Tag: virtualization

Hyper-V vs. ESXi – Response to techtarget's article

So, I was reading this article which talks about the advantages of MS Hyper-V over VMware ESXi and I’m amazed at the FUD that Microsoft has been spreading. I don’t usually write about virtualization over at this blog, but this I just have to clear.

It is quite clear from the article that the author, Greg Shields, has no clue about ESXi (or Hyper-V, for that matter). Greg starts his post with the following sentence,

Hyper-V Server is a free, recently released download from Microsoft that brings free virtualization hosting to small environments, as well as to those that don’t want to pay the extra cost of ESXi.

What extra cost Greg, would you care to explain ?

ESXi is free and has been for a while now.

Oh and ESXi supports SCSI (FC/iSCSI) and NFS data-stores, which means that the virtual machines can reside on any of the above, and not only flat files on a vmfs formatted volume.

Greg talks about the advantages of Hyper-V over ESXi and claims the following,

One particular administrative boon of Hyper-V Manager over ESXi is its use of NTFS partitions for the storage of VMs as opposed to VMware’s proprietary VMFS. Hyper-V Server can support the hosting of virtual machines through virtually all forms of Direct-Attached Storage and Network-Attached Storage, in addition to traditional SAN storage via iSCSI, SAS, and Fibre Channel. Since Hyper-V Manager runs atop Server Core, whatever storage back-end you select must have client-side support for this special operating system version.

First of all, Like I’ve already said, ESXi supports all transports that Hyper-V does and secondly, I really don’t understand why storing VMs on an NTFS partition is an advantage compared to VMFS ? How does it even matter where the VMs are stored ?

In my opinion, just the fact that ESXi is 32MB in size vs. the over 1GB of Hyper-V should be reason enough for a consumer to try ESXi. 1GB of Microsoft written software … hmmm .. let me calculate how many vulnerabilties would there be in that !

Now, I’m a fair guy and I do agree that Hyper-V has its advantages. Like the fact that it is a Microsoft product. And that reason by itself will make it the default option for a large number of Microsoft shops. But, this article here … give me a break ! I know a trashy article when I see one. I’m all for comparisons as long as they’re fair.

Whitepaper on "VMware Infrastructure 3 in a Cisco Network Environment"

VMware in collaboration with Cisco has just published a Whitepaper on integrating VMware Infrastructure 3 in a Cisco Network Environment.

Get the whitepaper here.

Even if you don’t rely on Cisco equipment for your Data Center, the whitepaper is a good read for anyone looking to implement VI 3 technology. It gives a good perspective in the real vs. virtual way of doing things and should help make the decision of moving to virtualisation easier.

Via: virtualization.info

The winner of the Data Center OS wars

If you came here looking for THE one definitive answer, I’m sorry to disappoint you. There is none ! There are lesser contenders for the title than, say, two years back, but the battle is still on.

Microsoft released its new virtualisation offering, Hyper-V, on thursday and has decided to take on the golliath of the virtual world, VMware, head on. Friday saw VMware’s stock at NYSE crash by almost 14%. Granted Friday wasn’t good for most tech stocks at NYSE, but the writing on the wall is clear. VMware has some tough competition on it’s hands. And the markets seem to agree.

For almost a decade now, VMware has been the undisputed leader in providing virtualisation solutions. So much so that the company’s revenues have been growing more than 80% YoY since the last 5 years. The company commands a 90% share of the over $1 billion virtualisation market. VMware’s IPO last year was arguably the biggest tech IPO ever after google. VMW debuted at an almost 100% premium and soared to a high of about $125 over the next few months. The stock is now valued at a relatively modest $51 and the hype appears to have cooled down and the stock was doing quite well till Friday after MS’s announcement of a product which is in direct competition with VMware’s flagship solution.

Continue reading “The winner of the Data Center OS wars”

80% of US businesses run Macs

According to a yankee group report, 80% of US businesses run Macs. While the number itself is staggering what is even more interesting is that this percentage is almost double the 47% of mac running businesses from just two years ago. Not surprisingly, a good 28% of these businesses still use virtualisation to run Windows on these macs.

While I’m not the right person to comment on this data, I’m not particularly surprised. Macs have been gaining market share with the general public since the last few years and its good to see  that businesses have started looking at the viability of putting macs in the hands of their employees. I’m sure the above number includes mom and pop stores who use a mac to do their billing and not much else, so the percentage of macs in big enterprises will still be low but even this represents a big change.

When Apple announced the moving of their entire line of computers to Intel based chips instead of the PPC architecture, who would have thought the implications of the move. A lot of people from the mainstream press and the apple zealots were unhappy with the move and for some reason or the other decided that Intel chips just won’t cut it for apple.

I, on the other hand, think that the move to Intel has been the biggest contributor for this new found love for Macs among the PC community. With an Intel powered mac, the consumer has a good looking machine which allows him/her to run windows, play games and use Mac OS X, even at the same time with virtualisation software from one of the major vendors.

The move to Intel in itself was a trigger for an even bigger revolution, Virtualisation. While virtualisation has existed on the Mac platform for some years in the form of products like the Microsoft’s virtual PC, the market was a very niche one and anyone who has tried using Virtual PC to run windows on a PPC mac, would testify that it isn’t the best of experiences.

With an Intel chip, however, things changed and virtualisation just became a lot easier … and faster and consumers actually started appreciating the value of the technology. That in my opinion has been the real trigger of this mass exodus of PC users towards the mac platforms. The power to be able to run their applications and do the things that they’ve been doing for ages on a newer better and more powerful platform.