XenServer 6.2 Is Now Fully Open Source

First time accepted submitter Jagungal writes "Although the core Xen hypervisor has always been open source from the start, Citrix have now released the next version of their XenServer including all features and tools under an open source license. This includes also introducing a new XenServer.org community portal. The major change for users is that they now get all features from the licensed version for free but unless they pay for support, they have to do all security updates manually. Change logs for the new version 6.2 can be found here. It's been a few years since Citrix started giving it away, free as in beer.

Comments

we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[Anonymous Coward]

and it was the best choice we ever made.

live migration is free (as in beer). and it runs its little heart out with no problems.

2 years now, 30 TB of files, 40 GB of mysql data, about 30 VMs on 4 hosts. not one single problem.

The only issue we've run into is getting fully paravirtualized FreeBSD. It is a rather involved process. But once you have one VM you just copy it like a template. And luckily ZFS On Linux is starting to be good enough so we don't have to really care about FreeBSD so much.

Plain-vanilla Xen (not Xenserver) with DRBD (et al.) making instant failover is pretty awesome too.

Fuck VMWare.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[niftydude]

3 years now. 20 Tb of files; 6 TB of Exchange mailboxes, 500 GB of SQL Server and MySQL data, >1000 transactions per second , 16 to 1 consolidation ratio, with CPU, Memory, and Storage heavily oversubscribed; 280 VMs on 3 hosts, and no issues..

See? Other people can do that too...

Sorry dude, this is slashdot. You lost your epeen contest with the op when you admitted your organisation uses exchange and sql server.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like there are many people on the planet that know VMWare, there are many people on the planet that know Xen. Just like you didn't learn VMWare by being born with the knowledge, there are manuals for Xen too.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you mention sendmail and email box sizes, you obviously don't know WTF you're talking about. Despite what you're learned working with exchange, not all MTAs have be the same giant POS as your "mailbox."

Also, bitching because there's not an OSS platform that doesn't work with Windows proprietary solution doesn't mean that there's a problem with OSS.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[msh104]

The Zimbra Open Source Edition is probably a very good choice.
- 99% of all companies don't need features then the open source edition.
- it supports large mailboxes very well. ( some of our employees have 21gb mailboxes, it still runs smooth )
- You can buy a plugin for encryption if you really need it.
- Mail (IMAP), Calender (iCal) and adressbook (LDAP) sync is possible to almost any device.
- You can always get the commercial version if you need the extras.

I don't think you can remotely wipe your mail using an open source product but nowadays you might simply get any android of iphone device and use a wiping app. Maybe not as convenient but it works.

Spamassasin can work very well ( it certainly does for us ) using external blocklists and distributed mail analysis services ( dcc, razor2 ) in addition to it's core filters. We added greylisting as well. Everything runs as part of the Amavis product. We don't use Bayesian filtering though. While good on paper we found it to be to unpredictable in real life. ( people reporting valid mailing lists as spam instead of unsubscribing, etc ) Instead we added around 15 additional custom spam filter lines over the years but that's it. Now all our spam is gone. We filter mail for over 1500 domains and our customers have never been happier.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[mysidia]

. If you are doing anything serious (or even moreso if you aren't), you generally don't have the RAM to waste on a bloated operating system that has to start up and maintain a GUI whether you are using it or not.

So there is a bit of this RAM used to provide GUI functionality. It's worthwhile, because it means some maintenance tasks to junior staff whose skills for picking up CLIs are more limited; on the other hand, they can still be trained to manage the server, using remote management tools of course.

There is practically no reason an administrator should be logging into the server and starting up a graphical console, since all administration tools can be installed on their workstation and used remotely.

Furthermore... in 2008, core install was introduced, which no longer includes a GUI for servers, and this is supported with SQL 2012

In Windows Server 2013; with some exceptions, the desktop experience is not required on servers, and generally, there will be no GUI.

Anyways... the success of a hypervisor should not be judged based on the perceived quality of the applications it has virtualized. It is not a more meaningful feat to run MySQL in a hypervisor than it is to run MS SQL in a hypervisor.

If anything.. with MySQL there are fewer sizing hints, AND the operational metrics provided by the database engine are much sparser than the detailed instrumentation that MS SQL provides -- with MS SQL, you get a heck of a lot better information about the performance and sizing.

At least you didn't go so far as to try to defend MS SQL Server. Who mentioned OSS? I didn't.

MS SQL server is the only backend supported by some applications, and some developers.

Personally, I would favor Oracle, but getting anyone to agree to pay for it, is a problem.

The fact of the matter is SQL server provides robust hitless failover clustering functionality. Postgres and MySQL do not provide this; although they are getting closer. They are worlds apart in terms of features, so it's not really fair to pick one or the other as a dilemma play, now is it?

Some application owners will demand MS SQL, and some will demand PostgreSQL, and that's OKAY.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[Eunuchswear]

It's not MTA functionality. It is LDA functionality.

Sendmail writes a flat file... this results in some limitations

No it doesn't

define(`confLOCAL_MAILER', `cyrusv2')

Problem solved.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[gl4ss]

You're not VMWare's target market. If you or any of your co-workers who handle Xen leave your company (or get hit by a bus/wiped out by vengeful spouses, etc.), how are they going to get support for Xen? All of a sudden your cheap IT budget explodes in one single incident, hiring someone (or paying through the nose for support) to rebuild/recover from scratch. Some businesses would basically tank at this point.

While VMWare is pricey - I have yet to worry about any problems for the company I work for arising from the few of us knowledgeable leaving. That is called responsible IT management. VMWare support, in the few cases we have needed it, has been top notch. If I give notice tomorrow, vmware support will carry the company through any issues that would arise until they could bring someone else on board.

you can't buy support for xenserver? because that's what you're saying. unless you actually work for vmware, because you know, nobody really uses the termp top notch unless they're writing from a script or just trolling. vmware is just bullshit fleecing licensing.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[drinkypoo]

If you are doing anything serious (or even moreso if you aren't), you generally don't have the RAM to waste on a bloated operating system

Nonsense. How much RAM does the most bloated operating system use? Less than a gigabyte? How much does RAM cost now? How much RAM can you get into a PC server now? Oh, so that hypothetical gigabyte is basically irrelevant? I see.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[riondluz]

I managed a zimbra system some time back and it was OK, support was pretty good. But it was all for the outlook plugins. Too much overhead otherwise (imo). Citadel is another good product.

Still, when all is said and done, count me in as a fanboy of sendmail on a xenU; despite my peers always singing the praises of postfix.

I use it with selinux, the milters, razor, pyzor, dcc, clam, combined with a virtusertable that routes non-existant users to the pit:
@some-domain.com error:nouser No such user here
and requiring reverse-dns for connecting hosts
(tip of hat to
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Messaging/sendmail-refuse-mail-with-no-reverse-lookup-PTR-record/td-p/3194706 )
I've had no issues and nearly no spam, in years of operation.

My only xen beef is my stupidly creating a xenU on an LVM volume that's too small w/too little storage. This resulted in having to NFS-mount (or DRBD) a yum-cache as well as a clam download dir.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[amginenigma]

I run in what I'd say is a small shop, we have 21 sites the smallest of which have two hosts 13 'guests' with 12TB of shared storage. Our average site has four hosts, 22 'guests' and 48TB of storage (almost ready to double those as they are nearly full). The two data centers each have 11 hosts, over 100 hosts (virtual sprawl I'll admit I'm losing count and that's a bad thing) and 120TB of storage each. For VMWare with that many nodes we were looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars that no one wanted to spend. We switched to XEN roughly two years ago, in that time I've had one issue that I was literally able to 'google' the answer to before our Linux vendor responded to the support request. Yes you can get support for XEN from any of the big guys, and guess what, at least for the distro we use support for XEN is included. For us VMWare couldn't touch that with a ten meter cattle prod. Oh I manage all of that with one 'console', and no not one per site, one console to rule them all (ha had to sneak that in there). Was it free as in beer, sure, but that caused us to learn what we run rather than just poke buttons and call for support the instant something (anything) goes even slightly awry as I've seen others running competing solutions do.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[mysidia]

Unsure what you mean by enforcing security policy.

I'll give you some examples, with how this is achieved within an Exchange environment in a typical enterprise:

• Users outside the enterprise access their mail through Activesync or OWA (Outlook Web Access)
• These services are published to the internet by a Forefront UAG or TMG -- smart card, or password and 2-factor access token are used for login via OWA, so this is secure.
• Activesync is the open standards-based protocol utilized with smart phones, in order to synchronize things from a mail server to the mobile device.
• When an enterprise authorized smart phone is provisioned, a client-side certificate is installed on the device, to allow Activesync connection using SSL, so again, there is two factor auth
• Activesync devices, when they associate download a security policy; this provides mechanisms that can be used to enforce policy
• Example: PIN Required policy, requires that the user must set a PIN on their smartphone, and enter their PIN number to gain access to Enterprise mail. In addition, after repeated failed entries, the device will be wiped.
• Aside from activesync policies; the mail server the device is associated with gets a Remote Wipe Function; in the event that the smart phone is lost or stolen, the enterprise can push down a message that will cause all the sensitive e-mail to be wiped; the phone will reset to factory defaults.
• OWA, Outlook, and Activesync protocol devices support meeting requests; free/busy availability for other people; calendar sharing and appointment functions. There are many tools provided through open standard activesync that are not available on generic IMAP clients.
• OWA and Outlook support functionality to Classify Sensitive Messages, view encrypted message, and send encrypted messages and documents, which can be disseminated only within the enterprise -- in other words, they cannot be accidentally forwarded outside the organization. So called Digital Rights Management or Information Rights Management functions. The closest OSS equivalent is PGP and does not provide a user friendly interface for end users, that can be readily administered by IT security.
• Aside from rights management, there is this concept of Data Leak Protection; where messages that contain sensitive information, will be detected by automated algorithms on the mail server, and users prevented from forwarding the messages outside the organization ---- this provides robust security against accidental leaks since Rights management services protected encrypted documents cannot be viewed, except by valid users on computers with a user certificate and computer certificate that acquired a "view license", using mail software that supports RMS --- generic POP/IMAP clients, and generic document viewers do not support implementing this kind of security.

With a bit of effort, you can scale these services over as many servers as you wish.

This is only horizontal scaling, and is inefficient, meaning that more overall resources and cost is required to scale up massively -- DESPITE the fact that the cost of each license is $0 with OSS; additional computers and electricity happen to be very expensive. The available OSS does not have adequate vertical scaling, and would require lots of custom bespoke system customization.

Unsure why you think a flat file cannot exceed 2GB. Of course, it's not optimal to have a mailbox file that big,

Flatfiles are not inherently restricted, but on many systems there is no largefile support. The exact details are murky, but there are plenty of reasons a 2GB mailbox doesn't work out so well. I am really using the example to highlight an entire class of issues.

You'd have switched to the Maildir format years ago

You m

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[X0563511]

This is just a guess, but you're probably not offering enough pay.

Define open source

[Anonymous Coward]

According to

http://www.xenserver.org/about-xenserver-open-source/gplv2-license.html

the licenses used include:

AFL
Artistic
ASL 2.0
BSD
BSD-like
LGPL (v2+, v2.1 , v2.1+, v3+, v2+ with linking exception, with linking exception)
GPL (v2, v2+, v3, v3+, unspecified version, v2 with linking exception)
OSL
MIT (v1.1, unspecified version)
OpenLDAP
Zlib
PSF

That list also includes:

Qlogic (link is to http://www.qlogic.com/supportx0/agreement.asp , but that's borked)
Public Domain
pubkey (artefact; refers to GPG keys for some reason)
Proprietary
Distributable
Freeware

I'm just a simple hyperchicken lawyer from Andromeda, but in my galaxy, proprietary licenses aren't 'open source' let alone Free software licenses. Same goes for freeware, public domain, etc.

For the curious, the proprietary-licensed stuff includes software from Brocade Communications, Citrix Systems (!), Emulex, and QLogic.

Re:Define open source

[storkus]

Mod parent up: I searched for almost 15 minutes trying to find the exact "free software" license it was changed to, and failed. But, boy, finding how to use XenControl (which runs on winblows only, BTW) to "license" your server (apparently that's what Citrix calls a support contract now) is very easy; oh, and this "license" is per socket now rather than per machine.

Advanced features not free

[mysidia]

It's been a few years since Citrix started giving it away, free as in beer.

They gave away what used to be called XenServer Enterprise functionality for free.

What they don't include for free is:

• "Hot" snapshot (Snapshot a virtual machine including its online RAM/Memory status) -- using VMware's hypervisor it's a free feature, Citrix makes you pay for it.
• Cluster-wide robust per-target resource Storage and Network 'QoS' functionality
• High availability. Not included with XenServer free as in beer; Citrix provides it as an addon.
• Live migration of virtual machines between backend datastores (E.g. migration between SANs) without shutting the virtual machine down.
• DRS-Like Workload balancing
• True memory overcommitment -- you get a more limited technology, no transparent page sharing, no swapping via SSD RAM cache or page compression.
• Role-based access control and AD integration for login to Xen servers
• Resource pools with servers having different CPU versions. (Enhanced 'VMotion' Compatibility)
• No distributed power management
• Alarms and e-mail notifications.
• Storage array offloaded cloning/copy/zero
• No SR-IOV/GPU or other passthrough device support

Re:Advanced features not free

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ, your list is not correct and seems to be based upon the previous 6.1 distribution model : what is now open-sourced as XenServer 6.2 is what was build as XCP (Xen Cloud Platform)

I am not telling that everything in your list is now free, but for example HA is there, as are heterogenous pools (I used them on XCP 1.6) and live migration.

http://www.xenserver.org/overview-xenserver-open-source-virtualization/open-source-virtualization-features.html

Re:Still on 5.5

[mysidia]

If it's dying; I am very heavily inclined to believe it's been mismanaged, sized improperly, misconfigured, or deployed incorrectly.

UCS is rock solid. If you have issues with it, get some consultants out to audit and verify the configuration and design of the infrastructure piece by piece for adherence to best practices; and attempt to fault isolate to where the issue is.

Re:Sucktrix

[rubycodez]

are you confused, maybe thinking about xen desktop? that's useful for normal business apps....if you're trying to do heavy duty rendering with the "thin client" model that's your problem

Re:Sucktrix

[symbolset]

XenServer is virtualization and cloud tech, not thin client tech. You're thinking of XenDesktop and XenApp - both of which are sweet stuff if you need that sort of thing.

XenServer being fully open source is cool because it creates a competitive environment for KVM, the native Linux virtualization solution. This competition will drive rapid adoption of technologies like PCI passthrough and partitioning of GPUs and coprocessors like Xeon Phi as well as other devices that seem to converge on what you seem to have meant to say. It will also promote technologies that pass user input back to the VM like voice, video and touch inputs, and support software defined networks. Everybody who possibly can will now integrate their devices with this. This will of course spur Microsoft's Hyper-V team to redouble their efforts. VMWare will laugh and laugh until the joke's on them, but in the mean time they'll earn great profits.

/disclaimer: I work for a joint that plays with all these, but my opinion is my own. No stock in anybody but mutual funds. No benefit for me on any of these.

Re:Still on 5.5

[symbolset]

The first iteration of UCS gear neglected the bandwidth. The error has been corrected, but early adopters still feel the pain.

ganeti

[halfnerd]

Check out ganeti as well: https://code.google.com/p/ganeti/

Features
Ganeti provides the following features for managed instances:

Support for Xen virtualization:
Support for PVM and HVM instances
Live migration support
Virtual console (on PVM) or VNC (on HVM) to control instances
Support for virtio or emulated devices

Support for KVM virtualization: (from Ganeti 2.0)
Live migration support
Support for fully virtualized instances
Support for semi-virtualized instances (kernel residing on the host)
Support for VNC or serial access
Support for virtio or emulated devices

Recommended cluster size 1-40 physical nodes

Disk management:
Plain LVM volumes
Files (from Ganeti 2.0)
across-the-network raid1 (using DRBD) for quick recovery in case of physical system failure

Instance disk partitioning supported from Ganeti 2.0

Export/import mechanism for backup purposes or migration between clusters, or

Automated instance migration across clusters (since Ganeti 2.2)