Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
Saying one moved to Scale because it's KVM is like saying I moved to Nutanix because it's KVM!
Let me re-phrase the question: Was the move to Scale done because it was technically superior to XS or was it financially motivated?
It was financially motivated.
https://mangolassi.it/topic/6796/our-new-scale-cluster-arrives-tomorrow -
@Dashrender said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
If Scale offered their interface on Xen or KVM, would it matter what was under the hood, if the higher layer offered all the same features?
What about the lower layers? If ALL the same features existed, then they'd be identical. But that would never really be the case. Xen and KVM have different performance characteristics, stability, change rates. All other things being equal, we'd have to evaluate which makes more sense. But that will never happen so is mostly moot.
What's interesting is that for years, it's the ecosystems that made the most difference anyway. KVM lacked tools like XenServer and XenOrchestra, backup vendor support and so forth. But until now, no one said "you didn't actually use Xen because the tooling was a factor in the decision." We are suddenly treating the Scale interface as a "special case" when the factors haven't changed. Why this sudden injection of "it's not really KVM" or whatever and not the same for other platforms previously?
And this question is asked regularly in the cloud space where people running OpenStack have one interface but have to choose between Xen, KVM, Hyper-V and VMware based on nothing but the hypervisor functions.
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@scottalanmiller said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
KVM lacked tools like XenServer and XenOrchestra, backup vendor support and so forth
It hasn't. Virt-Manager has been around for a long time. XenServer doesn't have any backup vendor support. The only support is agent based, which is exactly what KVM has. You also have backup options through QEMU and libvirt.
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
Let me re-phrase the question: Was the move to Scale done because it was technically superior to XS or was it financially motivated?
It's really apples and oranges. One is part of a solution, one is the full solution. If you used any other system, would you ask the same questions?
We are trying to break down something large, which is an architectural change drive by a change in support and use paradigm, and applying it to the underlying hypervisor component.
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@JaredBusch If they got paid to make the move, more power to them.
Are you saying KVM is not "superior/better" (insert your fav adjective) to XS? -
@stacksofplates said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@Dashrender said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@Dashrender said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
We've primarily moved to KVM before we are running Scale HC3 which has it built in under the hood.
So you like KVM these days better than XS?
Odd conclusion to draw from that statement.
Not entirely. You moved to KVM before getting the Scale. If not because you like it better, then why?
No, we did not. We use KVM exclusively with Scale as an artefact of the Scale system. My wording must be odd above,
Well, the site is running on KVM also.
It is, it's true.
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@JaredBusch If they got paid to make the move, more power to them.
They were not paid, but they also did not pay for it.
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
Are you saying KVM is not "superior/better" (insert your fav adjective) to XS?
I don't think that either he nor I have said anything of the sort, in either direction, in the thread. No one has gotten to that point yet. We are still just trying to explain the meaning of the answer to the initial question and dealing with the incredible amount of ensuing confusion.
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
Are you saying KVM is not "superior/better" (insert your fav adjective) to XS?
@scottalanmiller is not saying that at all. Anyone else is just throwing poo like a monkey.
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If I was to back up.... I think there is something important being danced around and that is that while someone might prefer one hypervisor to another, largely they don't matter today (except for VMware's licensing aspect.) Hypervisors are commodity and they are all fine. The ecosystems around them are vastly more important. Talking about Xen vs. KVM is academic and nearly esoteric. What matters is what you want to do with it and what ecosystem is providing the tooling that you want to use.
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It is interesting for IT people to discuss the merits of Xen vs KVM, and I'm happy to do so, but at the end of the day, the quality or features of Xen vs. KVM are almost never relevant to a business decision around which we will use in a deployment outside of a lab environment.
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Let me try to "re-phrase" the question...
...btw @JaredBusch I like the "poo as monkey phrase..."A lot of folks on this site have praised/raved about the XS/XOA combo.
Is KVM worthy of being looked at?
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It is not unlike the Linux discussions. People often ask me "If you prefer CentOS, why did you deploy Ubuntu?" And the answer is so obvious that I'm always confused by the question - because the thing that I needed to run runs best or only on Ubuntu.
No matter how much I prefer CentOS, it doesn't mean I would chose it over the better business choice, the differences between CentOS and Ubuntu are simply too small.
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I think the original question would make more sense like this.
"If there was a vendor who offered a Hyperconverged solution like the HC3, but with XenServer, would you have picked that vendor over scale and why?"
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
A lot of folks on this site have praised/raved about the XS/XOA combo.
Is KVM worthy of being looked at?
That's why we praise it, because it's a combo (or bundle.) I've even proposed calling it XS/XO (btw, many of us have never used XOA, not sure how many people are promoting that) instead of XS to make it clear that it is the combination that makes it make sense.
KVM is a great product. But you can't compare XS to KVM let alone XS/XO to KVM. If you want to do that, you need to determine your entire KVM stack to compare against. For example, is Scale HC3 (KVM) worth comparing to XS/XO (Xen)? Yes. Those are far more comparable items.
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@DustinB3403 said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
I think the original question would make more sense like this.
"If there was a vendor who offered a Hyperconverged solution like the HC3, but with XenServer, would you have picked that vendor over scale and why?"
And it would still come back to... it's the solution that matters, not "how they arrived at the solution."
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This is, in the most literal sense, getting caught up in details "under the hood."
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@FATeknollogee said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
Let me try to "re-phrase" the question...
...btw @JaredBusch I like the "poo as monkey phrase..."A lot of folks on this site have praised/raved about the XS/XOA combo.
Is KVM worthy of being looked at?
There is a bit of fanboy cult thing to some of the the XS love around here.
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@JaredBusch said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
There is a bit of fanboy cult thing to some of the the XS love around here.
As @scottalanmiller said above, it's the combination of the tools to make a robust solution that create fanboys.
@scottalanmiller said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
For example, is Scale HC3 (KVM) worth comparing to XS/XO (Xen)? Yes. Those are far more comparable items.
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@JaredBusch said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@Dashrender said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
@scottalanmiller said in Xen and KVM - Who is using what and why?:
We've primarily moved to KVM before we are running Scale HC3 which has it built in under the hood.
So you like KVM these days better than XS?
Really a WTF moment to start off your entire involvement in the thread.
Scott said 'before' which lead to my question.
