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As you've probably heard, today is the day the game changes for server virtualization, with Citrix offering XenServer for free and introducing advanced management for both XenServer and Hyper-V in the form of Citrix Essentials.
One question I've been asked has been: how did we determine what should be in the free virtualization platform?
Simple. We start with this proposition: XenServer = not just a free hypervisor, but the basic management capabilities 100% of or users require to make use of it in production, pre-production, and production support scenarios. Citrix Essentials = the advanced management capabilities that add value to advanced scenarios -- mainly business-critical production, but also high-end production support and pre-production scenarios.
(By "pre-production" I mean development, test and staging. By "production support" I mean technical support, demo, and training.)
We survey users of our products to find out why they bought the edition they bought, and what they'd like to see that is available in higher-end editions, among other things.
100% of Enterprise Edition users said they bought that version instead of the dearly departed Standard Edition because of XenMotion live migration, resource pools with shared storage, and centralized multi-server management. 100% of Standard Edition users said those were the features they would like to be able to add.
So we put them into the new free XenServer, because they are the baseline of management that 100% of our users are looking for.
As we go down the list, percentages fall off a bit of a cliff. The next most-requested feature is high availability, at about 30-40%. Despite others' best efforts at promotion, only a few companies implement high availability on 100% of their virtualized servers, and of those, far fewer protect all workloads. So we included high availability for XenServer in Citrix Essentials, Enterprise Edition -- so the 30-40% of customers who want availability protection for their 10% or 20% (or more) of their workloads they consider business-critical can pay for the ability only on the servers they want to protect -- and run the majority of their workloads on the new free XenServer.
Similarly, our advanced StorageLink technology -- currently offered for NetApp and Dell EqualLogic storage, but delivering deep integrated management for more storage in a near-future release. Basic storage integration with logical volume management and VHD support for everyone - advanced StorageLink technologies for Citrix Essentials users.
So: if every user needs it to go beyond free hypervisors to a free virtualization platform that every server needs -- it's in the new free XenServer. If it adds value to specific server roles, hardware, or other integrations -- it's in Citrix Essentials. It's that simple.
(Apologies to John Irving and Nicholas Meyer for the titles. The original versions come from books that are well worth a read.)
Comments (8)
Feb 25, 2009
Massimo RE FERRE' says:
Hi Roger. Isn't that like saying that since everyone needs Windows... Microso...Hi Roger.
Isn't that like saying that since everyone needs Windows... Microsoft should give it away for free?
I have expressed my concerns and doubts on virtualization.info as well but in a nutshell: since you are providing fee based extensions to both XenServer and Hyper-V through Essentials ..... what's the business reason behind continuing to develop/support XenServer when you could off-load the investment to MS that has deeper pockets and more interest in doing so?
Is there going to be gaps between XenServer+Essentials compared to Hyper-V+Essentials for which it would make sense (in the long run, starting with Hyper-V R2) to use XenServer?
I am just trying to understand.
Thanks.
Massimo.
Feb 25, 2009
Roger Klorese says:
I think your analogy is a bit flawed: as a dominant force, Microsoft has no impe...I think your analogy is a bit flawed: as a dominant force, Microsoft has no impetus to make a more powerful free OS experience... As we see a certain other party having no impetus to do so for virtualization. A better analogy is Linux: a key ingredient to Linux's success as compared to any of the earlier UNIX-on-x86 products is the fact that it is a free, supported-by-distros solution that is sufficiently feature-rich to do real work.
We have no plans for either Citrix Essentials to be more featureful than the other. However, we believe the open development process of Xen itself will make for a fuller, better experience.
Feb 25, 2009
Massimo RE FERRE' says:
Roger, thanks. I admit my MS parallel was an exaggeration. I see your poin...Roger,
thanks.
I admit my MS parallel was an exaggeration.
I see your point about Xen being extended/expanded by the community but XenSource/Citrix has always stressed about the difference between Xen(.org) and XenServer. What's the % in XenServer Enterprise that is Xen(.org) driven? If it's 90% than I am wondering why should anyone have paid $$$ to buy XenServer Ent when they could get 90% of the functionalities for free? If it's 30% ... who is going o pay for the remaining 70% now?
If you are going to make money on either XenServer and Hyper-V and if you are leaving the evolution of XenServer to the Xen(.org) community anyway .... what's your (business) interest in continuing to endorse Xen rather than jumping straight away on Hyper-V with Essentials? I guess the answer could boil down to the level of "penetration" (current and expected) of Xen into the commercial market..... if we agree this hasn't been so dramatic so far and that MS is going to be more pervasive than Xen by at least an order of magnitude than I still don't understand the business interest in backing it.
I guess you will challenge my latest speculation on the Xen penetration though...
Massimo.
Feb 25, 2009
Anonymous says:
I'm still trying to wrap my head around your polls suggesting that people want l...I'm still trying to wrap my head around your polls suggesting that people want live motion more than HA. What good is live motion if your server is dead?? Honestly I'd like to see how this question was asked in the poll. For example, if the question was something like "what's your favorite feature in enterprise edition?" I could understand how live motion might have more of a coolness factor than HA. But if you are looking to establish a baseline for reliability than HA is a must-have feature and live motion is a nice-to-have feature. So while I applaud your strategic move I think it will only benefit a small segment of the enterprise community.
Jason Baker
www.unofficialcto.com
Feb 25, 2009
Roger Klorese says:
It's simple, really. It's not that you can somehow run on a failed machine. It's...It's simple, really. It's not that you can somehow run on a failed machine. It's the fact that most modern hardware is much more robust than in the past, so scheduled maintenance accounts for much more downtime – in some cases 10:1. So adding motion eliminates far more downtime.
Feb 26, 2009
Anonymous says:
Hey, The fact that XenServer becomes free is good news for us, since we are cur...Hey,
The fact that XenServer becomes free is good news for us, since we are currently looking for a virtualization solution for a few of our servers.
There remains a question though. As of now, we can download and deploy XenServer on one machine, and upgrade once March 25 comes around. Will we then be able to use XenServer on two or more machines freely and legally?
Thanks,
Frans-Jan
Anonymous replies:
Feb 26, 2009
Volker Weiterer says:
This is exactly what I said last year in another post. I the standard version w...This is exactly what I said last year in another post.
I the standard version was completely a waste. Me and I suppose most people would had jumped directly to Enterprise. Since the only thing you got for the standard version was to be able to manage multiple servers. Thats it. If someone wanted to jump from free to paid they wanted more then just manage multiple servers. They wanted to be able to use shared pool and live motion, backups, etc, things that are easily deployed on the open source xen and comes as basic in most virtualized platforms. So standard was not even a middle jump version, its was like the free one but paid. I would not had expected Citrix to make Enterprise completely free but I agree the standard version was a joke.
Still i think its a good move, if they want to take market from the free xen open source. I remember most people that used Free Xen said XenServer was just a paid management interface, so you where just paying for it. Now there are no excuses anymore since its Free.
And I agree that people that will pay the edition will look at things that are available on the Enterprise like HA. Me included, HA is must be and im willing to pay, but EverRun did something wonderfull already so that means double pay, Citrix and Marathon. Still I would since the solution is brilliant. The paid edition should included features that only some business require, like HA, DA, etc. The free version should be a nice start, eventually people will need HA if they take their business serious or are using XEN for important tasks, if not, well free is a free as beer.
Feb 26, 2009
Volker Weiterer says:
I agree 100% with Roger. We did not had a simple downtime caused by harware in 2...I agree 100% with Roger. We did not had a simple downtime caused by harware in 2 years. Its maintaince, installing patches, upgrades, security scans, memory test, etc, which cost downtimes. So I think its wonderful to place the workload off to another box and do the maintaince as long as you want. Before that it was like a race against the clock. It the schedule was 20 minutes, you had to run to be able to do it all in less then 20 minutes, then when things are up again you just notice you forgot something. Too late, so you have to do it in the next week schedule. With Xenmotion you can take as much as you want without downtime.
The free move is to to make people jump from free Xen to Citrix. They will still earn allot of money with addons, support, etc.
Look at it as this way. Is it better to have 5.000 clients that pay 2000$ or 2 million clients that pay 150$. The answer is pretty clear. Xen is the widest deployed virtualization platform in the world. So they need to reach that. And they can only do it the free Xen cannot compete against XenServer, and that is free.
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