Did you consider VirtualBox ? Of course VmWare is the market leader NOW, but if you plan to invest on future open source platforms, You should choose KVM(which is now Linux native) or XEN.( Its unlikely to be killed). KVM still lag behind in terms of enterprise-class features , but count on it for future investment. So, i think you should just start off with Xen or virtualBox, with a migration plan to KVM in future. peter chacko. On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Emmanuel Noobadmin <centos.admin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Which of these would be the recommended virtualization platform for > mainly CentOS guest on CentOS host especially for running a > virtualized mail server? From what I've read, objectively it seems > that VMWare's still the way to go although I would had like to go with > Xen or KVM just as a matter of subjective preference. > > > VMWare's offering seems to have the best support and tools, plus > likely the most mature of the options. Also given their market > dominance, unlikely to just up and die in the near future. > > Xen would had been a possible option except Redhat appears to be > focusing on KVM as their virtualization platform of choice to compete > with VMWare and Citrix. So maybe Xen support will be killed shortly. > Plus the modified xen kernel apparently causes conflict with certain > software, at least based on previous incidents where I'd been advised > not to use the CentOS xen kernel if not using xen virtualization. > > > KVM would be ideal since it's opensource and would be supported in > CentOS as far as can be reasonably foreseen. However, looking at > available resources online, it seems to have these key disadvantages > > 1. Poorer performance under load. > http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Open_Topics_For_Discussion?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Quantitative+Comparison+of+Xen+and+KVM.pdf > This 2008 XenSummit paper indicates that it dies on heavy network load > as well as when there are more than a few VM doing heavy processing at > the same time. But that's two years ago and they weren't using > paravirtual drivers it seems. > > http://vmstudy.blogspot.com/2010/04/network-performance-test-xenkvm-vt-d.html > This blog testing out Xen/KVM pretty recently. While the loads are > not as drastic and neither the difference, it still shows that KVM > does lag behind by about 10%. > > This is a concern since I plan to put storage on the network and the > most heavy load the client has is basically the email server due to > the volume plus inline antivirus and anti-spam scanning to be done on > those emails. Admittedly, they won't be seeing as much emails as say a > webhost but most of their emails come with relatively large > attachments. > > > 2. Security > Some sites point out that KVM VM runs in userspace as threads. So a > compromised guest OS would then give intruder access to the system as > well as other VMs. > > Should I really be concerned or are these worries only for extreme > situations and that KVM is viable for normal production situations? > Are there other things I should be aware of? > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
