Advice please....

We’ve been using VMware on our SLED11 (a few SLES11 also) boxes for
quite some time, clients love it. They happily work in their numerous
desktops and occasionally flip over to Windows XP to use a specialized
application. However, SP2 seems to have broken this. Perhaps moving
over to KVM or XEN might stop the headaches of holding my breath every
time I apply patches? VMware was much more mature years ago compared to
the rest. I’ll assume by now things have changed. I’m willing to take
a different path if it will lower my client’s costs. Would you advise this?

KVM or XEN?

Will KVM run on SLED or only SLES?

We know XEN happily runs on both.

Any advice here will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Bob

Update

KVM installs on SLED11 SP2 fine. Articles seem to indicate that KVM can
run already created VMware machines.

Anyway, the fundamental question remains, is this a direction worth
taking to make the future a little less dicey?

Bob

On 3/25/2012 12:03 AM, Bob wrote:[color=blue]

We’ve been using VMware on our SLED11 (a few SLES11 also) boxes for
quite some time, clients love it. They happily work in their numerous
desktops and occasionally flip over to Windows XP to use a specialized
application. However, SP2 seems to have broken this. Perhaps moving over
to KVM or XEN might stop the headaches of holding my breath every time I
apply patches? VMware was much more mature years ago compared to the
rest. I’ll assume by now things have changed. I’m willing to take a
different path if it will lower my client’s costs. Would you advise this?

KVM or XEN?

Will KVM run on SLED or only SLES?

We know XEN happily runs on both.

Any advice here will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Bob[/color]

On 03/25/2012 12:45 AM, Bob wrote:[color=blue]

Update

KVM installs on SLED11 SP2 fine. Articles seem to indicate that KVM can run
already created VMware machines.

Anyway, the fundamental question remains, is this a direction worth taking to
make the future a little less dicey?[/color]

snip…

KVM works really well. And the KVM ins SLED11 SP2 is fairly contemporary.
You’ll find it much faster in general when compared to VMware and/or VirtualBox.

With that said, it is under very active development. That’s probably not a big
issue, just pointing that out. I’ve had no problems running SLES11 SP1 based
KVM nor have I had problems with RHEL 6.2 based KVM… and that one is
considerably newer (has some extra features… most of which will be in SLE11 SP2).

Realize that no matter what you choose, if you’re running Window desktops under
a hypervisor you may be subject to Microsoft’s VDA license (annual tax). You
might want to explore that just to make sure.

Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.

Bob

On 3/30/2012 5:30 PM, cjcox wrote:[color=blue]

KVM works really well. And the KVM ins SLED11 SP2 is fairly
contemporary. You’ll find it much faster in general when compared to
VMware and/or VirtualBox.

With that said, it is under very active development. That’s probably not
a big issue, just pointing that out. I’ve had no problems running SLES11
SP1 based KVM nor have I had problems with RHEL 6.2 based KVM… and
that one is considerably newer (has some extra features… most of which
will be in SLE11 SP2).

Realize that no matter what you choose, if you’re running Window
desktops under a hypervisor you may be subject to Microsoft’s VDA
license (annual tax). You might want to explore that just to make sure.[/color]