[ale] Jan 17 meeting topic

[jdp at algoloma.com (JD)]

On 01/15/2013 01:37 PM, Chuck Payne wrote:
> Shame you couldn't have compare them to KVM and Vmware.

Any comparison would be superficial in a 3 hour attempt.  Running virtual
servers in an enterprise is not that simple.

I can help with a 2 min comparison:
* If you are a 90% Microsoft Server company, use either VMware ESXi or whatever
Microsoft sells
* If you are mostly a Linux shop, the choices become more complex depending on
your workloads, how important support from different vendors is, type of
virtualization deployed, current admin skillsets and budget.

I looked at ovirt and for a small shop, the overhead seemed abusive, just use
virt-manager instead for the KVM needs.  For large scale operations, all of the
management interfaces pretty much suck to setup and have complex moving parts.
Learn about them in a lab and don't believe all the hype.

If you are looking for a management tool that works both internally and with
your extended cloud servers at different providers, look for a standard back-end
that does both with a multitude of different clouds:
https://deltacloud.apache.org/ is an example, but there are others.

Only use VirtualBox for desktops, not servers. NEVER servers. Also, if you are a
business using VirtualBox, please read the license agreement carefully for each
part that you use - especially the guest additions.

If the company runs a mix of Linux and Windows and needs a mixed virtualization
solution, then it becomes less clear what the best answers are.  I'm available
for paid consultations. ;)

My 2 minutes are up.