I'm not sure what the bottom line is on this thread then?
Getting the sense that those involved in one way or another with commercial
software want to see regular xen users adopt while I see xen users agreeing
that things aren't what they seem to be when the project isn't simply, fully,
open source, free.
I think I probably missed or haven't understood something but that seems to be
the outcome which leaves me unsure of what to base my decision on.
Just rambling from here, you don't have to read past this point, in fact, it'll
bore you and confuse you. I'm just thinking out loud :).
I have been putting hardware together for a xen environment when a friend told
me I should upgrade my vmware 2.0 servers to ESX. He told me ESX was quite an
improvement from server. He was right, it's incredibly cool. I was able to bare
metal install in minutes.
Once in the admin tool, I saw that ESX saw my fibre channel card and even
better, the FC storage. It took only a moment to set it up as a datastore. It
only took a second to also add the NFS paths so that I had access to my VM
guests.
Even cooler is that instantly, the two ESX servers I upgraded are instantly
using a shared storage filesystem (from what I understand) so that if I could
do fail over, etc. Boom it's up, it's running. I don't have to go hunting down,
trying out a dozen different tools to find the things that will work for me.
So, all of this is cool, and it's a darn fast way of putting together a virtual
network.
I wish I could find an ISO of xen that does exactly this (what ESX does) but
with open source, free xen. Then everyone could be taking advantage of the VERY
cool features that will eventually come to xen as well. More importantly, my
only concern, fear if you will at the stage would be that xen might end up
forked or something, big deal, that's nothing compared to a commercial entity
suddenly changing it's policies and I find myself locked out of my software or
with so few features that it's no longer usable.
It makes me nervous when commercial entities start trying to go after the
little guys and guys like me who like keeping things all open source free. When
I buy commercial, I buy commercial but when I use free open source, I want to
use free open source that won't bite me at some point. I don't get that feeling
with vmware or citrix or anyone else who is usually going after big business,
suddenly going after me. Ya, I understand, I'm a potential future market but my
points remain.
PS: I'm not pointing fingers to anyone who posted in this thread, I appreciate
the feedback, the input, the leads, all of it. I'm simply pointing out my
overall concerns.
Anyways, just rambling.
Mike
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