Release: XenSource XenEnterprise 1.0
After bitter statements around Xen maturity of these last weeks from Red Hat, Novell and XenSource itself, the company finally launches its first commercial product based on the open source hypervisor: XenEnterprise 1.0.
The product adds commercial grade features and support to Xen 3.0 and XenSource built around it also a sales channel infrastructure, a technical certification program and a much discussed agreement with Microsoft.
In this first release XenEnterprise introduces following features:
- Simplified installation and physical to virtual (P2V) tools
- Support for Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)
- Multiple Xen hosts management
- Real-time monitoring of server and guest performance
- Administrative console for Microsoft, Red Hat and Novell operating systems
Despite Intel VT help at the moment the product doesn't support Microsoft Windows virtual machines, which is expected to be introduced in Q4 2006, along with other guests operating systems support and extended P2V capabilities.
Check an introductory demo of management interface here.
XenSource bases its licensing model on host machine processors number, introducing annual and perpetual subscription options, with volume discounts.
It has to be verifed if customers will accept to pay for a product which still doesn't offer support for all operating systems and which is already expected to change.
At the moment XenEnterprise seems to bet on extended managent support capabilites, but this further exacerbate competition considering threat from upcoming multi-virtualization-platforms management tools, like Enomalism, HyperVM or SWsoft, newest Linux distribution from Novell and Red Hat, and direct competitor Virtual Iron.
In any case it's a kind of ironic the company offers a product called Xen-Enterprise and its CEO claims just before the commercial launch the underlying engine isn't ready for datacenter deployments.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.
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Comments
What does it mean to support Intel VT when XenEnterprise only supports paravirtualized operating systems? Can you also elaborate on what operating systems they support?
By
Anonymous, at Thursday, August 24, 2006 3:59:00 PM
Disclaimer: I work on Xen.
Don't know much about the commercial product, I work on the OSS stuff.
I think it's very sensible not to *offically* support Windows, even though it probably will run (in 32 bit mode anyhow). I get the impression from the mailing lists that it doesn't run as well as you'd probably want yet. But what do I know ;-)
There are other OSes (e.g. Linux) that you might want to run fully virtualised (e.g. to use legacy kernels that aren't Xen aware) so it's potentially still useful having VT etc in there. Also useful for people kicking the tires.
As for being called XenEnterprise when it's not data centre ready... There are other place in an enterprise that you could usefully deploy this sort of stuff. But yes, it is ironic - made me chuckle :-)
By
Mark Williamson, at Friday, August 25, 2006 3:46:00 AM
See the XenSource website for specific guest support.
The VT and Windows support claim applies to the next release, entering beta soon.
By
Anonymous, at Monday, August 28, 2006 8:09:00 PM
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