Practical Technology

Now that Red Hat has shown its KVM cards in the great virtualization Texas Hold’em poker game, you can safely bet that Novell will soon be joining up with Microsoft and Citrix to try to shove VMware out of the game with Citrix’s free XenServer.

aw this virtualization shoot-out coming, and I’m not surprised to see Novell on the Microsoft and Citrix side. I’m a little puzzled that Red Hat, after its recent Microsoft partnership, has decided to use KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) to support Windows Server instead of the ready-to-go XenServer. After some thought, though, I think it’s both that Red Hat wants to steer clear of getting entangled with Microsoft and that the Raleigh, NC-based company wants to deliver its own independent top-to-bottom enterprise operating system stack.

So, exactly what will the XenServer trio end up doing? Well, first, of course, XenServer is an outstanding virtualization program and virtualization manager in its own right. With a price-tag of zero, Citrix hopes to be in an ideal position to blow out VMware’s market lead, while making money from its new management tools, Citrix Essentials.

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