Virtualization

Microsoft Windows Hyper-V VS VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5

VMware VI3 VS MS Windows Hyper-V Introduction:

Ok, decided on riding the virtualization boat and confused on the right product for your
company. You are in the correct place as here we list the comparisons of most of the
virtualization solutions. On this page we will compare Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V vs
VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3, but other comparisons are available and you can choose
them from the menu on the left panel. As Microsoft Windows 2008 is approaching with its
new Hyper-V virtualization solution, & the great number of hits this comparison got when it
was looking at MS Hyper-V in beta vs VMware VI3 & the many requests to to update this
comparison. We had worked hard on testing the full release of MS Hyper-V & Compare it to
VMware VI3 latest release 3.5 U3 & updated the comparison below accordingly. If you are
coming back for our beta comparison you still can find it at: VMware ESX vs MS Windows
2008 Hyper-V Beta. If you are looking for the latest comparison then you might want to look
at: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V VS VMware ESX 4.0

Below is our unbiased comparison of MS Hyper-V vs VMware VI3. Please note this
comparison look at the full fledge of both servers not the lightened editions core services for
Hyper-V & VMware ESXi editions, though it will point out to them when required. Another
comparison of the lightened editions can be find at VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V Server
2008.

VMware/EMC Microsoft
URL Vmware.com http://www.microsoft.com/
windowsserver2008/en/us/
virtualization-consolidation.aspx
ITComparison VMware site is a bit easier to browse in regards of virtualization than Microsoft site
Comments due to the fact its their core business and they don't offer as much products to jam
their site comparing to Microsoft.
Product Name Infrstructure v3.5 (Starter, Standard, and Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V
Enterprise)
ITComparison It seems that VMware Infrastructure 3 is more attractive naming than Hyper-V with
Comments more companies looking at virtualization as a rebuild to their infrastructure
Pricing range $1000 - $5750 (two CPU versions) Free, but you still got to buy
paid product Windows 2008 & Management
Software.
ITComparison This can really be misleading as for Microsoft Windows Hyper-V you still
Comments have to pay for the host operating system (Windows 2008), which is for some
versions almost the equivalent of what you would pay for VMware 3.5. So if your
virtual machines are not running windows 2008 and if you don't benefit of the
special licensing offered by Microsoft for running several Windows version in a
virtualized environment then people should look at the cost of Windows 2008 as the
cost of Microsoft Windows Hyper-V. Anyway, if your guest are not Windows then
the cost of windows 2008 is obviously only for the hypervisor which does not seems
to us being free!!

- MS Hyper-V Server 2008 has been released as a separate media which will
provided a lightened version of Hyper-V which can be obtained totally free, though
-: MS Windows this is the equivalent of VMware ESXi which VMware started to distribute for free
Hyper-V 2005 R2 as well. This comparison is not covering these two products for that check out
VS VMware VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008..
VI3:-
- Another important side of the cost of Hyper-V Virtualization Solution & VMware
virtualization which usually get ignored is the management application cost.
VMware has Virtual Center for one fixed cost of $4000 and can manage unlimited
hosts, where with MS to get the same functionality you will need to get System
Center Management Suite Enterprise which cost about $1000 per host. So the
management cost will depend on how many servers your virtualization infrastructure
will have. It can go quite heavy with hyper-V.

In addition, in VMware VI3 you can run more virtual machines on the same specs
machine as VMware offer memory over commitment and waste less resource than
Microsoft Hyper-V solution in most cases. In many cases that it self will make up
for the cost differences. Don't let the initial price fool you. I have seen many
scenarios where the cost per VM in VMware got to be lower than Hyper-V.

- If you are getting one thing of the cost comparison then let it be to do a TCO study
of the solution you are going for instead of just the initial cost. Make sure you
calculate the management tools & maintenance of the solutions you are deciding on
as these are going to be your real cost
Primary usage Production Environment Moving to production, but for most
companies still at testing &
development environment.
ITComparison MS Hyper-V has just been out of beta for less than a year, and its main management
Comments tool SCVMM has been released for just a bit more than a month now. So it is not yet
running in many production environments, though many testing and development
environment have already adopted it. Though that might change in the future if it
proves stability.

In the other site VMware have been mature enough for production environment for a
while. It has been used by most of the fortune 100 companies in production. That
prove readiness of VMware Virtual Infrastructure. It will take time for MS to prove
the same.
Required Host Infra v3:bare metal Windows 2008 x64
OS (if any) Standard/Enterprise /Datacenter
Editions
ITComparison VMware bare-metal & Small footprint installation harden the security of its product
Comments and make it independent of any operating system security risks and breaches unlike
the Microsoft Hyper-V which unfortunately still
affected by the (Domain 0) OS( Windows )8002 bugs, viruses, and
security breaches even if only windows 2008 server core is running. In addition, not
using underlying OS make it more resource efficient although Hyper-V is using
hypervisor technology equivalent to Xen which make it a lot faster than its previous
-: Microsoft virtualization product Virtual Server 2005, still got lot more constrains when
Hyper-V VS compared to VI3 Infrastructure specially when it come to Linux and Legacy
VMware VI3:- windows systems.

Management Virtual Center 2.5 Microsoft System Center Virtual

tools Machine Manager (VMM) is planned
to be the centralized management
support for Hyper-V & has just been
releases.
ITComparison Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 has been just released
Comments around a month ago, which put it right in the testing age. Though it offered a quite
 good manageability and being able to manage VMware VI3 & MS Virtual server is
a plus if MS can keep up with that. As with our last test VMware VI3 3.5U3 was not
supported yet & plenty of the features VMware VI3 gain from Virtual Center can
not be delivered by SCVMM 2008. The keep up is not going to be easy, but I have
to give credit for trying.

VMware Virtual Center 2.5 has been the leading virtualization management
software for a while, and implemented in many environments which prove its
stability. It enhances the VMware VI3 with advanced features that Microsoft still
does not match, which are discussed further in this comparison. Though Virtual
Center only can manage VMware VI3 & VMware is not trying to manage other
virtualization products from their interface as they believe in their superiority &
spread in the market.
Support resources High Medium

ITComparison Microsoft might have more support resources than VMware,

Comments but not when it comes to virtualization, though they are investing into
that direction.
Supported Guest - Microsoft - MS Windows 2003/2008
OS WindowsNT4.0/2000/2003/XP/Vista - MS Windows 2000
- Red Hat Enterprise Server/Advanced Server SP4
2.1/3/4/5 - Windows XP SP2/SP3
- Red Hat Linux Advanced Server - SUSE Enterprise Linux Server
2.1 10 SP1/SP2
- Redhat Linux
7.2/7.3/8.0/9.0
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8/9/10
- SUSE Linux 8.2/9.0/9.1/9.2/9.3
-FreeBSD 4.9/4.10/4.11
- NetWare 6.5/6.0/5.1
- Solaris 10 for X86
- Vista
- Windows 2008
- Windows 2003 Standard/Enterprise
SP1/SP2/R2
64-bit + Virtual SMP (Supported
in Production)
ITComparison Its obvious that VMware has production support for many more OS
Comments than Microsoft. Actually supported guest operating systems in Microsoft Windows
Hyper-V is very limited. In addition, not all supported OSs on Hyper-V will run
with optimal speed on it. This is due to Hyper-V need for the virtualized OS to
understand its running in a virtual environment to perform well on Hyper-V, which
is not even the case with windows 2003.
Linux Support Support most Linux version available today. - Only SUSE Enterprise Linux
Server 10 SP1/SP2 is supported

- Xen supported version of Linux is

planned to be supported. They should
run by now, but with modification
and not supported.
ITComparison Its obvious at the moment that Hyper-V still lagging on Linux support, where
Comments VMware support running most version of Linux without the need to modify it,
Hyper-V still only officially support SUSE Enterprise Linux Server 10 SP1/SP2 at
the moment. Other Linux versions that have Paravirtualized Xen Kernal should run
at the moment, but still not officially supported. Even with the limited version of
Linux being supported by MS Hyper-V it still not that easy to setup. To illustrate the
required steps to setup Linux on Hyper-V read below:
 Microsoft Hyper-V provides Integration Components for Linux OSes, It would been
acceptable if the Integration Component for Linux OSes were straight forward to
setup but it require many complicated steps and what worse you have to do the same
steps over and over again for every Linux virtual machine including the following:
1- Manual installation of Xen Kernel.
2- Excute a seperate script that modifies the Linux bootloader
configuration to allow the use of Microsoft Hypercall adapter.
3- Run a perl script to install the Integration tools and paravirtualized
drivers.
Note: If you want to see a full step by step of how SUSE is install on Hyper-V look
at SUSE Installation on Hyper V at Virtualization Team Blog

Its clear that setting up Linux on VMware is way easier and cleaner than Hyper-V at
the moment, but Microsoft might change that with future releases.

Further More, Hyper-V still does not support the 2nd generation of
Paravirtualization for Linux (paravirt_ops / VMI (Virtual Machine Interface)).
Method used to support Paravirtualization with Linux in hyper-V increase the
maintenance of Linux OS as the administrators will have to keep up with two kind
of kernels for virtualized & Physical servers. In addition, they have to recompile
their Linux kernel in order for it to work. In the other hand, VMware are already
offering support for paravirt.

Performance - Higher Performance - Perform well with Operating

- More virtual Machines per hardware as it
support memory over commitment.
ITComparison The performance advantage of VMware is related directly with its smaller foot print
Comments than Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V.
systems that understand its running
in a virtualization environment
currently Windows 2008 & SUSE
- Fewer Virtual Machines per
hardware
- Domain 0 is a bulky windows 2008
& even the Server Core installation
can waste a good amount of
resources.

64-bit Support Has full support for most of the 64-bit Support Windows 64-bit Operating
Operating Systems. Systems.

ITComparison This is an obvious advantage of MS Windows Hyper-v over MS Virtual server

Comments which did not support any 64-bit guest OS, but still lag behind VMware on this one
as well.
Live Migration Supported Quick Migration (not real Live
(VMotion) migration)

Quick Migration (Host Clustering)

High Availability Supported
(HA)
NLB is all MS Offer !!
Dynamic
Supported
Resources
(DRS) N/A

Storage VMotion
(SVMotion) Supported N/A

Cluster File
System VMFS
Dependant on the NIC manufacture.
Network
Teaming
Supported
ITComparison Its a great features that VMware came up with and Microsoft still can't match.
Comments Although many assume some of the Hyper-V features match these of VMware, you
can see the differences illustrated below:

VMotion vs Quick Migration:

VMware VMotion is real Live migration where Quick Migration is nothing more
than host based clustering. It has more requirements on the host side as it have to
support windows 2008 clustering requirements and not as easy as VMotion to setup.
In addition, Hyper-V Quick Migration require a downtime enough to get the
machine to save state then shift the LUN group owner then bring back the machine
to running state. This downtime may vary depending on the speed of the SAN, size
and usage of the virtual machine a good sample of this downtime can be found at
Hyper V Quick Migration Downtime. In the other side, VMware VMotion requires a
zero downtime which can be a major advantage for environment which does not
tolerate downtime. Even Microsoft clearly know the differences and announced that
they have delayed the Live migration feature to a future release.

For Quick Migration to do the job you will need to have a separate LUN per Virtual
Machine which can be a burden on the storage & more work for the SAN
administrators. This is not required by VMware VMotion as VMware is using a
cluster file system called VMFS.

HA vs Host Clustering:

Windows host clustering is harder & had more requirements to setup than VMware
HA, but it can do the job.

Windows host clustering will failover all virtual machines installed on the same
LUN in case of a failover, which is not the case in VMware. Again this is an
advantage of a cluster file system which Microsoft still does not offer.

DRS vs NLB:

Network load balancing is nothing new, and it only work on the network layer. It
distribute the network load equally between the virtual machines only depending on
the traffic load on them not on how they are utilized. In addition, it require you to
run several virtual machines with OS which support NLB and configure NLB for
each of them depending on the configuration required for that OS which can be
complex for some OSes. They does not come even near what VMware offer with
DRS which distribute the load of the virtual machines dynamically and can shift
Live virtual machines between different hosts as required to obtain best performance
based on setting and configuration controlled by the administrator. In addition,
VMware support NLB for its virtual machines, but it did not limit its capability to
that.

Storage VMotion:

SVMotion is a new feature of VMware VI3 where the entire disk files of a virtual
 machine can be moved from one storage array to another without affecting the
operation of that Virtual Machine. This mean VMware VI3 users can avoid
downtime for their virtual machines when they need to carry a storage maintenance.
It means as well they can easily upgrade or move to a new storage without the need
for a down time. This feature has no equivalent in MS Hyper-V at the moment,
which mean downtime for storage maintenance can't be avoided.

Cluster File System:

VMware VMFS is a cluster file system, which give vmware ESXi a great flexibility
& a key factor in most of the advance features VMware offer. In the other hand,
Hyper-V Server 2008 still use the same non cluster File System Windows use NTFS
which make it lag in functionality behind VMware.

NIC Teaming:

VMware offers a network card independent NIC Teaming, where Hyper-V is

dependent on the network cards teaming driver & Software offered by the network
card vendor.

Virtual Machine Yes No

support SCSI
disk Boot
ITComparison MS Windows Hyper-V still does not support booting virtual Machine from Virtual
Comments SCSI disk. It only support it from Virtual IDE disk which will highly slow the
performance of these virtual machines. It is not clear yet if upcoming upgrade of
Hyper-V will support booting virtual machines from virtual SCSI disk as no
announcement on that have been made. If MS does not come up with boot from
virtual SCSI then they are risking their product of a very bad performance lag
behind VMware which has that capability.
Online Backup VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) Live Backups with VSS

ITComparison VMware VCB Is a great backup advantage as you can with it take live backup
Comments (image) of running virtual machines without affecting the performance of the host
neither the virtual machines performance, where with MS Hyper-V that still seems
to depend on the host capabilities using the Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)
to enable you to take Live Backups of running virtual machines in terms of
snapshots, but still affect the Hyper-V Host performance while the backup is
running.
Max virtual 64GB of RAM 64GB of RAM
Machine Specs 4 CPU 4 CPU

ITComparison Although Microsoft has been good in keeping up with numbers for marketing, still
Comments VMware can offer a better specs virtual machines for most Operating systems beside
windows 2008. At the moment, 4 virtual CPUs are only recommended on Windows
Server 2008 with Hyper-V. Its not even recommended to use more than one virtual
CPUs with most other OSes at the moment, but this hopefully would be resolved in
the next release. The following quote is directly from Microsoft Hyper-V Beta
release note:

==============From MS Hyper-V release note Begin============

Configure the virtual machines as follows:
For the guest operating system, install one of the following:
 Windows Server 2008 RC1 with Hyper-V Beta, with a maximum of 4
virtual processors. No other release of Windows Server 2008 is supported
with this release of Hyper-V.
 The Windows Server 2003 operating system, with a maximum of 1 virtual
 processor. You can install either a 32-bit version or an x64-based version."
=============From MS Hyper-V release note End===============

- Although the above quote is quoted from the beta release note, it still highly
recommended to follow it to get a better stability of the virtual machines hosted on
hyper-v.

Special Hardware Require supported SCSI or SATA x64 based processor computer
Requirement controllers. hardware-assisted virtualization, and
hardware data execution protection
(Intel VT or AMD-V) is a must.
ITComparison It seems Microsoft has forgotten again that many companies have some older
Comments hardware that does not run 64-bit and would like to virtualizes their environment.
MS Hyper-V force companies to obtain a newer more expensive hardware to be able
to virtualize. VMware still have a supported list of hardware, but most well-known
vendors servers are supported even the old ones.

Other Related Comparisons:

Windows 2008 Hyper-V R2 VS VMware ESX 4

VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
Xen Server Enterprise VS VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 VS Xen Server Enterprise
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 VS VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3

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