This seems like a small amount compared to switching the whole platform. Plus I thought they had no budget for the renewal? But now they can come up with $700 less?
Also, note that I said I would put in a budget request. If they can't afford the Starter Edition, I'll make do with the limitations of the free edition. I just lost that ability with 5nine.
This seems like a small amount compared to switching the whole platform. Plus I thought they had no budget for the renewal? But now they can come up with $700 less?
See my comment above about loss of trust. What about next year when it becomes $5000 / year and this year's license expires leaving zero functionality? I'm out.
@wirestyle22 Until 5nine decides to change the licensing model again. They completely lost my trust with the latest change - I assumed I would at least have the free version features if they increased the price yet again. They have moved full version pricing from <$100 to $350/core to $700 enterprise and killed the free version in the span of a few years.
If XO were to fork a closed source branch, we would at least have full source for the current version.
@DustinB3403 I started with the appliance, but have since installed the community version in my homelab. If I settle on XS / XO for the clubs, I'm going to make a budget request for the XO Starter Edition because I'd like to support the project.
No need for HA. The volunteer work is for a few Boys and Girls Club locations that shut down every night and most weekends, so maintenance windows are large. Even a mid-day failure can be worked around with the redundancy currently in-place.
I'm always trying to learn and will probably switch one of my two homelab servers to KVM just for the experience. My task for this week is to settle on a simple-to-use replacement for the clubs though, and I am really enjoying XO.
5nine made Hyper-V usable especially in non-AD environments. Without it, bringing a Hyper-V (core) server up and getting it configured was a bear. I do some powershell, but not enough. The rsat tools are OK, but Windows only and require more effort without AD. In a nutshell, without 5nine there is almost no local config or management ability on a Hyper-V server and most remote management requires expensive MS tools. Probably fine for your datacenter, but a PITA in a one or two server environment.
I mentioned in the welcome section that I was in the process of switching away from Hyper-V in my homelab and in my volunteer work. Hyper-V is out due to the loss of 5nine manager. esxi is out because of the expense and their inability to provide a fully functional Web client to replace the thick client they've killed off.
I was leaning toward XenServer because Xen Orchestra makes it very usable and they do have at least a small market share making it easier to find information and other users. The new, fully open source model is appealing because I know that even if Citrix totally screws it up, the code base won't die.
Replies to my 'hello' message are stongly suggesting KVM and it appears that there may be some gui options - not sure they're as good as XO though.
I run Debian (and Ubuntu), Centos and a smattering of Windows at home. My volunteer work is 90% Windows.
So, everybody really likes KVM. Is there a particular problem with XenServer? I know they had some real problems with IO bottlenecks in versions prior to 7.0, but they claim to have improved, and I get decent iSCSI performance to a FreeNAS server I'm using for testing.
Thanks for the information already provided and for any other comments or suggestions.
Thanks for the suggestions. I actually evaluated Proxmox along with XS and liked the fact that it was KVM based, but didn't like the confused business model (free/not free) and the steep licensing fees for paying customers.
I want a management GUI and didn't know about virt-manager until I saw a reference here. Maybe I need to re-evaluate.
I run Linux on my desktop and laptops, so I'm not opposed to doing some cli management, but like XO (already built from source using @scottalanmiller 's script).
So, should I back out XS now while it's early? Maybe I need to move that question out of the Welcome section?
@scottalanmiller @dafyre
Thanks for the welcome! I'm a retired SW dev who now volunteers at 3 Boys and Girls Club locations keeping their network and servers running. I stumbled onto this great site when searching for info about XenServer since I'm being pushed into a switch from Hyper-V by the loss of 5nine Manager. I actually purchased the 5nine license a year ago, but no budget for renewal this year. I was going to get by with the limited, free version... so much for that plan.
As a side note, I've benefitted a good deal over the years by some of the valuable information provided by @scottalanmiller in posts on other sites, so I'm looking forward to lurking here for additional education 