Using OVF users can download a virtualized application and run it on the operating system on which it was developed. Since the OVF is not hypervisor dependent users can install it on the virtualizaton platform of their choice. Admins and other users can download the OVF packaged software and install it within their own virtual infrastructure instead of creating the virtualization platform on which the software was originally installed. By using this admins can get new applications into production faster.

OVF is actually a set of metadata that describes the virtualization container. This allows the virtualization platform to translate the machine into it’s own environment. While the practice of competing virtual platforms translating virtual machines to run on their platform is not new until now there has not been an open source application that would wholesale translate any virtual machine into any virtual environment. This is all accomplished by using the metadata standard developed for the OVF,

OVF can also be used to manage virtual machine installations. For example if machines are required to start in a certain order to allow for dependencies the OVF can handle this. You can find out more about the OVF here.

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In a nutshell it comes down to a substantially better price:performance ratio. Take for example Red Hat’s virtualization product. For starters Red Hat integrates their virtualization product into the operating system at no additional cost. The real kicker though is the performance when compared to VMWare.

Red Hat and Intel worked together to produce a tightly integrated virtualization package with the Caneland processor. Having completed the project they asked independent laboratory Principled Technologies to perform some industry-standard benchmarks on these new capabilities. The results can be found here

In their tests they used a Red Hat 3 stand alone server, a Red Hat 5 server and another Red Hat 3 server virtualized on the RH5 machine. The results are as follows:

* A Xeon system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 achieved approximately 210,000 operations/second (4 socket, hyperthreaded, dual core allowing for 16 compute threads).
* A Caneland system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 achieved approximately 380,000 operations/second (4 socket, quad core also allowing for 16 compute threads).
* A Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 virtualized guest running on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 host achieved approximately 340,000 operations/second. So Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 delivered a performance increase of over 50 percent when running virtualized on the new Caneland system.

Regarding virtualization on VMWare there are some points to consider. The first is quite simply the added cost of VMWare regardless of what operation system is your choice. Regarding virtualization Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests can utilize all the underlying hardware – so a full quad-core, 4-socket system can be virtualized and presented to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. VMWare does not support guests with more than 4 executable threads. What that means is that VMware cannot provide a virtual machine guest larger than 1/4 of the new Caneland capacity.

Although I discussed only one technology there are many examples to be found. And when I hear of places such as Indiana University with almost 200,000 faculty and staff, Amerada Hess Corporation – Oil Exploration Supercomputing, Burlington Coat Factory – Entire Systems, Conoco – Oil Exploration Supercomputing I have to believe that these folks have some very smart engineers and CTOs on their IT staff that would decide that Linux is the best platform on which to be running. The complete list can be found here.

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The blurred lines start as many of the newer Virtualization companies are absorbed into main stream players. Take the XenSource deal with Citrix for instance. With the acquisition of XenSource Citrix is now able to setup it’s first XenServer and XenDesktop. Citrix touts that both of these are Microsoft license free. Really? TUp to a point maybe. They are also both optimized to run on Windows XP and Vista meaning license fees for Microsoft. This is where the lines start to blur. Citrix now has an Open Source product that to use efficiently is going to force you to purchase a Microsoft license for the application to perform optimally.

Take a close look Microsoft’s Hyper-V product. This product, which they were originally selling for $28, is base on XenSource. They are now giving it away for free. Microsoft give an enterprise technology away? That’s unheard of. The catch is that Microsoft and Citrix have agreed to work together to make sure that the Citrix applications will work smoothly with Microsoft applications. The answer to the question of why give it away is of course VMWare. They are the only logical target in something like this.

But wait you say, VMWare gives it;s products away as well. Not the high end products that contain the same functions as the Open Source products. They generate their revenues from selling high end virtualization software and management systems. And now that Microsoft is giving these away with Hyper-V, and if you don’t want that you can use Citirix’s XenDesktop and XenServer, who would pay for the high end VMWare products. Most likely no one.

As you can see from the above, the lines between Open Source and Proprietary (read Microsoft) are beginning to blur. Microsoft is offering a product for free that is built on XenSource. Citrix is offering the same core product to enhance it’s remote desktop and server offerings and doing so with the sales pitch of it doesn’t required a Microsoft license.

You can download the Citrix XenServer Express Edition for free. From a memory, CPU and number of guest machines you will get the same specs as the higher priced editions. What you won’t get are things like Resource pools, XenMotion live migration, Shared IP-based storage, Resource QoS Controls and
Dynamic provisioning of virtual and physical servers.

This doesn’t even get into the competition that is presented by Sun, Virtual Iron and Red Hat. However these are strictly proprietary companies that are starting to openly use Open Source in such a way that they are able to sell it as a licensed product. It remains Open Source because the code is available for the core product as is a download to use the core product.

-j