Well the first thing I can say is "it just works". I installed it, installed the client (unfortunately it's windows only so I had to dual boot into my windows partition) and opened it and was immediately able to create all my data stores (basically just links to NFS shares), vlan networks and then start making VMs and storing them on my NFS stores which I added with a few clicks. Everything is just so much easier. I did have to change my network config though and get rid of the bonding. I probably could have made it work but decided to just have one nic dedicated for management, and the other for traffic. Adding the vlans was easy as well, no need to modify config files, and no need to restart any kind of network service.

Proxmox is probably the closest thing to vmware but unfortunately it has lot of downfalls, such as not being able to deal with sub folders for the ISO store. That alone turned me away from it immediately, as there is no way I want to put all my ISOs in a single folder, nor do I want to have to make thousands of symlinks. The console was also really flaky, it would randomly lose connection.

I probably wont be converting any vm images as currently I'm using virtualbox on my old server, and I doubt there is any easy way to convert from virtualbox to vmware. I don't have that many VMs so I'll probably take this opportunity to install a fresh version of each OS and redo everything. I will also want to virtualize the old server itself (the host itself does lot of work such as email and dns) so that should be interesting. That too is due for a new OS though, it's currently running fedora core 9. So I might just install the latest CentOS in a fresh VM and then reconfigure everything and move stuff over and start fresh.

The main downfall of using something proprietary/commercial like vmware though is they could possibly change stuff later where it's no longer free, or add more limitations to the free version or what not.

Thanks

Well, Linux is a server system,not designed for the housewives, sorry. Still, don't confuse management libraries, hypervisors, and virtualization management systems. qemu-kvm is just the hypervisor, all it does is run a VM, you can compare it to VMKernel in vmware terms, and there is absolutely nothing you can do with vmkernel without the resto of the stack.

libvirt is a management library, it provides virsh and other utilities, but it is not supposed to give you a UI, it is supposed to give the programmer who designs a UI tools which will manage the hypervisor and the other aspects of the host.

On top of that, you can have various graphical utilities, from thevery basic virt-manager (which still allows you to do more than you'd be able to achieve with an ESXi) to enterprise virtualization systems like RHEV, oVirt or OpenStack, where you get the same functionality vCenter gives you, for free or much cheaper, and with no silly license limitations.

As for maturity, KVM is being used by huge enterprises all over the world, I'm pretty sure they understand its maturity better than some guy who can't manage a system without clicking his mouse. But hey, maybe you know something they don't?

@dyasny
Linux is actually a build what you want operating system, it's not server based. You don't have to become an email administrator just because the thing can instantiate Sendmail, Sendmail is there for you if you want to become a mail server administrator (though honestly, a good psychiatrist could probably nip that in the bud).
Additionally, I asked Red to tell me what he thinks, and he was kind enough to do me that favor. You discount his technical acumen far to much, in my opinion, because one thing I can tell you about Red from reading his posts, he's curious about virtualization and has met with more than a little success in implementing many of it's key components. I'm honestly interested in what somebody like that is thinking and doing because we're both looking at the same thing, just from different perspective. Not only that...The main downfall of using something proprietary/commercial... Red has his eye on the ball. He knows the water he's swimming in, which is more than I can say for a lot of others.
The CLI can be difficult and time consuming, as an adherent I'd be the first to tell you that if you want it quick, use a GUI, because you or I will be fiddling with switches long after Red has a functioning installation that he's working with, at least up until we script the configuration we want and move on to something else. Think about that for a moment.

You don't have to know everything Linux has to offer, but you can't expect everything it does offer to be chewed out for the housewife level of user. It's a professional system, created by professional programmers for professionals, and before you plunge into a deployment a learning curve might have to be endured. There is a good reason Linux has a small marketshare for desktops and a huge marketshare for servers and embedded devices.

There is nothing difficult about implementing virtualization, especially with KVM. All you need to do is read a good manual and understand the underlying subsystems. Once you do, you will see how much more power over the system the ability to set things up the way you want them, allows you. Clicking a mouse about requires no understanding, but if you get deep enough into virtualization (or any other IT related subject) you will find you are way in over your head without having gone through the baby steps first. Linux forces you to do that, while in proprietary systems you either never get beyond the basics or are forced to suddenly learn a LOT later on in the game, when there is no time for studying, because you have to get that system up and running right now. I've been managing windows, linux, vmware, netware and other systems, and even in the easy clicky systems, at some point, you end up having to get into the low level command line settings, where will you run to then?

I've actually compared a full scale vcenter setup to the same setup of RHEV. Both take about an hour, download time included.
Installing Zimbra takes about 20 minutes, Exchange is not even close.
Want to compare a typical setup time for mysql or postgreSQL to MSSQL or oracle? You know the latter has no chance.
Setting up an ESXi server is also no faster than configuring an ovirt-node, same 10 minutes on average.
I've actually had a job where I had to make these comparisons and had to write competitive analysis papers for large corporations, and then do the implementation.

A typical KVM setup, when you know what you're doing, takes minutes to set up, and it will provide you with much much more functionality than ESXi or hyper-v. If you aren't able to perform that simple setup, well, either pay a professional to do it for you, or do some basic learning, it's not hard and it will help you in the long run.

1 members found this post helpful.

I don't think Red ever expressed that expectation. Quite the opposite, he was simply pleased with the simplicity of the EXSi solution. I'd be pleased to if I could grind out the image I want in 10 minutes, however my expectations and goals here are not the same as Reds (which is not to suggest Reds goals are any less difficult to achieve, we're just investing our time in different places in the process.) so it's unrealistic to expect us to share preferences for procedures and tools
.
And yet, I can point to quit a few organizations who are scaling back their use of virtualization (or eliminating it entirely) because it routinely fails to meet mission critical expectations.
That assumes a preference when it comes to details of the virtual guests configuration that many people who work with this every day (which quit possibly Red does) are not concerned with.
The very first job in IT I ever had was as a Jr email admin. I worked for a guy named Ozzie, everybody called him the Wizard but he didn't actually know very much about the sendmail monster we served, he just knew this.
"The man pays you to turn the wheel. When he looks up and the wheel is turning, you're good. When he looks up and it aint, you're done"
Most people who work with this stuff every day look at it just like that. How you or I feel about that is immaterial.
Neither does tapping the keys. As always, the proof of competency is in the result and I would suggest Red is getting a pretty good result.
Yes, but can we do that on Rasberry-Pi and create an economical cloud computing solution for non-profits and schools? You pull that rabbit out of your hat and you wont care what hypervisor they slap on it.

Well, he explicitly expressed his unliking forthe fact that not everything is chewed out and available in the GUI, read the post if you don't believe me.

name one. Seriously, from 6 figure user corporations to SMBs, everyone is virtualizing as much as possible, if not for the sake of saving on hardware than to make backups and deployments easier. The only reason not to virtualize is usually heavily io-bound applications and network latency bound applications, and even that is hardly a problem these days, with paravirtualization, SSD arrays and NFV or 802.1Qbh.

you will be very surprised. I am not talking about my feelings, I am talking about my experience of 20 years doing IT in very different companies, from SMBs to global corporations to startups.

running a dead-end system? well, good luck to him, why moan about stuff he obviously doesn't understand well enough then?

the link isn't talking about hypervisors, it's a glorified beowulf cluster, easy to build on anything that can run Linux.
...and yes, you can run KVM on ARM (prooflink: http://www.virtualopensystems.com) unlike ESXi.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office, just to chose one I'm familiar with that doesn't require a blood oath to take their secrets to the grave.
Your not talking about the end users interests or preferences, which is what I'm most concerned with. My experience has been first they want it to work, then they want it to be easy to operate, the word "foolproof" often comes up in those conversations but that's just indicative of a lack of respect for the capacity of fools, in my opinion anyway.
That system is more widely used in the commercial world (thanks to Oracle and Red Hat) than the one you prefer and I've grown to prefer.
Thanks for the link. I should have known, I've never had a good idea somebody else didn't already have.
Do you know if this company grew out of an open source project and is that project still around? If you don't it's fine, I'll dig into it now that I know they are there. I know of a couple of non-profits that could really use that solution if it was delivered at cost (as a mouse, a have a soft spot for other mice).
Hey, just an FYI, I'm enjoying the discussion and I'm not angry at you or anything, though I did think you were overly harsh when talking about Red. You can't ask a man for his opinion and then let him get thumped for giving it, at least not without objection. The other thing is Red is almost the perfect guy to take any one of your good ideas to and give it to him and ask "what do you think" because his perspective on virtualization is much more common in the production environment than yours or mine. Not only that he's curious and to be honest, occasionally funny, which makes him easy to talk to. If you went to work with Red one afternoon, I'd wager you'd be stunned at all the things he knows and how smart and productive he is inside the environment he's working in. If you read his comments, he's not saying "I want to be lazy", he's saying "I want to be efficient". For someone interested in having an impact in the production world, Red is treasure, believe me, people like that are hard to find.

I'm not an expert, but I'm not a noob either, but people like dyasny's attitude are what make it hard for the true newbies to learn Linux as they get turned off by the people who try to put them down.

For the record I have managed healthcare environments that were fully virtualized before. They used VMware though. Uptime was key. All this weird stuff of having to edit the network file and restarting the network just to add vlan interfaces? Nope, can't do that in health care. In fact I don't even like doing that at home. One little typo and that network ain't coming back up, not to mention you just killed all your connections.

My complaint about how they make it complicated still stands, because there is absolutely no reason to purposely make something complicated, and I see this in Linux all the time. I was looking at various monitoring solutions a while back and all of them were super complicated to install. Tons of dependencies, and other crap like that. Nevermind using it, just installing it was a huge royal pain.

so I wrote my own. (this is an older screenshot)



I got busy with other projects so it's still in early alpha stage and the web interface is lacking, but when I release it I will make it very simple to install and use. Currently it's all config files, which is fine *IF* they are properly documented with EXAMPLES. It ships with examples. I don't know how many times I install something in Linux, and it finishes installing, but does not tell me anything, not even how to launch the app, and of course it did not add anything to the start menu, or give me config file examples. Often you have to blindly create a config file, and the only way to know what to put in it is to dig up online tutorials and stuff, and often they are vague or lacking.

The beauty with open source though is being able to modify stuff, so one of these days when I have time on my hands and want to start a project, I may possibly start to dig into the source of kvm and look at making my own front end for it. Though that would be one hell of a project, so I was not in the appetite to do that now, I just wanted something that works. :P

prooflink? Because I've dealt with severl US .gov-s and they are all virtualizing or building private clouds.

The end user of server infrastructure is the corporate IT, and virtualization is exactly that - infrastructure, not an end-user product. It's just like switches or routers - the end users are IT pros, often specifically trained to operate these systems, and it is normal and expected of them to know things way beyond the layman level. Virtualization is no different, it actually requires more of you as the admin - you are supposed to know multiple operating systems, storage, networking, server hardware AND virtualization, because more often than not, you cannot offload all of the network configs to the cisco team, or the zonings to the SAN team.

VMWare is often used in server virtualization environments, and it's market share seems to be diminishing, because frankly, they hadn't been coming up with new killer features for a while, and the competition is catching up to the existing stuff. But first of all, server virt is not VDI, and neither is it IaaS, where vmware is very far from being the leader.
And when I talk about dead-end, I talk about standalone ESXi speciically - you get locked into a limited functionality, basically a honeypot designed to make you purchase the full product and not to allow you to do any serious work and grow. With KVM or Xen, I can do my own clustering and live migrations, run as many VMs as I want on as much hardware as I've got, and use one of multiple management platforms, free or paid - that's up to me. I'm not locked in, and there is no way to lock me in.


This idea has been around ever since KVM went into the Linux kernel

Not really, ARM is nice and the cheap little toys are also nice, but for me, they still are no more than toys, not for production. If you have a specific project in mind, with specific workloads, I could probably provide a rough estimate of the kind of resources you'd need

I'm not angry, nobody is angry, nerve cells don't recover you know. As forproduction environments, you have amisconception again, I'm sorry. I meet lots of system admins from large companies at summits, they come up with questions, and their outlook ismuch more professional and knowledeable as a rule.

That's something you want to put in his linkedin profile, not here Seriously though, I have some junior admins working with me, and whenever they come moaning about something being hard, I will give them sh*t. When they come saying "this is hard, please help me understand" I will spend as much time as ti takes to help. I hope you see the difference.

At the point you claimed omniscience, I stopped reading
Which was, unfortunately, not before you demanded a "prooflink" for the internal IT strategy of a US government agency.
You apparently don't realize they don't publish "prooflinks".
Nobody does in reference to their internal strategy.
What you find on the internet, what you appear to be calling a "prooflink" is more commonly known as "marketing",

There is a huge difference between asking to be helped and starting a post where you basically just b*tch and moan.

weird? Have you managed Linux servers ever before? You HAVE to do the networking setup there, it has nothing to do with virtualization. As for uptime, well, like I already said, KVM is used in mission critical environments all over the world, I guess everyone is just too dumb to choose something else, eh?

And there you go complaining again, instead of trying to learn. And when you're told you're being a crybaby, you will complain even more because "OMG, people don't agree with my crying"

I haven't seen a single major project that wasn't well documented, overdocumented actually. And yes, when you install aserver system, you don't get anything in the "start" menu, you're not supposed to have an X server running on a server anyway. What you get is /user/share/doc and /etc/init.d/initscript and /etc/$APP for config files. This is something you need to KNOW, this is how the system works, and just because you're used to windoze, nobody will change these things for you, nor will anyone want to. People will be happy to explain and teach these things though.

You want a management system with a UI - take a look at oVirt or Proxmox. If you want something supported, take a look at RHEV. If you need to build a cloud and not a virtualization environment, there's OpenStack, but you always hae to learn and gain some understanding before you deploy, this is not ikea, which is why this stuff actually works.

Where did that happen?

Well, when you makeclaims in a public forum, you should expect to be called out on the bs, don't you think? Otherwise, we could throw bs at each other indefinitely and never reach an understanding. If there's something you cannot prove, keep it to yourself.

You just said that this was public knowledge, otherwise you'd be signing an NDA

Whitepapers and blogposts get published all the time. They are how we get to know what other companies are doing.

True. But it has to have a grain of truth in it, otherwise the publisher will easily get called out on his or her bs, causing public embarassment to the entire organization. Easier to publish real stuff, with marketing buzzwords around.

I didn't make that claim. I never said it was public knowledge. I said I wasn't precluded from talking about it with you. If you prefer not to believe it, it's fine with me.
No it doesn't. It's about the image of the corporation or organization, if it bears any relationship to the truth, that is entirely accidental.
By who? The users? There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding about what corporations are, why they exist and what their ultimate goals are. If they could find a way to legally sell you crack cocaine, it would be in baby food.
Now, I blame TV for the confusion, but really wouldn't you rather talk about virtualization?
I ran across some really interesting qemu-io commands the other day, the entire image making process is like a giant playground and I don't really want to talk about what mice need to know before dancing with sharks, it's depressing.
I got a fresh cup of coffee, a fresh pack of cigarettes, Howlin' Wolf blastin' through the earbuds, and the wife watching "Dancing with the Stars" a few feet away. All is right in my world, it's time to geek out.

This is the easiest/best answer. That way you don't have to mess with all of the IF config files.