Server Virtualization

It’s pretty obvious that computers are at such a powerful level now that server virtualization is realistic with bugger all to no performance hit. There are a few virtualization platforms around offering a range of different ways to make your “Server Management Life” easier. The virtual platforms I’m familiar with are VMWare Fusion for Mac, and Citrix XenServer for servers. Both have blown myself and colleagues away with their roaring performance and easy of use and maintenance. Lets look at what each is good at, and how we’re currently using them.

Citrix XenServer (Express at the moment)

This is a really awesome server virtualization platform. My first introduction to XenServer was the original open source project, which has been purchased by Citrix to extend their offering.

XenServer lets you create new virtual systems quicker than you can download and burn off a copy of Debian, and the best part is you can setup your own template images of pre-configured software (for example web servers), and roll them out just as fast! My record to date would be 8 servers in less than two days fully configured and operational. They are mostly basic web servers with various applications installed on them. That doesn’t include any time for backups etc which would take a little longer to add in there.

The Citrix offering has one little problem for me at this stage. The original open source version had a Java client program to manage your server. This client had an installer for Linux, but would run under Mac OS X as well, but Citrix’s version is a windows only application, which is pretty good, but I would love to not have to boot up VMWare Fusion each time I need to manage a XenServer.

The XenServer client application is awesome (it lets you provision new servers at the speed mentioned above), and look after your physical server. It lets you know what’s going on (network traffic, CPU time, I/O usage, and how much storage you have left). It’s quite light to install and pretty much does the job effectively (so there’s not much else to say). Citrix, if you’re reading this, bring back a Java version, it’s cross platform, and makes life easier!

VMWare Fusion (for Mac)

This is a great application. And honestly, it’s really quite cheap (<NZD120). What I’m using VMWare Fusion for at present is running Windows XP (for the XenServer Client), and other minor testing purposes such as IE6 (yuk!). The other really great thing I’m using VMWare for at the moment is testing Linux installations, it’s really fast, and if you stuff your installation up, you can just copy a backed up image and you’re back to a fresh install again!

I was using Parallels but changed to VMWare Fusion for a couple of reasons:

1. A colleague I’m working with uses it
2. It’s heaps faster
3. It’s friendlier to use
4. Images are easier to copy and move around (typical Mac folder but disguised as a file)