XenServer – Using for Lab Environment
For quite some time I have always been testing new things, training for new technologies and really just messing around. Having no formal Altiris training, I can say that all of the skills I do have are based on just plain experience.
My test lab’s have always been with VMWare Workstation and lately VMWare server. I found there were some performance limitations in which I tried to resolve but had too many issues in doing so. This brings me to the subject of this post.
During my last trip to Denver CO, I sat in on a Citrix XenServer technical demo that was hosted by the company that was contracting me at the time. I found that XenServer had some limitations compared to VMWare but that there was currently development that would allow more competition in the near future. For me, the biggest gain was the Linux device support that was not currently available with VMWare. Just a few weeks ago I spun up my first XenServer after trying many ways of trying to get ESX working for me.
I downloaded the free Express version of XenServer here
For me, I just ran the install of the CD on one of my desktops I built for VMWare and had no issues with drivers or anything else. I was able to spin up my first virtual machine within minutes of completing the server install. I am pretty happy with the performance of XenServer. There is no Windows kernel that I am running everything though now that I am not using the Windows versions of VMWare. With 8GB of RAM and a dual core Athlon XP Processor, I have 12-15 VM’s running and just hitting the limit of the host.
Now I am testing the latest Altiris NS 7 Beta, running a separate SQL server, and a bunch of XP test machines with Altiris Agents on them.
