VMWare <=> Xen

Hi.

Sorry, but I didn't find any better place to put this.

I'm setting up a virtual environment. I've downloaded VMWare ESXi 3.5 and Citrix Xen. Both are free. At least that's what I've learned.

Now I find myself stuck. I cannot find out which one to choose. My goal is to use only free software. I've tested them both, and find them very similar.

In VMWare you can install OS from an *.iso. That's nice. But I haven't been able to find a free software to manage the server.

In Xen you can manage your server with the command prompt, but you cannot install OS from an *.iso file. There are only predefined templates. (At least that's what I've found. Maybe I must take a closer look...?).

Which of them would you use, and why?

I appreciate your time an effort!

What type of application you are going to use ?
other things ale also available in market such as open vz ..etc even this is an free software ..

we use esxi and you can install the client to manage it.
you should be able to go to https://yourserver.name and pull up the esxi webpage. this web page is mostly useless, but it does have a link to the infrastructure client, which works like a champ for managing esxi

as far as overhead, you can't beat esxi, very small footprint compared to anything else that virtualizes and sits on top of an os.

haven't used xen.

we are looking at some additional storage for this now and are seeing that nfs performance is pretty comparable to iscsi and fiber channel. so if you are thinking of connecting everything thru iscsi or fiber channel to this server, might want to just look at freenas or something similar and just use nfs :)

Mostly I will be using either Debian or Ubuntu. Perhaps try CentOS.

ESXi works great, but from what I can understand, the VMWare Infrastructure Client only runs in Windows. Couldn't get it running in Wine. I've tried to install the Open View package, but it didn't work. The web interface is useless. :-)

I've used FreeNas for a while, but I needed some more functionality/ features so I installed NFS.

And now it's time to move on...

A little time ago I was using the StarWind Server, it was a good software actually but I lost the interest any way
they also have a free version both almost the same that VMware and Citrix. Maybe this one can help you

Hi,

I've been running Xen, for a few months now, and I'm actually quite satisfied. I will, however, check this out. One of the things i dislike about the Xen, is the XenCenter application. It's only for Windows, so I need to have a windows machine to run the program. (I've solved it by installing Win XP in Virtualbox OSE). I know it's possible to add, startup and shutdown VM's by the command line. One thing I cannot do, is to give the newly installed VM an IP-address. I haven't given it much time, because i'm so lazy. :rolleyes:


Thanks for the reply.