Comments on: Open Source Virtualization Thoughts http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/04/05/open-source-virtualization-thoughts/ The weblog of an IT pro specializing in virtualization, storage, and servers Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:49:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: slowe http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/04/05/open-source-virtualization-thoughts/#comment-31665 slowe Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:43:43 +0000 http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/04/05/open-source-virtualization-thoughts/#comment-31665 Kent, Good points! I completely agree with you. Companies want to "open source" their products, but they are really only open sourcing the code for those components that don't hold a competitive advantage, and then using the "open source" to draw attention to themselves. Hence, VMware would only open source the VMkernel (the heart of ESX Server), just as Xen has only open sourced its hypervisor, and hold the rest of the code back. Is this a mistake? Hard to say. As a company, they exist to make money for their shareholders, so they have to keep that in mind and can't give away EVERYTHING. They don't make enough money on professional services (they push that off to their partners and resellers) to give the software away for free, so they can't adopt that model. It seems to me that IF VMware were to open source the VMkernel (or all of ESX Server), the only way to keep a sustainable business model is to hold back stuff like VMotion, DRS, HA, and the like. As I stated above, I think that (so far) VMware has done a fairly decent job of balancing open source code, proprietary technologies, and published standards. For right now at least, I don't see any real business benefit to open sourcing the VMkernel or ESX Server. Kent,

Good points!

I completely agree with you. Companies want to “open source” their products, but they are really only open sourcing the code for those components that don’t hold a competitive advantage, and then using the “open source” to draw attention to themselves. Hence, VMware would only open source the VMkernel (the heart of ESX Server), just as Xen has only open sourced its hypervisor, and hold the rest of the code back. Is this a mistake? Hard to say. As a company, they exist to make money for their shareholders, so they have to keep that in mind and can’t give away EVERYTHING. They don’t make enough money on professional services (they push that off to their partners and resellers) to give the software away for free, so they can’t adopt that model. It seems to me that IF VMware were to open source the VMkernel (or all of ESX Server), the only way to keep a sustainable business model is to hold back stuff like VMotion, DRS, HA, and the like.

As I stated above, I think that (so far) VMware has done a fairly decent job of balancing open source code, proprietary technologies, and published standards. For right now at least, I don’t see any real business benefit to open sourcing the VMkernel or ESX Server.

]]> By: Kent A http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/04/05/open-source-virtualization-thoughts/#comment-31655 Kent A Fri, 06 Apr 2007 03:59:28 +0000 http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/04/05/open-source-virtualization-thoughts/#comment-31655 I see some of this push to virtualize the hypervisor as much to do about nothing. Look at the major open source hypervisor, Xen. The owner of the code has not even released the paravirtualized drivers that make networking even palatable as evidenced by even their comments in their performance benchmark whitepaper. What good is an open source hypervisor if the performance is so poor as to be unusable for production workloads without further modification. VirtualIron also is not completely open source with its ability to Live Migrate. It would be similar if VMware released just kernel and then conversely held back the ability not just for VMotion or DRS but to create virtual switches or the memory balloon driver. VMware already does open source some of their code as necessitated by GPL licenses and some that is not, such as VMI. The SDK already released enables users to create sophisicated replacements to VirtualCenter and VCB. The real question should be why should VMware be held to a higher standard than say Xen, VirtualIron, or SWsoft? I see some of this push to virtualize the hypervisor as much to do about nothing. Look at the major open source hypervisor, Xen. The owner of the code has not even released the paravirtualized drivers that make networking even palatable as evidenced by even their comments in their performance benchmark whitepaper. What good is an open source hypervisor if the performance is so poor as to be unusable for production workloads without further modification. VirtualIron also is not completely open source with its ability to Live Migrate. It would be similar if VMware released just kernel and then conversely held back the ability not just for VMotion or DRS but to create virtual switches or the memory balloon driver.

VMware already does open source some of their code as necessitated by GPL licenses and some that is not, such as VMI. The SDK already released enables users to create sophisicated replacements to VirtualCenter and VCB. The real question should be why should VMware be held to a higher standard than say Xen, VirtualIron, or SWsoft?

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