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RoyThe_Vulger
Contributor
Contributor

Windows VM vrs. VMWare

Any good points here? Besides "Microsoft sux?"

"Windows Server virtualization is Microsoft's new hypervisor-based virtualization technology available as part of Windows Server 2008. The Windows hypervisor is a thin software layer between the hardware and Windows Server 2008 operating system, and allows multiple operating systems to run unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. It provides partitioning functionality and is responsible for maintaining strong isolation between partitions."

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esiebert7625
Immortal
Immortal

There has not been alot of comparison yet because Windows 2008 has not been released yet. It's hard to compare a product that has not been released to a product that is released. A better comparison may be between Windows 2008 and VMware's soon to be released ESX 3.5. I'm sure Microsoft has made some improvements over there current Virtual Server offering to be able to better compete with VMware. Their current product is more aligned with VMware's free Server product, ESX is not much of a comparison to MSVS. Below is a thread that talks about this...

VMware ESX vs. Microsoft Virtual Server - http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=303426

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TomP1
Contributor
Contributor

Any more recent comparison? I've got a guy in my company who drank MS Koolaid and he swears that MSVS is now 5 years ahead of ESX. I could not even muster an answer because I was too busy rolling on the floor when I heard that one.

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esiebert7625
Immortal
Immortal

Sorry have not seen anything else, you might also check out these links...

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2007/06/15/leaving-esx-for-virtual-server/

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/101408

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JDLangdon
Expert
Expert

I gave up on this argument when one MS rep told me flat out, that clustering MSVS and configuring the guest OS's was just as good of a migration as VMotion.

Jason

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tmcd35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Well, they may not (yet) have the superior product - but atleast they haven't lost their sense of humor.

Terry.

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dawho9
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I spun up RC0 which includes a pre-beta release and it was fine. The biggest thing Microsoft has for them in regards to 2008 is answering the question, why pay for ESX when I get VS for free. Microsoft is going to make the big chunk of change off their management software instead. So there is a lower initial cost of ownership with VS as all you need to purchase is the Management software (+ support) as compared to VMware offerings.

The real quection will be what kind of add-on's can they pack in. They have already said nothing like VMotion to start out with so that will be problematic but until we see a full list SCVMM can do we have to do a little guessing about what the finished product will look like.

Competetion is a good thing and it will push VMware to do more in the virtualization space.

Richard

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pcrowley
Contributor
Contributor

Biggest issue with MS product is the Base Os has to be windows. Across the obard all of MS's Os's are bloated unpredictable and unreliable. There has been no way I have found yet to get any Windows server trimmed down and efficent as a single use product. I have several VM ware host that run near flawlessly I have one of them up and stable for over 6 months and even then I only shut it down to make ahardware change. My windows guests and physical boxes nned a reboot within 2 weeks max.

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oreeh
Immortal
Immortal

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mreferre
Champion
Champion

This might be of interest as well.......

Massimo.

Massimo Re Ferre' VMware vCloud Architect twitter.com/mreferre www.it20.info
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Abhishek124
Contributor
Contributor

Microsofts Hypervisor is just a modified Virtual PC. it doesnt have a Vmotion ha and DRS

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JDLangdon
Expert
Expert

Microsofts Hypervisor is just a modified Virtual PC. it doesnt have a Vmotion ha and DRS

While these technologies are crucial to any virtualized environment, even VMware's variations of VMotion, DRS, and HA need some improvement.

I have one server that constantly looses access to its local SCSI disks or the files system goes into a read only mode. VMware tells that this is by design but when this happens the VM's continue to run on the host that has crashed. For some reason HA doesn't consider this an issue and does not begin moving the VM's to a different host. The end result is that I must RDP or putty into 30 VM's, shut each one down manually, restart the host, and then power on the VM's manually.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to get change management approval to shutdown 30 servers?

Jason

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depping
Leadership
Leadership

Still, VMware has the functionality... MS doesn't. MS also lacks decent virtual switching, no load balancing -> failover etc. And i guess, they will fix it in the next release, but vmware and ciso will probably release virtual ios at that time...

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

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