Thanks for that Billy. And the OpenVZ reference led me to a good introduction to virtualization page that explains the difference between the various tools. <a href="http://wiki.openvz.org/Introduction_to_virtualization">http://wiki.openvz.org/Introduction_to_virtualization</a><br>
<br>Great!<br><br>Thanks,<br>Jim<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Billy Crook <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:billycrook@gmail.com">billycrook@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 21:28, Jim Herrmann <<a href="mailto:kclug@itdepends.com">kclug@itdepends.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> hell of a lot cheaper? Is there a better open source equivalent to Citrix?<br>
> I couldn't find it with just a few minutes on Google. NX seems like it<br>
<br>
</div>NX is most likely the best Free Software Citrix replacement. They<br>
sell some commercial components which probably handle "management" of<br>
hordes of users.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> Xen appears to be the open source equivalent to VMWare? Then there's KVM<br>
> too, right?<br>
><br>
> Just exploring possibilities here and trying to get my mind around the open<br>
> source virtualization world. Let me know what you think.<br>
<br>
</div>NX (and similar protocols/servers like xdmcp and vnc, and X11<br>
forwarding) have nothing to do with virtualization.<br>
<br>
VMWare is a company, not a program, so there is no Free Software<br>
equivalent thereto.<br>
<br>
The closest match to vmware server is probably kqemu because like<br>
vmware server, kqemu does not require hardware vm support in the CPU,<br>
and like vmware, it supports virtual guests which are not modified<br>
specifically to support being virtualized. AFAIK though kqemu is not<br>
as performant as vmware server.<br>
<br>
KVM is mostly considered to be the successor to Xen. KVM is the<br>
modern generic replacement for VMware server/esx in GNU+Linux systems.<br>
KVM does require hardware support in the CPU, but that's been<br>
standard now for about 5 years.<br>
<br>
You should however, consider OpenVZ if all your guests will be running<br>
the same Linux kernel, or kqemu if emulation of other architectures is<br>
useful, and even consider if you need to be running multiple instances<br>
of an OS, or if all you really need is multiple server instances,<br>
which is often significantly more efficient.<br>
</blockquote></div><br>