Microsoft Hyper-V

Virtualization Competitive Analysis in the middle of an ROI Calculator?

Microsoft recently published their Integrated Virtualization – ROI Tool, and I thought “That’s great. When the time comes I will have the ability to provide Microsoft branded reports to support a Microsoft virtual infrastructure opportunity.” I did not take the time to check out calculator first, but I assumed (or hoped) that it would provide clear answers about licensing costs and the confusing licensing options for virtualization. It wasn’t until I read VMware’s post Microsoft’s Virtualization ROI/TCO Calculator: Our Take that I decided I’d better understand what Microsoft’s ROI calculator produced.

Specifically, VMware’s post asked me to consider the inaccuracies they found:

“… evaluate the Microsoft calculator yourself – let us know what else you find! “

So I did just that, but it wasn’t how Microsoft calculated the numbers that bothered me most. I struggled to understand why a TCO and ROI calculator included a competitive analysis. After all, VMware’s TCO calculator doesn’t compare the cost of competitor’s products. What does that have to do with return on investment? It just seems out of place to me. Furthermore, if you go back and review VMware’s points they are mostly about the competitive cost comparison, too. It’s easy to forget we are discussing a TCO / ROI calculator.

As for using the calculator for ROI, it’s fine, I guess. But it did not live up to my basic expectations of helping with licensing. In fact, intentional or not, Microsoft comes across as trying to hide accurate licensing costs, as VMware points out:

“We did find a one-line disclaimer buried in the 66-page document: “Warning – Check pricing advice and rules as the automated recommendations here may not reflect all licensing rules.” Come on, guys - licensing is such a basic component for accurate TCO estimates. The disclaimer feels pretty weak.”

On the other hand, I think I can use the Windows Server Virtualization Calculators to help estimate licensing costs. But I shouldn’t have to use another calculator to verify the first one. Overall, I am left with the same feeling I get when trying to buy a new car. It’s similar to that doubt about the “dealership transport” charges or the frustration of feeling that I’m missing hidden costs even though the price is right. I am being forced to do way too much research.

I understand that the next few years will be filled with explaining the technical and financial differences between Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and all the other virtualization products. A competitive analysis calculator would come in handy. A single, unbiased virtualization competition calculator might be impossible to create, but even separate tools from each vendor that let you enter your own pricing numbers would be a great start. Call these tools what they really are. Don’t hide them in an ROI Calculator.

VMware: beware of bridge-building competitors

VMware may be king of the virtualization mountain now. But it should beware of bridge-building competitors.

Chris Wolf, an analyst with the Burton Group, warned that Novell Inc. was similarly at the top of the world in the late 1980s with its NetWare network operating system, which filled a key gap in Microsoft products. Addressing the problem, Microsoft responded with Windows NT, a weaker alternative to NetWare but “good enough” and stronger over time, and featuring a Gateway Services tool with just enough interoperability to make it easy to port data between the two systems.

But that “gateway” eventually became a floodgate, siphoning off Novell NetWare customers, who now had an easy way to migrate to Microsoft NT and a motive for doing so: Microsoft had a much larger package of software solutions while Novell’s NetWare was just a single point solution. Farewell, Novell NetWare.

Fast forward to 2008. VMware is the undisputed leader in virtualization, the hottest thing in the software market. And as part of its interoperability measures, Microsoft’s new System Center Virtual Machine Manager will have extenders to VMware. Microsoft will also launch its far more modest Hyper-V virtualization software at the giveaway price of $28 per server this summer. But, clearly, Microsoft will be working at furious speed to make it more competitive.

VMware, like Novell NetWare, is a point solution, and Microsoft, even more than in the 1980s, is a giant ecosystem with an overwhelming share of the global software market.

“This is a great strategy for Microsoft,” Wolf said. “It’s providing just enough interoperability [with VMware] to give some management with the goal of facilitating migration. And when users get comfortable with those tools, they will slowly migrate over to Microsoft.

“It’s exactly the same runbook as Microsoft ran against Novell,” Wolf said. “It’s pretty eerie.”

VMware expert sounds off on 3i, Hyper-V, XenServer

SearchVMware.com recently spoke with VMware book author and expert David Rule about his latest book, How to cheat at configuring VMware ESX Server. (Check out Design is key to VMware implementation success, expert says for the main interview and a free chapter download.)

The main interview covered security, management tools and best practices for implementation, but there was some other strong material about VMware 3i, Microsoft Hyper-V’s potential affect on VMware adoption and how Citrix plans to gain a better foothold in the marketplace with XenSource, so we decided to include them in this supplementary blog post.

SearchVMware.co: Do you think VMware 3i is VMware’s answer to the problems with the service console (patches, security vulnerabilities, etc.)?

Rule: Yes, and I think 3i is a great product for a variety of reasons. It’s a simpler, lighter footprint on hardware, which in turn gives better reliability and performance.

Do you think Hyper-V will detract from VMware’s customer base?

Rule: I don’t think there’s a compelling enough reason to move from one platform to another. From our internal lab testing, as well as customer feedback, I can say there’s more interest than there used to be in Microsoft, but the main issue is supportability. For at least the next 12-18 months, VMware will remain the market leader. 18 months out we may see more competition. But even looking at the long term, VMware is in a pretty good position because of their current stronghold in the market.

On the other hand, I have seen a few customers here within the last one to two quarters that don’t have any virtualization in place. Microsoft does come up more in conversations with new adopters than it used to.

Given the low licensing cost of Hyper-V, do you think VMware will have to alter its pricing?

Rule: At least with our customers, I don’t see a lot of push back on VMware licensing just because of the amount of consolidation you can get. At a 10:1 consolidation, you’re saving the customer so much it becomes a non-issue. VMware may have to focus on the business approach, and focus on, say, in a 1,000 server data center, here’s how much we can help you save. It’s really going to be about VMware and VMware-partner marketing.

Do you think Citrix XenServer will become a bigger contender?

Rule: A lot of it hinges on Citrix bringing their solutions together. Xen had good momentum behind it in the marketplace. People that didn’t like the VMware licensing, such as smaller size SMBs or those who used virtualization for test and development, liked XenSource. So, Citrix has brand recognition. If Citrix can meld their application and desktop virtualization products together, that’s going to be their strength. And, actually, that’s the direction they want to see things go.

Citrix has two focuses: people that aren’t doing virtualization at all yet, and their core customer base from Presentation Server. They’re taking on more of a grassroots campaign. It would be a tough sell with accounts that don’t currently have a Citrix install base.

How do you think VMware will remain competitive?

Rule: They’re going for continual add-on business, net-new accounts and the licenses they’ll bring in. You’ll see movement with virtual desktops and Site Recovery Manager. But virtual desktops are where VMware is going to see a huge surge of revenue coming in. If you have 1,000 servers, that’s 3,000 - 4,000 users. Just 10% of that is a huge amount of net-new licenses.

Is the mixed virtualization vendor data center possible?

I recently floated the idea of implementing a mix of virtualization products in your data center as a way to better customize your virtual environments. The query was part of a larger discussion I wanted to get going about how VMware will compete when Hyper-V is generally released. I threw out the notion that data center managers might use, for example, Hyper-V for end-user file servers; VMware ESX for apps that require dynamic load balancing, sophisticated disaster recovery and migration; and Xen for commodity Linux boxes.

The idea behind that supposition was to match your enterprise investments to appropriate workloads because, let’s face it, running everything on ESX is going to be expensive compared to other options. Big deal if you don’t get ESX-level features because you may get enterprise level features on silver-medal products.

Now, I wish I could take credit for that idea (for better or for worse), but that really came from SearchServerVirtualization.com’s editor, Jan Stafford. At any rate, a few people had comments about that note and I thought it would be fitting to continue that conversation with their input:

Hi,

One of the reasons I think Hyper-V is interesting is the server core concept. The ability to create appliance virtual machines for specific roles such as DNS, DHCP, DC etc. means you can drastically reduce the manageability overhead and the attack surface for those servers. Weird - I’m finding myself suggesting that an all-MS platform may actually be more secure than the alternatives!

On the other hand, you may be correct that fully-fledged servers with complex HA needs will be better off on ESX.

Cheers,
Dan Flower

There are flaws to this query, the base of which stem from whether ESX, Hyper-V and Xen-based virtualization products can even be compared; never mind that there are disparities between Xen-based virtualization vendors (xVM isn’t Red Hat isn’t Citrix Xen etc). This was the point that some folks took issue with:

Just a comment about an “apples and oranges” comparison you made:

I understand the point you were trying to make about using the right virtualization product for the right job, and at times this might mean using multiple solutions, but you can’t really compare Hyper-V or VMware to Xen. Both Virtual Iron and Citrix offer a virtualization solution based on Xen technology, but neither sells just Xen. Your reference to Xen brings to mind what a Suse or Red Hat shop might do with Xen technology, but not those that would consider Hyper-V or VMware as a virtualization solution.

David Roden

So, there are still many problems that have to be approached before we even ask the question of implementing a mixed enterprise virtualization infrastructure. Ultimately, people will have to decide on what functionality, support and management interfaces are important. Is quick migration support good enough, or do you need live migration? How does each platform approach P2V conversions? Does VirtualCenter have the right kind of management options for your installation? Will you be better off using System Center Virtual Machine Manager?

Let’s keep prodding at this idea and brainstorm ways that using multiple virtualization products in one environment could work. Send us your comments and feedback. If you’ve tried the mixed virtualization environment, we’d love to hear about it.