While this report offers some compelling information that cannot summerarily be dismissed, I contend that much of this is sheer opinion and will end up being incorrect in the long run.
In response to this whitepaper, I offer the following 6 reasons by VMware’s virtualization options will beat out Microsoft’s virtualization offerings (or will maintain their majority lead), in no particular order:
Head Start - VMware was founded in 1998 and began offering virtualization solutions in 1999. When did Microsoft begin offering virtualization solutions? 2005? The headstart is the reason that many of the other points on this list are here. (see VMware Milestones for reference)
More Complete Virtualization offering - Look at VMware’s VDC-OS DataCenter solution overview and you will see how all-encompassing VMware’s virtualization solution is. Microsoft may be able to try to fill two or three of these boxes but cannot begin to fill the rest.
Install base - Clabby Research pointed out that Microsoft will use their huge install base as an advantage. I agree that Microsoft’s “in’s” with major corporations will aide them but let’s not forget VMware’s existing install base for their virtualization solution. Microsoft’s install base is for applications like Office, Vista, and Windows 2008. Trust me, being a Microsoft enterprise customer myself, just because Windows 2008 is my choice for a server OS doesn’t mean I am going to automatically choose Hyper-V. VMware is already used by 120,000+ organizations of all sizes across all industries including all of the Fortune 100, 95% of the Fortune 1,000 and small and medium businesses. (see VMware Fast Facts for reference)
Partnerships - VMware already has 800 technology partners related to virtualization alone. It is the relationship with partners that really help to make products successful. How successful was “Vista Ready”? VMware’s solutions have been very open and they have fostered 3rd party development from the start. (see VMware Fast Facts for reference)
Experience - in the end, VMware just has more virtualization experience and now they have a CEO who is a former Microsoft exec. Moritz knows how Microsoft thinks and is prepared to make the VDC-OS a reality. I have seen the next version of VMware ESX/VI (still in beta) and it is very impressive!
Grass Roots Support - How many people attended VMworld this year? About 14,000 in the USA and about the same in Europe? How many VMware Certified Professionals are there? About 15K or something? How many books, training videos, and websites are there that support and educate on VMware’s virtualization solution? Too many to count. If you look at these same types of comparisons for Hyper-V they just aren’t there. It is support from “the masses” that makes a product popular, not just the cheapest or best name brand.
Sorry Microsoft, you will gain some marketshare out of curiosity but I predict that VMware will stay on the top of the virtualization marketplace.
Looking to quickly deploy VMware ESX host servers? I recommend that you take a look at the VMware ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA). Still very new (version number is .85), the EDA is able to script the installation of VMware ESX.
If you are interested in automating the deployment of ESX hosts, I recommend reading Duncan’s post over at Yellow-Bricks.com concerning the ESX Deployment Appliance. See:
This month VMware accounced their new VDI solution called “View 3″
This new VDI solution is a replacement for VMware’s VDI solution - “VDM”. View 3 is a move to fulfill their “vClient” initiative, put forward at VMworld 2008. It is sold in a Enterprise and Premier edition and includes the following:
VMware View Composer is a new product that uses Linked Clone technology to create virtual desktops rapidly from a master image while consuming up to 70 percent less storage space. Automated image preparation and provisioning take only seconds and are centrally controlled by View Manager. In addition, View Composer can reduce management costs by enabling IT to update thousands of individual virtual desktops by simply updating the master image with a patch or application update and then applying the changes to each desktop cloned from the master image. View Composer provides this one-to-many image updating while preserving user data, settings, and preferences so patching is seamless to end users.
VMware ThinApp is bundled with VMware View 3 to enable simplified application packaging and deployment to a virtual desktop environment. ThinApp and View Composer work together to provide streamlined virtual desktop image creation and updating. ThinApp enables applications to run independently of the host operating system version or patch level. This simplifies updating and patching applications, and provides additional storage reduction for virtual desktops by centralizing and compressing applications. ThinApp’s unique architecture does not require an agent on the user’s desktop, a major advantage compared to other techniques for virtualization applications.
Offline Desktop, an experimental feature, provides the flexibility to intelligently and securely move virtual desktops between the datacenter and a local laptop or desktop, increasing user productivity while providing secure mobility. Users can “check out” a virtual desktop onto an ordinary PC, such as a laptop, run the virtual desktop locally and then check it back in to the datacenter. Offline Desktop allows a user to keep using his virtual desktop when no network is available, or simply to take advantage of local resources for the best virtual desktop user experience available.
Unified Access, a new feature of VMware View Manager 3, provides desktop administrators with a single management platform for multiple types of sessions. VMware View Manager 3 connects to desktop environments hosted on VMware Infrastructure, or user sessions running on Windows Terminal Servers or even physical PCs such as a blade PC. Individuals have a single point of access to seamlessly connect to their desktop environment, while administrators have a single point of administration.
Virtual Printing provides end users the ability to print to any local or network printer without installing specific printer drivers. Virtual Printing technology provides compression for print jobs and auto detection of local printers from the client. This eliminates printer driver issues and the need for printer configuration. End users get high quality printing with enhanced performance across the WAN.\
Multimedia Redirection improves the user experience with rich multimedia playback capabilities. The multimedia processing tasks are intelligently redirected from the server to the end user device where the multimedia stream is decoded, taking advantage of the local processing power.
Veeam sent me an email on Christmas day and they said that they had a present for me. The present turned out to be their new FREE Veeam Monitor for VMware ESX and ESXi.
This is a much larger application than, say, the Solarwinds free VM Monitor. However, unlike VM Monitor (which uses SNMP to gather performance information and doesn’t support ESXi), Veeam’s free Monitor for ESX and ESXi can go directly to a Virtual Center server, ESX hosts, and ESXi hosts to gather performance information. Veeam Monitor also keeps historical performance data in SQL Express and uses a client/server model where you can have a Veeam Monitor Server and Client on different machines.
I installed the free Veeam Monitor and was impressed. Here are a couple of screenshots.
You may have seen my video on running VMware ESX inside Workstation on your desktop PC. I was very impressed and excited when VMware published a how-to document on thier VIOPS site that instructs you on how to run an entire VMware ESX Site Recovery demo environment on a single laptop.
Doing this this takes even more VM guests than I had anticipated. In fact, 6 VM guests are required on the laptop - 2 ESX hosts, 2 vCenter Servers, 2 LeftHand networks VSA (virtual storage appliances), and 1 nested guest VM inside one of the ESX hosts. Wow - that is a lot to be running on a single laptop but it is possible.
At the recent VMware roundtable, John Troyer announced that VMware will be offering a new title - the VMware Virualization Professional (VVP). This is not really a certification but more of an award. The VVP will be similar to Microsoft’s MVP (most valuable professional) in that it candidates must be nominated and are evaluated based on their voluntary contributions to the technical community in the past year.
VMware doesn’t yet have an official VVP page but you should be on the lookout for more information - perhaps at VMworld Europe 2008.
Did you apply ESX 3.5 Update 3? There are certainly a lot of great features in Update 3 (new guest support, newly supported NICs, other new HW support, experimental support for the VMDK recovery tools, and more). However, as is usually true in life, with any change offering some benefits, there are also some downsides. One of the downsides that VMware has acknowledged is a bug concerning ESX hosts who have applied this update, and are in a HA cluster, may reboot unexpectedly.
Also, expert VMware Blogger Scott Lowe recently blogged about how VMware ESX 3.5 servers with Update 3 applied may reboot when in a HA cluster (see Scott’s Blog post - VMware HA Problem with Update 3).
So, don’t be caught by surprise - consider these issues before applying update 3, or if you have applied update 3 already and are using HA, make sure you consider the workarounds related to this issue.
According to statements made at a Minneapolis VMware User Group (VMUG), and witnessed by a number of fellow bloggers, the new name for the next version of VMware ESX & the Virtual Infrastructure Suite (VI) won’t be VI4 or ESX4. The new name will be “vSphere” (but no official announcement has been made by VMware yet)
My personal comment on this is…
What was wrong with VI4? I know that it was long and “VI” and “ESX” don’t match the new “vCloud, vServices, vApps, and v-everything else”. But, still… What about “vESX” or “vInfrastructure”? At least with vInfrastructure we could still call it “VI”. Plus, why “Sphere”? What is that? Initially when I heard about “VDC-OS”, I thought perhaps that would be the new name for “ESX” but VDC-OS is just a “concept” or a “framework”. (sorry but “frameworks” just aren’t that exciting). And, why waste a good operating system name “VDC-OS” on a framework when you could use it for ESX. Instead, you could call the framework the “vFramework” and call ESX “VDC-OS”. Yes, I like that SO MUCH better!
(sorry VMware marketing people…)
Here are referring blog posts telling more about how this was learned and from who:
Wow, what an amazing year for the world of virtualization! How can that be topped in 2009? Here are some 2009 predictions:
VMware will release ESX Server & Virtual Infrastructure Suite version 4.0 (or whatever it is called) and their VDC-OS framework. This will significantly enhance the offering and provide many new APIs and frameworks for 3rd party companies to develop more applications.
Microsoft will release R2 of Hyper-V with Live Migration features, similar to VMotion
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and VMware Server usage will drop significantly in favor of Hyper-V and ESXi
VMware’s vCloud services and Microsoft’s Azure Cloud-Computing models will be put into production, by end of year, at a handful of well known companies
What do you think? What will happen in 2009 in the world of Virtualization?
Let’s say that you installed your VirtualCenter SQL data on one SQL server but you need to move it to another SQL server. Gee, how do you do that? Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be so hard if we have instructions. VMware has published a nice knowledgebase article for us that tells us how to move the VirtualCenter SQL database step by step. To read the article, just visit:
