Thank you Microsoft Hyper-V for providing the weapon which killed vSphere vRAM

August 27, 2012 by 2 Comments

Today VMware announced it terminated the vRAM licensing for vSphere 5.1. From now on it needs to be licensed only per physical processor again. An unlimited number of VMs can be run as long as physical memory in the host is available. VMware told us today:

WE HEARD YOU!

That is very good news for VMware vSphere users. Killing vRAM makes vSphere a lot more attractive for running it on hosts with a large amount of physical memory.

But lets not forget that VMware introduced vRAM 1 year ago for reasons that have not been changed today!
VMware stated back in 2011 that they wanted customers getting used to the ‘pay what you consume’ model of charging which is common for cloud computing.

They also claimed reduced revenue because of modern CPUs delivering more value for money. Licensing based on CPU alone would lead to less revenue for VMware and thus less innovation for customers.
What VMware forgot when introducing VRAM was:

  • customers are not stupid;
  • the economic situation for a lot of customers was and is not very good. IT-budgets are tight and reduced.
  • last but certainly not least: the big upcoming competition of Microsoft Hyper-V;

Back in 2011 Microsoft made it no secret that the next release of Hyper-V and System Center would deliver a lot more features than the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V release. Hyper-V is a lot cheaper to buy than vSphere .

Lets see what Microsoft has to offer with Windows Server 2012 and what VMware announced today:

  • vSphere Replication free in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V enabling host based , a-synchronous, storage agnostic replication.
    VMware today announced: vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus and higher editions will have vSphere Replication comparable to Hyper-V Replica. Also Site Recovery Manager can be used for Essentials Plus and higher editions. Used to be Standard Edition and higher.
  • Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V offers shared nothing Live Migration. Move a VM from one host to another without shared storage.
    VMware today announced Enhanced vMotion which can be compared to Hyper-V feature
  • Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V supports 64 vCPUs per guest max
    vSphere 5.1 supports 64 vCPUs per guest max
  • Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V supports an unlimited number of nodes using in-guest clustering
    vSphere 5.1 support 5 nodes (was 2 nodes in vSphere 5.0)
  • Microsoft System Center 2012 which enables private cloud is licensed per physical processor which makes it an attractive suite.
    VMware has a collection of solutions which enabled cloud. They were licensed per VM. Not anymore for the new vCloud which is licensed per physical processor
  • Using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 it is possible to create  a highly available shared storage solution based on Scale Out File Services and Just a Bunch of Disks or Storage Pools. Without the need to by an expensive SAN or NAS virtual disk files can be presented to Hyper-V hosts allowing vMotion and HA alike protection.
    VMware responded to include vSphere Storage Appliance in the Essentials Plus and higher editions of vSphere 5.1. Prior to vSphere 5,1 VSA needed to be purchased separatly. Now one VSA license is bundled with vSphere.

Why did VMware change it’s licensing policy and gives away more features?
Simple answer: because of the competition getting stronger and stronger and delivering value for money, Microsoft in the lead. The migration to vSphere 5.0 was not at a speed VMware hoped. Adoption of vCloud Director for private and public clouds is lower than expected. Customers were evaluating Hyper-V and stopped investments in new vSphere deployments.

If Microsoft would not have a mature solution for private cloud, customers would probably still have to deal with vRAM. Besides stronger competition the VMware suggested reasons for vRAM have not changed.

Thank you Microsoft (and Citrix and Red Hat) for your competition!

Filed under Hyper-V, Uncategorized, VMware solutions, VMworld 2012, Windows Server 2012

VMware getting rid of vRAM licensing in vSphere 5.1

August 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

Today CRN.com reports that VMware will get rid of the very unpopular vRAM based licensing in the next version of vSphere. At VMworld vSphere 5.1 will be announced as reported by several sources.

A summary of the rumoured changes :

  1. vRAM licensing will  not be used in vSphere 5.1 licensing. Just per CPU
  2. All VMware solutions will be licensed per CPU, not per VM according to CRN.com
  3. a new suite named vCloud Suite with solution like SRM, vCloud Director and vSphere according Techtarget
  4. Site Recovery Manager will be unbundled from vSphere Replication according Techtarget. This posting of VMware might confirm SRM and vSphere Replication are two products now.

TechTarget has a poll on its website with the question:Are you happy to see vRAM go?

these are the results ;-)

The unbundle will allow vSphere customers to do host based replication without the need to buy SRM licenses. Host based replication allows a more granular way of replication compared to storage based replication. Using vSphere Replication individual VMs can be enabled for replication while replication is storage agnostic.

vRAM has been around for about a year now. See this posting for an overview of opinions and why VMware decided to start charging the consumption of virtual memory.

vSphere 5.1 will return to a CPU licensing based on the number of physical processors.

The vRAM entitlement made vSphere much more expensive than it’s main competitor Hyper-V. Since Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V delivers almost equal functionality VMware had to do something to attract new customers and stop current customers from considering Hyper-V.

I already stated that VMware had to do something on it’s price in this posting in which vSphere 5 and Hyper-V are compared.  Personally I think (if the rumour is true)  this is very good news for customers.

Bob Plankers of lonesysadmin.net has a good posting on the knock out of the vRAM.

For detailed overview of features of vSphere 5 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V see this posting.

For more possible announcements at VMworld 2012 see this posting titled Possible VMware announcements at VMworld USA 2012

If you are attending VMworld see this pist will all the info you need ‘VMworld USA 2012 all you need to know’

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, Windows Server 2012

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: costs

August 17, 2012 by 9 Comments

This is my 6th posting in a serie of postings in which I will compare VMware vSphere 5 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. This time I do not compare features but  compare costs.

Update August 29:

VMware announced it discontinued the vRAM licensing for vSphere. vSphere 5.0 and 5.1 are now back again on CPU licensing.

This will have a positieve effect for costs. It will adjust this posting soon. Mind pricing in this post is still based on vRAM.

Other blogs in the serie are:
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: storage integration
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:management
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: live migrations
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: virtual networking
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: high available VMs
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Resource metering for chargeback
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: hybride cloud

Costs comparison is a tricky thing. It often comes to a comparison of apples to oranges. For example, to manage Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V you will need System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (SCVMM). This is not a standalone product as it does not have a SKU. When you want to use SCVMM you need to buy the System Center 2012 Suite. For one price you get monitoring (SCOM2012), backup and restore (DPM2012), Orchestrator, charge back (delivered in Service Manager SP1)  and a lot more functionality.

To manage VMware ESXi 5.x hosts you need vCenter Server. With it you get basic functionality for backup , orchestration but these cannot be compared to System Center 2012 functionality. To fully compare the same features for VMware additional tooling needs to be purchased and added to the cost comparison.

Here is where the apples to oranges compare starts.

So lets first try to determine what costs are. Are these easy to compare?
Purchasing a solution costs money, that is simple. Costs are clearly listed in the listprice. Purchase costs are named CAPEX or Capital Expenditures.

All cost comparisons between Hyper-V and VMware vSphere should use list prices. However many customers will get discounts which will be somewhere between 5 to 40% depending the size of the order and customer. When taking discounts in effect the calculation will be different.

Also license costs depends on the industry. Commercial usage  is more expensive than academic.
Last but not least there seems to be a price difference for at least VMware products per currency. For example vCenter Server costs in US Dollars 17 % more than in Euros!

Operational costs or COPEX are costs for using  to solution. Think about a car. The COPEX of a car are fuel costs, road tax, maintenance, car wash etc. More components are involved than just a listprice alone. Operational costs for a software solution are hard to determine let alone compare. How much does it costs to operate an infrastructure based on Hyper-V versus one on vSphere under the same conditions? What are savings in manhours, avoidance of issues when for example a feature like VMware’s Distributed Switch is used? Can VMware vSphere run more VMs on the same host as Hyper-V because of it’s memory techniques. Does it justify the higher purchase price? The answer is ‘it depends’

I like to compare IT to cars. Everyone knows about cars. Lets compare Hyper-V and vSphere to cars. Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 can be compared to a car which has all the essential features a car must have. Reliable, fast enough, airco, navigation etc for a good price almost everyone can afford. We do not have a clear insight in it’s fuel consumption though. As it is a new type of car  we do not know much about its reliability either. We also know it is difficult to get spare parts. The eco-system is just developing as there are not many cars sold yet.
vSphere is the best car around on features. It has all you want and more. Heated seats, cruise control, remote monitoring by the car dealer etc. Lots of nice accessoires are available and each garage sells spare parts. The purchase costs are  high and the dealer charges more when you want to ride with more than 1 person in the car. Do we need all the features? Are those nice to have or a must have? Do we accept to have increasing costs when more people are seated in the car?

Lets compare costs of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and vSphere 5 a bit more.

Hyper-V costs

Hyper-V Server 2012 is a free download . It has the same features as the paid Windows Server 2012 server editions. The only restrictions are:
-it does not have a graphical user interface (addon of third parties are available). Just like ESXi
-it can only run the Hyper-V role. No other roles can be installed. Just like ESXi
-it does not come with free licensing of Windows guests (virtualization rights). Just like ESXi

This edition like the other Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V can be managed by SCVMM 2012 when SP1 comes out. If you like a GUI addon software like vtUtilities can be helpfull.

Basically this version can be compared to a VMware vSphere ESXi server.

Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition and Windows Server 2012 Enterprise have the same technical features as the free edition. However they offer a choice between the full graphical user interface and the core installation. And can be used to install other apps and roles however very much NOT recommended to do so on a Hyper-V host.
Standard edition entitles two free licenses Windows Server licenses to be run as VM. The datacenter edition entitles  an unlimited number of Windows guests to run on that system. Mind both editions do not have any limitation on the number of VMs to be run.

Windows Server 2012 Standard costs $ 882, ( will allow you to license up to two physical processors on a single server )
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter costs $ 4809,- ( will allow you to license up to two physical processors on a single server )

The decision to use Standard or Datacenter Edition for a Hyper-V hosts is based on the number of VMs and your license agreement with Microsoft. If you running  12 or more VMs on one host, Datacenter will be more cost effective.

For management of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V,  System Center 2012 SP1 is needed. However Failover Cluster Manager will give a single pane of management as well. SP1 is expected to be released at the end of 2012.
Two editions are available: Standard and Enterprise. Both can be used for 2 physical processors. Enterprise edition can manage an unlimited number of Operating System Environments (either a virtual or phyical workload).
Cost for ‘Open No Level (NL) License and Software Assurance (L&SA) 2-year price’ $ 3607,-
The listprice for SC2012 without Software Assurance is $ 2404,- per 2 CPU’s

So for a 2-CPU host running over 12 VMs managed by SCVMM2012 the cost of purchasing licenses will be $ 4809 + $ 2404 = $7213  . Customers will get all lot of functionality on monitoring, backup, service manager etc etc. And will be able to built a private cloud without additional tooling.

VMware vSphere

vSphere Hypervisor is the free version of ESXi. It is limited in the phyiscal memory usage and cannot be managed by vCenter Server nor does it have API’s for image level backup. For most production environments not usable. VMware does not encourage production usage and states it is meant to have customers explore server virtualization before buying the full vSphere product.

VMware vSphere comes in 5 editions: Essentials and Essential Plus which is a bundle of ESXi and vCenter Server. Limited to max 6 CPU’s. More CPU’s means one of the other editions.

vSphere Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus Editions are unlimited in the number of hosts. License is purchased per physical processor in the host. The higher the edition, the more features it offers.
Per CPU an entitlement is given to use a limited amount of virtual memory. A 1-CPU Enterprise edition license will give the customer the right to use 64 GB internal memory.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V feature set is somewhere between vSphere Standard and Enterprise Edition. Closer to Enterprise than Standard I would say.

vSphere 5 Enterprise Edition costs $ 3187 per CPU. For a 2 CPU host the costs are  $ 6374. A total of 128 GB of virtual memory can be assigned to running VMs.

To manage ESXi hosts a license of vCenter Server is needed. vCenter Standard is used to manage an unlimited number of hosts. It costs $ 5558,- . With vCenter Server comes VMware Data Recovery for backup and restore. Fine for a small environment. In features it is not comparable with Microsoft DPM.

Lets say we have 10 hosts with 2 CPUs and 128 GB internal memory each.
Cost for Microsoft Hyper-V are $ 72130,-  An unlimited amount of internal memory can be used.
Cost for VMware vSphere 5 are $ 69298,-. 1280 GB of internal memory can be assigned when managed by the same vCenter Server. That is an average of 128 GB per host.

Support and maintenance costs

Besides costs of license the purchase of at least one year Support and Subscription (S&S) is mandatory for VMware vSphere. Support and Subscription enables unlimited requests for assistance by VMware. It also allows to use the most recent VMware vSphere edition.

1 year S&S for production hours/5 days is 20% of listprice vSphere
1 year S&S 24/7 is 25 % of listprice vSphere

Microsoft charges 25 % for its Software Assurance which gives the right to use the most recent software and 24×7 phone and websupport.

Source of VMware pricing here. 
Source of Software Assurance for Server costs here

Conclusion
What is the best solution depends on a lot of things. Costs is an important factor for many organizations. However reliability, matureness, integration with other components and a rich eco-system are important as well.

Windows Server 2012 with SC2012 SP1 offers a lot of value. It offers more functionality because of the System Center 2012 suite (backup, monitoring, orchestration, IT Service Managment) than vSphere does. Features of the hypervisors are almost equal when Hyper-V is compared to the Enterprise Edition of vSphere 5.0

If the free Hyper-V server is compared to ESXi there is a HUGE difference in price. Both software does not come with virtualization rights so that makes it a fair compare.

With hosts over 128 Gb vSphere becomes more expensive because of the vRAM entitlement of vSphere.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V + SC2012  SP1 looks promising  as a Good is Good enough attractive priced solution  for the SMB which enables customers to built a complete private cloud.

I believe enterprise and enterprise Plus organizations running mission critical systems on Windows and non-Windows guests where other aspects than costs are more important will benefit more from VMware vSphere.

Filed under Hyper-V, Uncategorized, VMware solutions, vSphere 5, Windows Server 2012

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Resource metering for chargeback

August 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

This is my 5th posting in a serie of postings in which I will compare features of VMware vSphere 5 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Goal of the postings is to give a non-biased overview on features of two main players in the server virtualization market: VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. I will not use the marketing comparison tables used by both vendors to promote their unique features while ignoring the competitors features (as marketing is all about).

Other blogs in the serie are:
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: storage integration
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:management
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: live migrations
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: high available VMs

This time I will compare the chargeback features. Chargeback is not a server virtualization feature but something we want when private cloud is used. One of the main characteristics of cloud is: pay what you use.

So instead of paying an amount of money based on fixed hardware specs (number of CPUs, amount of internal memory, virtual disk disk size) the cloud consumer is charged for how many resources are used: number of CPU cycles, disk IOPS, memory utilization, etc.

As a cloud provider (public or private) we need some sort of metering of the resource consumption. Based on the figures a bill can be sent to the cloud consumer.

Microsoft Hyper-V resource metering
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V allows metering of disk capacity used, CPU cycles used, memory consumption used and network consumption used. It does not measure IOPS. Using too much IOPS can disturb performance of other VMs. It would be nice if this could be measured and this charged as well.
Windows Server 2012 does not come with a GUI to enable metering and display the consumption, set costs, make reports etc. You will need to use PowerShell scripts to display consumption and create some sort of output file. This output file can be the input for the application used to charge business units or customers. For an example of Powershell scripts for resource metering see this blogpost.

Service Manager 2012 SP1 resource metering

For serious chargeback Service Manager 2012 SP1 is needed. Service Manager, part of System Center 2012,  is an IT Service Management tool. System Center 2012 is an additional purchase above the Windows Server license. SC2012 Datacenter edition for 2 physical processors costs $ 2404,- exclusing Software Assurance,

It currently has a System Center Cloud Services Process Pack addon which when installed can report on resource consumption.  Not sure how much information it delivers. More info here
When SC2012 SP1 is released a lot more chargeback can be performed by Service Manager. Read more about this here.

The image below shows a screenshot of a Excel report with data extracted using OLAP.

The alternative to native Microsoft tooling is to use third party tooling. VKernel and Solorwinds are examples of vendors selling such a tool.

Microsoft explain resource metering in this post titled Introduction to Resource Metering

VMware vSphere resource metering and chargeback
VMware does not offer a free method of resource metering. You might try PowerShell scripts yourself and extract data out of the vCenter Server database. Not sure if this will work.  Probably costs of development are higher than purchase. Additional tooling can be purchased like VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager. It is licensed per VM and costs $ 50 per VM (minimum of 50 VMs to be purchased). The console is integrated with vCenter Server. Chargeback Manager has a lot of features.

Solarwinds and VKernel both have third party solution for chargeback in vSphere infrastructures.

 

Conclusion

For advanced resource metering and billing you will currently need additional software for both Hyper-V and vSphere. The PowerShell scripts in Windows Server 2012 will give some basic overview but it will take a lot of do it yourself to develop reports, exports to billing applications etc. Better to not re-invent the wheel and buy additional tooling.

SC2012 Service Manager SP1 delivers more functionality. Microsoft does not reveal when SP1 will be available. Some well informed sources estimated around end of 2012.

The picture below shows a screenshot of Chargeback Manager.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: high available VMs

August 14, 2012 by 3 Comments

This is my third posting in a serie of postings in which I will compare features of VMware vSphere 5 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.
Goal of the postings is to give a non-biased overview on features of two main players in the server virtualization market: VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. I will not use the marketing comparison tables used by both vendors to promote their unique features while ignoring the competitors features (as marketing is all about).
Other blogs in the serie are:
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: storage integration
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:management
 vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: live migrations
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Resource metering for chargeback

This posting will compare high availability features of both platforms.

Protection against failed hosts
Both Hyper-V VMs (using Windows Failover Clustering) and vSphere (HA) VMs are proteced against host failures. VMs will automated restart when a node in a cluster unexpectedly failed.

Protection against network failures
Both vSphere and Windows Server 202 Hyper-V allow and support teaming of network interfaces to protect against failure of a network interface. In Windows Server 2008 the drivers of the nic vendor had to be used as Microsoft did not support teaming.

Protection against storage failures
Both vSphere and Hyper-V can use multiple paths to the storage array. They both support multipathing. If all paths from a Hyper-V node to the storage array fails, an alternative route using the network LAN can be used to reach the storage. This is called Redirected IO. vSphere does not offer such a feature.

Monitoring of VM health
vSphere HA is able to monitor the status of the guest operating system running in the VM. If the guest does not respond to a heartbeat signal in time, vSphere HA will reboot the VM. Using third party solutions which needs to be purchased the VM can also be restarted if the guest operating system is running but critical services are stopped.

Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster Manager allows to monitor services inside the Windows guest operating system. This feature is named Virtual Machine Monitoring. To configure this option see this Microsoft blog. No additional software needed.

Protection against downtime due to host failure
VMs protected using vSphere HA/Failover Clustering will have some downtime when the host unexpectedly fails. If a vSphere VM needs to be available even when the host it runs on fails, a VMware feature names Fault Tolerance can be used. When FT is enabled on a VM, a shadow VM is created on another vSphere host. It is a copy of the primary VM and all CPU, memory and disk actions on the primary VM will be copied and replayed on the shadow VM (lockstep). If the host on which the primary VM fails, the shadow VM will take over its identity without any downtime! This feature has some restrictions in CPU and disktype usage.

Mind that a fault in the guest operating system or application will occur in the shadow as well. Fault Tolerance will not prevent downtime of the application when a service pack requires a reboot of the VM. A blue screen in Windows will be copied over to the shadow. Lockstep means two instances doing the same. If one fails, the other fails as well.
Fault Tolerance could be useful for applications which cannot be clustered or made redundant but are that critical server downtime should be avoided.

Hyper-V does not offer such a feature.

Guest clustering support
Applications running inside a guest VM using Windows Server can be protected against failures using Microsoft Clustering.
vSphere is much more restricted in using Microsoft Clustering than Hyper-V. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V does not have restrictions on guest clustering.

See the VMware knowledgbase article listing the supported scenarios.
• Fibre Channel: Configuration using shared storage for Quorum and/or Data must be on Fibre Channel (FC) based RDMs (physical mode for cluster across boxes “CAB”, virtual mode for cluster in a box “CIB”). RDMs on storage other than FC (such as NFS or iSCSI) are not currently supported. Virtual disk based shared storage is supported with CIB configuration only and must be created using the EagerZeroedThick option on VMFS datastores.

  • Native iSCSI (not in the guest OS): VMware does not currently support the use of ESX host iSCSI, also known as native iSCSI (hardware or software), initiators with MSCS.

• In-guest iSCSI software initiators: VMware fully supports a configuration of MSCS using in-guest iSCSI initiators, provided that all other configuration meets the documented, supported MSCS configuration. Using this configuration in VMware virtual machines is relatively similar to using it in physical environments.

• FCoE: FCoE is not supported at this time.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5, Windows Server 2012

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:management

August 14, 2012 by Leave a comment

This is my fourth posting in a serie of postings in which I will compare features of VMware vSphere 5 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.
Goal of the postings is to give a non-biased overview on features of two main players in the server virtualization market: VMware vSphere and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. I will not use the marketing comparison tables used by both vendors to promote their unique features while ignoring the competitors features (as marketing is all about).

Other posting in this serie are
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: storage integration
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: live migrations
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: high available VMs

For management the compare is pretty simple:
VMware offers vCenter Server to manage ESXi hosts, virtual machines and more components using vendor plugins. At each new release of the ESXi hypervisor vCenter Server will immediately support it.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V cannot be managed yet by System Center. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is unlikely to support Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V at all.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 will need SP1 to support Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Unconfirmed sources say SP1 will come out and the end of the year, or even begin of 2013!
The same applies to DPM2012 for backup and restore.

Read more about it here.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: storage integration

August 14, 2012 by 4 Comments

This is my second posting in a serie of postings in which I will compare features of VMware vSphere 5 with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.
Goal of the postings is to give a non-biased overview on features of two main players in the server virtualization market: VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. I will not use the marketing comparison tables used by both vendors to promote their unique features while ignoring the competitors features (as marketing is all about).

Other blogs in the serie are:

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Resource metering for chargeback
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:management
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: live migrations
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: high available VMs

A lot can be written about storage. This posting will give a global overview of storage integration by both vendors. I left out some of the features for a future post.

The most important resource for virtual machine is storage and storage performance in particular. Because of the nature of server virtualization (virtual servers with different roles) the demand for storage resources is almost impossible to predict. By far the most issues in virtual infrastructures are storage related. Smaller environments with around 100 virtual servers for less might likely not run into storage related performance issues very often but enterprises are very likely to.

Infamous are issues with so called noisy neighbors; virtual machines which all of a sudden demand lots of IOPS and will bring other VMs to a hold. Personally I have seen this happen a couple of times. As an administrator you want to have control over Storage IO-consumption.

SAN Support
Both vSphere and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V support block level storage (iSCSI and Fiber Channel).
For file level storage Hyper-V supports Windows shares over SMB. vSphere supports NFS. I would say both solutions are equal on this.

Cheap shared storage/DIY storage
Storage arrays offers a lot of features but are not cheap. Especially when FiberChannel is used this can be costly. Think about the FC HBA’s in each host, switches etc.
Microsoft offers SMB3 as an alternative and cheap to implement protocol for FC . Using a cluster of Windows Server 2012 hosts and locally attached storage accessed over SMB3 a relative cheap shared storage solution can be created. Several design options are available.

VMware offers vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) software which can be used to create redundant storage out of cheap local harddisks. The software runs on a VM running on the ESXi host. The VSA is now available for free when a vSphere license is purchased. More info on VSA 5.1 here.

Vendors like StarWind also offer solutions to deliver SAN-alike features out of regular locally attached storage.

Hyper-V is a winner on this aspect. Two Windows Server 2012 Standard edition licenses are way cheaper (less tha $ 2000,- ) than VSA software.

Offload to storage
Some disk related processing is more efficient when done by the storage layer. Examples are cloning a VM or moving the virtual disk to another location. Both vSphere (VAAI) and Hyper-V (ODX) integrate with the firmware of the storage to command the storage to perform datacopy actions. Without VAAI/ODX data needs to be copied from the storage layer over the network to the hypervisor and back to the storage layer. This takes times and uses resources on the  host.

At this moment Hyper-V ODX cannot be used to provision a new VM based on a template. VMware VAAI is able to do that.
ODX support has been announced by vendors like EMC and Dell. All  major storage vendors support VAAI which has been available for some years now.

VMware is a winner here.

Storage IO Control/ Quality of Service
As mentioned before: you do not want a noisy neighbor to disturb other much more business critical applications. VMware offers several methods to guarantee one or more VMs a certain level of storage performance.
First there is Storage DRS. This feature allows virtual disk files to be moved to another storage location if the original storage location does not deliver the requested performance. SDRS will also move virtual disk files when available free storage space reaches a limit.
When a move of storage is not an option vSphere Storage IO Control can be used. Basically this is a kind of Quality of Service. Without congestion on the storage layer each VM can consume as much storage as it  wants. When latency reaches a certain critical level, VMs which are more important get more resources. A bit like cars getting access on a  dedicated lane of a motorway in rush hours.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V does not offer any control to the storage layer for individual VMs. On a converged network when muliple types of networks (iSCSI storage, Live Migration, Cluster heartbeat, CSV redirection and VM network) are using the same physical wire QoS can be used. However this is set per type of network. Not per individual VM. When storage is accesses over FC there is not control possible.

While SMB might not need Storage Control very often, Enterprise will need it sooner or later. There are workarounds when a noisy neighbor has been identified. It can be moved manualy for instance to another storage location. In a large enviroment this is not what you want as an admin. It will take time to identify the VM, space to move it etc.

VMware is a winner in the enterprise market. Mind SDRS and SIOC are available only in the most expensive edition of vSphere.

Virtual disks size
VMware uses VMDK as the native virtual disk format. It is limited to a maximum size of 2 TB.
Hyper-V uses VHD and VHDX. The latter supports a maximum of 64 TB. It is self healing which mean it can overcome corruption caused for example by a sudden shutdown of the VM.
Hyper-V is a clear winner here.

4K disk support
Hyper-V VHDX format supports 4K disks. vSphere 5 does not support 4K disks. If you want to know more read this posting by Aidan Finn

Virtual disk replication
For disaster recovery purposes replication of the virtual disk can be a very usefull feature. It allows to recover a virtual machines very quickly without a lot of manual effort, time and recovery from backup media.
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V offers a feature named Hyper-V replica. This free feature can be used to replicated Hyper-V virtual machines to another location.
VMware vSphere does not offer a free replication feature. To replicate virtual machines either storage replication needs to be purchased  or additional software like Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware Site Recovery Manager, Zerto Virtual Replication or VirtualSharp ReliableDR.

Mind Hyper-V Replica cannot be compared to VMware Site Recovery Manager as Microsoft likes to do. While Hyper-V Replica might be a suiteable solution for SMB, for enterprise it is probably not. Hyper-V Replica does not offer a runbook, automated testing and other enterprise features. Hyper-V is limited to asynchronous replication while VMware SRM support synchronous replication executed by the storage layer.

For DR in an SMB enviroment Hyper-V is a winner. For Enterprise environments vSphere is a winner.

Storage automation
To create new LUNs from System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 the SMI-S protocol is used. This is a standard way of communicating with storage arrays. Many vendors support SMI-S. CSV volumes can be created without manual interaction of the storage admin.

vSphere 5 does not offer an integrated way to automatically provision new LUNs from vCenter Server. A storage admin needs to create the LUN and make it accessible. Then the vSphere admin can create a datastore on it.

Hyper-V is a winner in storage automation.

Management of storage array
Most vendors offering storage solutions compatible with VMware offer integration with vCenter Server. This makes it possible to manage the storage array from the same console as management of hosts, virtual machines.Tasks like configuration of datastores, configuration of replication  can be done from a single vCenter console.

SCVMM 2012 does not offer management of storage. Generic tasks can be performed from the Fabric toolbar in SCVMM 2012. For more advantaged management the IT-admin needs to switch to the management console of the storage vendor.

VMware is a winner in storage management integration.

Storage caching
Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) demand a lot of the storage layer. Especially in the mornings when employees start their virtual workstations and log on (bootstorms), lots of IOPS are requested from the storage. This might lead to performance issues. To overcome this several solutions are available. Use faster and dedicated to VDI storage arrays mosty based on Flash SSD disks. Another solution is to cleverly cache part of the most requested storage blocks into the physical memory of the hypervisor.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V offers a feature named CSV cache. When enabled it delivers a performance increase of 20 x for VDI bootstorms.

vSphere currently does not have a caching feature. When VMware View is used caching can be enabled.

More on these features here. 

There is no clear winner here.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5

vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: live migrations

August 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

This is the first in a series of postings I will do on VMware vSphere 5 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Goal of the postings is to give a non-biased overview on features of two main players in the server virtualization market: VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Other blogs in the serie are:
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: storage integration
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:management
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: high available VMs
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Resource metering for chargeback
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: costs
vSphere 5 versus Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: hybride cloud

Lets start this series with an overview of the ability to move virtual machines from one host to another. VMware names this feature vMotion, Microsoft names it Live Migration.
Microsoft claims that Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V offers an unlimted number of concurrent Live Migrations. VMware vSphere can handle a maximum 8 concurrent vMotions on a 10 Gbps network.

vMotion/Live migration can be used for several use cases:
1. planned maintenance of a host. The host needs to be shutdown to add extra hardware or to install service packs or other software updates on the hypervisor which requires a reboot.
2. load balancing: when a host cannot deliver the resources a virtual machine needs. One or more virtual machines will be moved to another host.
3. critical hardware error: when a host is likely to fail in the very near future due to for example failure of a coolingfan and the admin wants to evacuate the virtual machines on that host as soon as possible.

Having the possibility to have an unlimited number of concurrent Live Migrations is only beneficial in use case number 3: a host is about the fail and you want your VMs to be evacutated as soon as possible. In the other cases it does not matter much if migration takes an hour or so longer.

Wait a moment:  does Unlimited also mean that virtual machines are moved faster than when a limited number of migrations is used?

NO! There is a reason why there is a limit even on 10 Gbps network connections. Live migration/vMotion mean the content of the internal memory of the to be moved VMs needs to be copied over to another host and kept in sync before the actual move. This can consume quite a bit of bandwidth depending on the internal memory usage of the VM. If an unlimited number of VMs are concurrently migrated to another host to might lead to congestions and much longer migration time, timeouts or even failures.

See the opinions of other bloggers like Chris Wahl in his posting titled From The Bad Ideas Department: Unlimited VM Migrations

Aidan Finn , which blogs exclusively about Microsoft Hyper-V did some benchmarking to find the sweet spot of the number of concurrent Live Migrations of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. In his blog he writes he found out that 20 concurrent Live Migrations took the least amount of time to complete using VMs with 512 MB internal memory.

So more or unlimited number of concurrent Live Migrations does not mean it is faster than a limit on the number of concurrent migrations.

Eric Gray, a VMware employee with a personal blog, responds to the Unlimited Live migration claim in his blog titled Hyper-V 3 Offers Unlimited Live Migrations — Kind of

Conclusion
I believe the Unlimited number of Live Migrations is a marketing term. In real life using real workloads under the same conditions the number of concurrent Live Migration delivering the shortest migration time for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V will most likely be the same as for vSphere’s vMotion feature.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5

Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) Users Guide for Windows Server 2012

July 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

This document details changes in MPIO in Windows Server 2012, as well as providing conifguration guidance via the GUI, or via our new MPIO module for Windows PowerShell, which is new for Windows Server 2012.

Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) provides hardware and software vendors with a means of creating MPIO solutions that work effectively with the Windows Server operating system to provide organizations with reliable multiple path support on Windows Server 2012. The MPIO solution provides support for Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI, and Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage, and also ensures that MPIO-based storage solutions from different storage partners can coexist on the same Windows Server host.

Download here.

Filed under Hyper-V, Windows Server 2012

VMware will beat Microsoft on releasing a new version of virtualization platform?

July 24, 2012 by Leave a comment

While Microsoft has been very loud on announcing the release of Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V, VMware is likely to beat the Redmond company on releasing a new version of vSphere, it’s virtualization platform. It looks like the comparision tables will need to be adjusted soon.

We all know Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Released to Manufactoring (RTM) was given to OEM partners August 1. The code is expected to be ready for download by Volume Licensing, MSDN and TechNet customers around the 15th of  August.

However, the management software needed to manage  Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 (SCVMM 2012),  is still  in a pre-beta phase.

Releasing the hypervisor without the proper management tooling could be compared to selling a car without a steering wheel. It will drive but only in 1 direction.

The current available version of System Center 2012 is restricted  to manage Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V only. For management of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Microsoft customers have to wait for the release of SC2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1). No date for the release of SC2012 SP1 has been announced yet. Well informed sources say the release of SP1 is expected at the end of December, or even begin 2013. Microsoft employees ‘on the record’ indicate that they are not in the position to say anything about a release date of SP1.

SC2012 Community Technology Preview 2 (CTP2) for SP1 has been released in June. CTP2 is able to manage Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V however this is a pre beta version which most customers are not willing to use in a production environment. The beta of SC2012 SP1 is expected somewhere in Q3 of 2012.

While basic management tasks of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V can be done using tooling like Failover Cluster Manager features like deployment of VM’s using templates are only available in SCVMM. Public cloud, fabric management, provisioning and a lot of other features need SCVMM 2012 SP1. Also management of VMware ESXi 5 hosts  is still missing in SCVMM 2012.

It gets worse: DPM 2012 part of System Center is not able to make a proper backup of the new Cluster Shared Volumes of Windows Server 2012. Microsoft made enhancements to CSV’s and offers the ability to make incremental backups of virtual disk files (VHD). Much like the Changed Blocking Tracking feature of vSphere this allows to only backup changed data blocks of the VHD file since the last full backup. Obvious advantages are shortened backup windows and less storage space.  Also the infamous redirected access during backup are gone.

Customers wanting to make the full out of Windows server 2012 Hyper-V have to wait till Microsoft releases SP1 for SC2012 DPM.

Microsoft promised attendees at Microsoft Management Summit Mid April 2o12 that they will release SC2012 SP1 at the same time as Windows Server 2012.

Other blogs picked up this as well:
Techtarget:  Hyper-V 3.0 tools won’t emerge until System Center 2012 SP1

vCritical.com : System Center 2012 “Ready Now”; More Lies Ahead

ThoughtsonOpsMgr   Windows 2012 is RTM! How about System Center 2012 and the Private Cloud?

Of course a private cloud using SC2012  can be built using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V or VMware ESX or Citrix XenServer. Mind though that a cluster of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V nodes cannot be upgraded to Windows Server 2012. You will need to create a new cluster.

In the meanwhile VMware has been busy developing a new release of vSphere. While VMware never speaks about future features of future releases it is very likely vSphere 5.1 will be announced and soon released at VMworld 2012 end of August. See my post and a TechTarget.com post with some rumoured new features.

As VMware  has both the hypervisor (ESXi) and the management layer (vCenter Server) delivered at once there is no wait for customers for additional tooling to complete the solution.

Filed under Hyper-V, SCVMM, VMware solutions

“Happy birthday VMware, welcome Windows Server 2012!”

July 11, 2012 by Leave a comment

Microsoft’s chief operating officer, Kevin Turner, did the keynote on the third day of Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 in Toronto.The keynote can be viewed on demand here.

As usual part of his keynote is telling how wrong the competition (Google, Apple, Oracle)  is and how well Microsoft solutions are. American way of doing marketing I guess. A funny example was a video showing someone asking Siri (an Apple  application on the iPhone) what the best smartphone was. Siri’s answer was the Nokia Lumia running Windows Phone.

Anyway, part of the bashing was VMware. Microsoft started rather late with delivering a server virtualization solution.Hyper-V currently has a much lower market share than VMware vSphere. However according to a slide shown in Turner’s keynote speech market share of Hyper-V is growing much faster than VMware. VMware’s  share even dropped in Q4 according to an IDC research. (Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker)

Turner noted that the figures are based on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Next year August when Hyper-V 3 has been out for almost a year the figures will even look better (for Microsoft ).

Turner invited VMware partners to look at Microsoft Hyper-V and take that road. Microsoft is determined to become the marketleader in server virtualization.

A few more quotes:

Hyper-V is third of the price of VMware

“Happy birthday VMware, welcome Windows Server 2012!

The slide below shown at Turner’s keynote shows Microsoft growing share in virtualization.

Filed under Hyper-V, server virtualization

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 sessions online

July 11, 2012 by Leave a comment

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is an event for Microsoft partners targeted at sales and marketing staff. Sessions are about Microsoft strategy, how to sell Microsoft solutions etc.

While not very technical still some sessions can be interesting for people with a technical role. Some of the sessions are on how Microsoft competes with VMware for example.An example is a session titled Did You Know: What VMware Does Not Want Your Customers to Know

Some of the sessions are recorded and available for free viewing here.

Filed under Events, Hyper-V

Free Microsoft Private Cloud and Beta Windows Server 2012 exams at TechEd 2012 Europe

June 21, 2012 by Leave a comment

Prometric offers attendees of Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012 in Amsterdam free exams on Private Cloud Exams and on the beta exam of Windows Server 2012.

Ijnfo below taken from the Prometric site.

Registrations are valid ONLY for Microsoft Tech Ed attendees. All persons checking in at the event must be wearing their Tech Ed attendance badge and provide photo ID in order to check in for the exam.

The following Private Cloud Exams will be offered for free:
  • 70-246 | Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud with System Center 2012
  • 70-247 | Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012
The following Microsoft Beta Exams will be offered for free:
  • 71-410 | Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012
  • 71-687 | Configuring Windows 8
  • 71-480 | Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3
All MCP exams will be offered* at this event, with the following available at a 30% discount:
  • 70-400 | Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuring
  • 70-243 | Administering and Deploying System Center 2012 Configuration Manager
  • 70-659 | Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization
  • 70-640 | Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring
  • 70-642 | Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuring
  • 70-646 | Windows Server 2008, Server Administrator
  • 70-461 | Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012
  • 70-583 | Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications

 

The following Microsoft Masters Exams will be offered at 50% discount:
  • 88-970 | SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master: Knowledge Exam
  • 88-974 | Microsoft Certified Master: Exchange Server 2012, Knowledge Exam

 

Filed under Hyper-V

Hyper-V Guest Design: Fixed vs. Dynamic VHD

June 21, 2012 by Leave a comment

Altaro, creator of Hyper-V backup, made a very good posting about the various disk types available for Hyper-V virtual machines: fixed and dynamic. The posting gives an overview of benefits, drawbacks and gives recommendations.

Recommended reading!

Filed under Hyper-V, Uncategorized

Hyper-V moving closer to vSphere in 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant

June 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

Gartner published it’s annual overview of server virtualization solutions in it’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure publication. The publication has a good overview of the position of the solutions in the market.

Hyper-V moved a bit closer to VMware vSphere since the 2011 Magic Quadrant while Gartner based the 2012 Magic Quadrant on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and System Center 2008 R2 SP1. See the Quadrant of 2011 here. Next year when Gartner publishes the Magic Quadrant Microsoft will probably positioned very close to VMware. Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 has many new features as well as System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.

Quote from the Gartner site:

Citrix, Microsoft and VMware remain in the Leaders quadrant in 2012. Microsoft has been improving its overall road map and clarifying its strategy, but still struggling to deal with an entrenched VMware — especially in large enterprises. The functionality gap between VMware and Microsoft for basic x86 server virtualization infrastructure has gradually narrowed, while the pricing gap hasn’t narrowed. Citrix remains a major  player, but at this point due entirely to its strength in hosting desktop virtualization workloads, not in the general server virtualization market.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions

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