VI3 vs. Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2008 + Hyper-V

[klantomo]

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Hyper-V will be released soon. I wonder what the VMware community has to say about these products. What are the advantages of VI3? Does Microsoft's solution have certain features that VMware lacks?

[TomHowarth]

I think i would be eaiser to say what the Microsoft solution lacks compared to ESX and VC. VMotion is the most pertanant feature here. Quick Motion just does not cut it.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Here's a video demonstrating what Tom refers to - http://vmwaretv.blip.tv/#800149

When you do compare the products, make sure to get an apples to apples comparison. Some of the recent MS blogs have tried to compare Quick Migration to High Availability which is not the same. Quick Migration should be compared to Vmotion, because in both cases the original host is still running. HA would come into play if the original host suddenly failded and for both HA and clustering on the MS side, the VM is restarting as if you pulled the power plug a server.

The ability to do memory overcommit is a big difference - see the blogs here - http://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2008/03/more-on-vmware.html / http://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2008/03/memory-overcomm.html

One thing the memory overcommit issue reinforces is the need to look at the total cost of running your virtualization platform. It's not a matter of adding up the various licensing components as was done erroneously here - http://blogs.technet.com/daven/archive/2008/02/26/comparing-microsoft-and-vmware-virtualisation.aspx. In part the blog post, quoting a Yankee Group report, errors in obtaining correct licensing costs for both solutions. But also significantly missing is the entire cost of the solution. If you're getting more VMs per ESX host than with Hyper-V, then VI3 will potentially be a lower cost solution (not to mention a more mature solution).

I think you also have to consider the problem that you're trying to solve with either product. How you compare the products for a very small IT shop that is perhaps considering only a single host will be very different to a company considering hundreds of host, multiple locations, DR, etc. The small shop won't care how much memory / CPUs either can support, advancing clustering features etc, but will focus likely on ease of management and also be sensitive to the cost of the solution. The larger company will be looking at reporting features, security, DR, scalability, etc.

See a good features comparison here of what the MS solution is missing.

http://www.it20.info/misc/virtualizationscomparison.htm

[G_T]

Ppl is really having interest on how Hyper-V to handle planned and unplanned downtime, and its cost & effort to implement it. Although MS didn't launch many materials about Quick Migration. It seems that Quick Migration is slower than Vmotion in this beta version. At the moment, Vmware provide simple way for high availability solution, i.e. VMware Cluster (HA, DRS), and Vmotion with same set of license, and HWs, and these technolgies can apply and co-exist in a same clustered nodes.

From Win 2003 Virtual Sever, to now 2008 Hyper-V, MS provide three of its Windows technologies for fault tolerance, i.e. Network load-balancing, Host cluster, and application specific clustering. We all know these technologies requires different architecture, hardware, and sofware licenses, and cannot co-exist in most scenarios. From this angle, IT professionals should well planned before implementing Hyper-V.

[dpomeroy]

I'm waiting for Hyper-V to actually come out before making any serious comparison. As it stands right now MS looks to still be well behind VMware in terms of features, but more importantly to me is that the VMware solution is tried and true and we have used ESX/VC in production for over 4 years now, you really want to run your enterprise production applications on a Microsoft 1.0 version product??? (If so make sure your resume is up to date).

So far it looks like MS doesnt have a acceptable answer for VMotion (quick migration as already discussed does not cut it), Storage VMotion, VMware HA (personally I think this is much better than any tech that relies on MS Cluster Services), DRS, basically most of the VI Enterprise features.

There is no way VMware is going to be able to stop MS from taking some of their market share away, even with an inferior product, but I think VMware will stay far enough ahead (at least for the near future) to remain the #1 virtualization solution.

Don Pomeroy

VMware Communities User Moderator