Xensource and Citrix - Interesting Times.
The Citrix acquisition of Xensource raises some interesting questions.
In VMware land there are lots of articles on the use of Citrix Presentation server as a VMware Guest.
Optimizing Citrix Presentation Server on Vmware ESX Server - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/med0115.pdf
Citrix and Vmware - http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac9728.pdf
Improving Scalability for Citrix Presentation Server - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_citrix_scalability.pdf
Best practices for deploying Citrix on ESX - http://virtrix.blogspot.com/2007/03/vmware-best-practices-for-deploying.html
Generally speaking it seems that in the world of two way, multi core systems - the efficiency gains on a PS/Windows server are not exponential.
It would seem that that the ESX hypervisor can more efficiently schedule the CPU resources of many single vCPU PS VMs leading to a higher net user count on the same physical box.
Citrix now how a hypervisor technology. Lets Speculate.
Could we see a new Citrix appliance/software - lets call it the Citrix SEP (Server Encapsulation Platform). This appliance would be able to run mutliple PS4.5 Servers with integrated resource management and load balancing. Introduce a second appliance with shared storage and these appliances can utilise XenMotion to move the virtual PS servers around to uniformly distribute resouce utilisation and increase the end user experience.
Citrix also have ardence in their bag of tricks. Could we see a SEP firing up Diskless PS4.5 servers?
Of course I've just read the headline and typed the first thing that has come into my head just above there - so if someone else has already jabbered on about this - well, great minds and all that!