Jeff O'Brien Systems Engineer ------------------------- Expert Server Group 1.800.726.9797 x5231 1.603.540.5999(mobile) www.expertserver.com -------------------------- RHCE,EQL,CCA,CPSA VCP: VI3, LabManager --------------------------
>>> From: "Thomas Charron" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: gnhlug <gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org> Date: 7/28/2008 5:22 PM Subject: VMWare ESXi now free The base metal version of VMWare, aka, no host OS, raw vmware, is now free. http://vmware.com/products/esxi/ ESX is actually using a small Linux kernel which then loads VMWare modules which actually perform the virtualization. -- -- Thomas --------------- I thought the same for quite some time(VMware server works like that) until I looked into it more and was told by the VMware folks thats not the case(Im still skeptical though, they ARE owned by EMC ;) ). According to VMware the 'official' process goes like so... 1.) Std x86 boot process (POST -> MBR) 2.) Grub loads up the vmkernel and initializes the hardware 3.) The vmkernel loads up a virtual instance of RHEL 3 U9 (as of 3.5 U2) to act as the service console for administrative purposes. If you watch the boot process of the service console you see all the services starting up and you think to yourself, hey this is linux and they are just using rc scripts to run this and load up the modules needed for virtualization(iscsi, networking, mgmt, etc...). There is no denying the close ties to linux. However with 3i they just boot the hypervisor kernel with limited admin abilities like those you would get in a BIOS. ESX is still considered a bare metal hypervisor because it does not run on top of an operating system. ESX 3i or ESXi is considered embedded. But if are a command line junkie you may not want to get rid of your console OS, I have 3i along with many standard ESX installs in our environment and prefer ESX. If I were a windows admin with no skills outside of M$ maybe I would prefer 3i so I wouldn't have to deal and understand things like partitioning, console security, or a command line interface. It aint bad for free though, but you need a windows box to admin the thing(or you have vmware server/kvm/xen running your xp vm). Hypervisors are becoming a commodity as you can see they are giving them away. Its the management and all the cool features that you have to pay for. But for production environments when you need HA to keep you running in case of a server failure, that downtime could be worth millions depending on business. If you haven't played with things like vmotion, storage vmotion and templates get your free fully functional 60 eval and test it out if you have the hardware. For the SAN you can use and NFS server to keep costs down. The ESX kernel is based on a 2.4 kernel but is not the linux 2.4 kernel. So just because a piece of hardware is supported in the standard 2.4 kernel doesn't mean it will work with ESX. Their drivers are not standard and are customized to work with their proprietary kernel. If you want standard drivers you are better off with XenServer which is based on CentOS 5 and uses standard hardware and drivers. Cheers, Jeff _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
