Was checking out the Zoho apps and found the slide show tool interesting. So this post will be an embedded slide show.
However to ensure that Google indexes my blog properly and keeps sending me some hits, here are the major contents:
XenServer Management Series Categories:
❖Migration (P2V) and Capacity Planning
❖Monitoring and Management
❖High Availability and Fault Tolerance
❖Backup and Disaster Recovery
❖Automation and Lifecycle Management
❖Cloud Platform
Keep watching this space for more updates...
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Access your Digital Camera from a VM
Recently one customer had asked me about using a VM to test USB connected devices like Digicams. I knew that USB devices was something that was not supported by enterprise class hypervisors (ESX, XenServer).
So decided to give it a shot using desktop hypervisor Virtual Box from Sun. Attached the USB digicam to my desktop (did not have any specific drivers on the desktop). Created a VM using VirtualBox and attached the USB device to it. The USB device appeared in the VM and on installing the digicam drivers in the VM, was able to access the digicam contents from the VM. Wow!!!
Virtualbox seems to use some filter drivers to bypass the USB device to the VM. Believe VMWare workstation should also definitely have a similiar functionality, but I have always been a big fan of the sleek and lightweight hypervisor from VirtualBox.
Isn't that a cool feature
So decided to give it a shot using desktop hypervisor Virtual Box from Sun. Attached the USB digicam to my desktop (did not have any specific drivers on the desktop). Created a VM using VirtualBox and attached the USB device to it. The USB device appeared in the VM and on installing the digicam drivers in the VM, was able to access the digicam contents from the VM. Wow!!!
Virtualbox seems to use some filter drivers to bypass the USB device to the VM. Believe VMWare workstation should also definitely have a similiar functionality, but I have always been a big fan of the sleek and lightweight hypervisor from VirtualBox.
Isn't that a cool feature
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Hypervisor Storage Integration - Is Citrix leading the Game?
Had posted in my previous post on the feature comparison between XenServer and ESX.
Apart from those, storage integration has been one area where Citrix has been leading the game. XenServer 5.0 has built in integration with NetApp and EqualLogic storage arrays. This enables XenServer to leverage the storage features like Snapshotting, Fast clone and thin provisioning.
Though this might not have a serious performance implications for normal workloads, this integration makes XenServer more suitable for disk intensive workloads and for apps like VDI and LabManager. Both VDI and Labmanager rely extensively on the fast clone and snapshot features. Offloading these functions to the storage should give users noticeable I/O performance enhancements and also free up CPU cycles on the Server. I am not aware of XenApp using the fast clone technology like VMWare View Manager does, but Citrix Labmanager (OEMd from VMLogix) extensively uses this feature and should be interesting to note the performance differences between VMLogix Labmanager on ESX and on XenServer with NetApp storage.
Citrix has gone another step further by introducing the new product - Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for both XenServer and Hyper-V. This product integrates with the leading storage vendors and provides the capabilities to carve out LUNs on the arrays on demand and present them to the hypervisors. This should fill the gap with the non-availability of Cluster file system in Hyper-V. Being a 1.0 product, it seems to lack functionalities in terms of the no. of storage vendors it supports and also support for Zoning of the FC switches. But this definitely is an interesting product to watch out for.
In my view VSM should boost the virtualization of I/O intensive production apps. By mapping storage LUNs straight to the VMs, you can provide the same performance and reliability to the VMs as that of physical machines. By automating and integrating storage provisioning with the hypervisor tools, Citrix has given the flexibility to quickly provision the VMs On Demand.
VMWare is definitely not lagging far behind. VMWare has announced the vStorage framework for integrating drivers and features specific to storage vendors into ESX 4.0. Should be interesting to watch if VMWare can come out with a broader vendor support and more features compared to Citrix in vStorage.
Let's wait and watch.
Apart from those, storage integration has been one area where Citrix has been leading the game. XenServer 5.0 has built in integration with NetApp and EqualLogic storage arrays. This enables XenServer to leverage the storage features like Snapshotting, Fast clone and thin provisioning.
Though this might not have a serious performance implications for normal workloads, this integration makes XenServer more suitable for disk intensive workloads and for apps like VDI and LabManager. Both VDI and Labmanager rely extensively on the fast clone and snapshot features. Offloading these functions to the storage should give users noticeable I/O performance enhancements and also free up CPU cycles on the Server. I am not aware of XenApp using the fast clone technology like VMWare View Manager does, but Citrix Labmanager (OEMd from VMLogix) extensively uses this feature and should be interesting to note the performance differences between VMLogix Labmanager on ESX and on XenServer with NetApp storage.
Citrix has gone another step further by introducing the new product - Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for both XenServer and Hyper-V. This product integrates with the leading storage vendors and provides the capabilities to carve out LUNs on the arrays on demand and present them to the hypervisors. This should fill the gap with the non-availability of Cluster file system in Hyper-V. Being a 1.0 product, it seems to lack functionalities in terms of the no. of storage vendors it supports and also support for Zoning of the FC switches. But this definitely is an interesting product to watch out for.
In my view VSM should boost the virtualization of I/O intensive production apps. By mapping storage LUNs straight to the VMs, you can provide the same performance and reliability to the VMs as that of physical machines. By automating and integrating storage provisioning with the hypervisor tools, Citrix has given the flexibility to quickly provision the VMs On Demand.
VMWare is definitely not lagging far behind. VMWare has announced the vStorage framework for integrating drivers and features specific to storage vendors into ESX 4.0. Should be interesting to watch if VMWare can come out with a broader vendor support and more features compared to Citrix in vStorage.
Let's wait and watch.
ESX Vs XenServer - Technical Comparison
In the last post, had written about the free version of XenServer and the impacts in the market.
Now to the real technical differences between ESX and XenServer. The areas where XenServer is lagging behind ESX are:
1. Memory Overcommit - Though MS and Citrix have been trying to push this as just a nice to have feature, overcommit really makes a big difference in the TCO of the solution and VMWare has never missed an opportunity to point this out. Believe XenServer should be getting this in its next release.
2. Resource Pools - VMWare has got its foundations really strong by defining Clusters and Resource Pools. Resource Pools provides the IT admins to allocate resources to a group of VMs (belonging to a specific department). VMWare has cleverly leveraged this in its management products including LabManager and StageManager.
3. Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) - Another reason why ESX is the darling of IT admins. DRS clubbed with HA has made life very peaceful for IT admins around the globe. Though XenServer already has HA (infact claims to have Fault Tolerance), hoping to see DRS also get into the solution soon.
4. Strong Community Participation - This is something that VMWare has built over the years. VMWare communities and forums are a wealth of ESX tips and tricks and it is going to take Citrix years to catch up on that. Hope Citrix focuses on this as it gets more traction in the enterprises.
Areas where Citrix has an edge over VMWare include Storage Integrations (will put up a separate post on that) and XenServer HA (Zero downtime) technology OEMd from Marathon. Have not really heard much about the technology from Marathon so will not comment on that.
Have focused only on the difference between VC+ESX and XenCenter+XenServer. Will probably put up a different post highlighting the differences in the management stack.
Feel free to comment on any areas that I have missed out.
Update: Had missed out on a minor but useful feature that XenCenter provides. The ability to search for VMs based on different criteria. Believe this should be a useful feature as the virtualization deployments grow in size. Had noted VMWare was getting this into the next version of vCenter!!!
Now to the real technical differences between ESX and XenServer. The areas where XenServer is lagging behind ESX are:
1. Memory Overcommit - Though MS and Citrix have been trying to push this as just a nice to have feature, overcommit really makes a big difference in the TCO of the solution and VMWare has never missed an opportunity to point this out. Believe XenServer should be getting this in its next release.
2. Resource Pools - VMWare has got its foundations really strong by defining Clusters and Resource Pools. Resource Pools provides the IT admins to allocate resources to a group of VMs (belonging to a specific department). VMWare has cleverly leveraged this in its management products including LabManager and StageManager.
3. Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) - Another reason why ESX is the darling of IT admins. DRS clubbed with HA has made life very peaceful for IT admins around the globe. Though XenServer already has HA (infact claims to have Fault Tolerance), hoping to see DRS also get into the solution soon.
4. Strong Community Participation - This is something that VMWare has built over the years. VMWare communities and forums are a wealth of ESX tips and tricks and it is going to take Citrix years to catch up on that. Hope Citrix focuses on this as it gets more traction in the enterprises.
Areas where Citrix has an edge over VMWare include Storage Integrations (will put up a separate post on that) and XenServer HA (Zero downtime) technology OEMd from Marathon. Have not really heard much about the technology from Marathon so will not comment on that.
Have focused only on the difference between VC+ESX and XenCenter+XenServer. Will probably put up a different post highlighting the differences in the management stack.
Feel free to comment on any areas that I have missed out.
Update: Had missed out on a minor but useful feature that XenCenter provides. The ability to search for VMs based on different criteria. Believe this should be a useful feature as the virtualization deployments grow in size. Had noted VMWare was getting this into the next version of vCenter!!!
Citrix XenServer goes Free - Impacts and Implications
The hypervisor war has seen a major twist with Citrix giving away XenServer 5 including the management product XenCenter for free. Personally I have been working with XenServer recently and should say that the product has improved dramatically and is worthy of being called a matured hypervisor.
VMware execs had brushed aside the implications of the announcement mocking at the worthiness of a "FREE" hypervisor in enterprises. But in my opinion, this has been a brilliant and a well timed move from Citrix. So far inspite of having a decent product, Citrix has been unable to break into the loyal customer base (or should I say fan following) that VMWare has.
By making XenServer free, Citrix has made an offer that enterprises can not reject. This will definitely get customers to atleast consider/evaluate XenServer for their deployments.
With Citrix pushing XenServer hard through its strong Sales Channels, should be interesting to observe the Hypervisor market over the next year.
VMware execs had brushed aside the implications of the announcement mocking at the worthiness of a "FREE" hypervisor in enterprises. But in my opinion, this has been a brilliant and a well timed move from Citrix. So far inspite of having a decent product, Citrix has been unable to break into the loyal customer base (or should I say fan following) that VMWare has.
By making XenServer free, Citrix has made an offer that enterprises can not reject. This will definitely get customers to atleast consider/evaluate XenServer for their deployments.
With Citrix pushing XenServer hard through its strong Sales Channels, should be interesting to observe the Hypervisor market over the next year.
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