"Red Hat's comments are suspect because they don't have something ready for prime time. We do," Dragoon said. "A Red Hat press release in March said Xen was ready."
In that release, Red Hat said it would make its Virtualization Migration and Assessment Services and Enterprise Virtualization beta available this summer. It also said the following: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux v. 5, scheduled for general availability by the end of 2006, will feature fully integrated virtualization."
At LinuxWorld, XenSource and Virtual Iron said they plan to ship their respective XenEnterprise and Virtual Iron platforms in the next few weeks. They indicated that Xen is ready.
Xen works on Novell's Linux distribution, XenSource said. "I know it was tested on every piece of hardware," said Simon Crosby, CTO at XenSource.
Virtual Iron, another ISV preparing to launch a Xen-based virtualization platform for the data center, said Xen is ready. Virtual Iron's solution will ship in the September-October time frame, said Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer for the Lowell, Mass.-based company.
"I'm not sure why Red Hat is saying [Xen is] not ready," said Alex Vasilevsky, founder, vice president and CTO of Virtual Iron. "We believe it's ready. We'll start taking orders soon."