COMPUTING: Virtualisation

[Kyuuketsuki]

But if you want to run a Virtualization on an existing OS, why not Virtuabox or Qemu? They come standard for any semi-modern flavor Windows and Linux and are even cross-platform interchangable. Just no live migration, but MS doesn't have that in the free version either.

It's a question of what each virtualisation system offers me.

Primarily I wanted a baremetal hypervisor so in principle we're talking ESXi, XenServer or MS Hyper-V.

ESXi is, in my opinion, the standard against which all others are measured: it is stable, works well, but not necessarily the best (the kind of Rolls Royce of virtualisation). It doesn't do templates.
XenServer is pretty good, it's faster and somewhat nattier than ESXi but real use of it seems to depend on a thorough grounding in Linux (which I do not have) and the ISO repository thing is a problem for me.
MS Hyper-V gets good write ups: It's the new boy on the block, effectively Hyper-V installed on top of a restricted core build.

I am only considering these three BUT because there isn't a whole load of difference between MS Hyper-V Free Baremetal and MS Server 2008 with Hyper-V installed I am prepared to consider it:

• My experience and more to the point my future is largely in Windows.
  
• Few VM's properly support USB so a physical server will help with that.
  
• I'll have a physical machine that will support my Ultrium 1 tape drive.
  
• I'll be able to work effectively from the console
  
• Many people will soon be using MS Hyper-V in a server with virtualisation configuration and that means I need to know stuff about it.

Essentially that's why ... I'm edging towards ESXi or MS Hyper-V, if I could have configure the ISO repository on XenServer it would be a serious contender but right now it's dropping to 3rd place.

Kyu