VMware’s vSphere vs. Microsoft’s Hyper-V is a hot debate I hear all the time when discussing virtualisation. While VMware remains the king of the hill in server virtualization, Microsoft’s new Hyper-V, is giving it a run for its money, specially in small-med size accounts.
With Vmotion, you can easily move things around and VMware is known to have more advanced memory-efficient technologies, such as page sharing. Yet with latest release from MIcrosoft, the gap is shrinking. Now Hyper-V has Live Migration which gives Vmotion a run for its money.
Also Microsoft might be more attractive to customers that already have invested in Windows Server 2008 R2, since it includes Hyper-V at no extra cost.
Usually in meetings, specially since the new “controversial” VMware licnese scheme, Hyper-V comes up often where price is a high priority for customer. Microsoft bundles its hypervisor with the Windows Server OS. VMware is an additional cost in addition to Windows. On the surface, Hyper-V looks like the better option. However, for customers with high priority requirement for fault tolerance (FT) and high availability (HA), VMware might be the better choice. Also customers with investment in VMware already, an upgrade might be more cost effective than a switch to Hyper-V.
Some might ask, how about performance? Who has the upper hand?
Recently, VMware released a 3rd paty performance study, showing that vSphere 5 outperformed the current release of Hyper-V by 20%!
In the end, each virtualization product has its own pros and cons that might be suitable for certain clients. For example, VMware vSphere might be best suited for large enterprise accounts that need vSphere’s advanced features such as vSphere DRS, Strorage vMotionand vSphere FT. Smaller organisations that don’t require VMware vSphere’s advanced features might find Microsoft’ Hyper-V a better fit for their smaller data centers.
Virtualization is not the end game but only a mean to an end. The end is the client’s needs.
Food for thought.
Thank you for reading.
Nick
