The Pros And Cons of Virtualisation technologies

We here in Dediserve are huge fans of Xen, after all our whole virtualized platform is built on it. However we did throughly investigate all the existing virtualization technologies currently on the market when we went to build out our own platform.

So to save you the same hassle i will outline below our feelings on each technology we looked at both good and bad.

Xen

Pro’s

• Using Paravirtualisation technology It allows several guest operating systems to be executed on the same computer hardware concurrently
• You can physically reboot the node with no affect to any other users on the same harrdware
• You can install and set-up Iptables
• You do not share resources and are guaranteed resources
• Its Free

Con’s

• Guanteed resources means having less users on each machine
• Not as mature as some of the other commercial virtualisation technologies

Hyper v

Pros

• Can be easily management via remote desktop
• Easy to use point and click based configuration and monitoring
• live migration is now supported in Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
• “bare-metal” product ,  runs directly off the machine hardware
• Backed by Microsoft which ensures regular updates
• Its Free

Cons

• Not a hugh amount of support for linux based systems running on it at present
• Does not support Live migration
• Owned by Microsoft which is a commercial entity so an eventual charge cannot be ruled out

Vmware

Pros

• Offer the most comprehensive user interface for easy management
• “bare-metal” product ,  runs directly off the machine hardware
• Supports all operating systems
• Provides live migrations
• Enterprise Level support available
• EXSi is Free

Con

• Enterprise edition starts at around $1000 per CPU
• http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/vsphere_purchaseoptions.html

Open Vz

Pros

• Can run muilple different linux distributions on each machine
• Each container provides the level of functionality of a physical server
• Provides good scalability

Cons

• OpenVZ is not true virtualization but really containerization
• Can only run Linux on each machine
• Does not use paravirtualisaiton technology
• Used by virtuozzo which charges a fee for its use

We’d love to hear from anyone that has used any of the virtualisation technologies listed above and hear their feedback in which we can then add to the list.

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