The Free Edition of Xenserver is Getting Gimped

[herby]

XenServer 7.3: Changes to the Free Edition

About four years ago XCP (Xen Cloud Platform) essentially the free version of Xenserver, was merged with "normal" Xenserver after it was opened sourced. This was awesome and pretty much all the Xenserver features were now free. Excellent for a hobbyist who didn't want/need a service contract.

Apparently the parties over, and whats truly remarkable it that some features from XCP are getting axed.

The full list of features being moved is [with 7.3]:
Dynamic Memory Control
Xen Storage Motion
Active Directory Integration
Role Based Access Control
High Availability
GPU Pass-Through
Site Recovery Manager (Disaster Recovery)
XenCenter Rolling Pool Upgrade Wizard

All dead for plebs like me.

and "Maximum Pool Size Restricted To 3 Hosts (existing larger pools will continue to work, but no new host joins will be permitted)"

Time to look for some alternative I guess. Nuts to you Citrix.

 

[i386]

I think they used gpl v2 (like linux) as license for the core of the xen server. Question is if they used the same license for the removed features.
Maybe some project can pick it up and release "custom" install files built from the xen source code. (Similar to what centos did with the red hat linux distro)

 

[Evan]

Inevitable I guess but sad even though I don’t use it.
Maybe they hope to increase their market share of paid software now that KVM is winning over Xen customers.

 

[Jannis Jacobsen]

kvm + openvirt might be a good alternative

-jannis

 

[KioskAdmin]

Xen is going to die except for vdi.

Amazon is going KVM. Everyone else will follow.

 

[ecosse]

You will think with a product that is in danger of dying they would be doing the absolute opposite move. The mind boggles.

 

[PigLover]

Will anyone care?

 

[whitey]

Will anyone care?

Not I, Xen roughly a decade ago was what I popped my virtualization cherry on but they have always been a PITA to work with. Good riddance!

KVM/VMware is my vote now depending on how shallow/deep your pockets are and what feature set/support model you need. :-D

 

[audio catalyst]

does make one wonder what amazon is going to do, their entire cloud runs on xen bare metal

send from a mobile device, so typo's are to be expected

 

[i386]

Amazon is migrating to kvm: New AWS Bare Metal Instances in Public Preview

 

[Stril]

I really hope, XCP-ng What is XCP-ng? will do the job...

Xenserver was a very good product in my opinion, but if Citrix proceeds in this way, Xen will die...

KVM is interesting, but I could not find a product, that is as powerful, as Xenserver.
Perhaps oVirt

VMWare is just too limited in most editions and the VERY powerful editions are way to expensive. Xenserver provided most of these features (like Storage VMotion, Cross VCenter Vmotion, Desaster Recovery, etc.)