We think Xen is ready
Del.icio.usIn my last post, I argued that Linux needed enhancements to fully address the demands of a data center. I identified 7 key characteristics which were required. I also committed that I would describe how SUSE’s Code 10 addressed these needs. In my next post, I will provide some of this detail. But there’s some press play out there right now about one of the critical new benefits available in SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 – virtualization – that I can’t let pass. A Red Hat VP has been telling the press that, although there is “unbelievable” demand for virtualization, that Xen, the leading open source virtualization offering, is not ready yet for the enterprise.
What does Novell believe? Xen is ready! What do other companies say? IBM has made it clear they’re supporting Xen now. I’m looking at another corporate press release supporting Xen from March 2006. The company “Formally Announces Integrated Virtualization”. Who is that company? Why, it is Red Hat! Do they really believe Xen virtualization is not ready? Or are they trying to introduce a little FUD into the market because another Linux vendor has beaten them to the punch by a good half year in terms of an integrated virtualization offering, including Xen? (In fact, Red Hat seems to be backtracking today, according to this story in the Register, so I’m not sure where they stand.) Xen is the leading open source project for virtualization for a reason – because it’s so strong. Novell and many others in the industry support it. If you have virtualization needs in the data center, we can deliver it today. Don’t be fooled….
August 5th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Jeff,
You need to actually try using Xen before you make a post like this. Do some reading in the trade mags from people who have tried installing and using Xen. I have tried it myself – it’s not a very straight forward process. It’s not on par with even VMWare workstation yet. It’s not ready for the enterprise – it’s getting better, but I wouldn’t trust it for anything other than testing scenarios.
August 9th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
I work in Linux and open source product marketing at Novell. I was struck by your last sentence “I wouldn’t trust it for anything other than testing scenarios.”. I personally think that you hit upon the key issue when considering any new technology. That is “do you trust the technology and do you trust the software vendor?”
I trust it, and I trust Novell to help me. I trust the hundreds of hours of development and QA, that has been performed by the Novell engineers and the community at large. And I trust that when I deploy Xen (or any of the applications in the distro for that matter), Novell will be there to answer my questions and concerns. More importantly that Novell possesses the knowledge to fix any issues I may have in a timely manner.
You also raised an excellent question about user experience expectations of open source. Arguably the main value of a distribution is the integration and usability experience of different open source projects. I think we’ve done an excellent job there too. Firstly we’ve integrated the Xen kernel and tools into the core distro’. So there should not be a need to separately download and install the Xen components. Secondly, when it comes to virtual server creation/installation, it’s mostly wizard driven. So you should only need to enter the path to your installation sources or disk images, and follow the prompts. Finally we’ve added some enterprise level features, such as high-availability, for virtual machines. You have the ability for VM’s to failover between servers. SUSE Linux Enterprise is the only distro’ to deliver the tools and runtimes to make all of this work in a clustered environment.
Clive
August 11th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Clive,
Nice apologist response. Like John, I’ve tried Xen and ended up more frustrated than satisfied with it.
You may be hip-deep in Xen and know it inside and out, but it’s not a good idea to recommend deployment of something if you must have a Xen engineer to help you. Remember DirXML 1?
Novell *used* to make products that work rather easily and effectively. Now it takes an advanced degree in differential calculus to get NetWare on a virtual environment (that isn’t ready) on a Linux (which is barely ready).
Nice move.
August 16th, 2006 at 6:54 am
I have used Xen for 2 years. I really do believe its fully ready for the enterprise. Xen is very stable. The only pieces missing (Novell has started to patch) are good GUI’s for those that like them to make it easy like VMware. For real systems administrators or people familiar with Linux Xen is very easy to get working in the enterprise.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:06 am
I understand what you’re saying about Xen, and I’m of the opinion that it pays to be aggressive with important technologies, even if you have growing pains at first.
However, even as a Novell fanboy, I found your comments about Red Hat being “the John Kerry of virtualization: constant flip-flopping” to be highly distasteful and unprofessional. Throwing out recycled political hyperbole (which many dispute, in this situation) is hardly a good way to characterize your opponent or rally supporters to your cause.
In fact, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth that makes me almost reconsider the Red Hat approach. It’s *that* bad.
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Brian:
Fair point.
- Jeff
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Stan has hit the nail on the head:
“people familiar with Linux Xen is very easy to get working in the enterprise.”
The majority of people are NOT familiar with Linux – hence they are having issues. I freely admit that I am more familiar with Netware and Windows servers than I am with Linux. Yet with almost 20 year of experience in the IT industry I wouldn’t call myself a novice.
At the end of the day – it’s not always about the technical superiority or stability – it’s also about the ease of use.
Let me ask you this – if someone was offering you two cars – 1 with a tried and true engine, in-cab gages for all the important systems, and the ability to start it with a push button. 2 – good engine, but not as much real world time as #1, all vital systems have to be checked by popping the hood, and you have to start it with a hand crank. Which one would you buy?
For good or ill this is the type of comparison that’s being made between Xen and VMware et al. You can say it’s free til you’re blue in the face, but most admins would rather be able to see what VMs are created and running by looking at one window instead of entering things at the command line. I find it hard to believe that it would take an experienced Linux programmer that much time to put a GUI frontend on some shell scripts and present the results in a window.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
I’m the VP of Engineering for a small silicon-valley software company (Mountain View Data), and we make server provisioning/management software. One of the initiatives that we’re currently working on is to integrate both VMWare and XEN technologies into our provisioning capabilities (ie, be able to create/destroy/start/stop/manage virtual machines as well as deploy/collect OS/application stack images to/from them). I have not yet worked with the Xen “Enterprise” edition, but I have had fairly good results working with the open-source version (3.0.2) that ships with OpenSuSE 10.1, using an AMD “Windsor” core chip (this has the hardware virtualization technology built-in, and XEN requires this to do ‘full’ virtualization (which is what you’re probably used to, if you’ve been a VMWare user for any length of time), as opposed to ‘paravirtualization’). As Jeff mentioned, Xen is fairly tightly integrated into the new versions of SuSE (even the free one), to the point where “yast2 vm” will bring up a GUI similar to VMWare’s gui for creating/destroying/starting/stopping virtual machines. They also provide a simple and well-documented commandline tool (xm) for doing all of this in a scripted fashion, which is what I was after in terms of my development. Granted I’ve been a “Linux Guy” since 1993, but the SuSE YAST2 gui seemed pretty straightforward to me – at least as straightforward as VMWare’s. While XEN does have a few rough edges currently, it definitely seems to be a stable virtualization system, and although it lacks some nice features like a HVM BIOS that can PXE boot, it does have very good performance in terms of VM I/O and resource management. I’m very much looking forward to trying out the “Enterprise” version, which I hope to do very shortly. But as of *right now*, I’m suitably impressed with the free version (3.0.2).
August 29th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I am so glad that this happening now.
I am a very big fan of Virtualization {especially with all the horsepower that is readily available today}
I have been shopping for Un-managed dedicated servers – mostly for personl use {better uptime then my ISP}. When I stumbled across dozens of Companies that provide VPS {Virtual Private Servers} for VERY reasonable prices. In fact I ordered one for a proof of concept. Its been almost three weeks since I received it. I have yet to have an issue with it. I am even running a Dedicated Game server on it. A MySql server, Web Server, Clan Forums, TeamSpeak server, etc. This thing looks and feels like a real server. Oh did I mention it is based on Xen 3.0. Yep it is. I would never know it was. Its unbelievably responsive. So will I continue down the Xen path YOU BETCHA!
My two gold nuggets…
Long Live VM… Long Live XEN.
Check it out for yourself.
http://www.canaca.com/dedicated.htm
They even give you 5 days free of charge plus a 30 day
money back guarantee. Remember its un-managed so you need to
have an SA readily available. Good thing I am a Unix SA.
Tim Manochehri
p.s. I am in no way affiliated with Canaca – just a happy customer.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Hi,
We are a Linux and VMware house, and use a combination of VMware and XEN in a variety of environments.
No problems to report with XEN…not with the install, not with the config, performance is much better than VMware…humm, I don’t quite know what the fuss is about.
Alex
December 11th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Alex, thanks for your support. Over time we expect to hear that from others as well. Take a look at the ZenWorks Orchestration we announced last month.
January 7th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Hi, i’m a litle confused over Xen.
As i understand it WMware gives you a virtualized OS in which you can put those applications you want to run, and then you also can direct this ‘machine’ towards clients over your net?
In a way that seems a waste of resources to me, what’s wrong with using hardware ???
Xen as far i’ve understood it seems to adress the problem of ‘defect’ or if you like ‘unstable’ processes running on your Linux enviorment. By embedding them in into a software-layer that lies as a ‘buffer zone’ between the hardware and your OS, which i find to be a really innovative aproach to getting stability. I like it very much. I can understand if you like to be able to, on a moments consideration, change a whole enviorment without having to rebuild the whole machine/enviorment. Still, can Xen be used like that ? Well that’s my question
.
Regards Yoron.
March 1st, 2007 at 12:43 pm
“I like it very much. I can understand if you like to be able to, on a moments consideration, change a whole enviorment without having to rebuild the whole machine/enviorment. Still, can Xen be used like that ? Well that’s my question
.”
Yes, that is my understanding of the Virtualisation Environment in which Xen Rruns in Parallel with other HyperVisor Driver Systems. A Program doesn’t run without a Drivers and Advanced Research and dDevelopment Wings which in Virtualisation would be Mini Beta Systems working within Systems. Simple Advanced Networking Environment….Hot StuffXXXX