XenServer 6.2 Is Now Fully Open Source

First time accepted submitter Jagungal writes "Although the core Xen hypervisor has always been open source from the start, Citrix have now released the next version of their XenServer including all features and tools under an open source license. This includes also introducing a new XenServer.org community portal. The major change for users is that they now get all features from the licensed version for free but unless they pay for support, they have to do all security updates manually. Change logs for the new version 6.2 can be found here. It's been a few years since Citrix started giving it away, free as in beer.

Re:Define open source

[storkus]

Mod parent up: I searched for almost 15 minutes trying to find the exact "free software" license it was changed to, and failed. But, boy, finding how to use XenControl (which runs on winblows only, BTW) to "license" your server (apparently that's what Citrix calls a support contract now) is very easy; oh, and this "license" is per socket now rather than per machine.

Advanced features not free

[mysidia]

It's been a few years since Citrix started giving it away, free as in beer.

They gave away what used to be called XenServer Enterprise functionality for free.

What they don't include for free is:

• "Hot" snapshot (Snapshot a virtual machine including its online RAM/Memory status) -- using VMware's hypervisor it's a free feature, Citrix makes you pay for it.
• Cluster-wide robust per-target resource Storage and Network 'QoS' functionality
• High availability. Not included with XenServer free as in beer; Citrix provides it as an addon.
• Live migration of virtual machines between backend datastores (E.g. migration between SANs) without shutting the virtual machine down.
• DRS-Like Workload balancing
• True memory overcommitment -- you get a more limited technology, no transparent page sharing, no swapping via SSD RAM cache or page compression.
• Role-based access control and AD integration for login to Xen servers
• Resource pools with servers having different CPU versions. (Enhanced 'VMotion' Compatibility)
• No distributed power management
• Alarms and e-mail notifications.
• Storage array offloaded cloning/copy/zero
• No SR-IOV/GPU or other passthrough device support

Re:Advanced features not free

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ, your list is not correct and seems to be based upon the previous 6.1 distribution model : what is now open-sourced as XenServer 6.2 is what was build as XCP (Xen Cloud Platform)

I am not telling that everything in your list is now free, but for example HA is there, as are heterogenous pools (I used them on XCP 1.6) and live migration.

http://www.xenserver.org/overview-xenserver-open-source-virtualization/open-source-virtualization-features.html

Re:Sucktrix

[symbolset]

XenServer is virtualization and cloud tech, not thin client tech. You're thinking of XenDesktop and XenApp - both of which are sweet stuff if you need that sort of thing.

XenServer being fully open source is cool because it creates a competitive environment for KVM, the native Linux virtualization solution. This competition will drive rapid adoption of technologies like PCI passthrough and partitioning of GPUs and coprocessors like Xeon Phi as well as other devices that seem to converge on what you seem to have meant to say. It will also promote technologies that pass user input back to the VM like voice, video and touch inputs, and support software defined networks. Everybody who possibly can will now integrate their devices with this. This will of course spur Microsoft's Hyper-V team to redouble their efforts. VMWare will laugh and laugh until the joke's on them, but in the mean time they'll earn great profits.

/disclaimer: I work for a joint that plays with all these, but my opinion is my own. No stock in anybody but mutual funds. No benefit for me on any of these.

Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back...

[Eunuchswear]

It's not MTA functionality. It is LDA functionality.

Sendmail writes a flat file... this results in some limitations

No it doesn't

define(`confLOCAL_MAILER', `cyrusv2')

Problem solved.