[AusNOG] Back of envelope II

[Matt Moor]

VMware also supports paravirtualisation.

My experiences with Xen have not been happy ones (your mileage might 
vary), and for VMware I can only say the reverse.

If you do want a cheaper solution, however, I hear good things about KVM 
- but it's still an emerging technology, and AFAIK doesn't support live 
migrations (VMotion) in production yet.

VMware pricing is more attractive if you look at the cost per virtual 
server - consolidation ratios of 8 or 10 to 1 aren't uncommon for 
Enterprise workloads, and web applications can achieve much higher than 
that. Memory overcommit is awesome.

VMware also gets much cheaper if you look at purchasing ESXi with your 
server (as cheap as $99, apparently), and then adding appropriate 
licenses for VMotion and/or HA. Like everything else, RRP goes down a 
lot as soon as you start bundling it as part of a larger purchase 
(think: a couple of servers + vmware licenses + storage).

- Matt

Nathan Gardiner wrote:
> Without having done any research at all on their pricing, it might
> also be worthwhile looking at Citrix/XenSource. Doesn't have the same
> market share but it does have some particular technology advantages,
> such as the Linux paravirtualisation which can significantly improve
> performance for Linux guests.
> 
> A bit of competition is always healthy..
> 
> 
> Nathan
>