Aaron Murray said:

Recently I bought a new server; however, XenServer is not a supported OS

Normally, before you purchase a server you confirm that the OS you intend to install is supported...

Aaron Murray said:

OES supports two types of Hypervisors - Xen or KVM.

Years ago I used Xen but these days KVM is the preferred solution.

Aaron Murray said:

Citrix XenServer

Aaron Murray said:

Note: I am not interested in VMware (expensive) or Hyper-V (resource hungry) as dom0.

That's easy: those hypervisors don't have a dom0! Dom0 is a term that applies only to Xen. 

More to the point, though, I assume what you are asking is if there are a replacements for Citrix XenServer other than VMware or Hyper-V. Of course there are; quite a few actually. Some are expensive; some are free. it all depends on your needs and the features you require.

Many of us who currently use VMware are also looking at alternatives. One that looks promising is Proxmox Virtual Environment a KVM based solution but, as they say, the devil is in the details. You'll have to decide what works best for you.

Thanks for your response, Kevin.

Kevin Boyle said:

Normally, before you purchase a server you confirm that the OS you intend to install is supported...

I did check this. The server is from Lenovo and they have a limited list of supported OS, but Citrix also have a list and state that they support this model of server. Seems it wasn't true.

Kevin Boyle said:

Many of us who currently use VMware are also looking at alternatives. One that looks promising is Proxmox Virtual Environment a KVM based solution but, as they say, the devil is in the details. You'll have to decide what works best for you.

I've seen this one in my travels. It's a Debian based KVM from what I've read. 

If I'm looking at KVM then, does anyone use OES / SLES KVM as their host? If so, what do you use to manage it? There seem to be quite a few management tools e.g. Cloudstack

Using OES / SLES would be ideal as 1) it's a supported OS by Lenovo, 2) I have a licence and support for OES already.

Cheers,

Aaron

Hi Aaron:

My company is a Microfocus/Opentext partner and we used XEN virtualization (not CITRIX) for 10 years at least and now we moved all our customers to KVM more then 10 years ago and both are vey good. We decided to move to KVM because SUSE adopted it as its default virtualization system. (we are a SUSE partner too)
We have very good results with KVM, but we advice you to let KVM server run with no other system installed on it, all other systems that you want to have in this machine, install as VMs, so you are going to have SNAPSHOTs that works VERY WELL even for SUSE or WINDOWS and you will be able to upgrade any VM without stopping othres VMs. So the best solution is KVM as "the Dom0" (actually it is not a Dom0) and all other servers as VMs.
Promox is based on KVM that is very good and will offer you good features as BACKUP and others, but like VMware who knows if they will charge you in the future?

From the field experience, an OES 23.4 can also be configured as a KVM or XEN host. In my experience, it makes less sense as there are too many dependencies. As an example, I would like to say that it is also possible to hammer wooden screws into a board.

An alternative as VM host KVM or XEN is opensuse or other distributions, depending on what you like. Or use Proxmox as already described here in the thread. The migration of VMware LINUX VMs to XEN, KVM or Proxmox is actually a small kindergarten, there are enough instructions.  QCOW2 Image - Import into Proxmox VE or XEN /KVM is a possible keyword. What then has to be considered again and again is what possibilities there are to insert a new bootloader or timekeeping is another thing to consider.

Opensuse leap can be installed on levona server hardware, levono typical drivers or support for ipmi and others is available. Helpful can be the guide from SUSE which describes the installation of SLES on Levono.

George

If you use SUSE SLES as your host OS you can use XEN or KVM hypervisors.  You would use Virt-manager to manage the Virtual machines and libvirt, those usually get installed by default on SLES when you install the hypervisor. 

Another choice would be to use Proxmox. Proxmox is a nice HOST OS that runs KVM virtual machines with a nice web GUI.

I have used openSUSE and KVM, libvirt/Virt-manager to host OES servers just fine and have not had any issues.

Good Luck!

-Marty-