09.10.07
Gemini version available ♊︎Choosing Novell for Your Business is Like Choosing XenSoft (sic)
We have pretty much established the fact that Microsoft used a proxy (Citrix) to hijack Xen and take it away from GNU/Linux (XenSource now has ex-Softies managing it). A one-year partnership culminated in an acquisition by association. This way, Microsoft escaped antitrust wrath (buying the competition) and has no direct contact with the GPL.
You will continue to find stories, such as this new one, about companies that find joy in Xen. These companies are probably unaware of Xen’s future direction.
“So as part of this open source initiative, we also chose a virtual machine called Xen…”
This was probably a good idea at the time, but this company, Mindbridge, should take a careful look at KVM. It’s much better and it is also more elegant, based on the advice of field experts. It’s also part of the new Linux kernel, so everything should be simplified
In a similar vein, avoid Novell. Microsoft found great threat in SUSE, which was inarguably the best Linux desktop at the time. Like XenSource and virtualisation, it was a disruptive trend that Microsoft was unable to compete with. What was the solution? Microsoft devoured the threat, thereby blurring the separation and changing the market forces.
Look ahead. Don’t bet your business on Novell. It should be treated as a Microsoft subsidiary because, sadly enough, there is far too much evidence to support this argument.
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Stephen said,
September 10, 2007 at 4:03 am
Redhat (amongst others) all ship Xen enabled kernels in their distributions. Novell, like the others will also absorb the KVM features. libvirt, which sits in between the virtualization technology itself and the ability to manage VMs will still be there to abstract the technology dependency. Novell for their part aren’t interested in Xen per se, rather in managing virtualized environments. See http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/orchestrator/
Whether you choose Xen with Novell or not, the choice of Xen will not affect you because Xen is GPL.
So yet again, this blog post is less than representative of an industry that’s bigger than Novell. You’ll need more depth for continued credibility with this reader.
Roy Schestowitz said,
September 10, 2007 at 4:21 am
The code does not write itself. Since XenSource lost interest in a Linux direction, Xen for Linux will become outdated and the company more Windows-centric. That’s a fact.
And yet again you expose your role as a Novell apologist. Other people (even in other sites) agree with my assessment as far as Xen goes.
Ian said,
September 10, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Just to put it into perspective, Xensource isn’t even close to the dominate player in the virtualization universe. It’s VMWware, hands down. If Microsoft was trying to slant the virtualization market, removing Xensource as a competitor is nothing more than a drop in the bucket. Moreover, Microsoft didn’t purchase Xensource, Citrix did. If you think Citrix is another Microsoft shill, well that’s a conspiracy theory that is very hard to prove beyond circumstantial evidence.
Sebastiaan Veld said,
September 10, 2007 at 3:11 pm
@Roy: ‘Since XenSource lost interest in a Linux direction’
Based on what? Last time I looked at the XenSource products they did use Linux as their OS. Indeed they do virtualise both Windows and Linux, but so does VMWare and their Infrastructure Server uses also Linux as the OS. Windows virtualisation is just a big market where they could easily take a share from VMWare. It’s just business.
‘And yet again you expose your role as a Novell apologist. Other people (even in other sites) agree with my assessment as far as Xen goes.’
Thinks Steven is allowed to have an opinion here, even if you do not like it, right? Else why can we comment on things…. A few weeks ago you asked how to make this site better; well I would suggest less post, with a higher quality level. Your yourself also suggested that comment could help to make your posts better. What you seem to call fact looks to some of us as just option. Like ‘Choosing Novell for Your Business is Like Choosing XenSoft (sic)’ is without doubt more opinion than fact.
Roy Schestowitz said,
September 10, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Yes, and as several analysts have said, Xen will help Microsoft compete against VMWare. Also recall some recent comments about virtualisation of Windows under Linux. It’s a “no way” according to Sam Ramji.
Ian said,
September 10, 2007 at 8:17 pm
He was mis-quoted, apparently.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/virtualize_windows_on_linux_microsoft_says_no_way
I’m not sure if Xen will help Microsoft. If we’re making the assumption that IT resources are pretty much finite from year to year for any consumer, theoretically hardware vendors take the biggest hit from virtualization(regardless of the vendor, host OS, guest OS). Now maybe Microsoft can slant the host OS market to their favor, but at that point it becomes a consumer choice.