Virtualize With Xen, Now
by Mark Ontkush, Boston, Massachusetts, USA on 05.24.07
Virtualization software allows you to run many different servers on a single piece of hardware; it's all the rage with IT departments because it drastically reduces the number of servers you need. This translates into reduced energy consumption (fewer machines to draw juice), less maintenance (fewer machines to fix), and more dollars in your pocket (fewer machines to buy).
VMware, a commercial product with a good rep is the clear market leader. But now a worthy competitor - the Xen open source project - just got better. Xen just released a new version of its virtualization product this week, and apparently it boots gluteus maximus. From the article:
"For server workloads, Xen's core hypervisor functionality now meets or beats VMware ESX in pretty much all areas, both features and performance," said Ian Pratt, leader of the Xen project and founder of XenSource.
Hype? Probably not; the list of supporters (Intel, IBM, Novell, VA Linux (Japan), HP, Fujitsu, SGI, Red Hat, AMD, Sun, Unisys and the National Security Agency) is impressive. And the cost of the free software is zero; ironically, that always seems to be the hardest number for IT shops to swallow. But why buy? Put your saved cash into a green technology, say solar cells.
Xen says the next stop is laptops and desktops; no idea what that means but I'm sure it will be exciting:: ServerWatch
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I'm using a xen virtual machine for my website since a long time, this is sure no big news. Xen is an excellent solution :) one of the best, and yes it's opensource.
I agree, virtualization (cutting slice of a single webserver to build up separate virtual machines acting as a phisical one) is very good for the environment, and such, especially for small services not requiring too much "horse power" (while for big appliances where you need a powerful server of course it's useless).
IT departments (i work in one) are not angry at all with this technology and use it since a long time, because in the end, the amount of human job to do is the same (20 virtual servers still requires the same amount of managing of 20 phisical servers).
Way more worried are the wholesalers of servers :-) because of course you need less.