[Users] oVirt or RHEV ?

[Dave Neary]

Just a note to apologise - I hadn't noticed I was sending email from
gmail, not redhat.com - disclaimer/disclosure apply. I work for Red Hat.

Cheers,
Dave.

On 02/06/2014 07:32 PM, Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 02/06/2014 04:06 PM, Martijn Grendelman wrote:
>> This may be the wrong place to ask, but I'm looking for input to form an
>> opinion on an "oVirt or RHEV" question within my company.
> 
> I suspect you'll get a different answer if you ask here vs Red Hat
> sales. I'll try to be objective (disclosure: I work for Red Hat).
> 
>> I have been running oVirt for about 5 months now, and I'm quite
>> comfortable with its features and maintenance procedures. We are now
>> planning to build a private virtualization cluster for hosting clients'
>> applications as well as our own. Some people in the company are
>> questioning whether we should buy RHEV, but at this point, I can't see
>> the benefits.
> 
> If you are running any applications which are certified on RHEL, and you
> want to ensure you continue getting the benefits of certification, then
> you should check if your supplier will support the configuration of
> "application on RHEL guest on oVirt managed hypervisor" - Red Hat does
> not support the operating system in this configuration, so if certified
> applications and support are important, this is something you may want
> to consider.
> 
> In general, oVirt will get less integration testing and QA than RHEV
> (purely a resource allocation issue), so you will occasionally hit bugs
> in oVirt that are fixed in the equivalent RHEV release. Bug fixes for
> RHEV get into oVirt too, but in the master branch usually, so if you're
> running a stable release of oVirt, you may still have the issue, unless
> the fix is back-ported to the stable release branch.
> 
> On the flip side, features appear first in oVirt, so if there are newer
> features you really need, you could use them on oVirt. A few months
> later, they will be available in the RHEV product.
> 
> Also, while most RHEV documentation will apply to oVirt, that's not
> always the case. A recent example was the Node quick start
> documentation, as pointed out by a list member. If you like
> documentation matching the actual functionality of the project, you can
> help fix the oVirt documentation.
> 
> Actually, that's a key differentiator - your ability to engage with the
> community, help update the wiki, test new features while they're still
> in design & ensure they fit your needs, are for me the key selling
> points of the project. If you want something that is supported, on which
> your apps are certified, and for which you can get good support, and
> have a reasonable expectation of more stability, RHEV is for you.
> 
> 
>> Can anyone on this list shed a light on when RHEV might be a better
>> choice than oVirt? What are the benefits? The trade-offs?
>>
>> I am looking for pragmatic, real-world things, not marketing mumbo
>> jumbo. That, I can get from redhat.com ;-)
> 
> You also got this from redhat.com - hope I didn't disappoint you.
> 
> Cheers,
> Dave.
> 
> 

-- 
Dave Neary - Community Action and Impact
Open Source and Standards, Red Hat - http://community.redhat.com
Ph: +33 9 50 71 55 62 / Cell: +33 6 77 01 92 13