New Citrix Tool Promises Virtual Interoperability
Citrix this week announced "
Project
Kensho" (which is a Zen term referring to one's initial enlightenment),
a set of tools that should make your choice of hypervisor, as Dr. Evil might
say, "inconsequential."
Kensho tools take advantage of Open Virtual Format (OVF), a standard that lets
IT and application makers build virtual machines that run independent of the
hypervisor. This way, a VM could be easily moved from VMware to Xen to Hyper-V.
Here's how Simon Crosby, Citrix CTO, described Kensho in a recent
blog:
"Kensho will allow application vendors and IT users to produce virtual
appliances once as 'golden application templates,' independent of the virtualization
platform used to deploy them -- and is a clear demonstration of how Citrix
will add value to Hyper-V."
Another advantage of Kensho? It will eventually let Microsoft System Center
VMM manage other hypervisors such as XenServer. Microsoft has got to love that.
With this kind of interop, does the hypervisor even matter? What do you think,
and what is your favorite virtual tool? Answers welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on July 16, 2008 at 11:52 AM