XenServer

ajs1976

Any market value to learning XenServer? Seems that medium and large companies are going ESXi and smaller are sticking with Hyper-V.

jmritenour

It wouldn't hurt to learn a little about the basics, but from doing plenty of deployments of all 3, Xen is easily the weakest of the 3 and has the least upside. It's been left in the dust feature wise by Vmware & Hyper-V. They were the king of virtual desktop infrastructure for a while though, to be fair. I'm not really sure where they stand with that market now.

undomiel

Marketwise I would say that VMware would be your safest bet. I for one definitely love working with XenServer though. And its ease of integration with Cloudstack definitely makes it worth looking into. I definitely see Xen/XenServer being targeted for cloud hosting. Intellicache is also not something to thumb your nose at if you're looking at hosting a XenDesktop VDI deployment. XenServer is also easier to pick up if you have some Linux skills. Pricewise it beats out vSphere. Hyper-V is a lot easier for the average tech to pick up compared to XenServer and vSphere though, which is why you see it securing a place in the SMB market. I know that my company prefers to deploy Hyper-V due to it being easy for a tech to get into. Albeit also easy for a tech to screw up which is why I'm still going around fixing virtual deployments.

ptilsen

I don't see the value. Go for Hyper-V on 2012 and/or VMware. XenApp is still a big deal, but I wouldn't want to invest serious career resources in XenServer. There are much more rewarding directions to go.

ben2112

The only reason to learn Xenserver is to get the CCEE or CCIA certs from Citrix. That is the only reason I am running Xenserver now. After I get my CCEE, I plan on wiping my server and install VMWare on it. As we support VMWare were I work.

al3kt.R***

Dear friend, though the trend may seem different:

I can see some value in using XenServer pools in low-budget Cloud requirements, where the Free license will suffice and Platinum characteristics (eg Dynamic Memory Control) are not needed.

"The Free XenServer edition has no limits on the number of VMs which can be run on it, and includes production grade features like shared storage, resource pools, centralized management and live migration of VMs between hosts in a pool.", one can read from their sites and I can without hesitation say it is absolutely true.

I can' think of a single VMware or Hyper-V offer (not evaluation or trial version) that pools servers at no Hypervisor S/W cost and with VM management out-of-the-box (XenCenter).

Doesn't hurt to learn XenServer Administration bro (btw there's a lot to learn about, they require solid maintenance skills and often have quite a few bugs that are dealt with directly through the custom Linux CLI)

Best Regards

phoeneous

I know this thread is 2 years old but with Xenserver going open source, I see a huge demand for more of the linux/devops/vm type guys. Plus from a small enterprise deployment perspective, the cost is amazing ($0). I currently run 20 vm's off of a 3 node cluster on dell r710's and it works flawlessly. Live migration and HA for free? I'm so there.