VirtualVCP IT Virtualization

And again while I love vmware and will continue to work towards my VCDX , It would be unwise of me to ignore hyper-v. I shall be interested to see how your lab setup goes.

I work for a platinum partner, and we had to fight to get NFR's for lab use. VMware don't seem to grasp that having to rebuild vCentre every month won't make me more proficient, only more frustrated!

While vSphere has the edge in features and management, Hyper-V is much cheaper for existing Win Datacentre license holders. As you point out, this will speed its adoption by those customers. I can't see them complaining about the product too much if it comes gratis...

I actually think Hyper-V and XENserver are not datacentre ready to the level of VMware at this time, but I know they are catching up. I will also learn these technologies, and like Andre my biggest bug bear is no NFR.

I have to destroy my home lab regularly and my two ESXi free offerings do not love me anymore.

VMware's hope though, is that vSphere becomes a totally different animal, in integrating other products like SRM and Chargeback all in one product at a cheaper price, well something along these lines.

If not, I do believe they might end up like Novell. We need a Technet type cheap subscription. MS do this very well by flooding the market with their products using this strategy. Us techies learn it and remember it and so do many students at UNIs.

Throw us a lifeline VM.

Hi Rynardt,

Congratulations on the VCAP passes. I will be studying towards these exams over the coming months.

I work for a Vmware Enterprise Partner and I emailed them and received NFR licenses ok. As for my home lab, I have 2 x HP ML110 G6 servers and I run Hyper-V (installed on local disks) and ESXi 4.1 (USB sticks), so I can switch to either environment easily.
As we are also a HP Gold Partner, we receive NFR licenses for P4000 VSAs, so I used these to provide iSCSI shared storage using local disks in the servers.

Anyway, yes I agree that Hyper-V does and will continue to sell and take some market share aware from VMware, but some customers argue that Hyper-V is effectively 'free' as they would have had to buy the MS Datacenter licenses anyway for a VMware environment. However, we have found that there are other costs with Hyper-V, such as a lower density of VMs per host and added support costs as it seems to be more problematic to maintain.

MS are promising some more features with SP1 such as Dynamic Memory, but even so, they are still are long way behind VMware in my opinion.

Nick at Nickapedia has a very good article with regards this debate:

http://nickapedia.com/2010/01/22/hello-hyper-v-meet-reality-part-deux/

I still believe, if VMware can integrate other products into a single more powerful product therefore reducing cost they will stay ahead of the competition.

Also when Novell got beaten up by MS, no one wanted to aquire them. This is a totally different picture with VMware. Google, Cisco, Oracle and IBM would likely step in, in the form of aquisition. The Cloud will dicate.

I still believe that VMware should help us advocates of their goods [ we are like psuedo salesmen at the coalface ] in providing a Technet type software offering. We would all purchase it tomorrow if it was the same price as Technet.

Hi Bob,

It's good to hear from you my old friend. How are you? We should catch up soon!

I do agree with your comments; however I don't think we can start debating around acquisitions as VMware is owned by its parent company EMC Corporation. I highly doubt EMC will easily let go of VMware.

Also, it seems from some of the comments and emails that I have received for a number of people since posting the article that people seem to disregard the fact that I do mention that in my opinion VMware is a much better product than anything else as a general datacentre virtualisation product.

Somehow a lot of people argue that just because VMware is better today, they will be able to fight of M$ in 10 years than the same margin that they are able to achieve today.

My intentions for writing this article were not to say that Hyper-V is now the future or not. As I mentioned in the post, I am not able to foresee the future, but can look at the past. I'm not in a position to say that today Hyper-V is not “data centre ready”, as I just don't have the numbers in front of me to justify such a statement.

My reasoning behind the article is to highlight the fact that more virtualisation professionals need to start looking at the bigger picture if they want to stay on top of their game in years to come. This in my mind was not a discussion whether Hyper-V is better than vSphere. I am not trying to compare products. That, I think is a pointless discussion for today at least.

Hi Rynardt,

Agree with your sentiments, and I do worry VMware might go the same way as Novell. Nick's article is good comparing the nitty gritty of the products. VMware is a better product, but the old VHS v Betamax springs to mind again.

As MCNE's and CNE's, Novell took away our free software subscriptions and our tools to fight off M$. VMware needs to provide us with a free or low price Technet type subscription. It seems we are always paying out all the time, and it is so easy as an alternative to switch to M$ because we can learn their products and courses so much cheaper.

In these times of recession, customers and freelance people like myself, cannot afford to keep paying out for training and exams and see no rewards. Its an uphill battle all the time. If VMware just rely on their large partners it will not be easy for them. They need to get the software out to the masses and the people working at the coalface.

Best Regards

Bob

Several points here. 1) not everyone uses or wants to use Windows Server and 2) customers will continue to go for the "leader" brand when it comes to virtualizing anything mission critical and that means VMware. At least for a few more years as virtualization reaches saturation.

Sure Microsoft will win in Windows shops but they won`t win everything.

Also, as virtualization is just an "add-on", they do not treat it as "strategic" and therefore do not invest the amounts VMware do in R&D (look at the file system as one of many examples - CSV is bolted on to NTFS), nor do they invest much into marketing it. Yet.

So, the real question is why not? It is already proven that the free pricing doesn`t work in most cases. What are they waiting for? They are allowing VMware to take the lead and VMware will certainly entrench themselves by adding additional value in the features and other value-add`s (see their product road map).

Yes, SE`s should hedge their bets. But don`t expect too much from Microsoft. Do you really think everyone wants Windows Server? Do you really see Windows underpinning "Cloud" scale virtualization deployments? Not so likely.

stumbled upon this entry while working on my first esx lab buildout. all of my virtualization work has been based on a pure microsoft foundation. and then i was handed an older dell 1750 server. dual x86 procs, 4 GB RAM, fans louder than hell..... it took me two weeks to decide whether i even wanted to mess with it at all. no usb boot, no dvd just cdrom, this thing was anti-every os and app i have been using for the past couple of years.

it started with a ubuntu whim.... the install went so well, i couldn't help but play with it; then pfsense and smoothwall and vyatta as mini virtuals. all of a sudden i started thinking of the old box as an equal peer to its rack neighbors in my server "closet," the ones with 4 times the ram, disk and procs. vmware esxi 3.5 was so polished, i am almost afraid to see what 4 offers. but i've already moved over to xen. the concept of pass through vga and usb just can not be ignored.

it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why hyper-v will be the 800 lb gorilla in the virtual space, nor will you ever hear any one from the MS side of the fence draw parallels to a more polished vmware platform. but, pubescent gorilla that it is, its appetite is vintage MS. that alone validates your decision to learn hyper-v.

I too have decided to take the plunge into the unknown world of hyper-v after VMware's recent announcement of vRAM pricing..

Hi,

Great post. I personally belief that Cloud Computing will drive future organizations to a heterogeneous hypervisor environment. Escpecially when mergers take place and/or multiple Infrastructure Service providers are going to be integrated. From that perspective, especially when you are System Integration Consultant, it is wise to study on management of multiple types of hypervisors. In my opinion this is also the best value for money approach. Especially when you are going to focus on Storage Hypervisors. Because there (I/O challenge) the performance focus should be shifted.

Regards,
Reinier Muller
Strategic IT Advisor