Virtualisation Toolkit

Bare metal hypervisors: a group test

David Jones ZDNet Australia

Published: 01 Jun 2009

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Manageability

Each product was assessed to determine the ease of host server management (using the console provided).

Citrix XenServer
Once again, XenServer has the most features, but it's only a Windows-based application (as opposed to web-based). A web-based console is available, but it's not supported. The XenCenter Management Client makes it easy to create, backup and even copy virtual machines (this is the only console that allowed us to copy a VM). Performance statistics and VM configuration are also easy to view and edit.

Another advantage of the XenCenter console is that it provides all the features needed if you're upgrading your licence key to a full-featured edition of XenServer. The same console will allow you to live-migrate virtual machines, create resource pools and set up high availability. There is no need to upgrade your console.

XenCenter Management Client.

VMware ESXi 3.5
VMware has a web-based console. This is also quite easy to use and navigate, although it has fewer features than XenCenter. To access its complete capability you'll need to use VMware's vCenter Server; this server is recommended if you wish to move virtual machines or automate high availability, but comes at a cost. It also requires the installation of SQL Server Express and will not install onto a Vista machine. This, of course, adds significantly to the complexity of the environment because the vCenter Server console then becomes a critical part of your infrastructure.

VMware's web-based management console.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
Hyper-V requires you to install its Server Management tools for Vista, then find the relevant update package on the Microsoft web site in order to manage the Hyper-V server. Information available is very sketchy, and the required software is hard to find, let alone understand. As a result, the TestLab staff were unable to get a Vista client working in the time available. We compromised by installing a Windows 2008 server in order to be able to manage the Hyper-V server. Eventually after downloading and installing an update, a connection was made to the Hyper-V server and the creation of virtual machines was possible. Even so, the console disconnected a number of times.

To exit the console screen, it is necessary to enter Ctrl+Alt+Left-arrow; this was extremely tedious after a server reboot or if we wanted to view in full screen. A VM with no network configured was created. To this, a network was added, but the VM did not detect this new network. To get the network attached to the VM we had to reinstall Windows — something we put down to the tested Hyper-V software being in beta.

After the ease of setting up XenServer and VMware ESXi, Hyper-V was a task. The Hyper-V console doesn't have any of the nice performance graphs that VMware and XenServer provide, although CPU usage is available. For full features you will need to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).