What are some reliable free virtualization platforms?

Hi Jim,

there is a large number of benefits when using virtualization. But keeping it short - better resource utilization, reduced operative costs, easier management and enterprise functionalities for a small amount of price of larger systems such as IBM System p with AIX, or HP Integrity with HPUX.

What you basically do with virtualization is install several OS's on a single serverand they run in parallel. For what you needed 10 physical servers before, now you need one. It's much easier to provision new virtual machines (which were physical servers in former life), connect it to network and SAN, protect it and anything that you like. So, for provisioning of one virtual machine from a template you'll need at most 10-30 minutes, while in past you needed to contact your partner who will sell you new servers (at least 10-20 days), install OS on it (1 day), install needed applications (1-5 days), and then release it in production or test/dev enviroment. So, you see where are the cost reductions.

On the other hand, don't forget power, cooling, rack space, management, administration. 1 server needs much less power for operation, your air conditioner won't have problem keeping air in datacenter cool, it uses around 4U in a rack, and management/administration is done from one location (management tool you use).

Now a little about enterprise features like high availability, live migrations, dynamic resource scheduling, dynamic power management. Put another server next to that one that runs your 10 VMs, and you can have all those 10 VMs in active/active or active/passive cluster running on both servers. So, instead of 10 servers now you use 2 servers, but have much better availability. For any kind of critical system, this is desirable, so you can protect your e-mail server (Exchange, Lotus Domino), database (SQL, Oracle, MySQL) or anything else you want. You can even install software firewall inside (IpCop, monowall or something similar if you use those free firewalls).

Now, what product you will use greatly depends on your enviroment. If you have few computers and 2 server, then there's really no need to spend money on costly hypervisors such as VMware vSphere4 Std/Adv/Ent/Ent+, and you can go with VMware ESXi, MS HyperV or Citrix XenServer. But if you manage enviroment of few 10's or 100's of servers, don't even think about anything free, and go with VMware without much questions.

Like Karthik said, there are three most popular free virtualization platforms:

- VMware ESXi
- Citrix XenServer
- Microsoft HyperV (R2)

For ESXi you'll need to check their HCL (hardware compatibility list) and see if you're equipment is listed. You will need a SAN storage or a hardware RAID controller for installing ESXi, because it cannot recognize software-based RAID controllers (typically those integrated on motherboards). ESXi is a bit tricky to manage via GUI interface, because you need the vSphere4 licence that costs a lot (800-3500$ per CPU). But there are some nice free mgmt tools like Virtualization EcoShell that can manage ESXi hosts.

XenServer is a free hypervisor that needs Citrix Xen Essentials for management. But it costs. Again, I saw somewhere that Virtualization EcoShell will be able to support Citrix very soon. Don't know much about Citrix, so I won't babble about it. ;)

HyperV uses several MS tools for managing, and those are costly again. And again, there is Virtualization EcoShell that that will be able to manage HyperV in next few months. But, there are 3rd party management tools for HyperV, and I would suggest you to take a look and ask for a demo of VM6 VMex for HyperV, because it is able to give you some nice features such as virtual shared storage, high availability, management and virtual desktop infrasctructure functionality. Licence costs around 4000$ per server, but can save your investment 'cause you don't have to buy a storage system, or separate servers for management. Also, you get VDI included in the price.

VM6 VMex - http://www.vm6software.com
Virtualizatoin EcoShell - http://thevesi.org/index.jspa

Hope this answers your questions. As I don't check this website oftenly, feel free to drop me an e-mail in case of any questions.

Hi Jim,

there is a large number of benefits when using virtualization. But keeping it short - better resource utilization, reduced operative costs, easier management and enterprise functionalities for a small amount of price of larger systems such as IBM System p with AIX, or HP Integrity with HPUX.

What you basically do with virtualization is install several OS's on a single serverand they run in parallel. For what you needed 10 physical servers before, now you need one. It's much easier to provision new virtual machines (which were physical servers in former life), connect it to network and SAN, protect it and anything that you like. So, for provisioning of one virtual machine from a template you'll need at most 10-30 minutes, while in past you needed to contact your partner who will sell you new servers (at least 10-20 days), install OS on it (1 day), install needed applications (1-5 days), and then release it in production or test/dev enviroment. So, you see where are the cost reductions.

On the other hand, don't forget power, cooling, rack space, management, administration. 1 server needs much less power for operation, your air conditioner won't have problem keeping air in datacenter cool, it uses around 4U in a rack, and management/administration is done from one location (management tool you use).

Now a little about enterprise features like high availability, live migrations, dynamic resource scheduling, dynamic power management. Put another server next to that one that runs your 10 VMs, and you can have all those 10 VMs in active/active or active/passive cluster running on both servers. So, instead of 10 servers now you use 2 servers, but have much better availability. For any kind of critical system, this is desirable, so you can protect your e-mail server (Exchange, Lotus Domino), database (SQL, Oracle, MySQL) or anything else you want. You can even install software firewall inside (IpCop, monowall or something similar if you use those free firewalls).

Now, what product you will use greatly depends on your enviroment. If you have few computers and 2 server, then there's really no need to spend money on costly hypervisors such as VMware vSphere4 Std/Adv/Ent/Ent+, and you can go with VMware ESXi, MS HyperV or Citrix XenServer. But if you manage enviroment of few 10's or 100's of servers, don't even think about anything free, and go with VMware without much questions.

Like Karthik said, there are three most popular free virtualization platforms:

- VMware ESXi
- Citrix XenServer
- Microsoft HyperV (R2)

For ESXi you'll need to check their HCL (hardware compatibility list) and see if you're equipment is listed. You will need a SAN storage or a hardware RAID controller for installing ESXi, because it cannot recognize software-based RAID controllers (typically those integrated on motherboards). ESXi is a bit tricky to manage via GUI interface, because you need the vSphere4 licence that costs a lot (800-3500$ per CPU). But there are some nice free mgmt tools like Virtualization EcoShell that can manage ESXi hosts.

XenServer is a free hypervisor that needs Citrix Xen Essentials for management. But it costs. Again, I saw somewhere that Virtualization EcoShell will be able to support Citrix very soon. Don't know much about Citrix, so I won't babble about it. ;)

HyperV uses several MS tools for managing, and those are costly again. And again, there is Virtualization EcoShell that that will be able to manage HyperV in next few months. But, there are 3rd party management tools for HyperV, and I would suggest you to take a look and ask for a demo of VM6 VMex for HyperV, because it is able to give you some nice features such as virtual shared storage, high availability, management and virtual desktop infrasctructure functionality. Licence costs around 4000$ per server, but can save your investment 'cause you don't have to buy a storage system, or separate servers for management. Also, you get VDI included in the price.

VM6 VMex - http://www.vm6software.com
Virtualizatoin EcoShell - http://thevesi.org/index.jspa

Hope this answers your questions. As I don't check this website oftenly, feel free to drop me an e-mail in case of any questions.

Definately go to www.citrix.com and check out Zen Server and Zen Desktop which are both free. Terrific Virtualization solution which we will be happy to help with when you're ready...

www.itarchiteks.com