» VIEW ALL POSTS Feb 24 2011   8:53PM GMT

VMware manages Hyper-V with new XVP ‘fling’

Posted by: Beth Pariseau
Hyper-V vs. VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, SCVMM 2012, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, vCloud Director, VMware

Speculation that VMware will support Hyper-V has become reality.

A so-called “fling” that lets vCenter manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines (VMs) is now available for download on the VMware Labs website.

The tool, dubbed XVP Manager, installs as a vCenter management plugin, according to demo videos on the VMware website. The IP addresses and authentication of Hyper-V hosts can be directly input into the vCenter/XVP system using the Add Host wizard within vCenter.

Users can also enter the IP address of a Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) server and select which of its VMs to import into the vCenter/XVP system for management, according to these videos. (And yes, there is a “select all” button.)

Host operations shown in the GUI on the demo video are basic, including adding and deleting, powering on and off, suspending, rebooting and connecting VMs to the network. A scroll bar on the screen during the demo suggests that more functionality will be available in this part of the tool. The same vCenter tabs already in use for getting a summary of the ESX/ESXi environment — as well as the Virtual Machines, Configuration and Tasks and Events tabs, won’t look any different with this tool; these functions can now just be applied to Hyper-V VMs. There is also a Console tab that handles direct connection into a third-party VM’s management console.

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Guest operations similar to the demonstrated host operations are also available within XVP for individual Hyper-V VMs. Memory, CPU, storage and peripherals can be managed on a per-Hyper-V-VM basis with this tool.

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Oh, and by the way, those Hyper-V VMs can also be converted to vSphere images using of XVP.

There’s no guarantee that XVP will be an officially released product, or when it might be offered as something beyond technology preview software. The VMware Lab terms and conditions state, “VMware is under no obligation to support the Technology Preview Software in any way or to provide any Updates to [the] Licensee.”

However, one of the main differentiatiors between vCenter and SCVMM over the last year or so has been that vCenter focuses on managing VMware software products only, including its hypervisor, while SCVMM can manage Hyper-V and VMware environments.  As competition is also expected to heat up between SCVMM 2012 and VMware’s vCloud Director later this year, it wouldn’t be surprising if VMware also looks to erase that distinction between its VM management tool and Microsoft’s.