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XenServer 6.2 Is Now Fully Open Source

Posted by timothy on from the boundless-bounty dept.

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.

12 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... by niftydude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
    2. Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... by msh104 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... by mysidia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      . 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.

    5. Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... by Eunuchswear · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
  2. Define open source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Define open source by storkus · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  3. Advanced features not free by mysidia · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Advanced features not free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      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

  4. Re:Sucktrix by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  5. ganeti by halfnerd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)