You can drop VMware server on a really small Linux deployment, that would give you all free and on your o/s choice. Im not overly familiar with Xen and a couple of the others, but when you are looking at virtualization make sure you look at the ability to migrate, upgrade, recover, move, DR and all the tools involved with that. If you have a dead vmware server, for example, you could take VMware player, workstation, server, ESX, or any of the other products and copy in that vm and get back up and running. You can convert anything to esx,server,workstation,player using the free VMware convertor tool.
So in a Xen scenario you would need two physical boxes, one for production and one 'hot' server in case of failure. You would want to maintain a hot copy of the server(s) that you could fire up. Unless you have another server already running one of the required o/s'es that you could put Xen on when failure occurs. Im sure other products offer similar functionality you just may want to see how it works and what your primary/secondary functions are for virtualization and how these needs are addressed. From: Reimer, Mark [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 10:06 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Xen Along the same vein, I'm on a tight budget, and in my cursory research into virtual server programs, Xen was the only free one that ran on bare metal. The other free programs ran on top of another OS. Is this correct? Mark _____ From: Joseph L. Casale [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 8:01 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Xen Anyone using the open source Xen package to virtualize Windows guests with success here? Just curious if it has gained any real enterprise use yet. jlc ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
