[CentOS] Stop the FUD Xen is not deprecated

Wed Nov 26 14:59:12 UTC 2008
nate <centos at linuxpowered.net>

Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Rainer Duffner wrote:
>> On a small scale, running VMware ESX3i or VMware-server is perfectly
>> possible.
>
> There seems to be a lot of fanboy affinity around ESXi - and with the
> fact that its 'available' off the shelf, zero cost up front. however to
> make it do anything you still need to buy into vmware tools. I dont see
> how that is a lot more of a technology lockdown than Xen or KVM.

You don't really need to buy anything, you do if you want
fancy enterprise-like management of multiple systems from
one screen. And there are limitations in ESXi, it certainly
isn't equivalent in abilities to enterprise or standard edition.

But as far as using it to virtualize systems it works ok, and
you can use Virtual Infrastructure client, the same client you
use for their non free versions of ESX(assuming no VirtualCenter
of course). VI Client is free.

A big downside to ESXi is it does not support serial consoles(yet),
and we've had some painful experiences trying to get 802.3ad+802.1q
working, while it was painless doing the same in ESX Foundation,
not sure what the issue was.

I've also read in their features list that ESXi does not support
cold migrations, nor snapshots, I haven't tested either of these
situations yet myself. These are two key things that I find
critical. If your not on shared storage than cold (or hot)
migrations isn't an issue.

nate