Citrix published some performance benchmarks comparing Xen and VMware ESX. The information was posted by Barry Flanagan at Citrix. The results show a pretty close neck and neck race between the two technologies. There have been some rumors that Microsoft's Hyper-V technology is showing well in its performance. Of course a big difference between the Xen and both VMware and Microsoft is that Xen is open source, the net result being a big disparity in cost.
But Xen's future has been called into question after XenSource's purchase by Citrix. Will Xen become an application virtualization product that better fits Citrix's business? Will Xen continue to be open source and supported as it has in the past? Does Citrix understand open source or will they screw up Xen? Many questions still remain.
Included in the blog post is information about who is advising the Xen project, what are its goals, and where is Xen headed. I have to say that the roadmap stuck me as extremely light and not very forthcoming. My guess is that Citrix is squashing the release of some of this information but that's only a guess.
Here's the Xen Product roadmap, as published by Ian Pratt, leader and chief architect of the Xen project. Judge for yourself if the Xen roadmap is a bit short on details.
Server
- Performance and scalability optimizations
- Enable Smart IO devices
- SCSI pass-through
Security
- Domain0 disaggregation; XSM Xen Security Modules
- Secure boot, TPM, certification, multi-level secure systems
Client
- Power management
Suspend and hibernate; Clock management
- 3D video
direct h/w access; high-performance guest virtualization
- USB device pass-through
Like this? Here are more recent posts.
How Microsoft Can Save Vista And Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Live Workspace - Anybody Home?
Virtualization Center Series: Microsoft Hyper-V Release Candidate In Server 2008
Cutting The Microsoft Apron Strings
It's All About... Location, Location, LocationVisit Microsoft Subnet for more news, blogs, opinion from around the Web.
Sign up for the bi-weekly Microsoft newsletter. (Click on News/Microsoft News Alert.)
Also check out Mitchell's personal blog The Converging Network and SSAATY Podcast.
Mitchell Ashley is principal consultant at Converging Network LLC where he provides product, technology and social media consulting to emerging technology companies. A successful CTO and product innovator, Mitchell has created many successful, award winning products in the networking, security, convergence, Internet and IT industries. In addition to blogging for NetworkWorld, Mitchell regularly blogs at TheConvergingNetwork and co-hosts the widely popular StillSecure After All These Years podcast.
Subscribe to Mitchell Ashley's Converging on Microsoft feed
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
|
|
Xen Roadmap
Michael,
I appreciate your comments and feedback. To clarify any potential confusion, this road map is for the Xen open source hypervisor itself, not for Citrix XenServer. I will edit the original post to clear that up.
Xen Project
One more comment -
In your post you state:
"But Xen's future has been called into question after XenSource's purchase by Citrix. Will Xen become an application virtualization product that better fits Citrix's business? Will Xen continue to be open source and supported as it has in the past? Does Citrix understand open source or will they screw up Xen? Many questions still remain."
I can understand the questions you have. Here is some additinal info for you.
The Xen Summit is specifically for all the people participating in the open source Xen hypervisor project. At the Fall 2007 Xen Summit (hosted by Sun), Ian Pratt announced the creation of a new Advisory Board for the Xen project. Here is a quote from my post (pulled from Ian's presentation)
Creation of the new Xen Project Avisory Board and Xen.org
Members of the Xen Advisory Board include the following
* Citrix
* IBM
* Intel
* HP
* Novell
* Red Hat
* Sun
A new independent site has been created (Xen.org) that is specifically for the Xen open source project. Citrix announced the creation of Xen.org for managing the Xen project at Citrix iForum just after the acquisition completed. The Xen Advisory board (of which Citrix is a part) is running the Xen project.
In another post, I highlighted the industry participation in the Xen Summit and the Xen Project -
http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/barryf/2007/12/14/Xen+Summit+Fall+2007+Presentations
"As you can see from this list, there is wide industry participation in the Xen hypervisor open source project. In this Xen Summit alone there were six presentations from Intel, three presentations from Sun and Red Hat, and two from HP and three from Citrix. In the Spring 2007 Xen Summit, there were eight presentations by IBM, three presentations by HP, two presentations by AMD, three by Red Hat, and seven by XenSource/Citrix. The Xen Open Source hypervisor is pulling in the creativity, innovation, knowledge and experience of a wide range of industry heavyweights. This effort is completely focused on building a highly scalable, stable and a powerful 64 bit virtualization engine."
Citrix, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle and Sun now all have virtualization offerings based on the Xen open source hypervisor. The Xen project is alive and well, and receiving a great deal of industry participation.
Lets get the word out
Barry - This is hugely helpful. Xen is such an important part of the virtualization ecosyste, I had hoped that Citrix would help continue Xen's adoption. Thank you for posting this additional information.
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
Personal podcast: http://www.clickcaster.com/ss
Mitchell, I appreciate you
Mitchell,
I appreciate you commenting on the post so I can ensure to clear up the confusion. I knew this was a question prior to attending Xen Summit. After attending that event, the question was no longer pressing in my mind so I neglected to cover it in the post. Thanks for your input and comments.
Barry Flanagan
Interesting subject for a podcast
Barry - I'm putting together a new podcast for NWW. This would make for a very interesting discussion.
What do you think?
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
Personal podcast: http://www.clickcaster.com/ss
Mitchell, I apologize for
Mitchell,
I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I an going to discuss your request with a few people internally next week to figure out who is the best person for this and get back to you in the new year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New year!
Post new comment