XenServer 6.2 Is Now Fully Open Source 86
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:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... (Score:4, Insightful)
3 years now. 20 Tb of files; 6 TB of Exchange mailboxes, 500 GB of SQL Server and MySQL data, >1000 transactions per second , 16 to 1 consolidation ratio, with CPU, Memory, and Storage heavily oversubscribed; 280 VMs on 3 hosts, and no issues..
See? Other people can do that too...
Sorry dude, this is slashdot. You lost your epeen contest with the op when you admitted your organisation uses exchange and sql server.
Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like there are many people on the planet that know VMWare, there are many people on the planet that know Xen. Just like you didn't learn VMWare by being born with the knowledge, there are manuals for Xen too.
Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... (Score:2, Insightful)
Since you mention sendmail and email box sizes, you obviously don't know WTF you're talking about. Despite what you're learned working with exchange, not all MTAs have be the same giant POS as your "mailbox."
Also, bitching because there's not an OSS platform that doesn't work with Windows proprietary solution doesn't mean that there's a problem with OSS.
Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... (Score:2, Insightful)
Would it be a good time to remind you that there aren't really any open source e-mail server products that are truly enterprise grade?
At least you didn't go so far as to try to defend MS SQL Server. Who mentioned OSS? I didn't. The reason the MS unholy trinity of server services (by which I mean exchange, sql server and IIS) are immediately disqualified for me is that they all need a GUI based operating system. Something about that just makes me want to run screaming while waving my hands in the air. If you are doing anything serious (or even moreso if you aren't), you generally don't have the RAM to waste on a bloated operating system that has to start up and maintain a GUI whether you are using it or not. You want to cut down on pointless overhead - you want a server which is a true headless server.
But while we're on the topic, postfix can be set up with folders, not a monolithic mailbox file, and so I'm morally certain it will handle bigger inboxes than exchange does. POP3/IMAP has security issues, but so does exchange. PGP encryption is still better than anything out there. AD RMS is only relevant to people who want to use windows proprietary stuff, so not at all. And anyone trying to get sensitive information off portable devices knows that to avoid remote wipe, all they have to do is put the thing in flight mode - so none of those remote wipe solutions are worth shit IMHO.
I will give you the fact that exchange does better calendar stuff than anyone else, but try integrating that into someone's android smartphone calendar. Either it doesn't work, or the phone manufacturer specific solution is such a battery hog that it isn't worth it.
Re:we ditched vmware for xenserver 2 years back... (Score:4, Insightful)
. If you are doing anything serious (or even moreso if you aren't), you generally don't have the RAM to waste on a bloated operating system that has to start up and maintain a GUI whether you are using it or not.
So there is a bit of this RAM used to provide GUI functionality. It's worthwhile, because it means some maintenance tasks to junior staff whose skills for picking up CLIs are more limited; on the other hand, they can still be trained to manage the server, using remote management tools of course.
There is practically no reason an administrator should be logging into the server and starting up a graphical console, since all administration tools can be installed on their workstation and used remotely.
Furthermore... in 2008, core install was introduced, which no longer includes a GUI for servers, and this is supported with SQL 2012
In Windows Server 2013; with some exceptions, the desktop experience is not required on servers, and generally, there will be no GUI.
Anyways... the success of a hypervisor should not be judged based on the perceived quality of the applications it has virtualized. It is not a more meaningful feat to run MySQL in a hypervisor than it is to run MS SQL in a hypervisor.
If anything.. with MySQL there are fewer sizing hints, AND the operational metrics provided by the database engine are much sparser than the detailed instrumentation that MS SQL provides -- with MS SQL, you get a heck of a lot better information about the performance and sizing.
At least you didn't go so far as to try to defend MS SQL Server. Who mentioned OSS? I didn't.
MS SQL server is the only backend supported by some applications, and some developers.
Personally, I would favor Oracle, but getting anyone to agree to pay for it, is a problem.
The fact of the matter is SQL server provides robust hitless failover clustering functionality. Postgres and MySQL do not provide this; although they are getting closer. They are worlds apart in terms of features, so it's not really fair to pick one or the other as a dilemma play, now is it?
Some application owners will demand MS SQL, and some will demand PostgreSQL, and that's OKAY.