Conduct internal comparison of VMware & Hyper-V Pros and Cons Total Cost of Ownership
Need for High Availability
Free up rack space
VMware Capacity Planner Study to determine server consolidation ratio and storage requirements
Physical World Virtual World
Many:1 relationship between applications and hardware
Relevant cost metric = COST PER APPLICATION
1:1 relationship between applications and hardware
Relevant cost metric = cost per server
1:1
1:1
1:1 Many:1
1:1
1:1
1:1
VM density matters!
VMware cluster with Dell R720s at 2 locations 96Gb of RAM per Server 16 total Cores for processing
Dell EqualLogic PS4100x iSCSI SAN Redundant controllers Redundant iSCSI network
Veeam Backup & Replication Onsite backup Replication to DR
Agent free
Best support for VMware and Hyper-V
Image-based backup and replication
2 in 1 backup and replication
Instant VM recovery
Instant file level recovery
Built-in WAN acceleration
Built-in deduplication and compression
Distributed Architecture Backup servers, proxy servers, and repositories Centralized management Intelligent load balancing
Low TCO No agents to license, deploy or maintain Storage agnostic Manage VMware and Hyper-V fron a single console
Replicate offsite for DR
Numerous optimizations for replication across the WAN
Re-IP after failover and failback
Built-in WAN Acceleration
Backup from Storage Snapshots
Native Tape Support
Virtual Lab for Hyper-V
vSphere Web Client
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Sharepoint
VMware ESXi
x86 Architecture x86 Architecture
MSFT Hyper-V
Parent Partition, wholly based on Windows
Lots of legacy Windows code! First ultra-slim x86 hypervisor in industry
VMware ESXi 5.1 144MB
Smaller attack surface area No extraneous code to patch
Hypervisor burdened with unrelated code that introduces additional threats
Direct driver model Indirect driver model
Easier to deploy/redeploy Easier to patch with ability to rollback if necessary
More complex host provisioning Patches are complex, installed one on top of another
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Server Core Installation
5GB
AV agent AV agent AV agent
Introspection
VMware vSphere
MS Hyper-V
Microsoft Hyper-V—Agent-Based VMware vSphere—Agentless
Traditional Security Method:
Install antivirus agent in every VM
Weaknesses:
Based on legacy physical solutions
Agents are resource intensive; difficult to scale for VDI, large cloud deployments
Susceptible to “AV storms” which can cause 100% saturation of CPU and storage
VMware Security Method:
Offload AV processing to a secure VM, powered by partners like Trend Micro, Symantec, BitDefender, Kaspersky, McAfee
Included in vSphere Essentials Plus and above
Strengths:
Agent-less architecture improves performance and scales well for large environments
Eliminate AV storms
Hypervisor Architecture
Purpose-Built Hypervisor No reliance on general
purpose OS Hyper-V requires
Windows Server OS
Small Attack Surface Area 144MB disk footprint Server Core: 5GB Full Install: 8GB
Advanced CPU Management Specifically tuned to support Intel SMT hyper-threading
No reliable performance advantage when using hyper-
threading
Advanced Memory Management
Ballooning Transparent page sharing
Memory Compression Swap to disk/SSD
Dynamic Memory: No Linux support, disables NUMA
Hyper-V 2012 vSphere 5.1
Broad Support & Choice
Guest Operating Systems 96 guest OSs inc. more Windows than Hyper-V
25 guest OSs
Compatible Service Providers 7,200+ VMware Service
Providers Less than 200 worldwide
ISV Support Statements 3,600+ applications
explicitly supported by 2,000+ software providers
No explicit support statements for virtualized apps
Business Continuity
Zero Downtime for Most Critical Apps
Fault Tolerance Nothing comparable
Agentless Backups Data Protection: Built-in
de-dupe for both Win & Linux
System Center DPM req’s agents, 3rd party dedupe;
No Linux VMs
Live Resource Expansion Hot-add vCPU, vRAM
Hot-plug/extend virtual disk No hot-add vCPU
No hot-extend virtual disk
Host-Based Replication vSphere Replication Hyper-V Replica:
Single VM management only, inflexible RPO
Robust High Availability High Availability:
Single-click, heartbeat thru network and storage
Failover Clustering: Based on legacy network-dependent heartbeats
Broad Support & Choice
Guest Operating Systems 96 guest OSs incl. more Windows than Hyper-V
25 guest OSs
Compatible Service Providers 7,200+ VMware Service
Providers Less than 200 worldwide
ISV Support Statements 3,600+ applications
explicitly supported by 2,000+ software providers
MS certifies on Windows, but not specifically Hyper-V
Hyper-V 2012 vSphere 5.1
Windows Server 2003 (32/64) Windows Server 2008 (32/64) Windows Server 2012 Windows Home Server 2011 Windows Small Business Server
2011 Windows 8 (release preview) Windows 7 (32/64) Windows Vista (32/64) Windows XP (32/64) RHEL 6 (32/64) SLES 11 (32/64) CentOS 6 (32/64)
MS Hyper-V 2012
Total: 20
MS-DOS 6.22 Windows 3.1 Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows NT Windows XP (32/64) Windows Vista (32/64) Windows 7 (32/64) Windows 2000 WinServer 2003 (32/64) WinServer 2008 (32/64) WinServer 2012 RHEL 2.1 RHEL 3 (32/64) RHEL 4 (32/64) RHEL 5 (32/64) RHEL 6 (32/64) SLES 8 SLES 9 (32/64) SLES 10 (32/64) SLES 11 (32/64) SLED 10 (32/64) SLED 11 (32/64) Debian 4 (32/64) Debian 5 (32/64) Debian 6 (32/64) CentOS 4 (32/64) CentOS 5 (32/64) CentOS 6 (32/64) Oracle OEL 4 (32/64)
Oracle OEL 5 (32/64) Oracle Linux 4 (32/64) Oracle Linux 5 (32/64) Oracle Linux 6 (32/64) Asianux 3 (32/64) Asianux 4 (32/64) Ubuntu 7 (32/64) Ubuntu 8 (32/64) Ubuntu 9 (32/64) Ubuntu 10 (32/64) Ubuntu 11 (32/64) Ubuntu 12 (32/64) FreeBSD 6 (32/64) FreeBSD 7 (32/64) FreeBSD 8 (32/64) FreeBSD 9 (32/64) Solaris 10 (32/64) IBM OS/2 Warp 4 IBM 4690 IBM Systems Director 6 NetWare 5 NetWare 6 eComStation 1 eComStation 2 SCO UnixWare 7 SCO OpenServer 5 Mac OS X 10 (32/64)
Total: 96
VMware vSphere 5.1
Data collected Sep 4, 2012
2011
2010
2009 2008
2007 2006
VI 3 HA DRS VCB NAS & iSCSI support 4-way vSMP 16GB RAM per VM
VI 3.5 Embedded, OS-free hypervisor Storage vMotion Guided consolidation 256GB host memory support Large memory page NPT
support
vSphere 4.1 Memory Compression Storage and Network
I/O Control DRS Host Affinity Linked mode Boot from SAN vStorage APIs 8-way vMotion 3000 VMs per cluster
vSphere 5 Storage DRS Profile-driven Storage Auto Deploy Improved HA engine Metro vMotion vSphere web client vCenter Server Appliance 32-way vSMP 1 TB RAM per VM
vSphere 4 Fault Tolerance vNetwork Distributed
Switch vShield Zones Host Profiles Thin Provisioning 8-way vSMP 255GB RAM per VM
2012
vSphere 5.1 vSphere Data Protection vSphere Replication Improved Auto Deploy Improved Distributed Switch vCenter Single Sign-on 64-way vSMP
VMware vSphere Microsoft Hyper-V 2012
MAC Address Handling No special recommendations Static MAC addresses recommended for Linux
Memory Utilization Memory ballooning, transparent page sharing, memory compression, swap to disk/SSD Works with both Windows and Linux
Dynamic Memory Does not work with Linux
VM Backups VMware Data Protection Works with both Windows and Linux
System Center Data Protection Manager Does not work with Linux
Application Discovery Mapping
Virtual Infrastructure Navigator (part of vCOps) Works with both Windows and Linux
System Center Operations Manager (management pack Only supports .NET, IIS7
Purpose-Built Hypervisor No reliance on general purpose OS Requires Windows Server OS
Simplified Patching No unrelated patching Required to do patching unrelated to
hypervisor
Advanced CPU Management Tuned to support Intel SMT hyper-threading No reliable adv with hyper-threading
Advanced Memory Management Ballooning, Transparent page sharing, Memory Compression, Swap to disk/SSD
Relies only on ballooning; Reqs special drivers
Centralized Management Virtualization-aware security No centralized network security mgmt
Secure Introspection with leading 3rd Party Tools
EPSEC APIs provide introspection into guest activity without sitting in-guest
No introspection capabilities
Zero Downtime for Apps Fault Tolerance Nothing comparable; 3rd party req’d
Robust High Availability Single-click, withstands multiple host failures Legacy quorum model; complex, brittle
In-guest Failover Clustering of MS Apps
Supports MSCS in virtualized environment; AppAware HA with API
Cumbersome setup and config of Virtual FC reqs storage expertise
Live Resource Expansion Hot-add vCPU, Hot-plug/extend virtual disk No hot-add vCPU or hot-extend virt. disk
Standardized Configurations Host Profiles Nothing comparable
Automated Host Provisioning Auto Deploy: Auto configure new servers Bare-metal provisioning not scalable
Automated Network Provisioning Distributed Switch, 3rd party extensible switch Only 3rd party extensible switch
Automated Storage Load Balance Storage DRS Nothing comparable
Intelligent Storage Selection Profile-Driven Storage Nothing comparable
Prioritization of Storage I/O Storage I/O Control Nothing comparable
Functionality vSphere 5.1 Hyper-V 2012 + System Center 2012
VSA is a virtual appliance software that utilizes server storage space by presenting it as shared storage
Managed as a single instance from vCenter
VSA is installed on a cluster of servers and resides on a virtual machine on each server
The cluster enables virtual machines to access shared storage without the need for dedicated external storage.