Virtualisation with different technologies

[jrubinstein]

I'm hoping that some of you can help with advice on server virtualisation. We are about to embark on this and while I'm moderately familiar with Vmware (at least on a workstation), I'd like to know about alternative possibilities. Has anyone used Citrix or Hyper V if so how have you found them and what, if any, are the pitfalls?

 

I'd also be grateful if anyone has any horror stories, or a good list of gotchas in starting down the route.

 

Thanks

 

Jay

[glennda]

Personally I have been using VMware recently with my New role. I would stick with VMware or Hyper-V and not look at Citrix just for the fact you can use Veeam backup which is awesome. The easy of backing up and replicating servers makes it a must personally, especially when you look at the cost in comparison to the likes of Backup Exec etc.

 

VMware can be good just watch out for snap shots and understand how they are designed before using them - this tends to be a large pitful with Vmware most people hit.

[Soulfish]

I've used Citrix XenServer extensively (I helped write the Citrix certification exam) as well as VMWare, Virtualbox, Hyper-V etc. They all have their various positives and negatives. VMWare is certainly the most advanced with lots of very nice powerful features, but most schools don't need the all singing all dancing functionality that VMWare Enterprise Plus licensing provides.

 

Both VMWare and Ctirix have quite active forums so you can normally find information on any problems your having their, while Hyper-V has the technet forums. If your mainly using Windows VMs then Hyper-V is excellent, but Linux/Unix support is a little lacking. To be honest the main reason for using Citrix over VMWare is normally cost, or because your running a XenDesktop/XenApp farm.

 

As glennda says take a look at the entire ecosystem that has been built up around the various products. Veeam is an excellent back up tool (we use it here), but I'm also told that PHDVirtual works well for XenServer.