Novell chief technology officer Markus Rex has hit back at criticism the company included an 'unstable' Xen virtualisation environment in its new Linux server, pointing to support from hardware partners. "We had all the major hardware partners that had virtualisation hardware like IBM, Intel and AMD. They all stood up and said 'Yes, this technology's ready, and we fully support deployments based on Xen and in combination with SUSE Linux Enterprise 10'."
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Member since:2006-03-17
> We really don't need another company
> indulging in Microsoft-quality software.
Looks like Red Hat's FUD was successful.
Novell made the better Xen packages for SLES 10 and Red Hat doesn't like that. It's really as simple as that.
What people don't seem to get is that Red Hat's criticism refers to Red Hat's own packages - they are indeed unstable and not enterprise ready.
And now they try to keep people away from products with better Xen implementations. But it won't work that way, it's too transparent.
Member since:2006-07-13
Member since:2005-07-06
Looks like Red Hat's FUD was successful.
It isn't "FUD." Commentary by people other than RedHat has also indicated the immaturity of Xen technology. Xen is especially limited in focus at the moment since the way it works internally seems to favour Linux more than anything else. Not only that, there are several rough spots within Xen internally. To the credit of the Xen development team though, they are working to address these issues. However, I think Novell is insane to try to claim Xen is a stable, reliable, production-ready technology. It hasn't had nearly enough production or enterprise level deployment yet to claim that.
Everyone I know of that has experimented with Xen has been doing just that, experimenting. No one seems ready to really commit themselves to it, just yet.
Member since:2005-07-13
Looks like Red Hat's FUD was successful.
Novell made the better Xen packages for SLES 10 and Red Hat doesn't like that. It's really as simple as that.
What people don't seem to get is that Red Hat's criticism refers to Red Hat's own packages - they are indeed unstable and not enterprise ready.
And now they try to keep people away from products with better Xen implementations. But it won't work that way, it's too transparent.
People overlook the fact that Novell's implementation of Xen will only work with virtualized versions of SLES. So you can run a virutalized version of your Novell OS under your Novell OS. That being the case, clearly they had to do some hacking and workarounds to get it working under controlled circumstances, so I wouldn't dismiss what Red Hat said as FUD.
They've "pledged" expanded support for other versions of Suse Linux and Windows in a future service pack, no word on a date.
If Novell's limited Xen implementation works for you, and for many it will, then great, but it's a little misleading on their part. Their marketing hype and blogging made it sound like they've created a full fledged vmware replacement, and that's not the case. They've simply implemented what is generally held to be an unstable technology under very controlled circumstances to give the appearance of being a stable technology. If it works, then it works, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's hardly the realization of Xen's potential, and that's what Red Hat was referring to.
Basically it's Xgl for server rooms. Cool technology that works under limited circumstances, generating much hype but not yet ready for prime time.
Member since:2005-06-30
Member since:
2006-04-21
Some "testing" wouldn't have gone amiss. We really don't need another company indulging in Microsoft-quality software.