For me I started using VMware due to the application compatibility of 3 party software. The other vendors have closed the gap quickly. However knowing that I have the best support out there is what matters most to me and having third party software officially support the virtualization product. I don’t have enough servers to make a few % difference in performance to sway me.

Ultimately it comes down to what works for you, and it doesn’t hurt to keep an open mind. I have been looking into Xen and hyper-v more recently, and I will be looking into KVM now.

At the same time, it would be nice to see some hard numbers in a comparison versus “feelings”. All of the vendors offer free versions of their software which seems to meet your needs. For your back requirements vMotion would not be what you need, HA or Fault Tolerance are the features that you are talking about. If a server fails vMotion is not going to help you.

I have been using their virtualmin for many years and enjoy it. Now I’m considering either going with ESXi or cloudmin and things are leaning towards the latter as my solution. Another option to manage virtual guest on a server for those looking for GUI solution for their clients. We all can’t teach CLI to everyone.

I’m with Dean Rantala, as a programmer myself, I like to have access to an API that allows flexible use. Our setup won’t be mission-critical stuff, just experimental. Unfortunately, I am disappointed that VMware puts out such a good free hypervisor then makes it hard to use the API to its full potential. If you don’t use the API, you’re stuck with the .NET client. If you’ve got deep corporate pockets and just want to test out their stuff, that’s all it’s good for. If you are a small organization with the need for flexibility, it’s out.

We already have a $10,000 per year CRM app that is a pain to move around or upgrade because you have to call the vendor and then explain why you want to do what you want to do before the thing will work. Forget about trying to get the data out if the license ever expires. You also have to hope that it’ll work with the new version of your OS. That explains why some of our apps are still running on Windows 2000 Server. I am with the open source guys on this one.

It looks like we’ll go with KVM and then a modified version of OpenECP. We’ll build whatever other little pieces that we need. That should be a fun project.

I did look at oVirt a little bit. First, it seems to be a work-in-progress. Second, it’s design doesn’t seem to fit my environment (which is a single server with lots of CPU, RAM, and Disk). From the web pages it looks like oVirt is depending on TWO machines, one machine with disk (iSCSI), and then another machine with RAM/CPU, on which you pxe-boot an oVirt image to join the cluster.

Really, I’m just looking at something to replace vmware-server now that it’s EOLed. I’d like to use KVM, but I don’t want to repurpose my hardware.

Thanks!

oVirt is another option that you might want to try. It provides a Web console as well as a management infrastructure. I’m not sure if you can use the former without the latter, but probably, since it’s all open-source.

Is the enomaly/enomalism community edition dead? If not, where can I find the download? If it is dead, is there some other decent open source web-based access solution to manage KVM and provide web access to VM consoles?