Citrix Announces Agreement to Acquire XenSource

An anonymous reader writes "'Citrix has signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenSource a leader in enterprise-grade virtual infrastructure solutions. The acquisition moves Citrix into adjacent and fast growing datacenter and desktop virtualization markets.' For nearly $500 million, including about $100 million of unvested options, Citrix would be purchasing VMWare's closest competitor in the server virtualization market, with XenEnterprise v4 offering technology similar to VMWare's flagship product — and arguably overtake them as a combined solution, as VMWare offers little in the realm of application and desktop virtualization. Though subject to the customary closing conditions, both boards of directors have approved the transaction, and the deal is expected to close in Q4 of 2007."

kvm

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain why the future of all virtualization isn't simply kvm?

kvm seems like the only free, general-purpose, straight forward sort of implementation.

Xen needs modified guests AFAIK, so Windows and others are out. VMware isn't free and has various issues because of that. kvm seems the obvious choice, although I understand it's still a work in progress.

I hate Citrix

[celardore]

A couple of years ago at work, the IT dept. changed all our 486s for terminals and a Citrix network. It was awful. The server and connection to said server were, and still are, buggy. Whereas before, if the network went down, we could still at least type a letter or work on a spreadsheet. Now if the network goes down (which is at least weekly) we're stuck with nothing to do. In an accounts department it is vital that we have Excel, Word, etc to do the most basic of tasks. Worst move ever.

On the plus side, I got to keep my 486 which I installed Linux on and now it runs pretty nicely.

If they're smart, they'll be more open with Xen

[tji]

Xen has a lot of potential. The basic virtualization capabilities are on par with VMWare or anybody else.

What Xen _really_ blows at is usability / manageability. Setting up Xen is a pain in the ass, especially if you're on something other than 32bit x86. Figuring out obscure command line options and text config file syntax won't take them very far.

XenSource has a closed source, functionally limited GUI management tool in their free (as in beer) XenExpress. It makes managing Xen VMs more realistic, but the limitations are too severe (maximum of 4 VMs, missing some features).

If they want to compete with VMWare, and fend off KVM, they'll need a lot more traction. They only way they'll get it is to start building the user-base.

They need to open source their management tools, and make Xen as easy to use as VMWare. Maybe they need to hold back a few enterprise-grade features, so that they can still sell product at the high end. But, the common linux users, and low-end business users could still be enticed away from VMWare, to a more open solution, if it was available. If they continue their half-open approach, they even compete with themselves, in Xen on Ubuntu/Suse/RedHat.

If they don't open up, VMWare continues to dominate. Microsoft's upcoming hypervisor expands to the strong number 2 option, and other wildcards might crop up.. KVM with a good mgmnt too.

Re:Uhh...

[TheRealFixer]

VDI is an overall [i]concept[/i] that VMware has been building with various third-party application vendors (including Citrix - though I'd imagine that's going to change now). VMware sells a VDI edition of VI3 licensing, but it's not required to actually do VDI. At the core, all you need is a virtualization platform, and a remote client to interact with the desktops. You can even do it with VMware server for free if you want.

What do you mean by "graphics"? Are you talking about 3D games, or full motion video? If so, Citrix is not any better at this than VDI. If you're just talking about GUI applications, then you really don't know what you're talking about here. In typical VDI installs, you're virtualizing Windows XP workstations and interacting with them through RDP (which was originally licensed from Citrix, ironically). In Citrix, you're accessing a Windows server over their own ICA protocol. Since RDP 5.1, there's not a whole lot of difference between ICA and RDP. I believe ICA still holds a bit of an edge in bandwidth utilization and efficiency, but not much anymore. Over a LAN, it's not even noticeable. Visual performance-wise, there's not really a difference between VDI and Citrix.