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...

[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.

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: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.