Virtual server solutions for your customers

Your customers are looking at virtual servers and you're tasked with helping them compare the options. You'll find out pretty quick that there is no simple decision to be made when it comes to choosing a server consolidation platform.

You have five virtual server solutions: VMware ESX Server 2.5.3, VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, Xen 3.0 and XenEnterprise.

This tip offers an introduction to each of these products and offers criteria for evaluating these options in terms of administrative features. In part two, I will discuss technical specifications and support. Part three will go over management and high availability. Finally, part four will compare the options in terms of extra features and give a summary of the evaluation. (These criteria borrow heavily from the VMware server product comparison chart.)

Product overview

• VMware ESX Server 2.5.3 is the current industry leader when it comes to server virtualization. It has a steep entry cost, but it is well supported by the vendor and third parties, and it works with fantastic results straight out of the box.
• VMware Server is a free, stripped-down version of ESX, with the primary difference being that it requires an existing host operating system (OS) to run. For a complete list of differences between VMware ESX Server 2.5.3 and VMware Server, see http://www.vmware.com/products/server_comp.html.
• Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is geared towards Windows server virtualization, but Microsoft recently announced support for Linux guests as well. Although it is many times overlooked, do not ignore Microsoft when it believes in a technology.
• Xen 3.0 is the current version of the Xen virtual machine monitor (VMM). It is open source and is rapidly being adopted by the heavyweights in the industry, such as IBM, HP, Intel, Red Hat, AMD and Novell, as the choice technology for server virtualization.
• XenEnterprise springs forth from the company XenSource, founded by the creators of Xen. XenEnterprise is a packaged version of the Xen software and will provide a similar vertical virtualization solution to VMware's ESX Server.

Criteria

Here I will describe the criteria for evaluation and evaluate the options in terms of administrative features.

Administrative	Management
Cost Open source Service Level Agreement (SLA) enforcement (service level guarantees)	Web-based server management Remote VM console Scripting and API support Template support
Technical specifications	High availability
Host / control OS CPU support System RAM support Hardware compatibility Virtual SMP support VMs per CPU core Virtualization Mode	NIC teaming VM clustering Storage area network (SAN) connectivity Host VM migration capability
Support	Additional features
Vendor support Community support Third-party support (consulting and development)	Available physical-to-virtual (P2V) solution Integrated monitoring solution Integrated backup solution

Processor
All the comparisons assume that VMM is running on an Intel processor that supports Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-i, VT-x).

Host / control OSs
When a host or control OS is required, the following will be used:

Sources
My information for the following comparisons is derived from the material I found online about the products, by reading white papers and other related documents, talking with VMware engineer Michael Wilson, and a phone conversation with Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource, on 2006/5/10.

Administrative

Read on to learn how the major options compare in terms of administrative features.

Cost
I will not be addressing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), only the monetary cost of the product itself.

With three of the products being given away, ESX and XenEnterprise better offer some key features to be worth their price points.

Winner(s): VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, Xen 3.0

Loser(s): VMware ESX Server 2.5.3, XenEnterprise

Open source
This section evaluates whether or not the VMM is open source software.

Xen 3.0 and XenEnterprise are the only VMMs in this comparison that are open source, a huge benefit to those who wish to better understand and modify VMMs. This also means that investors in virtualization do not have to worry about a vendor going out of business and taking their source code with them. (There are ways to obtain source code from VMware, but it is still not open source.) I do not necessarily believe that software immediately gets a black mark for not being open source, so the closed-source solutions do not lose points, but Xen does gain them.

Winner(s): Xen 3.0, XenEnterprise

Loser(s): --

Service level guarantees
Service level guarantees ensure defined allocations of VM resources such as CPU, memory, disk and network.

All the solutions offer service level guarantees with the exception of VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. While they may not seem like a big deal, service level guarantees help you enforce Service Level Agreements (SLA). Service level guarantees are a crucial feature of any virtualization solution.

Winner(s): VMware ESX Server 2.5.3, Xen 3.0, XenEnterprise

Loser(s): VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

About the author: Andrew Kutz has been professionally involved in the technology sector for 11 years. For the last six of them he has worked with the latest technologies while employed by the University of Texas at Austin. He started his own consulting firm and development house,

l o s t c r e a t i o n s

This tip originally appeared on SearchServerVirtualization.com.

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