XenSource

Could open source be the key to users' virtualization efforts? With Egenera announcing an OEM deal with XenSource today, analysts are predicting that VMware will be coming under increasing pressure from open source, although there is some skepticism how broadly the technology can be deployed. (See Egenera OEMs XenSource.)

XenSource, which was recently identified as one of Byte & Switch Top 10 startups, has already racked up a number of partners, including AMD, Intel, Novell, Red Hat, and an OEM deal with Cassatt. Back in July, the startup also inked a deal with Microsoft to work on interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and Windows Longhorn.

"The 800-pound gorilla is VMware, but keep an eye on Xen," says StorageIO Group analyst Greg Schulz. "The market needs at least two alternatives," he adds, alluding to user concern about vendor lock-in. (See Users Search for Virtual Reality.)

These sentiments are echoed by Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "XenSource will be a much bigger player in 2007 -- the market will have a lot more choices than it does now," he says.

Under the terms of today's deal, Egenera will offer XenEnterprise, a commercial version of Xen's open-source hypervisor, within its PAN management software. This, according to Susan Davis, Egenera's vice president of marketing, will let users run multiple operating systems and applications on Egenera's blade technology.Tellingly, the XenSource deal surpasses Egenera's existing partnership with VMware. "We announced that we would be porting VMware's ESX server to our platform, but we have not announced that we will be doing the same level of integration that we will be doing with XenEnterprise," says Davis. Open source technology, she adds, enables the faster development of new features and functionality.

But not everyone is likely to go the open-source virtualization route. "Near-term it is going to take some tinkering -- that appeals to a certain audience, but the notion will turn other users off," explains Schulz.

One such user is Ray Brady, technical manager of the computing services division at Johnson & Johnson, and co-leader of the Philadelphia VMware Users Group. "Right now, my perception is that there is a significant gap" between VMware and XenSource, he told Byte and Switch. "VMware is more robust around clustering, resource scheduling, and consolidated backups."

According to Brady, open source virtualization is a risky proposition for large scale projects. "If you're doing a small development project, something like Xen is fine, but if you're doing a major data center and server consolidation, do you really want to bet your career on open source?"

IDC analyst Stephen Elliot agrees that open-source virtualization is still in its relative infancy. "There's a lot of people playing around with it, but, at the end of the day, production environments are a different story," he says.Undeterred, XenSource is already racking up additional OEM partners, according to John Bara, the startup's vice president of marketing. "We have got another half dozen in the pipeline that you will see by the end of the year and early Q1," he told Byte and Switch

Egenera's Davis says that XenSource's partnership with Microsoft helped clinch today's OEM deal: "Part of it was based on the strength of the relationship between XenSource and Microsoft -- customers want to consolidate Windows applications."

The end result of XenSource's work with Microsoft will be a set of software adapters, according to Bara. These, he adds, will enable Linux "guests" to run natively on top of Microsoft's Longhorn virtualization software, which is expected to be on the market sometime within the next 18 months.

Egenera's XenSource-enabled hypervisor will be available sometime in the first half of next year; the vendor has not yet released pricing.

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch