host OS, then crank back up the VMs. That's a total of 6 reboots for 6 windows machines.
Virtualisation is a fun toy and may be a useful tool if you're a multi-platform developer. But it does not seem to be a serious enterprise solution for the datacenter.
Virtualization IS a serius enteprise solution. Lots and lots of us have it in production. Then again, we know a bit about the field and don't patch every machine by hand and do unneccessary reboots.
The cost savings are real if you hire someone competent to run the machines.