Addon
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custom |
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Unique Feature 1
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Add-On not supported by this product
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Add-On not supported by this product
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Add-On not supported by this product
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General
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- Fully Supported
- Limitation
- Not Supported
- Information Only
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Pros
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Cons
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Content |
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Content created by Virtualizationmatrix; (Contributors: Jon Benedict, Yaniv Dary, Raissa Tona, Larry W. Bailey)
Content created by Virtualizationmatrix
Thanks to Jon Benedict, Yaniv Dary, Sean Cohen, and Larry W. Bailey for content contribution and review.
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The VIRTUALIST and Enzo Raso (Citrix)
Content created by THE VIRTUALIST: http://www.thevirtualist.org/ with help from Enzo Rasso (Citrix)
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Assessment |
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RHV 4.1 - Click Here For Details
Red Hat Virtualization is Red Hats flagship server and workstation virtualization platform. It consists of the smart management product RHV-M (Red Hat Virtualization Manager) that can manage both RHV-H (Red Hat Virtualization Host), a purpose built image for easy management, and RHEL-H (Red Hat Enterprise Linux Hypervisor). Both hosts types contain KVM based virtualization capabilities. All listed features apply to both RHV-H and RHEL host - unless stated otherwise.
RHV is a complete virtualization management solution for virtualized servers and workstations that aims to provide performance advantages, competitive pricing and a trusted, stable environment. It is built to work best with Linux mission critical and high proformance workloads on x86 and Power architectures. It can also run Windows guests and is Microsoft SVVP (Server Virtualization Validation Program) certified. RHV is co-engineered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and inherits its characteristics of reliability, performance, security and scalability
RHV is derived from oVirt, the community open virtualization management project and is a strategic virtualization alternative to proprietary virtualization platforms. Red Hat Virtualization is also integrated with OpenStack for a smooth transition into Private and Public clouds.
With Red Hat Virtualization, you can:
* Take advantage of existing people skills and investment.
* Decrease TCO and accelerate ROI.
* Automate time-consuming and complicated manual tasks.
* Standardize storage (tech-preview), infrastructure, and networking services on OpenStack .
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XenServer 7.2 Enterprise Edition includes features that are not available in the Standard Edition, focused on enterprise customers needs, as well as Citrix support:
- Live patching
- Conversion manager for vSphere
- Dynamic Workload Balancing & Audit Reporting (WLB)
- Accelerate Citrix Provisioning Services performance
For Standard vs Enterprise edition, please check: http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
NEW
Citrix released XenServer version 7.2 in February 2017, this major release added for:
- Scheduled Snapshots. This feature enables customers to configure their environment to automatically create VM snapshots at specified intervals. This helps guard against ransomware, unforeseen data corruption issues, system crashes, or user errors, by providing a last-known working version of the VM.
- Enablement for XenDesktop Tablet Mode. Support for GPIO mode laptop and slate indicator driver, which when used in conjunction with XenDesktop 7.14, allows customers to experience tablet mode. XenServer and XenDesktop are the only desktop virtualisation solution to enable Windows 10 Continuum experience in a virtualised environment.
- XenCenter Proxy Authentication. XenCenter already allows the configuration of a proxy server to access the Internet. XenCenter 7.2 adds the ability to specify a username and password to connect to the proxy server, if the proxy server requires authentication.
Citrix entered the Hypervisor market with the acquisition of XenSource - the main supporter of the open source Xen project - in Oct 2007. The Xen project continues to exist, see https://www.xenproject.org/
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RHV 4.1 released in April 2017
NEW
RHV 4.1 is the 11th major release of Red Hats enterprise virtualization management software based on the KVM hypervisor.
In 2008 Red Hat acquired Qumranet, a technology startup that began the development of KVM. Red Hats first release of RHV was v2.1 in 2009. The v3.0 release in 2012 was a major milestone in porting the RHV-M manager from .NET to Java (and fully open-sourcing). RHV 3.1 removed all requirements of any Windows-based infrastructure, but still support Microsoft Active Directory and guests. Since RHV 3.2, Red Hat has provided many feature enhancements, improvements in scale, enhanced reliability and integration points to other Red Hat offerings based on the cutting edge KVM developement.
Previous releases:
- RHV 4.0 - Aug 2016
- RHEV 3.6 - March 2016
- RHEV 3.5 - Feb 2015
- RHEV 3.4 - June 2014
- RHEV 3.3 - January 2014
- RHEV 3.2 - June 2013
- RHEV 3.1 - Dec 2012
- RHEV 3.0: Jan 2012
- RHEV 2.2: Aug 2010
- RHEV 2.1 - Nov 2009
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XenServer 7.2 Release date May 2017
Xens first public release was in 2003, becoming part of Novell SUSE 10 OS in 2005 (later also Red hat). In Oct 2007 Citrix acquired XenSource (the main maintainer of the Xen code) and released XenServer under the Citrix brand.
Version 5.6 was released in May 2010, 5.6SP2 in May 2011, 6.0 in Sep 2011, 6.1 in Sep 2012, 6.2 in June 2013, 6.5 in January 2015, version 7 in May 2016 and 7.1 in February 2017
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Pricing |
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Included in hypervisor subscription
The RHV-M management component is included in the RHV subscription model (i.e. single part number for both, hypervisor and management).
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Open Source (free) or two commercial editions, pricing for Standard Edition is: Annual: $695 / socket, Perpetual: $1525/ socket - both including 1 year of software maintenance.
For commercial editions (Standard or Enterprise)XenServer is licensed on a per-CPU socket basis. For a pool to be considered licensed, all XenServer hosts in the pool must be licensed. XenServer only counts populated CPU sockets.
All customers who have purchased any edition of XenApp or XenDesktop have an entitlement to use all XenServer 7.2 features
In XenServer 7.x, customers should allocate product licenses using a Citrix License Server, as with other Citrix components. From version 6.2.0 onwards, XenServer (other than via the XenDesktop licenses) is licensed on a per-socket basis. Allocation of licenses is managed centrally and enforced by a standalone Citrix License Server, physical or virtual, in the environment. After applying a per-socket license, XenServer will display as Citrix XenServer Per-Socket Edition.
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Yes, combined RHEL and RHV offering 26% savings
Red Hat offers Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization (a combined solution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization) that offers a 26% savings over buying each product separately. Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization is the ideal platform for virtualized Linux workloads. Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization enables organization to virtualize mission-critical applications while delivering unparalleled performance, scalability, and security features. See details here: http://red.ht/1Tzr9pq
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Free (XenCenter)
Citrix XenCenter is the Windows-native graphical user interface for managing Citrix XenServer. It is included for no additional cost (open source as well as commercial version).
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Bundle/Kit Pricing
Details
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RHV: No included (RHEL: 4/unlimited)
Customers can buy the Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization which includes both RHV and unlimited RHEL guests for use as the guest operating System. http://red.ht/1Tzr9pq
RHV stand alone subscriptions include the RHV-H hypervisor and RHV-Manager, they do not include the rights to use RHEL as the guest operating system in the virtual machines being managed by RHV.
The customer would purchase this separately by buying a RHEL for Virtual Datacenter subscription.
Please note that RHEL hosts generate additional subscription costs that are not included with RHV (see https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/server/ for details). RHEL hosts are priced by socket pairs (can be stacked to the number of sockets in the server) and subscription levels (Standard/Premium) and are allowed to run up to 4 virtual guests in case they are not managed by RHV.
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Yes
XenServer is included for free with all XenApp and XenDesktop editions media kit
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Guest OS Licensing
Details
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Yes (RHV-M)
NEW
RHV-M - the Red Hat Virtualization Manager with a web-driven UI is central management console. It is based entirely on Open Source Software, with no dependencies on proprietary server infrastructures or web browsers. A centralized management system with a search-driven graphical interface supporting up to hundreds of hosts and thousands of virtual machines. The fully featured enterprise management system enables customers to centrally manage their entire virtual environments, which include virtual datacenters, clusters, hosts, guest virtual servers and technical workstations, networking, and storage.
RHV-M is also localized in various languages including: French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and English.
(NEW) The Cockpit Web UI is also available for use as a hypervisor manager, providing deeper insight into resource usage. It also provides console access as well as a means to interact with hypervisor services for troubleshooting purposes.
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No
There are no guest OS licensing included with the XenServer license. Guest OSs need to be therefore licensed separately.
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VM Mobility and HA
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VM Mobility |
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Live Migration of VMs
Details
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Yes
Each cluster is configured with a minimal CPU type that all hosts in that cluster must support (you specify the CPU type in the RHV-M GUI when creating the cluster). Guests running on hosts within the cluster all run on this CPU type, ensuring that every guest can be live migrated to any host within the cluster. This cannot be changed after creation without significant disruption. All hosts in a cluster must run the same CPU type (Intel or AMD).
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Yes XenMotion
XenMotion is available in all versions of XenServer and allows you to move a running VM from one host to another host, when the VMs disks are located on storage shared by both hosts. This allows for pool maintenance features such as Workload Balancing (WLB), High Availability (HA), and Rolling Pool Upgrade (RPU) to automatically move VMs. These features allow for workload leveling, infrastructure resilience, and the upgrade of server software, without any VM downtime. Storage can only be shared between hosts in the same pool, as a result, VMs can only be moved within the same pool.
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Migration Compatibility
Details
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Yes
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Yes (Heterogeneous Pools)
XenServer 7.0 introduced improved support for Heterogeneous Pools which enables live migration across different CPU types of the same vendor (requires AMD Extended Migration or Intel Flex Migration), details here: http://bit.ly/1ADu7Py.
This capability is maintained in XenServer 7.2
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Yes - Built-in (CPU\Memory) and plugable scheduler
A policy engine determines the specific host on which a virtual machine runs. The policy engine decides which server will host the next virtual machine based on whether load balancing criteria have been defined, and which policy is being used for that cluster. RHV-M will use live migration to move virtual machines around the cluster as required.
A scheduler handles virtual machine placement, allowing users to create new scheduling policies, and also write their own logic in Python and include it in a policy.
- The scheduler serves scheduling requests for running or migrating virtual machines according to a policy.
- The scheduling policy also includes load balancing functionality.
- Scheduling is performed by applying hard constraints and soft constraints to get the optimal host for that request at a given point of time
- The infrastructure allowing users to extend the new scheduler, is based on a service called ovirt-scheduler-proxy. The services purpose is for RHV admins to extend the scheduling process with custom python filters, weight functions and load balancing modules.
- Every cluster has a scheduling policy. Administrators can create their own policies or use the built-in policies which were extended to support new capabilities such as shutting down servers for power saving policy.
The load balancing process runs once every minute for each cluster in a data center. You can disable automatic migration for individual vm or pin them to specific hosts.
You can choose to set the policy as either even distribution or power saving, but NOT both.
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Yes
Enabled through XenCenter
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Automated Live Migration
Details
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Yes
When Power saving is enabled in a cluster it distributes the load in a way that consolidates virtual machines on a subset of available hosts. This enables surplus hosts that are not in use to be powered down, saving power. You can set the threasholds in the RHV-M GUI to specify the Minimum Service Level a host is permitted to have.
You must also specify the time interval in minutes that a host is permitted to run below the minimum service level before remaining virtual machines are migrated to other hosts in the cluster - as long as the maximum service level set also permits this.
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Yes Workload Balancing
Workload Balancing (WLB) which was reintroduced in 6.5 is now enhanced with XenServer 7.x
Workload Balancing 7.2 is supported on XenServer 7.5 and includes the following enhanced features:
- Host disk Read/Write I/O. Introduces host disk Read/Write I/O recommendations for workload optimization to complement the existing CPU, memory, and network load balancing capabilities
- CentOS 7.2. Workload Balancing VPX is based on 64-bit CentOS 7.2
Details here: http://bit.ly/2sK6siq
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Yes
Storage Live Migration is supported and allows migration of virtual machine disks to different storage devices while the virtual machine is running. There is also an option to move an entire storage domain between datacenters or even between setups.
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Yes Workload Balancing
Power management is part of XenServer Workload Balancing (WLB). More inf: http://bit.ly/2mrYNVo
Background: Power Management introduced with 5.6 was able to automatically consolidate workloads on the lowest possible number of physical servers and power off unused hosts when their capacity is not needed. Hosts would be automatically powered back on when needed.
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Storage Migration
Details
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200 hosts/cluster
That is the supported maximum number of hosts per RHV datacenter and also per cluster (the theoretical KVM limit is higher).
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Yes (Storage XenMotion)
Storage XenMotion in XenServer 7.x now works with the VM in any power state (stopped, paused or running)
XenServer 6.1 introduced the long awaited (live) Storage XenMotion capability
Storage XenMotion allows storage allocation changes while VMs are running or moved from one host to another including scenarios where a) VMs are NOT located on storage shared between the hosts (shared nothing live migration) and (b) hosts are not even in the same resource pool. This enables system administrators to:
- Live migration of a VM disk across shared storage targets within a resource pool (e.g. move between LUNs when one is at capacity);
- Live migration of a VM disk from one storage type to another storage type within a resource pool (e.g. perform storage array upgrades)
- Live migration of a VM disk to or from local storage on a XenServer host within a resource pool (reduce deployment costs by using local storage)
- Rebalance or move VMs between XenServer pools (for example moving a VM from a development environment to a production environment);
Starting with XenServer 6.1, administrators initiating XenMotion and Storage XenMotion operations can specify which management interface
transfers should occur over. Through the use of multiple management interfaces, the virtual disk transfer can occur with less impact on both core XenServer operations and VM network utilization.
Citrix supports up to 3 concurrent Storage XenMotion operations. The maximum number for (non-CDROM) VDIs per VM = six. Allowed Snapshots per VM undergoing Storage XenMotion = 1.
Technical details here: http://bit.ly/2lNgACU
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HA/DR |
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Yes
High availability is an integrated feature of RHV and allows for virtual machines to be restarted in case of a host failure.
HA has to be enabled on a virtual machine level. You can specify levels of priority for the vm (e.g. if resources are restrained only high priority vm are being restarted). Hosts that run highly available vm have to be configured for power management (to ensure accurate fencing in case of host failure).
Fencing Details: When a host becomes non-responsive it potentially retains the lock on the virtual disk images for virtual machines it is running. Attempting to start a virtual machine on a second host could cause data corruption. Fencing allows RHV-M to safely release the lock (using a fence agent that communicates with the power management card of the host) to confirm that a problem host has truly been rebooted.
RHV-M gives a non-responsive host a grace period of 30 seconds before any action is taken in order to allow the host to recover from any temporary errors.
Note: The RHV-M manager needs to be running for HA to function (unlike e.g. VMware HA or Hyper-V HA that do not rely on vCenter / VMM for the failover capability), also HA can not be enabled on the cluster level.
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16 hosts / resource pool
16 Hosts per Resource Pool.
Please see XenServer 7.2 Configuration Limits document http://bit.ly/2rcrjZx
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Integrated HA (Restart vm)
Details
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Yes (HA, WatchDog)
RHV supports watchdog device for linux guests that restarts virtual machines in case of OS failure. High availability (in addition to monitoring physical hosts) also monitors all virtual machines, so if the virtual machines operating system crashes, a signal is sent to automatically restart the virtual machine, but this is with host change.
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Yes
XenServer High Availability protects the resource pool against host failures by restarting virtual machine. HA allows for configuration of restart priority and failover capacity. Configuration of HA is simple (effort similar to enabling VMware HA).
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Automatic VM Reset
Details
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No
There is no live lock-step mirroring support in RHV - although the theoretical capability is available in KVM. Red Hat tends to points out that the limitations around this technology (inability to take e.g. snap shots, perform a live storage migrate, limited guest vCPU support, high bandwidth/processing requirements) can make it inappropriate for enterprise implementation.
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No
There is no automated restart/reset of individual virtual machines e.g. to protect against OS failure
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VM Lockstep Protection
Details
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No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Red Hat Cluster Suite)
There is no integrated application level monitoring or restart of services/vm in case of application failures. RHV supports watchdogs and HA.
This is possible using Red Hat Cluster Suite. This is a Fee-based Add-On.
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No
While XenServer can perform vm restarts in case of a host failure there is no integrated mechanism to provide zero downtime failover functionality.
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Application/Service HA
Details
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No - See Details
There is no natively provided Site Failover capability in RHV. Red Hat does provide the tools needed to provide a disaster recovery solution.
This is possible via 3rd party partners integration (such as Veritas, Acronis, SEP, Commvault and vProtect via IBM Spectrum Protect).
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No
There is no application monitoring/restart capability provided with XenServer
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Replication / Site Failover
Details
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Yes
You are able to update both RHV-H or RHEL-H via the management UI. The management sends events on updates pending on the hosts and the manager machine.
Updates can be also managed via Red Hat Satellite.http://red.ht/1Oxs20B
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Integrated Disaster Recovery (no storage array control)
XenServer 6 introduced the new Integrated Site Recovery (maintained in 7.2), replacing the StorageLink Gateway Site Recovery used in previous versions. It utilizes the native remote data replication between physical storage arrays and automates the recovery and failback capabilities. The new approach removes the Windows VM requirement for the StorageLink Gateway components and it works now with any iSCSI or Hardware HBA storage repository (rather only the restricted storage options with StorageLink support). You can perform failover, failback and test failover. You can configure and operate it using the Disaster Recovery option in XenCenter. Please note however that Site Recovery does NOT interact with the Storage array, so you will have to e.g. manually break mirror relationships before failing over. You will need to ensure that the virtual disks as well as the pool meta data (containing all the configuration data required to recreate your vims and vApps) are correctly replicated to your secondary site.
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Management
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General |
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Central Management
Details
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Third-party plug-in framework
NEW
RHV focuses on managing the virtual infrastructure and can also manage Red Hat Gluster Storage nodes.
Also RHV-M integrates with 3rd party applications including:
- BMC connector for RHV-M REST API to collect data for managing RHV boxes without having to install an agent.
- HP OneView for Red Hat Virtualization (OVRHV) UI plug-in that that allows you to seamlessly manage your HP ProLiant infrastructure from within RHV Manager and provides actionable, valuable insight on underlying HP hardware (HP Insight Control plug-in is also available).
- Veritas Storage Foundation that delivers storage Quality of Service (QoS) at the application level and maximizes your storage efficiency, availability and performance across operating systems. This includes Veritas Cluster Server provides automated disaster recovery functionality to keep applications up and running. Cluster Server enables application specific fail-over and significantly reduces recovery time by eliminating the need to restart applications in case of a failure.
- Tenable Network Securitys Nessus Audit for RHV-M which queries the RHV API and reports that information within a Nessus report.
- Ansible RHV module that allows you to create new instances, either from scratch or an image, in addition to deleting or stopping instances on the RHV platform.
- (NEW) External Partner Network API - allows third party SDN providers to integrate with RHV.
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Yes (XenCenter)
XenCenter is the central Windows-based multi-server management application (client) for XenServer hosts (including the open source version).
It is different to other management apps (e.g. SCVMM or vCenter) which typically have a management server/management client architecture where the management server holds centralized configuration information (typically in a 3rd party DB). Unlike these management consoles, XenCenter distributes management data across XenServer servers (hosts) in a resource pool to ensure there is no single point of management failure. If a management server (host) should fail, any other server in the pool can take over the management role. XenCenter is essentially only the client.
License administration is done using a separate web interface.
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Virtual and Physical
Details
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Yes
RHV offers the choice to integrate with many LDAP servers (Microsoft Active Directory, Red Hat Directory Server, Red Hat Enterprise IPA, OpenLDAP, iPlanet Directory Server and more) with support for simple or Kerberos based authentication, centrally managed identity, single sign-on services, high availability directory services.
RHV also provides complete solution for users/groups management using PostgreSQL database as a backend, which can be used in RHV the same way users/groups from LDAP.
RHV provides a range of pre-configured or default roles, from the Superuser or system administration of the platform, to an end user with permissions to access a single virtual machine only. Additional roles can be added and customized to suit the end user environment.
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Limited (plug-ins)
NEW
XenCenter focusses on managing the virtual infrastructure (XenServer host and the associated virtual machines).
XenServer 7.0 sees the introduction of an updated System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) integration pack. This enabling the management and monitoring of XenServer hosts and VMs and is available for no additional charge for XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition users (see http://bit.ly/2cXr14v for details)
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RBAC / AD-Integration
Details
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No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: CloudForms)
No - RHV exclusively manages Red Hat based environments.
With Red Hat CloudForms users can manage multiple hypervisor vendors and reduce training costs to switch over to RHV. Details here: http://red.ht/I8JG3E (additional cost, not included in RHV subscription)
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Yes (hosts/XenCenter)
XenServer 5.6 introduced Role Based Access Control by allowing the mapping of a user (or a group of users) to defined roles (a named set of permissions), which in turn have the ability to perform certain operations. RBAC depends on Active Directory for authentication services. Specifically, XenServer keeps a list of authorized users based on Active Directory user and group accounts. As a result, you must join the pool to the domain and add Active Directory accounts before you can assign roles.
There are 6 default roles: Pool Admin, Pool Operator, VM Power Admin, VM Admin, VM Operator and Read Only - which can be listed and modified using the xe CLI.
Details here: http://bit.ly/2rHyEE6
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Cross-Vendor Mgmt
Details
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Yes (RHV-M, Power User Portal)
Yes, RHV-M is Java based and is accessed through a web browser GUI, RESTful API with session support, Linux CLI, Python SDK, Java SDK.
RHV also offers a Power User Portal, a web-based access portal for user (Red Hat positions it as an entry-level Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) user portal). It allows users to: Create, edit and remove virtual machines, Manage virtual disks and network interfaces, Assign user permissions to virtual machines, Create and use templates to rapidly deploy virtual machines, Monitor resource usage and high-severity events, Create and use snapshots to restore virtual machines to a previous state.
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No (native)
Yes (Vendor Add-On: CloudPlatform)
XenCenter only manages Citrix XenServer hosts.
Comments:
- Citrixs Desktop Virtualization product (XenDesktop, fee based add-on) supports multiple hypervisors (ESX, XenServer, Hyper-V)
- The Citrix XenServer Conversion Manager in 7.1 now enables batch import of Windows and Linux VMs created with VMware products into a XenServer pool to reduce costs of converting to a XenServer environment).
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Browser Based Mgmt
Details
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Yes (extended functionality with CloudForms - Fee-Based Add On)
RHV has comprehensive data warehouse with a stable API.
It provides a system monitoring dashboard in the UI to monitor the system in these different levels.
Red Hat Virtualization includes a deeper integration with Red Hat Satellite that allows the querying of errata information for the RHV-Manager’s operating system and provides a complete view into critical updates for the infrastructure lifecycle management. The release also includes the ability to modify the health status of Host, Storage Domain, or Virtual Machine objects based on external factors such as hardware failure or OS monitoring alerts. Users can quickly perform an impact analysis of their environment in the event an object beyond RHV’s normal visibility is at risk of failure.
CloudForms offers cloud and virtualization operations management advance capabilities.
Features of the cloud and virtualization operations management capabilities:
- delivering IaaS with self-service
- service catalogs, automated provisioning and life cycle management
- monitoring and optimization of infrastructure resources and workloads
- metering, resource quotas, and chargeback
- proactive management, advanced decision support, and intelligent automation through predictive analytics
- provides visibility and reporting for governance, compliance, and management insight
- Enforces enterprise policies in real-time, ensuring cloud security, reliability, and availability
- IT process, task, and event automation.
Note that CloudForms is an additional Fee-Based offering not covered by the RHV subscription.
Details here: www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/cloudforms
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Not directly with XenCenter but possible with XenOrchestra (Open Source)
More info: http://bit.ly/2m7FVIG
Web Self Service (retired with the launch of XenServer 6.2) was a lightweight portal which allowed individuals to operate their own virtual machines without having administrator credentials to the XenServer host. For large infrastructures, OpenStack is a full orchestration product with far greater capability; for a lightweight alternative, xvpsource.org offers a free open source product.
Related Citrix products have browser based access, for example Storefront (next generation of Web Interface)
XenOrchestra is a web interface to visualize and administrate your XenServer (or XAPI enabled) hosts. No agent is requiered to make it work. It aims to be easy to use on any device supporting modern web technologies (HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript) such as your desktop computer or your smartphone. More info: http://bit.ly/2m7FVIG
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Adv. Operation Management
Details
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Yes
NEW
Yes, live migration is fully supported with unlimited concurrent migrations (depending only on available resources on other hosts and network speed). RHV 4.0 adds abilities to use compression and auto-convergence to complete migration of heavier workloads faster.
(NEW) Advanced Live Migration Policies - virtualization admistrator can tune the migration policy, greatly reducing both the time live migration time as well as the actual cutover time.
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No
There is no advanced operations management tool included with XenServer.
Additional Info:
XenServers Integration Suite Supplemental Pack allows inter-operation with Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM). SCOM enables monitoring of host performance when installed on a XenServer host.
Both of these tools can be integrated with your XenServer pool by installing the Integration Suite Supplemental Pack on each of your XenServer hosts.
For virtual desktop environments Citrix EdgeSight is a performance and availability management solution for XenDesktop, XenApp and endpoint systems. EdgeSight monitors applications, devices, sessions, license usage, and the network in real time, allowing users to quickly analyze, resolve, and proactively prevent problems.
EdgeSight is actually discontinued and replaced by Citrix Director http://bit.ly/2lKLpaE
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Updates and Backup |
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Hypervisor Upgrades
Details
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Yes (Red Hat Network)
Updates to the virtual machines are typically performed as in the physical environment. For Red Hat virtual machines updates can be downloaded from the Red Hat Network. For Windows virtual machines you would apply the relevant MS update mechanisms. There is no specific integrated function in RHV-M to update virtual machines or templates.
Centralized patching mechanism for Red Hat machines is possible via Satellite. RHV also shows errata information on updates for RHEL hosts and guests OS.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/satellite
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The XenCenter released with XenServer 7.0 allows updates to be applied to all versions of XenServer (commercial and free)
XenServer 7.1 introduced Live patching
With XenServer 7.0 patching and updating via the XenCenter management console (enabling automated GUI driven patch application and upgrades) is supported with the comercial and free XenServer versions.
XenServer 6 introduced the Rolling Pool Upgrade Wizard. The Wizard simplifies upgrades to XenServer 6.x by performing pre-checks with a step-by-step process that blocks unsupported upgrades. You can choose between automated or semi-automated, where automated can use a network based XenServer update repository (which you have to create) while semi-automated requires local install media. There are still manual steps required for both approaches and no scheduling functionality or online repository is integrated.
Indroduced in Xenserver 7.1, live patching enables customers to install some Linux kernel and Xen hypervisor hotfixes without having to reboot the hosts. Such hotfixes will consist of both a live patch, which will be applied to the memory of the host, as well as a hotfix that updates the files on disk. This reduces maintenance costs and downtime. When applying an update using XenCenter, the Install Update wizard checks whether the hosts need to be rebooted after the update is applied and displays the result on the Prechecks page. This enables customers to know the post-update tasks well in advance and schedule the application of hotfixes accordingly.
XenServer Live Patching is available for XenServer Enterprise Edition customers, or those who have access to XenServer through their XenApp/XenDesktop entitlement.
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Yes; Including RAM
Live VM snapshot with or without memory and live removal of snapshots is supported.
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Yes
XenServer 7.x Enterprise edition allows the automation of the delivery of Windows drivers via the Windows Update mechanism. The management agent is also automatically updated without user intervention. Both of these features should drastically reduce the administration effort in creation and ongoing maintenance of Windows VMs.
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Yes
There is a API set for third-party tools that offer backup, restore, and replication.
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Yes
You can take regular snapshots, application consistent point-in-time snapshots (requires Microsoft VSS) and snapshots with memory of a running or suspended VM. All snapshot activities (take/delete/revert) can be done while VM is online.
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Backup Integration API
Details
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No
There is no natively provided backup capability in RHV. Red Hat does provide the tools needed to provide a backup solution. This is possible via 3rd party partners integration (such as Veritas, Acronis, SEP, Commvault and vProtect via IBM Spectrum Protect).
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Limited
There is no specific backup framework for integration of 3rd party backup solutions as such however the XenServer API allows for scripting (e.g. utilizing XenServer snapshots) and basic integration with 3rd party backup products and scripting (e.g. utilizing XenServer snapshots) e.g. PHD backup
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Integrated Backup
Details
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No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Satellite 6)
RHV-H or RHEL hosts can be installed using traditional methods either interactively (from ISO, USB flash media) or automated (PXE). There is however no integrated capability to deploy RHV centrally to bare metal hosts using the RHV management.
This is possible using Satellite 6 using Foreman. RHV allows bare metal provisioning via Satellite in a single UI.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/satellite
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No (Retired)
Citrix retired the Virtual Machine Protection and Recovery (VMPR) in XenServer 6.2. VMPR was the method of backing up snapshots as Virtual Appliances.
Alternative backup products are available from Quadric Software, SEP, and PHD Virtual
Background:
With XenServer 6, VM Protection and Recovery (VMPR) became available for Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum Edition customers.
XenServer 5.6 SP1 introduced a basic XenCenter-based backup and restore facility, the VM Protection and Recovery (VMPR) which provides a simple backup and restore utility for your
critical vims. Regular scheduled snapshots are taken automatically and can be used to restore VMs in case of disaster. Scheduled snapshots can also be automatically archived to a remote CIFS or NFS share, providing an additional level of security.
Additionally the XenServer API allows for scripting of snapshots. You can also (manually or script) export and import virtual machines for backup purposes.
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Deployment |
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Automated Host Deployments
Details
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Yes
RHV allows creation and management of templates. RHV also supports integration with a Glance image provider used in a OpenStack enviroment.
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No
There is no integrated host deployment mechanism in XenServer - manual local or network repository based deployments are required.
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No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: CloudForms, Ansible)
There is no integrated functionality in RHV that allows you to deploy a multi-vm construct from a single template.
CloudForms supports tiered VM Templates and a ordering portal to deploy them.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/cloudforms for details.
Ansible dynamic inventory allows deployment of n-tiered application using on Ansible playbooks and utilizing VMs as an inventory items to run those playbooks focused on application deployment.
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Yes
Templates in XenServer are either the included pre-configured empty virtual machines which require an OS install (a shell with appropriate settings for the guest OS) or you can convert an installed (and e.g. sysprep-ed) vm into a custom template.
There is no integrated customization of the guest available, i.e. you need to sysprep manually.
You can NOT convert a template back into a vm for easy updates. You deploy a vm from template using a full copy or a fast clone using copy on write.
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Tiered VM Templates
Details
|
Yes (limited native);
Advanced options with Vendor Add-On: Satellite
When adding host to a cluster it is automaticly configured to match storage, network and other settings in the RHV manager. State is also monitored for changed in network and storage that can have impact on service.
More complex configuration can be done via Satellite 6 using Foreman.
This is a Fee-based Add-On; Details - http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/satellite
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vApp
XenServer 6 introduced vApps - maintained with v 7.x.
A vApp is logical group of one or more related Virtual Machines (VMs) which can be started up as a single entity in the event of a disaster.
The primary functionality of a XenServer vApp is to start the VMs contained within the vApp in a user predefined order, to allow VMs which depend upon one another to be automatically sequenced. This means that an administrator no longer has to manually sequence the startup of dependent VMs should a whole service require restarting (for instance in the case of a software update). The VMs within the vApp do not have to reside on one host and will be distributed within a pool using the normal rules.
This also means that the XenServer vApp has a more basic capability than e.g. VMwares vApp or MSs Service Templates which contain more advanced functions.
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No
While RHV supports different types of storage, there is no integrated ability in RHV that allows classification of storage (e.g. by performance or other properties).
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No
There is no integrated capability to create host templates, apply or check hosts for compliance with certain setting.
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Yes
RHV includes quota support and service level agreement (SLA) for storage I/O bandwidth, network interfaces and CPU QoS\shares:
- Quota provides a way for the Administrator to limit the resource usage in the System. Quota provides the administrator a logic mechanism for managing resources allocation for users and groups in the Data Center. This mechanism allows the administrator to manage, share and monitor the resources in the Data Center from the engine core point of view.
- vNIC profile allows the user to limit the inbound and outbound network traffic in virtual NIC level.
- CPU profile limits the CPU usage of a virtual machine.
- Disk profile limit the bandwidth usage to allocate the bandwidth in a better way on limited connections.
- CPU shares is a user defined number that represent a relative metric for allocating CPU capacity. It defines how often a virtual machine will get a time slice of a CPU when there is no CPU idle time.
- Host network QoS can define limits on network usage on the pysical NIC.
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No
There are is no ability to associate storage profiles to tiers of storage resources in XenServer (e.g. to facilitate automated compliance storage tiering)
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Other |
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V2V, P2V
Whilst there is no integrated capability to perform physical to virtual migrations in RHV itself, Red Hat provide p2v tools to customers to export existing physical machines to a virtual infrastructure whilst ensuring that relevant changes are made to the new guest like paravirtualization drivers.
RHV also provides ability to use virt-v2v tool via the manager to migrate workloads from VMWare vSphere in a simple and easy wizard based flow.
RHV provides the virt-v2v CLI tool as well, enabling you to convert and import virtual machines created on other systems such as Xen, KVM and VMware ESX.
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No
A resource pool in XenServer is hierarchically the equivalent of a vSphere or Hyper-V cluster. There is no functionality to sub-divide resources within a pool.
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User Portal
RHVs web-based Power User Portal is positioned by Red Hat as an entry-level Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) user portal.
It allows the user to: create, edit and remove virtual machines, manage virtual disks and network interfaces, assign user permissions to virtual machines, create and use templates to rapidly deploy virtual machines, monitor resource usage and high-severity events, create and use snapshots to restore virtual machines to a previous state. In conjunction with the quota functionality in RHV administrators can restrict resources consumed by the users (but there is no integrated request approval or granular resource assignment based on e.g. subsets of the resources through private clouds).
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No (XenConvert: retired), V2V: yes
XenConvert was retired in XenServer 6.2
XenConvert allowed conversion of a single physical machine to a virtual machine. The ability to do this conversion is included in the Provisioning Services (PVS) product shipped as part of XenDesktop. Alternative products support the transition of large environments and are available from PlateSpin.
Note: The XenServer Conversion Manager, for converting virtual machines (V2V), remains fully supported.
Background:
XenConvert supported the following sources: physical (online) Windows systems OVF, VHD, VMDK or XVA onto these targets: XenServer directly, vhd, OVF or PVS vdisk
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Self Service Portal
Details
|
RHV supports the most common server and technical workstation OSs as well as PPC guests, current support includes:
For X86_64 hosts:
- Microsoft Windows 10, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 7, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 8, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 8.1, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
For PPC hosts:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Tier 1, LE\BE
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Tier 1, BE
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, Teir 2, LE
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4, Teir 2, BE
There is no orchestration tool/engine provided with RHV.
Red Hat CloudForms (fee-based vendor add-on) is used to provide orchestration.
This functionality is achieved with Red Hat Cloudforms (Fee-Based Add-ON), now part of RHCI. With CloudForms, resources are automatically and optimally used via policy-based workload and resource orchestration, ensuring service availability and performance. You can simulate allocation of resources for what-if planning and continuous insights into granular workload and consumption levels to allow chargeback, showback, and proactive planning and policy creation. For details: http://red.ht/1h7DR9T.
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No (Web Self Service: retired)
Web Self Service was a lightweight portal which allowed individuals to operate their own virtual machines without having administrator credentials to the XenServer host.
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Orchestration / Workflows
Details
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sVirt, SELinux, iptables, VLANs, Port Mirroring
The RHV Hypervisor has various security features enabled. Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) and the iptables firewall are fully configured and on by default. SELinux and sVirt adds security policy in kernel for effective intrusion detection, isolation and containment (SELinux is essentially a set of patches to the Linux kernel and some utilities to incorporate a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture into the major subsystems of the kernel. e.g. with SELinux you can give each qemu process a different SELinux label to prevent a compromised qemu from attacking other processes and also allows you to label the set of resources that each process can see , so that a compromised qemu can only attack its own disk images).
Advanced network security features like VLAN tagging and port mirroring are part of RHV, but there are no additional security-specific add-ons included with RHV (e.g. to address advanced fire-walling, edge security capabilities or Anti-Virus APIs).
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Yes (Workflow Studio)
Workflow Studio provides a graphical interface for workflow composition in order to reduce scripting. Workflow Studio allows administrators to tie technology components together via workflows. Workflow Studio is built on top of Windows PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation. It natively supports Citrix products including XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer and NetScaler.
Available as component of XenDesktop suite, Workflow Studio was retired in XenDesktop 7.x
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Agent-based, CIM, SNMP
CIM management is available in RHV-H and RHEL-H. It is possible to use OEM vendor supplied tools, e.g. hardware monitoring utilities / agents. Red Hat uses the open source libcmpiutil as the default CIM provider in RHV-H.
Red Hat Virtualization Manager can send Simple Network Management Protocol traps to one or more external SNMP managers. SNMP traps contain system event information; they are used to monitor your Red Hat Virtualization environment. The number and type of traps sent to the SNMP manager can be defined within the Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
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Direct Inspect APIs and Basic (NetScaler - Fee-Based Add-On)
XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition supports Direct Inspect APIs, enabling a supported security solution to use xen to provide security software isolation. This enables the introspection of what is going on inside a VM, from a privileged service VM on the same host. This represents a radical departure from the current generation malware detection based on in-guest agents. The Direct Inspect APIs are fully supported, and enable 3rd party security products such as Bitdefender’s GravityZone to monitor and protect virtual infrastructures against malicious activity:
Guest memory can be watched in real time, detecting advanced threats as they attempt to execute inside the VM
By virtue of the isolation the hypervisor provides, the security solution can no longer be attacked by the threat
XenServer uses netfilter/iptables firewalling.
The fee-based NetScaler provides various (network) security related capabilities through e.g.
- NetScaler Gateway: secure application and data access for Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenMobile)
- NetScaler AppFirewall: secures web applications, prevents inadvertent or intentional disclosure of confidential information and aids in compliance with information security regulations such as PCI-DSS. AppFirewall is available as a standalone security appliance or as a fully integrated module of the NetScaler application delivery solution and is included with Citrix NetScaler, Platinum Edition.
Details here: http://bit.ly/17ttmKk
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Systems Management
Details
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RHV-H or RHEL with KVM - details here
With RHV 4.0 virtualization hosts must run version 7.2 or later of either: full Red Hat Enterprise Linux Hypervisor (RHEL-H) with KVM enabled or Red Hat Virtualization Hypervisor (RHV-H), a image-based purpose built hypervisor with minimized security footprint. RHV support both x86 and power deployments from a single x86 manager.
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Yes (API / SDKs, CIM)
XenServer includes a XML-RPC based API, providing programmatic access to the extensive set of XenServer management features and tools. The XenServer API can be called from a remote system as well as local to the XenServer host. Remote calls are generally made securely over HTTPS, using port 443.
XenServer SDK: There are five SDKs available, one for each of C, C#, Java, PowerShell, and Python. For XenServer 6.0.2 and earlier, these were provided under an open-source license (LGPL or GPL with the common linking exception). This allows use (unmodified) in both closed-and open-source applications. From XenServer 6.1 onwards the bindings are in the majority provided under a BSD license that allows modifications.
Citrix Project Kensho provided a Common Information Model (CIM) interface to the XenServer API and introduces a Web Services Management (WSMAN) interface to XenServer. Management agents can be installed and run in the Dom0 guest.
Details here: http://bit.ly/2rHMhTI
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Network and Storage
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Storage |
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Supported Storage
Details
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Yes (FC, FCoE, iSCSI)
NEW
Multipathing in RHV manager provides:
1) Redundancy (provides failover protection).
2) Improved Performance which spreads I/O operations over the paths, by default in a round-robin fashion but also supports other methods including Asynchronous Logical Unit Access (ALUA). This applies to block devices (FC, FCoE, iSCSI), although the equivalent functionality can be achieved with a sufficiently robust network setup for network attached storage.
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DAS, SAS, iSCSI, NAS, SMB, FC, FCoE, openFCoE
XenServer data stores are called Storage Repositories (SRs), they support IDE, SATA, SCSI (physical HBA as well as SW initiator) and SAS drives locally connected, and iSCSI, NFS, SMB, SAS and Fibre Channel remotely connected.
Background: The SR and VDI abstractions allow advanced storage features such as Thin Provisioning, VDI snapshots, and fast cloning to be exposed on storage targets that support them. For storage subsystems that do not inherently support advanced operations directly, a software stack is provided based on Microsofts Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)
specification which implements these features.
SRs are storage targets containing virtual disk images (VDIs). SR commands provide operations for creating, destroying, resizing, cloning, connecting and discovering the individual VDIs that they contain.
Reference XenServer 7.2 Administrators Guide: http://bit.ly/2rHyEE6
Also refer to the XenServer Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for more details.
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Yes
For shared file systems RHV supports LVM for block storage and POSIX, NFS or GlusterFS for file storage.
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Yes (limited for SAS)
Dynamic multipathing support is available for Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage arrays (round robin is default balancing mode). XenServer also supports the LSI Multi-Path Proxy Driver (MPP) for the Redundant Disk Array Controller (RDAC) - by default this driver is disabled. Multipathing to SAS based SANs is not enabled, changes must typically be made to XenServer as SAS drives do not readily appear as emulated SCSI LUNs.
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Shared File System
Details
|
Yes
Booting from SAN is possible.
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Yes (SR)
XenServer uses the concept of Storage Repositories (disk containers/data stores). These SRs can be shared between hosts or dedicated to particular hosts. Shared storage is pooled between multiple hosts within a defined resource pool. All hosts in a single resource pool must have at least one shared SR in common. NAS, iSCSI (Software initiator and HBA are both supported), SAS, or FC are supported for shared storage.
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Yes
The hypervisor can be installed onto USB storage devices or solid state disks. (The initial boot/install USB device must be a separate device from the installation target).
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Yes (iSCSI, FC, FCoE)
XenServer 7.x adds Software-boot-from-iSCSI for Cisco UCS
Yes for XenServer 6.1 and later (XenServer 5.6 SP1 added support for boot from SAN with multi-pathing support for Fibre Channel and iSCSI HBAs)
Note: Rolling Pool Upgrade should not be used with Boot from SAN environments. For more information on upgrading boot from SAN environments see Appendix B of the XenServer 7.2 Installation Guide: http://bit.ly/2sK4wGn
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RAW, Qcow2
RHV supports two storage formats: RAW and QCOW2.
In an NFS data center the Storage Pool manager (SPM) creates the virtual disk on top of a regular file system as a normal disk in preallocated (RAW) format. Where sparse allocation is chosen additional layers on the disk will be created in thinly provisioned Qcow2 (sparse) format.
For iSCSI and SAN (block), the SPM creates a Volume group (VG) on top of the Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs) provided. During the virtual disk creation, either a preallocated format (RAW) or a thinly provisioned Qcow2 (sparse) format is created.
Background:
QCOW (QEMU copy on write) decouples the physical storage layer from the virtual layer by adding a mapping between logical and physical blocks. This enables advanced features like snapshots. Creating a new snapshot creates a new copy on write layer, either a new file or logical volume, with an initial mapping that points all logical blocks to the offsets in the backing file or volume. When writing to a QCOW2 volume, the relevant block is read from the backing volume, modified with the new information and written into the new snapshot QCOW2 volume. T hen the map is updated to point to the new place.
Benefits QCOW2 offers over using RAW representation include:
- Copy-on-write support (volume only represents changes to a disk image).
- Snapshot support (volume can represent multiple snapshots of the images history).
The RAW storage format has a performance advantage over QCOW2 as no formatting is applied to images stored in the RAW format (reading and writing images stored in RAW requires no additional mapping or reformatting work on the host or manager. When the guest file system writes to a given offset in its virtual disk, the I/O will be written to the same offset on the backing file or logical volume. Note: Raw format requires that the entire space of the defined image be preallocated (unless using externally managed thin provisioned LUNs from a storage array).
A virtual disk with a preallocated (RAW) format has significantly faster write speeds than a virtual disk with a thin provisioning (Qcow2) format. Thin provisioning takes significantly less time to create a virtual disk. The thin provision format is suitable for non-IO intensive virtual machines.
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No
While there are several (unofficial) approaches documented, officially no flash drives are supported as boot media for XenServer 7.x
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Virtual Disk Format
Details
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Default max virtual disk size is 8TB (but its configurable in RHV DB)
The default maximum supported virtual disk size is 8TB in RHV (but its configurable in RHV DB).
With virtio-scsi support, Red Hat also supports now 16384 logical units per target.
File level disk size remains unlimited by the hypervisor, the limits of the underlying filesystem do however apply.
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vhd, raw disk (LUN)
XenServer supports file based vhd (NAS, local), block device-based vhd (FC, SAS, iSCSI) using a Logical Volume Manager on the Storage Repository or a full LUN (raw disk)
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Yes
During the virtual disk creation, either a preallocated format (RAW) or a thinly provisioned Qcow2 (sparse) format can be specified.
A preallocated virtual disk has reserved storage of the same size as the virtual disk itself. The backing storage device (file/block device) is presented as is to the virtual machine with no additional layering in between. This results in better performance because no storage allocation is required during runtime. On SAN (iSCSI, FCP) this is achieved by creating a block device with the same size as the virtual disk. On NFS this is achieved by filling the backing hard disk image file with zeros. Pre-allocating storage on an NFS storage domain presumes that the backing storage is not Qcow2 formatted and zeroes will not be deduplicated in the hard disk image file. (If these assumptions are incorrect, do not select Preallocated for NFS virtual disks).
For sparse virtual disks backing storage is not reserved and is allocated as needed during runtime. This allows for storage over commitment under the assumption that most disks are not fully utilized and storage capacity can be utilized better. This requires the backing storage to monitor write requests and can cause some performance issues. On NFS backing storage is achieved simply by using files. On SAN this is achieved by creating a block device smaller than the virtual disks defined size and communicating with the hypervisor to monitor necessary allocations. This does not require support from the underlying storage devices.
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2TB
For XenServer 7.2 the maximum virtual disk sizes are:
- NFS: 2TB minus 4GB
- LVM (block): 2TB minus 4 GB
Reference: http://bit.ly/2rcrjZx
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Thin Disk Provisioning
Details
|
Yes (Limited)
NEW
It is possible to consume NPIV devices for creation of storage domains and use of directly attached LUNs. In future releases we plan to include support for passthrough of NPIV devices to the virtual machines.
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Yes (Limitations on block)
XenServer supports 3 different types of storage repositories (SR)
1) File based vhd, which is a local ext3, remote NFS or SMB filesystems, which supports thin provisioning for vhd
2) Block device-based vhd format (SAN based on FC, iSCSI, SAS) , which has no support for thin provisioning of the virtual disk but supports thin provisioning for snapshots
3) LUN based raw format - a full LUN is mapped as virtual disk image (VDI) so to is only applicable if the storage array HW supports that functionality
SMB storage (CIFS) is supported for XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition
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Yes
In RHV by default, virtual machines created from templates use thin provisioning. In the context of templates, thin provisioning of vm means copy on write (aka linked clone or difference disk) rather than a growing file system that only takes up the storage space that it actually uses (usually referred to as thin provisioning). All virtual machines based on a given template share the same base image as the template and must remain on the same data domain as the template.
You can however specify to deploy the vm from template as clone - which means that a full copy of the vm will be deployed. When selecting to clone you can then select thin (sparse) or pre-allocated provisioning of the full clone. Deploying from template as clone results in independence from the base image but space savings associated with using copy on write approaches are lost.
A virtual disk with a preallocated (RAW) format has significantly faster write speeds than a virtual disk with a thin provisioning (Qcow2) format. Thin provisioning takes significantly less time to create a virtual disk. The thin provision format is suitable for non-IO intensive virtual machines.
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No
There is no NPIV support for XenServer
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No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Red Hat Gluster Storage)
There is no native software based replication included in the base RHV product.
However, there is support for managing Red Hat Gluster Storage volumes and bricks using Red Hat Virtualization Manager. Red Hat Gluster Storage is a software-only, scale-out storage solution that provides flexible unstructured data storage for the enterprise.
Red Hat Storage Console (RHS-C) of Red Hat Storage Server (RHS) for On-Premise provides replication via the native capabilities of RHS, with integration in the RHV-M interface.
RHS-C extends RHV-M 3.x and oVirt Engine technology to manage Red Hat Trusted Storage Pools with management via the Web GUI, REST API and (future) remote command shell.
Note that Red Hat Gluster Storage is a fee-based add-on.
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Yes - Clone on boot, clone, PVS, MCS
XenServer 6.2 introduced Clone on Boot
This feature supports Machine Creation Services (MCS) which is shipped as part of XenDesktop. Clone on boot allows rapid deployment of hundreds of transient desktop images from a single source, with the images being automatically destroyed and their disk space freed on exit.
General cloning capabilities: When cloning VMs based off a single VHD template, each child VM forms a chain where new changes are written to the new VM, and old blocks are directly read from the parent template. When this is done with a file based vhd (NFS) then the clone is thin provisioned. Chains up to a depth of 30 are supported but beware performance implications.
Comment: Citrixs desktop virtualization solution (XenDesktop) provides two additional technologies that use image sharing approaches:
- Provisioning Services (PVS) provides a (network) streaming technology that allows images to be provisioned from a single shared-disk image. Details: http://bit.ly/2d0FrQp
- With Machine Creation Services (MCS) all desktops in a catalog will be created off a Master Image. When creating the catalog you select the Master and choose if you want to deploy a pooled or dedicated desktop catalog from this image.
Note that neither PVS (for virtual machines) or MCS are included in the base XenServer license.
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SW Storage Replication
Details
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FS-Cache
FS-Cache is a persistent local cache that can be used by file systems to take data retrieved from over the network and cache it on local disk.
This helps minimize network traffic for users accessing data from a file system mounted over the network (for example, NFS). User can use this feature with mount options for NFS\POSIX.
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No
There is no integrated (software-based) storage replication capability available within XenServer
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Yes
This is possible via local datacenter feature, but limited to a single host with reduced management features.
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IntelliCache and in-memory read cache
XenServer 6.5 introduced a read caching feature that uses host memory in the new 64-bit Dom0 to reduce IOPS on storage networks, improve LoginVSI scores with VMs booting up to 3x Faster. The read cache feature is available for XenDesktop & XenApp Platinum users who have an entitlement to this feature.
Within XenServer 7.0 LoginVSI scores of 585 have been attained (Knowledge Worker workload on Login VS 4.1)
IntelliCache is a XenServer feature that can (only!) be used in a XenDesktop deployment to cache temporary and non-persistent operating-system data on the local XenServer host. It is of particular benefit when many Virtual Machines (VMs) all share a common OS image. The load on the storage array is reduced and performance is enhanced. In addition, network traffic to and from shared storage is reduced as the local storage caches the master image from shared storage.
IntelliCache works by caching data from a VMs parent VDI in local storage on the VM host. This local cache is then populated as data is read from the parent VDI. When many VMs share a common parent VDI (for example by all being based on a particular master image), the data pulled into the cache by a read from one VM can be used by another VM. This means that further access to the master image on shared storage is not required.
Reference: http://bit.ly/2d8Bxpm
With in-read memory cache the reads can be cached in dom0 RAM, providing fast, scalable access and dramatically reducing off-host IOPS, thereby reducing the need for high-end arrays to support large scale infrastructures.
Reference: http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
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Yes (Limited)
RHVs REST API does allow storage actions and storage provisioning calls via software storage actions and a backup API can also be leveraged with array cloning & replication for DR. It doesnt have vendor specific offloading abilities.
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No
There is no specific Storage Virtualization appliance capability other than the abstraction of storage resources through the hypervisor.
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Storage Integration (API)
Details
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Yes (Quota, Storage I/O SLA)
RHV 4 includes quota support and Service Level Agreement (SLA) for storage I/O bandwidth:
- Quota provides a way for the Administrator to limit the resource usage in the system including vDisks. Quota provides the administrator a logic mechanism for
managing disks size allocation for users and groups in the Data Center.
- Disk profile limit the bandwidth usage to allocate the bandwidth in a better way on limited connections.
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Integrated StorageLink (deprecated)
Integrated StorageLink was retired in XenServer 6.5.
Background: XenServer 6 introduced Integrated StorageLink Capabilities. It replaces the StorageLink Gateway technology used in previous editions and removes the requirement to run a VM with the StorageLink components. It provides access to use existing storage array-based features such as data replication, de-duplication, snapshot and cloning. Citrix StorageLink allows to integrate with existing storage systems, gives a common user interface across vendors and talks the language of the storage array i.e. exposes the native feature set in the storage array. StorageLink also provides a set of open APIs that link XenServer and Hyper-V environments to third party backup solutions and enterprise management frameworks. There is a limited HCL for StorageLink supporting arrays. Details: http://bit.ly/1xS2J0m
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Various new enhancements + Neutron Integration (Tech Preview) - click for details
At present RHV allows to:
- Do simplified management network setup that includes host level management.
- Assign migration\management\VM\host networks roles.
- Create profile for virtual machine NIC with specific parameters.
- Network QoS on host NICs and on virtual NIC profiles.
- Multiple network gateways per host (define a gateway for each logical network on a host).
- Refresh and automtic sync host network configuration (allows the administrator to obtain and set updated network configuration).
- Improved bond support (add new bonds from the administration portal, in addition to the five predefined bonds for each host).
- Network labels to ease complex hypervisor networking configurations, comprising many networks.
- Predictable vNIC ordering inside guest OS for newly-created VMs.
- Hypervisors now recognize hotplugged network interfaces.
- Notifications in case of bond/NIC changing link state (e.g. link failure).
- Ability to configure custom properties on hypervisor network devices; specifically configuring advanced bridge and ethtool options.
- Dedicated network connectivity log on hypervisors to ease investigation in case of 'disaster'.
- Properly display arbitrarily-named hypervisor VLAN devices in the management console.
- Use SR-IOV NICs by enabling you to create virtual functions and assign them to VMs.
- Report total network use of a VM.
- Get info on out of sync hosts from a network definition aspect and allowing to sync them.
- Support for Cisco UCSM VM-FEX hook.
OpenStack Neutron integration can provide networking capabilities for consumption by hosts and virtual machines.
The integration includes:
• Advanced engine for network configuration.
• open vSwitch distributed virtual switching support.
• Ability to centralize network configurations with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (not included).
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Basic
Virtual disks on block-based SRs (e.g. FC, iSCSI) have an optional I/O priority Quality of Service (QoS) setting. This setting can be applied to existing virtual disks using the xe CLI.
Note: Bare in mind that QoS setting are applied to virtual disks accessing the LUN from the same host. QoS is not applied across hosts in the pool!
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Networking |
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Advanced Network Switch
Details
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Yes
RHV support 4 bonding modes with easy management of their definition on the host.
Details:
Mode 1 (active-backup policy) sets all interfaces to the backup state while one remains active. Upon failure on the active interface, a backup interface replaces it as the only active interface in the bond. The MAC address of the bond in mode 1 is visible on only one port (the network adapter), to prevent confusion for the switch. Mode 1 provides fault tolerance and is supported in Red Hat Virtualization.
Mode 2 (XOR policy) selects an interface to transmit packages to based on the result of an XOR operation on the source and destination MAC addresses multiplied by the modulo slave count. This calculation ensures that the same interface is selected for each destination MAC address used.
Mode 2 provides fault tolerance and load balancing and is supported in Red Hat Virtualization.
Mode 4 (IEEE 802.3ad policy) creates aggregation groups for which included interfaces share the speed and duplex settings. Mode 4 uses all interfaces in the active aggregation group in accordance with the IEEE 802.3ad specification and is supported in Red Hat Virtualization.
Mode 5 (adaptive transmit load balancing policy) ensures the outgoing traffic distribution is according to the load on each interface and that the current interface receives all incoming traffic. If the interface assigned to receive traffic fails, another interface is assigned the receiving role instead. Mode 5 is
supported in Red Hat Virtualization.
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Yes (Open vSwitch) - vSwitch Controller
The Open vSwitch is fully supported
The vSwitch brings visibility, security, and control to XenServer virtualized network environments. It consists of a virtualization-aware switch (the vSwitch) running on each XenServer and the vSwitch Controller, a centralized server that manages and coordinates the behavior of each individual vSwitch to provide the appearance of a single vSwitch.
The vSwitch Controller supports fine-grained security policies to control the flow of traffic sent to and from a VM and provides detailed visibility into the behavior and performance of all traffic sent in the virtual network environment. A vSwitch greatly simplifies IT administration within virtualized networking environments, as all VM configuration and statistics remain bound to the VM even if it migrates from one physical host in the resource pool to another.
Details in the XenServer 7.2 vSwitch Controller Users Guide: http://bit.ly/2r1WuaS
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Yes
With RHV the Network Interfaces tab of the details pane shows VLAN information for the edited network interface. In the VLAN column newly created VLAN devices are shown, with names based on the network interface name and VLAN tag.
Background: RHV VLAN is aware and is able to tag and redirect VLAN traffic, however VLAN implementation requires a switch that supports VLANs.
At the switch level, ports are assigned a VLAN designation. A switch applies a VLAN tag to traffic originating from a particular port, marking the traffic as part of a VLAN, and ensures that responses carry the same VLAN tag. A VLAN can extend across multiple switches. VLAN tagged network traffic on a switch is completely undetectable except by machines connected to a port designated with the correct VLAN. A given port can be tagged into multiple VLANs, which allows traffic from multiple VLANs to be sent to a single port, to be deciphered using software on the machine that receives the traffic.
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Yes (incl. LACP - New)
XenServer 6.1 added the following functionality, maintained with XenServer 6.2 and later:
- Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) support: enables the use of industry-standard network bonding features to provide fault-tolerance and load balancing of network traffic.
- Source Load Balancing (SLB) improvements: allows up to 4 NICs to be used in an active-active bond. This improves total network throughput and increases fault tolerance in the event of hardware failures. The SLB balancing algorithm has been modified to reduce load on switches in large deployments.
Background:
XenServer provides support for active-active, active-passive, and LACP bonding modes. The number of NICs supported and the bonding mode supported varies according to network stack:
• LACP bonding is only available for the vSwitch, while active-active and active-passive are available for both the vSwitch and Linux bridge.
• When the vSwitch is the network stack, you can bond either two, three, or four NICs.
• When the Linux bridge is the network stack, you can only bond two NICs.
XenServer 6.1 provides three different types of bonds, all of which can be configured using either the CLI or XenCenter:
• Active/Active mode, with VM traffic balanced between the bonded NICs.
• Active/Passive mode, where only one NIC actively carries traffic.
• LACP Link Aggregation, in which active and stand-by NICs are negotiated between the switch and the server.
Reference: http://bit.ly/13e9mxc
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Yes (via host hooks)
Currently PVLAN support in RHV is done via host hook.
Background: Hooks are scripts executed on the host when key events occur. The creation and use of VDSM hooks to trigger modification of virtual machines based on custom properties specified in the Administration Portal.
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Yes (limited for mgmt. traffic)
VLANs are supported with XenServer. To use VLANs with virtual machines use switch ports configured as 802.1Q VLAN trunk ports in combination with the XenServer VLAN feature to connect guest virtual network interfaces (VIFs) to specific VLANs (you can create new virtual networks with XenCenter and specify the VLLAN IDs). The XenServer management interfaces cannot be assigned to a XenServer VLAN via a trunk port - to place management traffic on a desired VLAN the switch ports need to be configured to perform 802.1Q VLAN tagging/untagging (native VLAN or as access mode ports). In this case the XenServer host is unaware of any VLAN configuration.
XenServer 6.1 removed a previous limitation which caused VM deployment delays when large numbers of VLANs were in use. This improvement enables administrators using XenServer 6.x to deploy hundreds of VLANs in a XenServer pool quickly.
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Guests fully, hypervisors partially
RHV currently uses IPv4 for internal communications and does not use/support IPv6. Using IPv6 at the virtual machine level is fully supported though, provided that youre using a guest operating system thats compatible.
As of RHV-4.1, RHV can assign IPV6 addresses to host interfaces.
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No
XenServer does not support PVLANs.
Please refer to the Citrix XenServer Design: Designing XenServer Network Configurations guide for details on network design and security considerations http://bit.ly/2n2aWwW
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Yes
RHV has added ability to passthorough hosts PCI and USB devices including GPUs and use of SR-IOV via VFIO and high speed PCI-express based SSD storage, as well as automatic NUMA (Non-uniform memory access) balancing moves tasks (which can be threads or processes) closer to the memory they are accessing
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Yes (guests only)
XenServer 6.1 introduced formal support for IPv6 in XenServer guest VMs (maintained with 7.2). Customers already used it with e.g. 6.0 but the 6.1 release notes list this as new official feature: IPv6 Guest Support: enables the use of IPv6 addresses within guests allowing network administrators to plan for network growth.
Full support for IPv6 (i.e. assigning the host itself an IPv6 address) will be addressed in the future.
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Yes
The network management UI in RHV allows you to set the MTU for network interfaces (jumbo frames).
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SR-IOV
XenServer 6.0 provided improved SR-IOV support for once specific card, Intels Niantic NIC, this card is not officialy supported for XenServer 7.x
Generally with SR-IOV VF, functions that require VM mobility like live migration, workload balancing, rolling pool upgrade, High Availability and Disaster Recovery are not possible.
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TOE
Currently, RHV hypervisors support TOE. Due to the way that RHV provides networking access to the virtual machines, using technologies such as TSO/LRO/GRO are currently unsupported. With OVN-based overlay networks (tech-preview in 4.1), a NIC can carry VM traffic while having offloading set.
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Yes
You can set the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) for a XenServer network in the New Network wizard or for an existing network in its Properties window. The possible MTU value range is 1500 to 9216.
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Yes (vNIC Profile)
RHV has the ability to control Network QoS using virtual NIC profiles through the RHV-M interface.
Users can limit the inbound and outbound network traffic on a virtual NIC level by applying profiles which define attributes such as port mirroring, quality of service (QoS) or custom properties.
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Yes (TSO)
TCP Segmentation Offload can be enabled, see http://bit.ly/13e9WLi
By default, Large Receive Offload (LRO) and Generic Receive Offload (GRO) are disabled on all physical network interfaces. Though unsupported, you can enable it manually http://bit.ly/2djwZiZ
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Yes (Port Mirroring)
RHV has port mirroring capabilities.
It is now possible to configure the virtual Network Interface Card (vNIC) of a virtual machine to run in promiscuous mode. This allows the virtual machine to monitor all traffic to other vNICs exposed by the host on which it runs. Port mirroring copies layer 3 network traffic on given a logical network and host to a virtual interface on a virtual machine. This virtual machine can be used for network debugging and tuning, intrusion detection, and monitoring the behavior of other virtual machines on the same host and logical network.
RHV also adds the ability to create a Virtual Network Interface Controller (VNIC) profile to toggle port monitoring. There are also the vendor-supplied UI plug-ins to RHV-M, e.g. the Nagios community plugin.
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Yes (outgoing)
QoS of network transmissions can be done either at the vm level (basic) by setting a ks/sec limit for the virtual NIC or on the vSwitch-level (global policies). With the DVS you can select a rate limit (with units), and a burst size (with units). Traffic to all virtual NICs included in this policy level (e.g. you can create vm groups) is limited to the specified rate, with individual bursts limited to the specified number of packets. To prevent inheriting existing enforcement the QoS policy at the VM level should be disabled.
Background:
To limit the amount of outgoing data a VM can send per second, you can set an optional Quality of Service (QoS) value on VM virtual interfaces (VIFs). The setting lets you specify a maximum transmit rate for outgoing packets in kilobytes per second.
The QoS value limits the rate of transmission from the VM. As with many QoS approaches the QoS setting does not limit the amount of data the VM can receive. If such a limit is desired, Citrix recommends limiting the rate of incoming packets higher up in the network (for example, at the switch level).
Depending on networking stack configured in the pool, you can set the Quality of Service (QoS) value on VM virtual interfaces (VIFs) in one of two places-either a) on the vSwitch Controller or b) in XenServer (using theCLI or XenCenter).
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Traffic Monitoring
Details
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Yes (virtio), Mem Balloon optimization and error messages
The virtio-balloon driver allows guests to express to the hypervisor how much memory they require. The balloon driver allows the host to efficiently allocate and memory to the guest and allow free memory to be allocated to other guests and processes. Guests using the balloon driver can mark sections of the guests RAM as not in use (balloon inflation). The hypervisor can free the memory and use the memory for other host processes or other guests on that host. When the guest requires the freed memory again, the hypervisor can reallocate RAM to the guest (balloon deflation).
This includes:
- Memory balloon optimization (Users can now enable virtio-balloon for memory optimization on clusters. All virtual machines on cluster level 3.2 and higher includes a balloon device, unless specifically removed. When memory balloon optimization is set, MoM will start ballooning to allow memory overcommitment, with the limitation of the guaranteed memory size on each virtual machine.
- Ballooning error messages (When ballooning is enabled for a cluster, appropriate messages now appear in the Events tab)
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Yes (Port Mirroring)
The XenServer vSwitch has Traffic Mirroring capabilities. The Remote Switched Port Analyzer (RSPAN) policies support mirroring traffic sent or received on
a VIF to a VLAN in order to support traffic monitoring applications. Use the Port Configuration tab in the vSwitch Controller UI to configure policies that apply to the VIF ports.
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Hypervisor
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General |
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Hypervisor Details/Size
Details
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No limit stated
The RHV Hypervisor is not limited by a fixed technology (or marketed) restriction. Red Hat lists no Limit for the maximum ratio of virtual CPUs per host.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Virtualization_Deployment_and_Administration_Guide/chap-Overcommitting_with_KVM.html
In reality the specifications of the underlying hardware, nature of the workload in the vm and the overall restriction of 240 logical CPUs per host will determine the limit. RHV has been publicly demonstrated (see SPECvirt) to run over 550 VMs with a mix of SMP vCPU VMs.
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XenServer 7.1: Xen 4.7 -based
XenServer is based on the open-source Xen hypervisor. XenServer 7.2 runs on the Xen 4.7 hypervisor and adds support for 'live-patching' of the Xen hypervisor, allowing issues to be patched without requiring a host reboot. Xen 4.7 also includes various performance improvements, and updates to the virtual machine introspection code (surfaced in XenServer as Direct Inspect).
XenServer uses paravirtualization and hardware-assisted virtualization, requiring either a modified guest OSs or hardware assisted CPUs (more commonly seen as its less restrictive and hardware assisted CPUs like Intel VT/AMD-V have become standard). The device drivers are provided through a 64-bit Linux-based guest (CentOS) running in a control virtual machine (Dom0).
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Host Config |
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Max Consolidation Ratio
Details
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x86: 288
PPC: 192
The maximum supported number of CPUs with hyper-threading enabled. Depends on the particular version of RHEL-H or RHV-H. For details please check https://access.redhat.com/articles/rhel-limits
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1000 VMs per host
Citrix has listed the new scalability limits for XenServer 7.1 within the published configuration limits document http://bit.ly/2mpocPc
- Concurrent VMs per host (Windows or Linux): 1000
- Concurrent protected VMs per host with HA enabled: 500
Disclaimers are:
- The maximum number of VMs/host supported is dependent on VM workload, system load, and certain environmental factors. Citrix reserves the right to determine what specific environmental factors affect the maximum limit at which a system can function. For systems running over 500 VMs, Citrix recommends allocating 8GB RAM and 8 exclusively pinned vCPUs to dom0, and setting the OVS flow-eviction-threshold to 8192.
The maximum amount of logical physical processors supported differs by CPU. Please consult the XenServer Hardware Compatibility List for more details on the maximum amount of logical cores supported per vendor and CPU.
Each plugged VBD or plugged VIF or Windows VM reduces this number by 1
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Unlimited
there is no license restriction for the max number of cores per CPU
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288 (logical)
XenServer 7.2 supports up to 288 Logical CPUs (threads) e.g. 8 socket with 18 cores each and Hyper-Threading enabled = 288 logical CPUs
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Max Cores per CPU
Details
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x86: 12TB
PPC: 2TB
Max amount of physical RAM installed in host and recognized by RHV is 4TB (12000GB) for x86 hosts and 2TB (2000GB) for PPC hosts.
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unlimited
The XenServer license does not restrict the number of cores per CPU
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Max Memory / Host
Details
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240 vCPUs per VM
The maximum supported number of virtual CPUs per vm (please note that the actual number depends on the type of the guest operating system).
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5TB
XenServer supports a maximum of 5TB per host, if a host has one or more paravirtualized guests (Linux VMs) running then a maximum of 128 GB RAM is supported on the host
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VM Config |
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4TB
Maximum amount of configured virtual RAM for an individual vm is 4TB (4000GB).
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32
XenServer 7.x now supports 32vCPUs for Windows and Linux VMs. Actual numbers vary with the guest OS version (e.g. license restrictions).
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Yes
RHV exposes serial console access through ssh. You can configure host UNIX domain sockets or named pipes to be attached to a virtual machine serial ports, using hooks.
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1.5TB
A maximum of 1.5TB is supported for guest OSs, actual number varies greatly with guest OS version so please check for specific guest support.
The maximum amount of physical memory addressable by your operating system varies. Setting the memory to a level greater than the operating system supported limit, may lead to performance issues within your guest. Some 32-bit Windows operating systems can support more than 4 GB of RAM through use of the physical address extension (PAE) mode. The limit for 32-bit PV Virtual Machines is 64GB. Please consult your guest operating system Administrators Guide and the XenServer Virtual Machine Users Guide for more details.
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Yes
You can pass-through any host USB devices directly to a virtual machine. You can also use the SPICE protocol capabilities to redirect USB device from a client computer to a virtual machine.
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No
You can not configure serial ports (as virtual hardware) for your vm
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Yes
RHV has the ability to hot-add network interface cards, virtual disk storage, vCPUs and memory. Hot unplug is not support currently for vCPUs and memory, but it is planned for future versions. Support is dependent on guest OS support.
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No (except mass storage)
XenServer doesn’t natively support USB passthrough of anything but mass storage devices.
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Yes (RHV 4.2 full support)
Starting with RHEL 7.4 based hypervisors, vGPU (mdev) support got added to the Hosts.
RHV 4.1 still needs hooks to enable these devices, RHV 4.2 is planned to have native support for vGPU in RHV.
Please note that the host requires supported devices (NVidia Tesla grid cards) for being able to utilize the feature.
Intel GPU support is planned.
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Yes (disk, NIC)
XenServer supports adding of disks and network adapters while the vm is running - hot plug requires the specific guest OS to support these functions - please check for specific support with your OS vendor.
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Graphic Acceleration
Details
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DAS, iSCSI, NFS, GlusterFS, FC, POSIX;
Virtio SCSI support
RHV storage is logically grouped into storage pools, which are comprised of three types of storage domains: data (vm and snapshots) , export (temporary storage repository that is used to copy and move images between data centers and RHV instances), and ISO.
The data storage domain is the only one required by each data center and exclusive to a single data center. Export and ISO domains are optional, but require NFS or POSIX.
Storage domains are shared resources and can be implemented using NFS, GlusterFS, POSIX, iSCSI or the Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP). On NFS, all virtual disks, templates, and snapshots are simple files. On SAN (iSCSI/FCP), block devices are aggregated into a logical entity called a Volume Group (VG). This is done using the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and presents high performance I/O.
Luns can be directly attached to VMs as disks, but some feature are not supported when this option is used like snapshotting.
Local storage can be used to create non-shared local datacenter which allow a single host.
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Yes
Citrix XenServer is leading the way in the virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics applications and workstations. Its offerings include GPU Pass-through (for NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs) as well as hardware based
GPU sharing with NVIDIA GRID™ vGPU™ and Intel GVT-g™.
XenServer 7.2 customers can use AMD MxGPU on 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2016 VMs.
Details: http://bit.ly/2sJOcW4
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Memory |
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Dynamic / Over-Commit
Details
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Yes (KSM)
Kernel SamePage Merging (KSM) reduces references to memory pages from multiple identical pages to a single page reference. This helps with optimization for memory density.
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Yes (DMC)
XenServer 5.6 introduced Dynamic Memory Control (DMC) that enables dynamic reallocation of memory between VMs. This capability is maintained in 7.x.
XenServer DMC (sometimes known as 'dynamic memory optimization', 'memory overcommit' or 'memory ballooning') works by automatically adjusting the memory of running VMs, keeping the amount of memory allocated to each VM between specified minimum and maximum memory values, guaranteeing performance and permitting greater density of VMs per server. Without DMC, when a server is full, starting further VMs will fail with 'out of memory' errors: to reduce the existing VM memory allocation and make room for more VMs you must edit each VMs memory allocation and then reboot the VM. With DMC enabled, even when the server is full, XenServer will attempt to reclaim memory by automatically reducing the current memory allocation of running VMs within their defined memory ranges.
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Memory Page Sharing
Details
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Yes
RHV has a feature called transparent huge pages, where the Linux kernel dynamically creates large memory pages (2MB versus 4KB) for virtual machines, improving performance for VMs that require them (newer OSs generations tend to benefit less from larger pages)
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No
XenServer does not feature any transparent page sharing algorithm.
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Yes
RHV supports Intel EPT and AMD-RVI
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No
There is no support for larger memory pages in XenServer
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HW Memory Translation
Details
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Yes
The Red Hat Virtualization Manager interface allows you to import and export virtual machines (and templates) stored in Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF).
This feature can be used in multiple ways:
- Moving virtual resources between Red Hat Virtualization environments.
- Move virtual machines and templates between data centers in a single Red Hat Virtualization environment.
- Backing up virtual machines and templates.
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Yes
Yes, XenServer supports Intel EPT and AMD-RVI, see http://bit.ly/2r2ezp0
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Interoperability |
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Comprehensive
RHV takes advantage of the native hardware certification of the Redhat Enterprise Linux OS. The RHV Hypervisor (RHV-H) is certified for use with all hardware which has passed Red Hat Enterprise Linux certification except where noted in the Requirements chapter of the installation guide http://red.ht/1hOZEDA
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Yes, incl. vApp
XenServer 6 introduced the ability to create multi-VM and boot sequenced virtual appliances (vApps) that integrate with Integrated Site Recovery and High Availability. vApps can be easily imported and exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard. There is full support for VM disk and OVF appliance imports directly from XenCenter with the ability to change VM parameters (virtual processor, virtual memory, virtual interfaces, and target storage repository) with the Import wizard. Full OVF import support for XenServer, XenConvert and VMware.
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Limited
RHV supports the most common server and technical workstation OSs as well as PPC guests, current support includes:
For X86_64 hosts:
- Microsoft Windows 10, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 7, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 8, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 8.1, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
For PPC hosts:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Tier 1, LE\BE
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Tier 1, BE
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, Teir 2, LE
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4, Teir 2, BE
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Improving
XenServer has an improving HCL featuring the major vendors and technologies but compared to e.g. VMware and Microsoft the list is somewhat limited - so check support first. Links to XenServer HCL and XenServer hardware verification test kits are here: http://hcl.xensource.com/
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Yes (Limited);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform)
RHV offers the support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host as a guest.
The RHV guest agent is runing as a system contatiner and provides the managment system the notion of running containers on this VM.
A container managment platform support is offered with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform which can be layered on top of RHV.
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Good
NEW
All major:
- Microsoft Windows 10
- Microsoft Windows Server 2016
- Ubuntu 14.14, 16.04
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3, SLED 11SP3, SLES 11 SP4, SLES 12, SLED 12, SLED 12 SP1
- Scientific Linux 5.11, 6.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.10, 5.11, 6.5, 6.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2
- Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5.10, 5.11, 6.5, 6.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2
- Oracle UEK 6.5
- CentOS 5.10, 5.11, 6.5, 6.5, 7.0, 7.1, 7.3
- Debian 7.2, 8.0
Refer to the XenServer 7.2 Virtual Machine User Guide for details: http://bit.ly/2rHOmPh
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Container Support
Details
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REST API, Python CLI, Hooks,
Python/Java/Ruby SDKs, Ansible
RHV exposes several interfaces for interacting with the virtualization environment. These interfaces are in addition to the user interfaces provided by the
Red Hat Virtualization Manager Administration, User, and Reports Portals. Some of the interfaces are supported only for read access or only when it has been explicitly requested by Red Hat Support.
Supported Interfaces (Read and Write Access):
- Representational State Transfer (REST) API: With the release of RHV-3 Red Hat introduced a new Representational State Transfer (REST) API. The REST API is useful for developers and administrators who aim to integrate the functionality of a Red Hat Virtualization environment with custom scripts or external applications that access the API via standard HTTP. The REST API exposed by the Red Hat Virtualization Manager is a fully supported interface for interacting with Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Python Software Development Kit (SDK): This SDK provides Python libraries for interacting with the REST API. The Python SDK provided by the RHVm-sdk-python package is a fully supported interface for interacting with Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Java Software Development Kit (SDK): This SDK provides Java libraries for interacting with the REST API. The Java SDK provided by the RHVm-sdk-java package is a fully supported interface for interacting with Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Ruby Software Development Kit (SDK): This SDK provides Ruby libraries for interacting with the REST API. The Ruby SDK provided by the RHVm-sdk-java package is a fully supported interface for interacting with Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Ansible Modules; this modules provides an Ansible inteface for interacting with Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- Linux Command Line Shell: The command line shell provided by the RHVm-cli package is a fully supported interface for interacting with the Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
- VDSM Hooks: The creation and use of VDSM hooks to trigger modification of virtual machines based on custom properties specified in the Administration Portal is supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization hosts. The use of VDSM Hooks on virtualization hosts running Red Hat Virtualization Hypervisor is not currently supported.
Additional Supported Interfaces (Read Access)
Use of these interfaces for write access is not supported unless explicitly requested by Red Hat Support:
- Red Hat Virtualization Manager History Database
- Libvirt on Virtualization Hosts
Unsupported Interfaces
Direct interaction with these interfaces is not supported unless your use of them is explicitly requested by Red Hat Support:
- The vdsClient Command
- Red Hat Virtualization Hypervisor Console
- Red Hat Virtualization Manager Database
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Yes
Docker support for XenServer is a feature of XenServer 6.5 SP1 or later and is delivered as a supplimental pack named 'xs-container' which also includes support for CoreOS and cloud-drives.
More info: http://bit.ly/2mM2vde
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REST API
RHV provides its RESTful API for external integration into cloud platforms, for example, ManageIQs cloud management interface.
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Yes (SDK, API, PowerShell)
The Software Development Kit provides the architectural overview of the APIs and use of SDK tools provided: http://bit.ly/2rSZ83K
The XenServer 7.2 management API is documented in detail here: http://bit.ly/2rHMhTI
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RHCI: CloudForms, OpenStack, RHV; Satelite, OpenShift (Fee-Based Add-Ons)
Comment: Due to the variation in actual cloud requirements, different deployment model (private, public, hybrid) and use cases (IaaS, PaaS etc.) the matrix will only list the available products and capabilities. It will not list evaluations (green, amber, red) rather than providing the information that will help you to evaluate it for YOUR environment.
Overview:
IaaS (private and hybrid)
Red Hat offers Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure (RHCI) -a single-subscription offering that bundles and integrates the following products:
- RHV - Datacenter virtualization hypervisor and management for traditional (ENTERPRISE) workloads
- Cloud-enabled Workloads: RHEL OpenStack - scalable, fault-tolerant platform for developing a managed private or public cloud for CLOUD-ENABLED workloads
- Red Hat CloudForms - Cloud MANAGEMENT and ORCHESTRATION across multiple hypervisors and public cloud providers
- Red Hat Satellite - A system management platform that provides lifecycle management for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux for both host and tenant operating systems within Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure.
This includes provisioning, configuration management, software management, and subscription
management. - http://red.ht/1oKMZsP
- Red Hat Insights - automated resolution of critical issues for Red Hat products.
PaaS:
Red Hat also offers OpenShift (PaaS), as on-promise technology as well as available as online (public cloud) offering by Red Hat. Details here - http://red.ht/1LRn7ol
There are a number of public and hybrid (on-premise or cloud) offerings that Red Hat positions as complementary like Red Hat Storage Server (scale-out storage servers both on-premise and in the Amazon Web Services public cloud). Details are here: http://red.ht/1ug7XTY
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CloudStack APIs, support for AWS API
Citrix CloudPlatform uses a RESTful CloudStack API. In addition to supporting the CloudStack API, CloudPlatform supports the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API. Future cloud API standards from bodies such as the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) will be implemented as they become available.
Details on the CloudPlatform API here: http://bit.ly/2slkJ7R
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Extensions
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Cloud |
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VDI Included in RHV; HTML5 support (Tech Preview)
There is one single SKU for RHV that includes server and technical workstation virtualization.
Red Hats Enterprise Virtualization includes an integrated connection broker as well as the ability to manage VDI users via external (LDAP-based) directory services. The same interface is used to manage both server and technical workstation images (unlike most other solutions like e.g. VMware View, Citrix Xentechnical workstation).
Please note that VDI is an additional charge to the server product and cannot be purchased separately (i.e. without purchasing RHV for servers).
Red Hat Virtualization for technical workstations (RHV-D) consists of:
- Red Hat Hypervisor
- Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHV-M) as centralized management console with management tools that administrators can use to create, monitor, and maintain their virtual technical workstations (same interface as for server management)
- SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) - remote rendering protocol. There is initial support for the SPICE-HTML5 console client is offered as a technology preview. This feature allows users to connect to a SPICE console from their browser using the SPICE-HTML5 client.
- Integrated connection broker-a web-based portal from which end-users can log into their virtual technical workstations
Note: VDI related capabilities are NOT listed as Fee-Based Add-Ons (no purchase of additional VDI management software is required or licenses involved to enable the VDI management capability).
However, you will require relevant client access licensing to run virtual machines with Windows OSs, see http://bit.ly/1cBdgAm for details
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CloudPlatform; OpenStack
NEW
Note: Due to the variation in actual cloud requirements, different deployment model (private, public, hybrid) and use cases (IaaS, PaaS etc) the matrix will only list the available products and capabilities. It will not list evaluations (green, amber, red) rather than providing the information that will help you to evaluate it for YOUR environment.
After the acquisition of Cloud.com in July 2011, Citrix has centered its cloud capabilities around its CloudPlatform suite.
Citrix CloudPlatform (latest release 4.5.1) powered by Apache CloudStack - is an open source cloud computing platform that pools computing resources to build public, private, and hybrid Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. CloudPlatform manages the network, storage, and compute nodes that make up a cloud infrastructure. Use CloudPlatform to deploy, manage, and configure cloud computing environments.
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Desktop Virtualization |
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Yes
This is possible via local datacenter feature, but limited to a single host with reduced management features.
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Citrix Desktop Virtualization (XenDesktop & XenApp 7.6 - NEW; ViaB; associated products)
Citrix is by many perceived to own the most comprehensive portfolio for desktop virtualization alongside with the largest overall market share.
Citrixs success in this space is historically based on its Terminal Services-like capabilities (Hosted SHARED Desktops i.e. XenApp aka Presentation Server) but Citrix has over time added VDI (Hosted Virtual Desktops), mobility management (XenMobile), networking (NetScaler), cloud for Service Providers hosting desktop/apps (CloudPlatform) and other comprehensive capabilities to its portfolio (separate fee-based offerings).
Citrixs FlexCast approach promotes the any type of virtual desktop to any device philosophy and facilitates the use of different delivery technologies (e.g. VDI, application publishing or streaming, client hypervisor etc.) depending on the respective use case (so not a one fits all approach).
XenDesktop 7.x history:
- Citrixs announcement of Project Avalon in 2011 promised the integration of a unified desktop / application virtualization capability into its CloudPlatform product. This was then broken up into the Excalibur Project (unifying XenDesktop and XenApp in the XenDesktop 7.x product) and the Merlin Release aiming to provide multi-tenant clouds to manage virtual desktops and applications.
- XenDesktop 7.1 added support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, and new Studio configuration of server-based graphical processing units (GPUs) considered an essential hardware component for supporting virtualized delivery of 3D professional graphics applications.
- In Jan 2014 Citrix announced that XenApp is back as product name, rather than using XenDesktop to refer to VDI as well as desktop/application publishing capabilities, also see http://gtnr.it/14KYg4b
- With XenDesktop 7.5 Citrix announced the capability to provision application and or desktop workloads to public and or private cloud infrastructures (Citrix CloudPlatform, Amazon and (later) Windows Azure. Wake-on-LAN capability has been added to Remote PC Access and AppDNA is now included in the product.
-With XenDesktop 7.6 includes new features like: session prelaunch and session linger; support for unauthenticated (anonymous) users and connection leasing makes recently used applications and desktops available even when the Site database in unavailable.
VDI in a Box: Citrix also has VDI in a Box (ViaB) offering (originating in the Kaviza acquisition) - a simple to deploy, easy to manage and scale VDI solution targeting smaller deployments and limited use cases.
In reality ViaB box scales to larger (thousaunds of users) environments but has (due to its simplified nature and product positioning) restricted use cases compared to the full XenDesktop (There is no direct migration path between ViaB and XenDesktop). ViaB can for instance not provide advanced Hosted Shared Desktops (VDI only), no advanced graphics capabilities (HDX3DPro), has limited HA for fully persistent desktops, no inherent multi-site management capabilities.
Overview here: http://bit.ly/1fXeA38
Recommended Read for VDI Comparison (Ruben Spruijts VDI Smackdown): http://www.pqr.com/downloadformulier?file=VDI_Smackdown.pdf
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1 |
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3rd Party
At this time RHV focuses on the management of the virtual and cloud infrastructure.
Partner solutions offer insight into the services running on top of the virtual infrastructure, with integration into RHV.
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no
There is no specific Storage Virtualization appliance capability other than the abstraction of storage resources through the hypervisor.
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2 |
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Application Management
Details
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sVirt & Security Partnerships
RHV includes sVirt, a technology included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 that integrates SELinux and virtualization. sVirt applies Mandatory Access Control (MAC) to improve security when using virtual machines. The main reasons for integrating these technologies are to improve security and harden the system against bugs in the hypervisor that might be used as an attack vector aimed toward the host or to another virtual machine. To learn more about sVirt, visit this link: http://red.ht/1oZPMkf. Also Red Hats RHV partner ecosystem has security partnerships with SourceFire, Catbird, and other security-focused products and solutions.
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Vendor Add-On: XenDesktop
Citrix Director
The performance monitoring and trouble shooting aspect of Application Management in the context of Citrix is mostly applicable to XenDesktop 7 Director and XenDesktop 7 EdgeSight
- Desktop Director is a real-time web tool, used primarily for the Help Desk agents. In XenDesktop 7, Directors new troubleshooting dashboard provides the real-time health monitoring of your XenDesktop 7 site.
- In XenDesktop 7, EdgeSight provides two key features, performance management and network analysis.
With XenDesktop 7, Director (the real-time assessment and troubleshooting tool is included in all XenDesktop 7 editions.
The new EdgeSight features are included in both XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum editions entitlements however these features are based on the XenDesktop 7 platform. The environment must be XenDesktop 7 in order to leverage the new Director.
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3 |
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Ansible 2.3 oVirt modules
Ansible 2.3 release includes integration with RHV in the form of oVirt Ansible modules.
workflows can now be automated by using playbooks based on those modules.
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/list_of_cloud_modules.html#ovirt
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Vendor Add-Ons: NetScaler Gateway, App Firewall, CloudBridge
NEW
NetScaler provides various (network) security related capabilities through e.g.
- NetScaler Gateway: secure application and data access for Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenMobile)
- NetScaler AppFirewall: secures web applications, prevents inadvertent or intentional disclosure of confidential information and aids in compliance with information security regulations such as PCI-DSS. AppFirewall is available as a standalone security appliance or as a fully integrated module of the NetScaler application delivery solution and is included with Citrix NetScaler, Platinum Edition.
Details here: http://bit.ly/17ttmKk
CloudBridge:
Initially marketed under NetScaler CloudBridge, Citrix CloudBridge provides a unified platform that connects and accelerates applications, and optimizes bandwidth utilization across public cloud and private networks.
CloudBridge encrypts the connection between the enterprise premises and the cloud provider so that all data in transit is secure.
http://bit.ly/17ttSYA
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4 |
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Workflow / Orchestration
Details
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No - See Details
There is no natively provided Site Failover capability in RHV. Red Hat does provide the tools needed to provide a disaster recovery solution.
This is possible via 3rd party partners integration (such as Veritas, Acronis, SEP, Commvault and vProtect via IBM Spectrum Protect).
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Workflow Studio (incl.)
Workflow Studio is included with this license and provides a graphical interface for workflow composition in order to reduce scripting. Workflow Studio allows administrators to tie technology components together via workflows. Workflow Studio is built on top of Windows® PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation. It natively supports Citrix products including XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer and NetScaler.
Available as component of XenDesktop suite, Workflow Studio was retired in XenDesktop 7.x
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5 |
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Vendor Add-On: CloudForms
RHV includes enterprise reporting capabilities through a comprehensive management history database, which any reporting application utilizes to generate a range of reports at data center, cluster and host levels.
For charge-back, RHV has -party integrated solutions like e.g. IBMs Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager (TUAM) which can convert the metrics RHVs enterprise reports provide into fiscal chargeback numbers.
Red Hat Cloudforms fee add-on or sold as part of Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure (RHCI) provides enterprises operational management tools including monitoring, chargeback, governance, and orchestration across virtual and cloud infrastructure such as Red Hat Virtualization, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and VMware and OpenStack and provides the capability for cost allocation with usage and chargeback by determining who is using which resources to allocate costs, create and implement chargeback models.
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Integrated Site Recovery (incl.)
XenServer 6 introduced the Integrated Site Recovery (maintained in 7.0), utilizing the native remote data replication between physical storage arrays and automates the recovery and failback capabilities. The new approach removes the Windows VM requirement for the StorageLink Gateway components and it works now with any iSCSI or Hardware HBA storage repository. You can perform failover, failback and test failover. You can configure and operate it using the Disaster Recovery option in XenCenter. Please note however that Site Recovery does NOT interact with the Storage array, so you will have to e.g. manually break mirror relationships before failing over. You will need to ensure that the virtual disks as well as the pool meta data (containing all the configuration data required to recreate your vims and vApps) are correctly replicated to your secondary site.
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6 |
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Vendor Add-Ons: Load Balancer, High Performance
- Red Hat has networking related products like the Load-Balancer Add-On for RHEL (http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/rhel/RHEL6_Add-ons_datasheet.pdf) and the RHEL High-Performance Network Add-On (delivers remote direct memory access - RDMA- over Converged Ethernet - RoCE) that can add value to virtualization and cloud environments.
- Common SDN solution integration is available with Neutron OVS integration.
- Cisco UCS (VM-FEX) integration
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Vendor Add-On: CloudPortal Business Manager, CloudStack Usage Server (Fee-Based Add-Ons)
NEW
The workload balancing engine (WLB) was introdcued within XenServer 5.6 FP1 introduced support for simple chargeback and reporting. The chargeback report includes, amongst other data, the following: the name of the VM, and uptime as well as usage for storage, CPU, memory and network reads/writes. You can use the Chargeback Utilization Analysis report to determine what percentage of a resource (such as a physical server) a specific department within your organization used.
see http://bit.ly/2sK6siq
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7 |
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Network Extensions
Details
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NSX (Vendor Add-on)
VMware NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center.
http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx.html
NSX embeds networking and security functionality that is typically handled in hardware directly into the hypervisor. The NSX network virtualization platform fundamentally transforms the data center’s network operational model like server virtualization did 10 years ago, and is helping thousands of customers realize the full potential of an SDDC.
With NSX, you can reproduce in software your entire networking environment. NSX provides a complete set of logical networking elements and services including logical switching, routing, firewalling, load balancing, VPN, QoS, and monitoring. Virtual networks are programmatically provisioned and managed independent of the underlying hardware.
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Hyper-V Extensible Switch - 3rd party Extensions (Nexus 1000V - Fee-Based Add On)
(No major updates in WS 2016) The Hyper-V Virtual Switch enables ISVs to create extensible plug-ins (Virtual Switch Extensions) that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities.
Deatils on Ciscos 1000v for Hyper-V here: http://bit.ly/1aZTXOk
New in 2012 R2 is the ability to give third party extensions visibility into both Hyper-V Network Virtualization address spaces.
The HNV module was moved to inside the virtual switch so that extensions could see both the provider (PA) and virtual (CA) IP address spaces. This allows forwarding and other types of extensions to make decisions with knowledge of both address spaces.
The second change was to implement hybrid forwarding. Hybrid forwarding directs packets to different forwarding agents, based upon the packet type. In the Windows Server 2012 R2 implementation a packet that is NVGRE is forwarded by the HNV module. A packet that is non-NVGRE is forwarded as normal by the forwarding extension. Regardless of which agent performs the forwarding computation, the forwarding extension still has the opportunity to apply additional policies to the packet. If there is no forwarding extension, the Microsoft forwarding logic takes over for non-NVGRE packets.
Details here: http://bit.ly/1aZTz2p
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