XenServer vs ESXi
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@coliver said:
It is your place to point out poor decision making and poor proposals of the MSP though. If this were happening to my company I would bring this up to my boss (and his boss) almost immediately. Especially if they are going to spend money on a product that has no intrinsic benefit over what you are currently using. Especially since you already have that solution running and proven in house.
I wouldn't go to my boss's boss over something like this. I don't always agree with my boss's decision, but he's my boss and paid the big bucks to make the big decisions. I'd hope my boss's boss would realise if he was an idiot, but if he doesn't, I don't see it as my place to point it out. I'd probably get a new job before I went over my boss's head about something.
I'll say I see your point but not that I necessarily agree with it. Sometimes your boss is coming at this from a different perspective and you may need a third set of eyes to determine what the best approach is. However if this is an ongoing constant thing where this MSP/VAR is proposing solutions that are inadequate or don't correctly match the environment there may be something else going on that you need to bring to someones attention.
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I always get advice from my staff and encourage them to tell me I'm an idiot and explain why. But at the end of the day the buck stops with me. I don't expect them to always agree with me, but I wouldn't be happy if they took that to my boss.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I always get advice from my staff and encourage them to tell me I'm an idiot and explain why. But at the end of the day the buck stops with me. I don't expect them to always agree with me, but I wouldn't be happy if they took that to my boss.
I'm of the opposite opinion, I prefer to not have management block upward concerns. I'm not a manager, but when I am I like companies that encourage people to take their concerns "up the stack." Not in a sneaky way but in a "we don't agree, let's take this up a layer and see what someone higher up thinks of our concerns."
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@Dashrender said:
I suffer the same problem! I do care.
Me too, and that makes me have to be careful where I work to make sure that they care too.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I think I've got you. So the I'm guessing the correct approach would be something like:
Demote the DC
Remove the DC from the domain
Do a fresh, clean install of Windows on the host
Install HyperV
Install a fresh, clean VM of Windows and setup as new DCYes, that's ideal. Since you need to do some maneuvering of the DC workload, doing the fresh install is pretty trivial (since you need to clean off that image anyway.) If it wasn't for that, might make sense to clean it and do the role install instead to save time. But that install should only be a few minutes except for the most extreme cases. Very vanilla.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I always get advice from my staff and encourage them to tell me I'm an idiot and explain why. But at the end of the day the buck stops with me. I don't expect them to always agree with me, but I wouldn't be happy if they took that to my boss.
The IT World, especially needs more bosses like you! 8-)
But sometimes bosses can be hard headed and need someone above them to do a head-check and make sure they're not being an idiot. I think that in most cases going over your direct boss should be reserved for times when you are being mistreated, and not just because you don't agree with your boss.
Generally, I'm not talking about going over the boss's helmet... More to the side... and being in a meeting with my boss, and his boss to talk about $project, so we have three heads are better than 2 type deal going on... Especially if there are no real teams involved.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'd probably get a new job before I went over my boss's head about something.
That feels extreme
I would sure hope that if I had employees willing to quite because they thought that middle management was on the take or just incompetent that they would at very least bring it to senior management if not the CEO or owner to say that they were so completely mortified by the state of the middle managers that they were willing to change jobs because of it. Maybe senior management doesn't care, maybe they really, really care. Would be nice to at least give them the chance to know how seriously you were taking it.If you don't, you are empowering a middle manager to hide more or less everything. They can use good staff to cover up their own incompetence. Or worse.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I always get advice from my staff and encourage them to tell me I'm an idiot and explain why. But at the end of the day the buck stops with me. I don't expect them to always agree with me, but I wouldn't be happy if they took that to my boss.
This system only works under a system where you are both ethical and reasonable. In any situation where you are not both, and the problem here could be one or the other or even both (the OP's scenario), this actually becomes a major problem.
At the very least, I hope that upper management would be aware that someone lower down was either blocking or at least presenting some pressure not to expose things to upper management. If the UM is okay with that, great. If not, they need to know, I would think.
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So with some verbiage I stole from Scott here's my list of primary reasons to not use ESXi. (Ignore the bullets it reads better on my screen)
Citrix XenServer Facts (Advantages really…)
• We already knows it. (It’s already in use for Day-to-Day )
• It is incredibly easy to use.
• It is very performant and this has been shown.
o VM’s used by Interactive over a 3-5 day span producing sellable work only a few days after EagleXen was built and VM’s configured.
• Zero cost for everything, totally zero licensing if Citrix support isn’t required.
o Licensing is per Socket CPU and is perpetual (if needed)
o No critical functionality is lost if support is cancelled
• Full Paravirtualization Options for Linux workloads.
• Updates are also free forever, regardless of a support contract.
o Updating is also extremely easy with Free Tools (already configured)
• No overhead cost for license management.
• No salesman providing guidance. Built to suite our needs
• VM Backups are completely free and schedulable.
o Already configured and performed weekly on hardware we had in house*
• Far greater feature set than any possible VMware option.
o HA is free
o XenMotion is free
o XenMotion Storage is also free*
o Many more free features
• No scale limitations (within reason)
• Local support available (in Rochester)*
o Unlimited free forums support
o Paid options available with licensing through Citrix
• Minimal technical debt incurred.
o Hardware cost for required needsESXi vSphere Essentials Facts
• Publicly and extremely common Hypervisor
o Easily supported between different MSP’s as it’s “common”
o Designed for Enterprise businesses not SMB’s
o Licensing is priced for Enterprises not SMB’s
• Licensing Cost
o Maintenance is required to receive system updates
o Essentials allows use of appropriate hardware only
o Without a Plus plan or higher VMWare offers no support*
Essentials is a bare metal hypervisor that simply allows us to use our chosen hardware
o MSP’s / In-House IT must troubleshoot all issues
• Internal IT must learn ESXi vSphere Essentials management
o Troubleshooting procedures
o Backup systems
o Restoration steps
o Updating steps
• Requires 3rd party VM Backup Solution (Veeam / Unitrends.. etc.) -
@DustinB3403 said:
ESXi vSphere Essentials Facts
• Publicly and extremely common HypervisorThey both are. That's not an advantage to either. Xen is what is used by Amazon, IBM, Rackspace, etc. The "big boys" for the most critical environments in the world. So from that perspective I'd call this a draw at best, in Xen's favour possibly.
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@DustinB3403 said:
o Easily supported between different MSP’s as it’s “common”
Any reason to believe that XenServer is not easy to get support for or is that just based on people who use ESXi claiming such? I've yet to hear of anyone who struggled to get support for XenServer.
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@DustinB3403 said:
o Designed for Enterprise businesses not SMB’s
Is this meant to be a pro or a con? I'm not sure how you are planning to present this.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Essentials is a bare metal hypervisor that simply allows us to use our chosen hardware
ESXi, like Xen, is a bare metal hypervisor. Essentials is a license, not a "thing."
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@DustinB3403 said:
o Unlimited free forums support
VMware has great community support too. Open source is often great for this and is very good in Xen's case, but VMware's community is huge and just as good.
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@DustinB3403 said:
ESXi vSphere Essentials Facts
• Publicly and extremely common Hypervisor@scottalanmiller said:
They both are. That's not an advantage to either. Xen is what is used by Amazon, IBM, Rackspace, etc. The "big boys" for the most critical environments in the world. So from that perspective I'd call this a draw at best, in Xen's favour possibly.
Just because a platform is used by Amazon, IBM, and Rackspace does not make it extremely common to IT.
No one "uses" Xen from those providers as they would "use" Xen installed locally.
XenServer is not an extremely common Hypervisor for the intents and purposes of an SMB (and many smaller enterprises).
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Easy support as in (Our current MSP already uses this, therefore we don't have to look for support should we need it)
The enterprises item is specifically a negative as much larger companies (from all information I could find) with the aforementioned ones you put up are paying for ESXi functionality and licensing.
ESXi Essentials licensing allows you to use more than the maximum hardware of 1 CPU. Otherwise it's practically worthless without licensing but to run a few VM that can fit on a single CPU.
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@DustinB3403 said:
o Easily supported between different MSP’s as it’s “common”
@scottalanmiller said:
Any reason to believe that XenServer is not easy to get support for or is that just based on people who use ESXi claiming such? I've yet to hear of anyone who struggled to get support for XenServer.
XenServer is not "easily supported between different MSP's" because it is NOT common as I previously documented. This mean it is harder to find an MSP to support it than it is to find an MSP to support VMWare. This does not mean ti is actually too hard to find a MSP to support it, but contrasting the two options this is most certainly a true statement.
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@DustinB3403 said:
ESXi vSphere Essentials Facts
o Licensing is priced for Enterprises not SMB’sBoth Xen and ESXi are designed with the enterprise in mind. I don't think this should really be included... it is basically saying that because Xen was designed for the SMB (which it wasn't) it is somehow a lesser product...
o Essentials allows use of appropriate hardware only
You should use supported hardware regardless I believe that XenServer has a HCL although it may be a bit out of date.
o Without a Plus plan or higher VMWare offers no support*
Essentials is a bare metal hypervisor that simply allows us to use our chosen hardwareXen is a bare metal hypervisor as well. XenServer is the distribution that is built on top of Xen. It is similar to VSphere for ESXi except already built into the operating system
o MSP’s / In-House IT must troubleshoot all issues
Same with XenServer?
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@JaredBusch said:
XenServer is not "easily supported between different MSP's" because it is NOT common as I previously documented. This mean it is harder to find an MSP to support it than it is to find an MSP to support VMWare. This does not mean ti is actually too hard to find a MSP to support it, but contrasting the two options this is most certainly a true statement.
There are two ways to look at it. Is it easier to find Vmware support? Yes. Is it so easy to get XenServer support that more support doesn't matter? Yes.
So as a relative use I think it is misleading. People have been doing this with Windows and Linux for years. Yes Windows shops are everywhere, but there is enough Linux support so that that's not a benefit of going to Windows. There is a threshold of "more support than you could consume as a customer" and both Linux and XenServer have that (at least in his market, maybe not in the wilderness somewhere.)
So yes, I agree. But it is important to not present it as a value.
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coliver
Licensing priced for an enterprise is comparable to buying a car, you may have $200,000 to drop, but the next guy just wants 4 wheels and a steering wheel.
Why should I (we) pay more for a solution just because others are? Especially when there are other options for free.
Yes.. yes I know they are both bare-metail hypervisors.
Lastly
If we went with either paid solution (we not the MSP) would be more than likely to have to reach either support department* for help, unless its of a critical function at which point the MSP would come in to help.
