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General |
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Central Management
Details
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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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=BW20
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Third-party plug-in framework
NEW
RHV focuses on managing the virtual infrastructure and can also manage Red Hat Gluster Storage nodes.
Also RHV-M 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).
- Veritas 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 Veritas 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.
- (NEW) External Partner Network API - allows third party SDN providers to integrate with RHV.
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Virtual and Physical
Details
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Limited (plug-ins)
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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=BW21
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Yes
RHV offers the choice to integrate with many LDAP servers (Microsoft Active Directory, Red Hat Directory Server, Red Hat Enterprise IPA, OpenLDAP, iPlanet Directory Server and more) with support for simple or Kerberos based authentication, centrally managed identity, single sign-on services, high availability directory services.
RHV also provides complete solution for users/groups management using PostgreSQL database as a backend, which can be used in RHV the same way users/groups from LDAP.
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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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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=BW22
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No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: CloudForms)
No - RHV exclusively manages Red Hat based environments.
With Red Hat CloudForms users can manage multiple hypervisor vendors and reduce training costs to switch over to RHV. 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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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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=BW23
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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). It allows users 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
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Not directly with XenCenter but possible with XenOrchestra (Open Source)
More info: https://bit.ly/1gcmTYN
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: https://bit.ly/1gcmTYN
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Yes - Enhanced Web Client (with enhanced SSO), No BDE
No vSphere Big Data Extensions (BDE) supported with this edition!
vSphere 5 introduced a web based (Adobe Flex based) vSphere client interface which makes the access to vCenter platform-independent.
VMware positioned the web client as the core management interface since vSphere 5.1 - largely matching and in many cases superseding functionality of the legacy client (many new features will only be accessible through the web client). If you e.g. want to create one of the new large 62TB vmdks, you can only do that from the web client.
vSphere 5.5. maintains both the legacy and web client (confirming continued use of the legacy client) and has further enhanced the capabilities of the web client itself, as well as the Single Sign On that enables central authentication.
vSphere 5.5 web client enhancements:
- full client support for Mac OS X
- Drag and drop (e.g. drag and drop vm on to hosts)
- new filters and dynamically updated object lists based on those filters
- new recent-items navigation aid
The initial vCenter Single Sign On (SSO) has been improved in 5.5:
- Simplified deployment (single installation model for customers of all sizes)
- Enhanced Microsoft Active Directory integration - The addition of native Active Directory support enables cross-domain authentication with one- and two-way trusts common in multi-domain environments.
- Architecture - Built from the ground up, this architecture removes the requirement of a database and now delivers a multi-master authentication solution with built-in replication and support for multiple tenants.
vSphere Big Data Extensions (BDE) is a new addition in vSphere 5.5 for vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise Plus Editions. BDE is available as a plug-in for the vSphere Web Client.
BDE is a tool that enables administrators to deploy and manage Hadoop clusters on vSphere. It simplifies the provisioning of the infrastructure and software services required for multi-node Hadoop clusters.
It performs the following functions on the virtual Hadoop clusters it manages:
- Creates, deletes, starts, stops and resizes clusters
- Controls resource usage of Hadoop clusters
- Specifies physical server topology information
- Manages the Hadoop distributions available to BDE users
- Automatically scales clusters based on available resources and in response to other workloads on the vSphere cluster
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Yes (extended functionality with CloudForms - Fee-Based Add On)
RHV has comprehensive data warehouse with a stable API.
It provides a system monitoring dashboard in the UI to monitor the system in these different levels.
Red Hat Virtualization includes a deeper integration with Red Hat Satellite that allows the querying of errata information for the RHV-Manager’s operating system and provides a complete view into critical updates for the infrastructure lifecycle management. The release also includes the ability to modify the health status of Host, Storage Domain, or Virtual Machine objects based on external factors such as hardware failure or OS monitoring alerts. Users can quickly perform an impact analysis of their environment in the event an object beyond RHV’s normal visibility is at risk of failure.
CloudForms offers cloud and virtualization operations management advance capabilities.
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.
Note that CloudForms is an additional Fee-Based offering not covered by the RHV subscription.
Details here: www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/cloudforms
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Adv. Operation Management
Details
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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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=BW25
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Yes
NEW
Yes, live migration is fully supported with unlimited concurrent migrations (depending only on available resources on other hosts and network speed). RHV 4.0 adds abilities to use compression and auto-convergence to complete migration of heavier workloads faster.
(NEW) Advanced Live Migration Policies - virtualization admistrator can tune the migration policy, greatly reducing both the time live migration time as well as the actual cutover time.
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Updates and Backup |
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Hypervisor Upgrades
Details
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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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=BW38
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Yes (Red Hat Network)
Updates to the virtual machines are typically performed as in the physical environment. 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. RHV also shows errata information on updates for RHEL hosts and guests OS.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/satellite
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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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=BW39
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Yes; Including RAM
Live VM snapshot with or without memory and live removal of snapshots is supported.
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Yes
You can take regular snapshots, application consistent point-in-time snapshots (requires Microsoft VSS) and snapshots with memory of a running or suspended VM. All snapshot activities (take/delete/revert) can be done while VM is online.
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=BW40
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Yes
There is a API set for third-party tools that offer backup, restore, and replication.
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