Comments on: Virtualization Product Choices http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/virtualization-product-choices/ Mon, 20 May 2013 05:26:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: virtualaleph http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/virtualization-product-choices/#comment-57999 virtualaleph Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:47:33 +0000 #comment-57999 let’s try ESXi –> it’s free and very complete: no other product can compete with vmware (IMO).
Manlio
My virtualization Blog

]]> By: gilly400 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/virtualization-product-choices/#comment-55553 gilly400 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:13:58 +0000 #comment-55553 Hi,

Are there many other alternatives worth looking at?

Regards,

Martin Gilbert.

]]> By: nopius http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/virtualization-product-choices/#comment-55442 nopius Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:37:12 +0000 #comment-55442 I recommend you to try all available choices before making decision.

Xen is a CPU virtualization and is the most ‘lightweight’. Currently there are 2 major Xen implementations:
- open source (included in some Linux distributions)
- commercial XenDesktop Express (with free version available for up to 2xCPU sockets, 4G RAM, 4x guest OSes): http://citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057

Commercial version should be more Windows-guest friendly. It has unified ‘Virtualization Management Console’ and most easy to use.

I have no experience with Xen and Windows guest (because my CPU doesn’t have virtualization features). I used open source Xen on Linux with Linux guest – it was very stable.

VirtualBox is a hardware virtualization and quite heavy. I’m using it now for running all my guest OSes, sometimes it’s quite slow, but faster than vmware. I have no problems with it on Windows guest.
There are also 2 VirtualBox implementations: open source edition (VirtualBox OSE) and commercial (just called VirtualBox, it’s also free but only in binaries): http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions
Making NIC work on guest at the same network segment as host is a little tricky, but possible. On commercial version there are tools for network configuration, that are absent on OSE, so I recommend you commercial.

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