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Virtualization (Last updated: 06-12- 2008) Microsoft Windows Hyper-V VS VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 |
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Queries the following Comparison is trying to Answer:
VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 VS Microsoft Windows Hyper-V VMware ESX Versus MS Hyper V How does MS Windows Hyper-V compare to VMware VI3? Advantages & Disadvantages of Windows 2008 Hyper-V & VMware VI3 (V3.5) What is better VMware VI3 or MS Windows Hyper-V ? How? Independent Unbiased Comparison MS Windows Hyper-V & VMware VI3
VMware VI3 VS MS Windows Hyper-V Introduction:
Ok, decided on riding the virtualization boat and confused on the right product for your company. You are in the correct place as here we list the comparisons of most of the virtualization solutions. On this page we will compare Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V vs VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3, but other comparisons are available and you can choose them from the menu on the left panel. As Microsoft Windows 2008 is approaching with its new Hyper-V virtualization solution, & the great number of hits this comparison got when it was looking at MS Hyper-V in beta vs VMware VI3 & the many requests to to update this comparison. We had worked hard on testing the full release of MS Hyper-V & Compare it to VMware VI3 latest release 3.5 U3 & updated the comparison below accordingly. If you are coming back for our beta comparison you still can find it at: VMware ESX vs MS Windows 2008 Hyper-V Beta. If you are looking for the latest comparison then you might want to look at: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V VS VMware ESX 4.0
Below is our unbiased comparison of MS Hyper-V vs VMware VI3. Please note this comparison look at the full fledge of both servers not the lightened editions core services for Hyper-V & VMware ESXi editions, though it will point out to them when required. Another comparison of the lightened editions can be find at VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
http://www.microsoft.com/ windowsserver2008/en/us/ virtualization-consolidation.aspx
-: MS Windows Hyper-V 2005 R2 VS VMware
VI3:-
This can really be misleading
as for
Microsoft Windows Hyper-V
you still
have to pay for the host operating system
(Windows 2008),
which is for some versions almost the equivalent of what you would pay for VMware 3.5. So if
your virtual machines are not running windows 2008 and if you don't
benefit of the special licensing offered by Microsoft for running
several Windows version in a virtualized environment then people should look at the cost of Windows 2008 as the
cost of Microsoft Windows Hyper-V. Anyway, if your guest are not
Windows then the cost of windows 2008 is obviously only for the hypervisor
which does not seems to us being free!!
- MS Hyper-V Server 2008 has been released as a separate media
which will provided a lightened version of Hyper-V which can be obtained
totally free, though this is the equivalent of VMware ESXi which VMware
started to distribute for free as well. This comparison is not covering
these two products for that check out
VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008..
- Another important side of the cost of Hyper-V
Virtualization Solution & VMware virtualization which usually get
ignored is the management application cost. VMware has Virtual Center
for one fixed cost of $4000 and can manage unlimited hosts, where with
MS to get the same functionality you will need to get System Center
Management Suite Enterprise which cost about $1000 per host. So the
management cost will depend on how many servers your virtualization
infrastructure will have. It can go quite heavy with hyper-V.
In addition, in VMware VI3 you can run more virtual machines on the same specs machine
as VMware offer memory over commitment and waste less resource than Microsoft Hyper-V solution
in most cases. In many cases that it self will make up for
the cost differences. Don't let the initial price fool you. I have seen
many scenarios where the cost per VM in VMware got to be lower than
Hyper-V.
- If you are getting one thing of the cost
comparison then let it be to do a TCO study of the solution you are
going for instead of just the initial cost. Make sure you calculate the
management tools & maintenance of the solutions you are deciding on as
these are going to be your real cost
Moving to
production, but for most companies still at testing &
development environment.
MS
Hyper-V has just been out of beta for less
than a year, and its main management tool SCVMM has been released for
just a bit more than a month now.
So it is not yet
running in many production environments, though many testing and
development environment have already adopted it. Though that might
change in the future if it proves stability.
In the other site VMware
have been mature enough for production environment for a
while. It has been used by most of the fortune 100 companies in
production. That prove readiness of VMware Virtual Infrastructure. It will
take time for MS to prove the same.
-: Microsoft Hyper-V VS VMware
VI3:-
VMware bare-metal
& Small footprint installation harden the security of its product and make it independent of
any operating system security risks and breaches unlike the Microsoft Hyper-V which unfortunately still
affected by the (Domain 0) OS (Windows
2008) bugs, viruses, and
security breaches even if only windows 2008
server core is running. In addition, not using
underlying OS make it more resource efficient although Hyper-V is
using hypervisor technology equivalent to Xen which make it a lot faster
than its previous virtualization product Virtual Server 2005, still got
lot more constrains when compared to VI3 Infrastructure specially when it
come to Linux and Legacy windows systems.
Microsoft
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 has been just released around a
month ago, which put it right in the testing age. Though it offered a
quite good manageability and being able to manage VMware VI3 & MS
Virtual server is a plus if MS can keep up with that. As with our last
test VMware VI3 3.5U3 was not supported yet & plenty of the features
VMware VI3 gain from Virtual Center can not be delivered by SCVMM 2008.
The keep up is not going to be easy, but I have to give credit for
trying.
VMware Virtual Center 2.5 has been the leading
virtualization management software for a while, and implemented in many
environments which prove its stability. It enhances the VMware VI3
with advanced features that Microsoft still does not match, which are
discussed further in this comparison. Though Virtual Center only can
manage VMware VI3 & VMware is not trying to manage other virtualization
products from their interface as they believe in their superiority &
spread in the market.
Microsoft might have more support resources
than VMware,
but not when it comes to virtualization,
though they are investing into
that direction. - Microsoft WindowsNT4.0/2000/2003/XP/Vista
- Red Hat Enterprise 2.1/3/4/5
- Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1
- Redhat Linux 7.2/7.3/8.0/9.0
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8/9/10 - SUSE Linux 8.2/9.0/9.1/9.2/9.3 -FreeBSD
4.9/4.10/4.11 - NetWare
6.5/6.0/5.1 - Solaris 10 for
X86
- Vista - Windows 2008 - Windows 2003 Standard/Enterprise SP1/SP2/R2 64-bit + Virtual
SMP (Supported in Production)
- MS Windows
2003/2008 - MS Windows
2000 Server/Advanced Server SP4
- Windows XP SP2/SP3
- SUSE Enterprise Linux Server
10 SP1/SP2
Its obvious that VMware has production
support for many more OS
than Microsoft. Actually supported
guest operating systems in Microsoft Windows Hyper-V is very limited. In
addition, not all supported OSs on Hyper-V will run with optimal speed
on it. This is due to Hyper-V need for the virtualized OS to understand
its running in a virtual environment to perform well on Hyper-V, which
is not even the case with windows 2003.
- Xen supported version of Linux is planned to be supported. They should
run by now, but with modification and not supported.
Its obvious at the moment that Hyper-V
still lagging on Linux support, where VMware support running most version
of Linux without the need to modify it, Hyper-V still only officially
support SUSE Enterprise Linux Server 10 SP1/SP2 at the moment. Other
Linux versions that have Paravirtualized Xen Kernal should run at the
moment, but still not officially supported. Even with the limited version
of Linux being supported by MS Hyper-V it still not that easy to setup. To
illustrate the required steps to setup Linux on Hyper-V read below:
Microsoft Hyper-V provides Integration
Components for Linux OSes, It would
been acceptable if the Integration Component for Linux OSes were straight
forward to setup but it require many complicated steps and what worse you
have to do the same steps over and over again for every Linux virtual
machine including the
following:
1- Manual installation of Xen Kernel.
2- Excute a seperate script that modifies the Linux
bootloader
configuration to allow the use of
Microsoft Hypercall adapter.
3- Run a perl script to install the Integration
tools and paravirtualized
drivers.
Note: If you want to see a full step by step of how
SUSE is install on Hyper-V look at
SUSE Installation on Hyper V at Virtualization Team Blog
Its clear that setting up Linux on VMware is way
easier and cleaner than Hyper-V at the moment, but Microsoft might change
that with future releases.
Further More, Hyper-V still does not support the 2nd generation of
Paravirtualization for Linux (paravirt_ops / VMI (Virtual Machine
Interface)). Method used to support Paravirtualization with Linux in
hyper-V increase the maintenance of Linux OS as the administrators will
have to keep up with two kind of kernels for virtualized & Physical
servers. In addition, they have to recompile their Linux kernel in order
for it to work. In the other hand, VMware are already offering support
for paravirt.
- Higher
Performance - More virtual
Machines per hardware as it support memory over commitment.
- Perform well with Operating
systems that understand its running in a virtualization environment
currently Windows 2008 & SUSE - Fewer Virtual Machines per
hardware
- Domain 0 is a bulky windows 2008 & even the Server Core installation
can waste a good amount of resources.
ITComparison
Comments
The performance advantage of VMware is related directly with its smaller foot print than Microsoft Windows
2008 Hyper-V.
Live Migration
(VMotion)
High Availability (HA)
Dynamic Resources (DRS)
Storage VMotion (SVMotion)
Cluster File System
Network Teaming
Supported
Supported
Supported
Supported
VMFS
Supported
Quick Migration (not real Live migration)
Quick Migration
(Host Clustering)
NLB is all MS
Offer !!
N/A
N/A
Dependant on the NIC manufacture.
ITComparison
Comments VMotion vs Quick
Migration: VMware VMotion is real Live migration where Quick
Migration is nothing more than host based clustering. It has more
requirements on the host side as it have to support windows 2008
clustering requirements and not as easy as VMotion to setup. In addition,
Hyper-V Quick Migration require a downtime enough to get the machine to
save state then shift the LUN group owner then bring back the machine to
running state. This downtime may vary depending on the speed of the SAN,
size and usage of the virtual machine a good sample of this downtime can
be found at
Hyper V Quick Migration Downtime. In the other side, VMware VMotion
requires a zero downtime which can be a major advantage for environment
which does not tolerate downtime. Even Microsoft clearly know the
differences and announced that they have delayed the Live migration
feature to a future release. For Quick Migration to do the job you will need
to have a separate LUN per Virtual Machine which can be a burden on the
storage & more work for the SAN administrators. This is not required by
VMware VMotion as VMware is using a cluster file system called VMFS. HA vs Host Clustering: Windows host clustering is harder & had more
requirements to setup than VMware HA, but it can do the job. Windows host clustering will failover all
virtual machines installed on the same LUN in case of a failover, which
is not the case in VMware. Again this is an advantage of a cluster file
system which Microsoft still does not offer. DRS vs NLB: Network load balancing is nothing new, and it
only work on the network layer. It distribute the network load equally
between the virtual machines only depending on the traffic load on them
not on how they are utilized. In addition, it require you to run several
virtual machines with OS which support NLB and configure NLB for each of
them depending on the configuration required for that OS which can be
complex for some OSes. They does not come even near what VMware offer with
DRS which distribute the load of the virtual machines dynamically and can
shift Live virtual machines between different hosts as required to obtain best performance
based on setting and configuration controlled by the administrator. In addition, VMware
support NLB for its virtual machines, but it did not limit its capability
to that. Storage VMotion: SVMotion is a new feature of VMware VI3 where the entire disk files of a virtual machine can be moved from one storage array
to another without affecting the operation of that Virtual Machine. This
mean VMware VI3 users can avoid downtime for their virtual machines when
they need to carry a storage maintenance. It means as well they can easily
upgrade or move to a new storage without the need for a down time. This
feature has no equivalent in MS Hyper-V at the moment, which mean downtime
for storage maintenance can't be avoided. Cluster File System:
ITComparison Comments
MS Windows Hyper-V still does not support
booting virtual Machine from Virtual SCSI disk. It only support it from
Virtual IDE disk which will highly slow the performance of these virtual
machines. It is not clear yet if upcoming upgrade of Hyper-V will support
booting virtual machines from virtual SCSI disk as no announcement on that
have been
made. If MS does not come up with boot from virtual SCSI then they are risking
their product of a very bad performance lag behind VMware which has that
capability.
ITComparison Comments
VMware VCB Is a great backup advantage as you can
with it take live backup (image) of running virtual machines without
affecting the performance of the host neither the virtual machines
performance, where with MS Hyper-V that still seems to depend on the host
capabilities using the Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) to enable you to
take Live Backups of running virtual machines in terms of snapshots, but
still affect the Hyper-V Host performance while the backup is running.
64GB of RAM
4 CPU
64GB of RAM
4 CPU
ITComparison Comments
Although Microsoft has been good in keeping up with
numbers for marketing, still VMware can offer a better specs virtual
machines for most Operating systems beside windows 2008. At the moment,
4 virtual CPUs are only recommended on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V. Its not even recommended to use more than one virtual CPUs with
most other OSes at the moment, but this hopefully would be resolved in the
next release. The following quote is directly from Microsoft
Hyper-V Beta release note:
==============From MS Hyper-V release note
Begin============
Configure the virtual machines as follows:
Windows
Server 2008 RC1 with Hyper-V Beta, with a maximum of 4 virtual
processors. No other release of Windows Server 2008 is supported with
this release of Hyper-V. The
Windows Server 2003 operating system, with a maximum of 1 virtual
processor. You can install either a 32-bit version or an x64-based
version."
=============From MS Hyper-V release note End=============== -
Although the above quote is quoted from the beta release note, it still
highly recommended to follow it to get a better stability of the virtual
machines hosted on hyper-v.
ITComparison Comments
It seems Microsoft has forgotten again that many
companies have some older hardware that does not run 64-bit and would like
to virtualizes their environment. MS Hyper-V force companies to obtain a
newer more expensive hardware to be able to virtualize. VMware still have
a supported list of hardware, but most well-known vendors servers are
supported even the old ones. Other Related Comparisons:
Windows 2008 Hyper-V R2 VS VMware ESX 4
VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
Xen Server Enterprise
VS VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3
Microsoft
Virtual Server 2005 R2
VS Xen Server Enterprise
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
VS VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3
Virtualization
Comparison
Forum:
Please post your requests, comments,
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readers comments at our
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MS
Windows 2008 Hyper-V VS VMware ESX 3.5 or our Forum at
Virtualization Comparison
forum.
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