Comments on: Why (or why not) switch from VMware to Hyper-V?

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:09:13 +0000

Those who mentioned VMware server (aka free) forgot, he needs to buy Windows license to run it.. Or show me a company who will use linux + it (company, not students ;))

By: Angelo

Angelo — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:50:43 +0000

28USD is the price of the hyper-v stand alone server license.

Also, the differences between the the features of both may not be as bad as they seem: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/…

Quick Migration in seconds is hardly a problem for the majority of servers.

By: Keith Jakobs

Keith Jakobs — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:11:38 +0000

It seems that no-one has bothered to look at Hyper-V pricing before slamming the $28 figure.

First, you can get Hyper-V, as a standalone product (without any licenses for Windows) for only $28. Secondly, MS is actually selling (or planning to sell) versions of Windows 2008 without Hyper-V included, and those copies retail for exactly $28 less than the full-featured O/S at each level.

So that $28 figure is very accurate. You just have to remember it does not include your first Virtual O/S… but then again, neither does VMWare.

By: Don Parmentier

Don Parmentier — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:03:21 +0000

I would like to make a correction to the statement:

“Hyper-V will pretty much run on any hardware that Windows will run on. ESX only supports a very specific set of hardware. VMware has recently expanded their hardware support and will continue to do so.”
Not quite–unless something has changed from the last Beta release, Hyper-V needs a processor with VT technology implemented. When I tried to install Hyper-V on a 64 bit machine running 64-bit Windows 2008, it refused to install because the processor did not have VT implemented. So care has to be made to purchase a processor that will support Hyper-V.

Don P.

By: Brock Bruner

Brock Bruner — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:39:22 +0000

I disagree with the cost of Hyper-V being cheaper. With all the features that ESX gives and the benefit of memory overcommitment, the costs per VM are in VMware’s favor. You can see this discussed here: http://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2…

By: Eric Siebert

Eric Siebert — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:36:14 +0000

Agreed SQL has become a powerhouse especially with the latest 2005 release which is a very worthy alternative to Oracle. Innovation is definitely the key, those that continue to innovate thrive (most of the time) and those that don’t slowly wither away.

By: Eric Siebert

Eric Siebert — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:33:07 +0000

Obviously $28 is a misleading number. If you start adding the features to ESXi that you will need in a enterprise environment the cost goes up. An ESXi standalone license only gets you VMFS and vSMP support. Plus take a look at the cost of a VirtualCenter license that is needed to use any of the advanced features with ESX. If you do a overall licensing cost comparison of implementing Hyper-V vs. ESX in a enterprise with all the features Hyper-V will be much cheaper right now. However you will get better performance, scalability, features and functionality with ESX. David did a good cost comparison of the two here–> http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/news/…

By: Bret Rice

Bret Rice — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:29:14 +0000

Hank,

The free Vmware server is ok if you want to install it on 1 server (can’t use as much memory,etc) but the functionality of ESX is a whole lot better and it does cost a lot more. We bought it where I work at so it is installed on 2 HP Blades so if we need to do maintenance on 1 blade we can move the virtual machines over to the other one (VmMotion)(can’t do that with the free Vmware) and the HA so if one blade fails it moves all of the virtual servers for you even if you’re not at the job site.

We use the free Vmware server hosted on a Windows 2003 server for development servers but it is very underpowered since the version of Windows 2003 server that we had already can’t use any more the 3 gb of memory. But, it’s ok for those needs.

I personally haven’t looked up the Hyper-V but I’m assuming since it’s a Windows product it’s going to need a lot more updates and reboots then Vmware ESX that runs on a Linux platform does.

By: Brock Bruner

Brock Bruner — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:27:00 +0000

I am also talking to others whom have a concern around cost due to the fact that the consolidation ratio on Hyper-V is significantly less than ESX. For a small platform, this is not an issue, but for medium to large installs, this increases the cost per VM using Hyper-V due to the requirement of more infrastructure.

By: Tom Howarth

Tom Howarth — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:33:19 +0000

you also forgot about Oracle. SQL server as a joke when it first appeared in the scene, but luck at it now, Oracle DB’s are being pushed out of the door.

VMware have to continue to inovate, the Hypervisor will soon become redundant as more virtualisation functions are added to the processor. what VMware need to do is continue to invest in inovation surrounding the management of VM’s. the beast has awoken in MS releasing Hyper-V but they are not yet out of the blocks and the business world is alot more IT savvy today than when NetScape, Novell and Notes were pushed asside. the Techies that argued against the removal of Netware for NT4 are now in the boardrooms as CTO’s and CIO’s, these people will demand proof about MS claims and not just believe the Marketing speel.