Addon
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custom |
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Unique Feature 1
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Add-On not supported by this product
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Add-On not supported by this product
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Add-On not supported by this product
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General
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- Fully Supported
- Limitation
- Not Supported
- Information Only
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Pros
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Cons
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Content |
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=BW12
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The VIRTUALIST and Enzo Raso (Citrix)
Content created by THE VIRTUALIST: http://www.thevirtualist.org/ with help from Enzo Rasso (Citrix)
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Content created by Virtualizationmatrix; (Contributors: Sean Cohen, Yaniv Dary, Raissa Tona, Larry W. Bailey)
Content created by Virtualizationmatrix
Thanks to Sean Cohen, Raissa Tona, Yaniv Dary and Larry W. Bailey for content contribution and review.
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Assessment |
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vSphere 6.0 with Operations Management Enterprise - Click Here For Overview
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XenServer 7.2 Enterprise Edition includes features that are not available in the Standard Edition, focused on enterprise customers needs, as well as Citrix support:
- Live patching
- Conversion manager for vSphere
- Dynamic Workload Balancing & Audit Reporting (WLB)
- Accelerate Citrix Provisioning Services performance
For Standard vs Enterprise edition, please check: http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
NEW
Citrix released XenServer version 7.2 in February 2017, this major release added for:
- Scheduled Snapshots. This feature enables customers to configure their environment to automatically create VM snapshots at specified intervals. This helps guard against ransomware, unforeseen data corruption issues, system crashes, or user errors, by providing a last-known working version of the VM.
- Enablement for XenDesktop Tablet Mode. Support for GPIO mode laptop and slate indicator driver, which when used in conjunction with XenDesktop 7.14, allows customers to experience tablet mode. XenServer and XenDesktop are the only desktop virtualisation solution to enable Windows 10 Continuum experience in a virtualised environment.
- XenCenter Proxy Authentication. XenCenter already allows the configuration of a proxy server to access the Internet. XenCenter 7.2 adds the ability to specify a username and password to connect to the proxy server, if the proxy server requires authentication.
Citrix entered the Hypervisor market with the acquisition of XenSource - the main supporter of the open source Xen project - in Oct 2007. The Xen project continues to exist, see https://www.xenproject.org/
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RHV 3.5 - Click Here For Details
NEW
Red Hat Virtualization is Red Hats server and technical workstation virtualization platform. It consists of the management product RHV-M (manager) and RHV-H (hypervisor) - a purpose built, slim hypervisor based on KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) - also referred to as Red Hat Virtualization Hypervisor. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) also contains KVM based virtualization capabilities, typically referred to as Red Hat Enterprise Linux Hosts. RHV-M can manage RHV-H hosts as well as RHEL hypervisor hosts running KVM (but make sure to check version compatibilities). All listed features apply to both, RHV-H and RHEL host - unless pointed out otherwise.
Red Hat Virtualization is Microsoft SVVP (Server Virtualization Validation Program) Certified and RHV-M can manage Windows guests.
Vendor Messaging:
- Red Hat Virtualization is a complete virtualization management solution for virtualized servers and technical workstations.
- Red Hat Virtualization aims to provide performance advantages, competitive pricing, and a trusted, stable environment.
- Building on Red Hat Virtualization hypervisor and the popular oVirt open virtualization management project, Red Hat Virtualization positions itself as strategic virtualization alternative to proprietary virtualization platforms.
- Red Hat Virtualization provides common underlying services and management technologies for traditional virtualization workloads while also providing an on-ramp to high-level cloud functionality based on OpenStack.
With Red Hat Virtualization, you can:
* Take advantage of existing people skills and investments
* Decrease TCO and accelerate ROI
* Automate time-consuming and complicated manual tasks
* Standardize storage, infrastructure, and networking services on OpenStack (tech-preview)
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=BI14
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XenServer 7.2 Release date May 2017
Xens first public release was in 2003, becoming part of Novell SUSE 10 OS in 2005 (later also Red hat). In Oct 2007 Citrix acquired XenSource (the main maintainer of the Xen code) and released XenServer under the Citrix brand.
Version 5.6 was released in May 2010, 5.6SP2 in May 2011, 6.0 in Sep 2011, 6.1 in Sep 2012, 6.2 in June 2013, 6.5 in January 2015, version 7 in May 2016 and 7.1 in February 2017
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RHV 3.5 released in Feb 2015 - (RHV 3.4 - June 2014, RHV 3.3 - January 2014, RHV 3.2 - June 2013, RHV 3.1 - Dec 2012, RHV 2.1 - Nov 2009, 2.2: Aug 2010, RHV 3.0: Jan 2012)
NEW
Qumranet, a technology startup began the development of KVM and was subsequently acquired by Red Hat in 2008. Red Hats first release was v 2.1 in 2009 with an update in 2010 which included the virtual technical workstation capabilities. The 3.0 release in 2012 was a major milestone in porting the RHV-M manager from .NET to Java (and fully open-sourcing) alongside other improvements.
RHV 3.1 removed all requirements of any Windows-based infrastructure, but still support Microsoft Active Directory for user authentication, administration, VDI, etc. RHV 3.1 also provided a RESTful API for integration.
Since RHV 3.2, Red Hat has provided many feature enhancements, improvements in scale, enhanced reliability and integration points (hooks, OpenStack etc) documented in the matrix.
While not as large as e.g. the VMware and Microsoft ecosystem there are a large number of ISVs with products currently integrated into RHV, including Acronis for Backup/DR/Migration, Symantec Storage Foundation and Tintri for Storage, BMC TrueSight for capacity optimization, Igel, Wyse and other thin client vendors have SPICE (RHVs remote viewing protocol) integrated in some of their product offerings. Major OEM hardware vendors like IBM and HP support RHV (e.g. IBM has part numbers for all of RHVs subscription offerings). Additionally RHV enables third party plug-ins Recent plug-ins include:
- BMC connector for RHV-M REST API to collect data for managing RHV boxes without having to install an agent.
- HP OneView for Red Hat Virtualization (OVRHV) UI plug-in that that allows you to seamlessly manage your HP ProLiant infrastructure from within RHV Manager and provides actionable, valuable insight on underlying HP hardware (HP Insight Control plug-in is also available).
- NetApp Virtual Console enables rapid cloning of NetApp virtual machines, and allows NFS storage discovery, provisioning and modification from within Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Symantec Storage Foundation that delivers storage Quality of Service (QoS) at the application level and maximizes your storage efficiency, availability and performance across operating systems. This includes Symantec Cluster Server provides automated disaster recovery functionality to keep applications up and running. Cluster Server enables application specific fail-over and significantly reduces recovery time by eliminating the need to restart applications in case of a failure.
- Tenable Network Securitys Nessus Audit for RHV-M which queries the RHV API and reports that information within a Nessus report.
- Ansible RHV module that allows you to create new instances, either from scratch or an image, in addition to deleting or stopping instances on the RHV platform.
Visit marketplace.redhat.com/RHV to learn more about these plug-ins and RHV’s ecosystem of partner
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Pricing |
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OM Ent: $3,625/socket + S&S:$761 (B) or $906 (Prod)
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Open Source (free) or two commercial editions, pricing for Standard Edition is: Annual: $695 / socket, Perpetual: $1525/ socket - both including 1 year of software maintenance.
For commercial editions (Standard or Enterprise)XenServer is licensed on a per-CPU socket basis. For a pool to be considered licensed, all XenServer hosts in the pool must be licensed. XenServer only counts populated CPU sockets.
All customers who have purchased any edition of XenApp or XenDesktop have an entitlement to use all XenServer 7.2 features
In XenServer 7.x, customers should allocate product licenses using a Citrix License Server, as with other Citrix components. From version 6.2.0 onwards, XenServer (other than via the XenDesktop licenses) is licensed on a per-socket basis. Allocation of licenses is managed centrally and enforced by a standalone Citrix License Server, physical or virtual, in the environment. After applying a per-socket license, XenServer will display as Citrix XenServer Per-Socket Edition.
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Yes (included in RHV hypervisor subscription)
The RHV-M management component is included in the RHV subscription model (i.e. single part number for both, hypervisor and management)
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=BI17
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Free (XenCenter)
Citrix XenCenter is the Windows-native graphical user interface for managing Citrix XenServer. It is included for no additional cost (open source as well as commercial version).
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Yes, combined RHEL and RHV offering 26% savings
Red Hat offers Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization (a combined solution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization) that offers a 26% savings over buying each product separately. Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization is the ideal platform for virtualized Linux workloads. Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization enables organization to virtualize mission-critical
applications while delivering unparalleled performance, scalability, and security features. See details here: http://red.ht/KBgLO5
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Bundle/Kit Pricing
Details
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=BW18
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Yes
XenServer is included for free with all XenApp and XenDesktop editions media kit
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RHV: No (RHEL: 1/4/unlimited)
RHV subscriptions include the RHV-H hypervisor and RHV-Manager, they do not include the rights to use RHEL as the guest operating system in the virtual machines being managed by RHV.
The customer would purchase this separately by buying a RHEL for Virtual Datacenter subscription.
Please note that RHEL hosts generate additional subscription costs that are not included with RHV (see https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/server/ for details). RHEL hosts are priced by sockets (2, 4), number of virtual guests included (1, 4, unlimited) and subscription levels (Standard/Premium).
Or, the customer can buy the Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization which includes both RHV and RHEL for use as the guest operating System. http://red.ht/1lT1fww
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Guest OS Licensing
Details
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=BI19
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No
There are no guest OS licensing included with the XenServer license. Guest OSs need to be therefore licensed separately.
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Yes (RHV-M)
RHV-M - the Red Hat Virtualization Manager with a web-driven UI is central management console.
RHV 3.5 is based entirely on Open Source Software, with no dependencies on proprietary server infrastructures or web browsers. A centralized management system with a search-driven graphical interface supporting up to hundreds of hosts and thousands of virtual machines. The fully featured enterprise management system enables customers to centrally manage their entire virtual environments, which include virtual datacenters, clusters, hosts, guest virtual servers and technical workstations, networking, and storage.
RHV-M is also localized in various languages including: French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and English.
From RHV 3.3 there is full support for integrated external applications plug-ins from HP, Symantec, and NetApp – Learn more through the RHV marketplace - http://marketplace.redhat.com/RHV
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VM Mobility and HA
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VM Mobility |
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Live Migration of VMs
Details
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=BW26
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Yes XenMotion
XenMotion is available in all versions of XenServer and allows you to move a running VM from one host to another host, when the VMs disks are located on storage shared by both hosts. This allows for pool maintenance features such as Workload Balancing (WLB), High Availability (HA), and Rolling Pool Upgrade (RPU) to automatically move VMs. These features allow for workload leveling, infrastructure resilience, and the upgrade of server software, without any VM downtime. Storage can only be shared between hosts in the same pool, as a result, VMs can only be moved within the same pool.
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Yes (except with CPU pass-through)
Each cluster is configured with a minimal CPU type that all hosts in that cluster must support (you specify the CPU type in the RHV-M GUI when creating the cluster). Guests running on hosts within the cluster all run on this CPU type, ensuring that every guest can be live migrated to any host within the cluster. This cannot be changed after creation without significant disruption. All hosts in a cluster must run the same CPU type (Intel or AMD).
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Migration Compatibility
Details
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=BI27
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Yes (Heterogeneous Pools)
XenServer 7.0 introduced improved support for Heterogeneous Pools which enables live migration across different CPU types of the same vendor (requires AMD Extended Migration or Intel Flex Migration), details here: http://bit.ly/1ADu7Py.
This capability is maintained in XenServer 7.2
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Yes
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=BI28
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Yes
Enabled through XenCenter
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Yes (LB) - Built-in (CPU) and Scheduler for custom
Yes - a policy engine determines the specific host on which a virtual machine runs. The policy engine decides which server will host the next virtual machine based on whether load balancing criteria have been defined, and which policy is being used for that cluster. RHV-M will use live migration to move virtual machines around the cluster as required.
From RHV-M 3.3 a new scheduler handles virtual machine placement, allowing users to create new scheduling policies, and also write their own logic in Python and include it in a policy.
- The new scheduler serves scheduling requests for running or migrating virtual machines according to a policy.
- The scheduling policy also includes load balancing functionality.
- Scheduling is performed by applying hard constraints and soft constraints to get the optimal host for that request at a given point of time
- The infrastructure allowing users to extend the new scheduler, is based on a service called ovirt-scheduler-proxy. The services purpose is for RHV admins to extend the scheduling process with custom python filters, weight functions and load balancing modules.
- Every cluster has a scheduling policy. Prior to 3.3, there were only three main policies - None, Even distribution, and Power saving - and now administrators can create their own policies or use the built-in policies which were extended to support new capabilities such as shutting down servers for power saving policy.
The load balancing process runs once every minute for each cluster in a data center. You can disable automatic migration for individual vm or pin them to specific hosts.
You can choose to set the policy as either even distribution or power saving, but NOT both.
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Automated Live Migration
Details
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=BW29
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Yes Workload Balancing
Workload Balancing (WLB) which was reintroduced in 6.5 is now enhanced with XenServer 7.x
Workload Balancing 7.2 is supported on XenServer 7.5 and includes the following enhanced features:
- Host disk Read/Write I/O. Introduces host disk Read/Write I/O recommendations for workload optimization to complement the existing CPU, memory, and network load balancing capabilities
- CentOS 7.2. Workload Balancing VPX is based on 64-bit CentOS 7.2
Details here: http://bit.ly/2sK6siq
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Yes (Power Saving)
When Power saving is enabled in a cluster it distributes the load in a way that consolidates virtual machines on a subset of available hosts. This enables surplus hosts that are not in use to be powered down, saving power. You can set the threasholds in the RHV-M GUI to specify the Minimum Service Level a host is permitted to have.
You must also specify the time interval in minutes that a host is permitted to run below the minimum service level before remaining virtual machines are migrated to other hosts in the cluster - as long as the maximum service level set also permits this.
LIMITATIONS:
- You can enable either Load Balancing or Power Savings on a cluster but not both concurrently.
- Currently only CPU utilization is considered.
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=BI30
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Yes Workload Balancing
Power management is part of XenServer Workload Balancing (WLB). More inf: http://bit.ly/2mrYNVo
Background: Power Management introduced with 5.6 was able to automatically consolidate workloads on the lowest possible number of physical servers and power off unused hosts when their capacity is not needed. Hosts would be automatically powered back on when needed.
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Yes
NEW
Storage Live Migration is officially supported since RHV 3.2 that allowed migration of virtual machine disks to different storage devices while the virtual machine is running.
RHV 3.3 added the ability to do it to several disks of the same vm concurrently.
RHV 3.4 added the ability to do cold move between any two storage domains in the same DC (e.g., NFS and iSCSI) and Storage Live Migration between types of file domains (NFS/POSIX/Gluster) or block domains (FCP/iSCSI).
RHV 3.5 added the option to move an entire storage domain between DCs or even between setups.
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Storage Migration
Details
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=BI31
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Yes (Storage XenMotion)
Storage XenMotion in XenServer 7.x now works with the VM in any power state (stopped, paused or running)
XenServer 6.1 introduced the long awaited (live) Storage XenMotion capability
Storage XenMotion allows storage allocation changes while VMs are running or moved from one host to another including scenarios where a) VMs are NOT located on storage shared between the hosts (shared nothing live migration) and (b) hosts are not even in the same resource pool. This enables system administrators to:
- Live migration of a VM disk across shared storage targets within a resource pool (e.g. move between LUNs when one is at capacity);
- Live migration of a VM disk from one storage type to another storage type within a resource pool (e.g. perform storage array upgrades)
- Live migration of a VM disk to or from local storage on a XenServer host within a resource pool (reduce deployment costs by using local storage)
- Rebalance or move VMs between XenServer pools (for example moving a VM from a development environment to a production environment);
Starting with XenServer 6.1, administrators initiating XenMotion and Storage XenMotion operations can specify which management interface
transfers should occur over. Through the use of multiple management interfaces, the virtual disk transfer can occur with less impact on both core XenServer operations and VM network utilization.
Citrix supports up to 3 concurrent Storage XenMotion operations. The maximum number for (non-CDROM) VDIs per VM = six. Allowed Snapshots per VM undergoing Storage XenMotion = 1.
Technical details here: http://bit.ly/2lNgACU
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200 hosts/cluster
That is the supported maximum number of hosts per RHV DataCenter and also per cluster (the theoretical KVM limit is higher).
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HA/DR |
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=BI32
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16 hosts / resource pool
16 Hosts per Resource Pool.
Please see XenServer 7.2 Configuration Limits document http://bit.ly/2rcrjZx
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Yes (HA)
High availability is an integrated feature of RHV and allows for virtual machines to be restarted in case of a host failure.
HA has to be enabled on a virtual machine level. You can specify levels of priority for the vm (e.g. if resources are restrained only high priority vm are being restarted). Hosts that run highly available vm have to be configured for power management (to ensure accurate fencing in case of host failure).
Fencing Details: When a host becomes non-responsive it potentially retains the lock on the virtual disk images for virtual machines it is running. Attempting to start a virtual machine on a second host could cause data corruption. Fencing allows RHV-M to safely release the lock (using a fence agent that communicates with the power management card of the host) to confirm that a problem host has truly been rebooted.
RHV-M gives a non-responsive host a grace period of 30 seconds before any action is taken in order to allow the host to recover from any temporary errors.
Note: The RHV-M manager needs to be running for HA to function (unlike e.g. VMware HA or Hyper-V HA that do not rely on vCenter / VMM for the failover capability), also HA can not be enabled on the cluster level.
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Integrated HA (Restart vm)
Details
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=BI33
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Yes
XenServer High Availability protects the resource pool against host failures by restarting virtual machine. HA allows for configuration of restart priority and failover capacity. Configuration of HA is simple (effort similar to enabling VMware HA).
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Yes (HA, WatchDog)
RHV supports watchdog device for linux guests that restarts virtual machines in case of OS failure. High availability (in addition to monitoring physical hosts) also monitors all virtual machines, so if the virtual machines operating system crashes, a signal is sent to automatically restart the virtual machine, but this is with host change.
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Automatic VM Reset
Details
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=BI34
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No
There is no automated restart/reset of individual virtual machines e.g. to protect against OS failure
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No
There is no live lock-step mirroring support in RHV (aka Fault Tolerance in VMware) - although the theoretical capability is available in KVM. Red Hat tends to points out that the limitations around this technology (inability to take e.g. snap shots, perform a live storage migrate, limited guest vCPU support, high bandwidth/processing requirements) can make it inappropriate for enterprise implementation).
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VM Lockstep Protection
Details
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=BI35
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No
While XenServer can perform vm restarts in case of a host failure there is no integrated mechanism to provide zero downtime failover functionality.
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No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Satellite
There is no integrated application level monitoring or restart of services/vm in case of application failures.
You can e.g. use Symantec Cluster Server to mitigate this.
This is possible using Satellite 6.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/satellite
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Application/Service HA
Details
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=BW36
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No
There is no application monitoring/restart capability provided with XenServer
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No (yes with Symantec Storage Foundation - Fee-Based Add-On)
There is no natively provided Site Failover capability in RHV.
You can e.g. use Symantec Storage Foundation to mitigate this.
Since RHV 3.2 Red Hat supports a third-party plug-in framework, enabling third parties to integrate new features and actions directly into the RHV Manager user interface.
RHV-M 3.5 fully supports a Symantec Storage Foundation plug-in that provides disaster recovery in case of a failure.
Symantec Storage Foundation offers push button disaster recovery orchestration and features completely automated failover of a Red Hat Virtualization environment over to a disaster recovery site. This includes guests, guest network reconfiguration, and storage reconfiguration. It is designed to provide high availability and disaster recovery for databases, custom applications, and complete multi-tiered applications across physical and virtual environments over any distance.
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Replication / Site Failover
Details
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=AU37
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Integrated Disaster Recovery (no storage array control)
XenServer 6 introduced the new Integrated Site Recovery (maintained in 7.2), replacing the StorageLink Gateway Site Recovery used in previous versions. It utilizes the native remote data replication between physical storage arrays and automates the recovery and failback capabilities. The new approach removes the Windows VM requirement for the StorageLink Gateway components and it works now with any iSCSI or Hardware HBA storage repository (rather only the restricted storage options with StorageLink support). You can perform failover, failback and test failover. You can configure and operate it using the Disaster Recovery option in XenCenter. Please note however that Site Recovery does NOT interact with the Storage array, so you will have to e.g. manually break mirror relationships before failing over. You will need to ensure that the virtual disks as well as the pool meta data (containing all the configuration data required to recreate your vims and vApps) are correctly replicated to your secondary site.
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Yes
In RHV-H you can upgrade and reinstall a Red Hat Virtualization Hypervisor host from an ISO image centrally stored on the Red Hat Virtualization Manager. Upgrading and reinstalling means that you are stopping and restarting the host. This can be either done manually by entering maintenance mode for the individual hosts or using a automated process of scheduling and applying updates to the cluster by setting hosts to maintenance mode in round-robin fashion (like e.g. with VMware Update Manager).
In RHEL Hypervisor hosts Patching is done via the normal patching processes via RHN or Satellite. Reboot can either be done manually or scheduled in round-robin fashion.
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Management
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General |
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Central Management
Details
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=BI20
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Yes (XenCenter)
XenCenter is the central Windows-based multi-server management application (client) for XenServer hosts (including the open source version).
It is different to other management apps (e.g. SCVMM or vCenter) which typically have a management server/management client architecture where the management server holds centralized configuration information (typically in a 3rd party DB). Unlike these management consoles, XenCenter distributes management data across XenServer servers (hosts) in a resource pool to ensure there is no single point of management failure. If a management server (host) should fail, any other server in the pool can take over the management role. XenCenter is essentially only the client.
License administration is done using a separate web interface.
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Third-party plug-in framework
NEW
RHV focuses on managing the virtual infrastructure and can also manage RHSS.
Also, RHV-M 3.3 (and onwards) integrates with 3rd party applications including:
- BMC connector for RHV-M REST API to collect data for managing RHV boxes without having to install an agent.
- HP OneView for Red Hat Virtualization (OVRHV) UI plug-in that that allows you to seamlessly manage your HP ProLiant infrastructure from within RHV Manager and provides actionable, valuable insight on underlying HP hardware (HP Insight Control plug-in is also available).
- NetApp Virtual Console enables rapid cloning of NetApp virtual machines, and allows NFS storage discovery, provisioning and modification from within Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Symantec Storage Foundation that delivers storage Quality of Service (QoS) at the application level and maximizes your storage efficiency, availability and performance across operating systems. This includes Symantec Cluster Server provides automated disaster recovery
functionality to keep applications up and running. Cluster Server
enables application specific fail-over and significantly reduces
recovery time by eliminating the need to restart applications in case of
a failure.
- Tenable Network Securitys Nessus Audit for RHV-M which queries the RHV API and reports that information within a Nessus report.
- Ansible RHV module that allows you to create new instances, either from scratch or an image, in addition to deleting or stopping instances on the RHV platform.
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Virtual and Physical
Details
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=BI21
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Limited (plug-ins)
NEW
XenCenter focusses on managing the virtual infrastructure (XenServer host and the associated virtual machines).
XenServer 7.0 sees the introduction of an updated System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) integration pack. This enabling the management and monitoring of XenServer hosts and VMs and is available for no additional charge for XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition users (see http://bit.ly/2cXr14v for details)
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Yes (AD and IPA)
RHV offers the choice to either integrate with Microsoft Active Directory or use Red Hat IPA (based upon open technologies and standards) with support for LDAP and Kerberos, centrally managed identity, single sign-on services, high availability directory services or Red Hat Directory Services (RHDS).
RHV provides a range of pre-configured or default roles, from the Superuser or system administration of the platform, to an end user with permissions to access a single virtual machine only. Additional roles can be added and customized to suit the end user environment.
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RBAC / AD-Integration
Details
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=BI22
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Yes (hosts/XenCenter)
XenServer 5.6 introduced Role Based Access Control by allowing the mapping of a user (or a group of users) to defined roles (a named set of permissions), which in turn have the ability to perform certain operations. RBAC depends on Active Directory for authentication services. Specifically, XenServer keeps a list of authorized users based on Active Directory user and group accounts. As a result, you must join the pool to the domain and add Active Directory accounts before you can assign roles.
There are 6 default roles: Pool Admin, Pool Operator, VM Power Admin, VM Admin, VM Operator and Read Only - which can be listed and modified using the xe CLI.
Details here: http://bit.ly/2rHyEE6
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No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: CloudForms)
No - RHV exclusively manages Red Hat based environments.
Yes with Red Hat CloudForms - users can manage multiple hypervisor vendors. Details here: http://red.ht/I8JG3E (additional cost, not included in RHV subscription)
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Cross-Vendor Mgmt
Details
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=BI23
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No (native)
Yes (Vendor Add-On: CloudPlatform)
XenCenter only manages Citrix XenServer hosts.
Comments:
- Citrixs Desktop Virtualization product (XenDesktop, fee based add-on) supports multiple hypervisors (ESX, XenServer, Hyper-V)
- The Citrix XenServer Conversion Manager in 7.1 now enables batch import of Windows and Linux VMs created with VMware products into a XenServer pool to reduce costs of converting to a XenServer environment).
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Yes (RHV-M, Power User Portal)
Yes, RHV-M is Java based and is accessed through a web browser GUI, RESTful API with session support, Linux CLI, Python SDK, Java SDK.
RHV also offers a Power User Portal, a web-based access portal for user (Red Hat positions it as an entry-level Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) user portal to: Create, edit and remove virtual machines, Manage virtual disks and network interfaces, Assign user permissions to virtual machines, Create and use templates to rapidly deploy virtual machines, Monitor resource usage and high-severity events, Create and use snapshots to restore virtual machines to a previous state.
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Browser Based Mgmt
Details
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=BI24
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Not directly with XenCenter but possible with XenOrchestra (Open Source)
More info: http://bit.ly/2m7FVIG
Web Self Service (retired with the launch of XenServer 6.2) was a lightweight portal which allowed individuals to operate their own virtual machines without having administrator credentials to the XenServer host. For large infrastructures, OpenStack is a full orchestration product with far greater capability; for a lightweight alternative, xvpsource.org offers a free open source product.
Related Citrix products have browser based access, for example Storefront (next generation of Web Interface)
XenOrchestra is a web interface to visualize and administrate your XenServer (or XAPI enabled) hosts. No agent is requiered to make it work. It aims to be easy to use on any device supporting modern web technologies (HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript) such as your desktop computer or your smartphone. More info: http://bit.ly/2m7FVIG
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Yes (extended functionality with CloudForms - Fee-Based Add On)
RHV has comprehensive data warehouse with a stable API and reports package that provides a suite of pre-configured reports that enable you to monitor and analyse the system at data center, cluster and host levels.
It also provides dashboards in the UI to monitor the system in these different levels.
CloudForms - offers cloud and virtualization operations management advance capabilities:
Note that CloudForms is an additional Fee-Based offering not covered by the RHV subscription!
Features of the cloud and virtualization operations management capabilities:
- delivering IaaS with self-service
- service catalogs, automated provisioning and life cycle management
- monitoring and optimization of infrastructure resources and workloads
- metering, resource quotas, and chargeback
- proactive management, advanced decision support, and intelligent automation through predictive analytics
- provides visibility and reporting for governance, compliance, and management insight
- Enforces enterprise policies in real-time, ensuring cloud security, reliability, and availability
- IT process, task, and event automation.
Details here: www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/cloudforms
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Adv. Operation Management
Details
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=BI25
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No
There is no advanced operations management tool included with XenServer.
Additional Info:
XenServers Integration Suite Supplemental Pack allows inter-operation with Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM). SCOM enables monitoring of host performance when installed on a XenServer host.
Both of these tools can be integrated with your XenServer pool by installing the Integration Suite Supplemental Pack on each of your XenServer hosts.
For virtual desktop environments Citrix EdgeSight is a performance and availability management solution for XenDesktop, XenApp and endpoint systems. EdgeSight monitors applications, devices, sessions, license usage, and the network in real time, allowing users to quickly analyze, resolve, and proactively prevent problems.
EdgeSight is actually discontinued and replaced by Citrix Director http://bit.ly/2lKLpaE
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Yes (Live Migration - unlimited concurrent migrations, 3 by default)
Yes, live migration is fully supported with unlimited concurrent migrations (depending only on available resources on other hosts and network speed). By default limited to 3 concurrent outgoing migrations and each live migration event is limited to a maximum transfer speed of 32 MiBps.
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Updates and Backup |
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Hypervisor Upgrades
Details
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=BI38
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The XenCenter released with XenServer 7.0 allows updates to be applied to all versions of XenServer (commercial and free)
XenServer 7.1 introduced Live patching
With XenServer 7.0 patching and updating via the XenCenter management console (enabling automated GUI driven patch application and upgrades) is supported with the comercial and free XenServer versions.
XenServer 6 introduced the Rolling Pool Upgrade Wizard. The Wizard simplifies upgrades to XenServer 6.x by performing pre-checks with a step-by-step process that blocks unsupported upgrades. You can choose between automated or semi-automated, where automated can use a network based XenServer update repository (which you have to create) while semi-automated requires local install media. There are still manual steps required for both approaches and no scheduling functionality or online repository is integrated.
Indroduced in Xenserver 7.1, live patching enables customers to install some Linux kernel and Xen hypervisor hotfixes without having to reboot the hosts. Such hotfixes will consist of both a live patch, which will be applied to the memory of the host, as well as a hotfix that updates the files on disk. This reduces maintenance costs and downtime. When applying an update using XenCenter, the Install Update wizard checks whether the hosts need to be rebooted after the update is applied and displays the result on the Prechecks page. This enables customers to know the post-update tasks well in advance and schedule the application of hotfixes accordingly.
XenServer Live Patching is available for XenServer Enterprise Edition customers, or those who have access to XenServer through their XenApp/XenDesktop entitlement.
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Yes (Red Hat Network)
Updates to the virtual machines are typically performed as in the physical environment, providing only limited capabilities. For Red Hat virtual machines updates can be downloaded from the Red Hat Network. For Windows virtual machines you would apply the relevant MS update mechanisms. There is no specific integrated function in RHV-M to update virtual machines or templates.
Centralized patching mechanism for Red Hat machines is possible via Satellite.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/satellite
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=BI39
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Yes
XenServer 7.x Enterprise edition allows the automation of the delivery of Windows drivers via the Windows Update mechanism. The management agent is also automatically updated without user intervention. Both of these features should drastically reduce the administration effort in creation and ongoing maintenance of Windows VMs.
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Yes; Including RAM
RHV 3.1 introduced the new ability to take Live Snapshots of VMs and has an enhanced Snapshot management interface (maintained with 3.3).
New in RHV 3.3: Snapshots now include the state of a virtual machines memory as well as disk. In addition a new Create Snapshot button has been added to the action panel of the Virtual Machines tab, and as a context menu item when a virtual machine is selected.
New in RHV 3.4: The admin portal now allows to preview, commit and manage snapshots of individual disks within a VM.
New in RHV 3.5: Ability to Live Merge snapshots, allowing to remove intermediate snapshots while VM is running
Taking a snapshot in RHV involves the following possible actions:
- Creation (obviously)
- Previews (involves previewing a snapshot to determine whether or not to restore the system to this snapshot - when it is previewed, a new (COW) preview layer is copied from the snapshot being previewed. The guest interacts with the preview instead of the actual snapshot volume. The preview can then be committed to restore the
guest data to the state captured in the snapshot or alternatively the admin can select Undo to discard the preview layer of the viewed snapshot.
- Deletion (deleting a restoration point that is no longer required)
Notes for Live Snapshots:
- VM with a guest agent that supports quiescing can ensure filesystem consistency across live snapshots. Red Hat Network registered Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests can install the qemu-guest agent to enable quiescing before snapshots (VDSM uses libvirt to communicate with the agent to prepare for a snapshot).
- All live snapshots are attempted with quiescing enabled. If the snapshot command fails because there is no compatible guest agent present, the live snapshot is re-initiated without the use-quiescing flag.
Please note: When a virtual machine is reverted with quiesced filesystems, it boots cleanly with no filesystem check required.
Reverting the previous snapshot using an un-quiesced filesystem however requires a filesystem check on boot.
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=BI40
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