Re: [tlug] VMWare/Virtualserver free

["Patrick Niessen" <tlug.niessen@example.com>]

Sorry for responding late to this topic.

I have been running GSX Server in production for our company for more
than 2 Years, and can only praise the product.

Since then I have also started to use the VMWare server product, and
it delivers (but not sure if its better than gsx 3.1).

While GSX still commanded a proud price, I was dabbling with xen for a
while, thinking about using it to consolidate linux servers.  It
generally was ok, once you got it working.

The main advanatges of VMWare over Xen at this stage are:

*Mature product
*Many distros and distro versions are supported
*Extensive testing done with many distributions and windows versions
*Excellent Support (if you pay for it)
*Excellent free forum support
*Good Administration interface
*Good Documentation
*Runs Windows without special processors
*Large user base

I think Xen will become a valid alternative, but it has to prove
itself for a while, handle windows smoothly, and provide better
administration & documentation out of the box.  When deciding to use
virtualisation products motivations may vary.  But in case of server
consolidation our main focus was not to get the fastest performance,
but to save hardware cost, provide better disaster recovery and lower
administration work.  So good performance is sufficient to superior
performance.  Actually end users noticed a speed improvement, because
after a physical server was migrated to virtual machine, all VMs
shared a very new  and powerful server.

This is just my experience.


regards

Patrick