[plug] WA Councils choose Linux and Xen

[Senectus .]

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1971464960&eid=-219

The Dardanup, Harvey, and Donnybrook/Balingup local government councils in
Western Australia have a central IT support infrastructure and, according to
IT officer Stephen Eaton, required a simple way of deploying and managing
its Windows servers.

"We're running standard Windows 2000 and 2003 servers and started looking at
VMware a few years ago as we were getting server creep," Eaton said. "And we
starting to look at a replacement strategy for existing servers as we had a
number of servers doing multiple roles, and we were looking for something
for disaster recovery."

Eaton evaluated VMware and wanted to deploy it but because of the size of
the installation it was deemed two cost prohibitive for the enterprise
features like vmotion.

As a "big supporter" of open source and a Linux user personally, Eaton
looked at the open source Xen hypervisor and waited about 12 months to
deploy XenEnterprise 3.0 which supported Windows guests.

Eaton said the big thing lacking at the moment is the ability for hosts to
access the hardware, like USB ports, but now with XenMotion DR between the
sites can be done easily.

"I can see virtualization being for the better, as desktops are the next
thing to be virtualized," he said. "I'm definitely not interested in Vista,
but Linux desktops will be a way off. We are moving more to thin clients,
which is the beauty of virtual environment."


-- 
Ubuntu Dapper 7.04
The less you know, the more you believe. - Bono
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