vmware vs hyperv

8/7/2019 Vmware vs Hyperv

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VMware vSphere vs.Microsoft Hyper-V R2Technical Analysis

A CTI Strategy Report

Peter Baer Galvin – CTO – IT Architecture

[email protected] 781-791-2112 www.ctistrategy.com

Copyright 2009 Corporate Technologies, All Rights Reserved



• Battle to be your virtualization platform

• Broad, deep ramifications

• Two main contenders▫ VMware vSphere 4

Market leading VMM

▫ Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V R2 Now shipping (as of October 2009)

Market leading OS

The Battle is Joined



About CTI Strategy• Corporate Technologies’ Strategy Group offers independent consulting

services covering IT products, technologies, and best practices. Our product evaluation service provides clients with a vendor-independent,highly informed opinion of which one of many available technologiescan best address their business and technical challenges. Our market

trend consulting service helps clients stay abreast of technology areascharacterized by active change. We focus on understanding the widelyvarying functionality of various solution sets, so when products arenear-ready for adoption, our clients are able to take early advantage of those most promising.

• A division of Corporate Technologies – www.cptech.com

• This talk is derived from our “VMware vSphere vs. Microsoft Hyper-V”Whitepaper

• Our activities, blogs, whitepapers, FAQs, columns, resources availableat ctistrategy.com

• Email to [email protected] any comments or questions



Topics• Summary of virtualization technologies and terms

• Reasons to consider virtualizing

• Features of virtualization

• Impact of future server technology on virtualization

• Decision criteria to determine when and how to virtualize

• Description and comparison of features of vSphere andHyper-V



• Analysis of current state of virtualization

• Prognosis of the future of virtualization

• Advice on how to determine which solution to chose

• Decision tree to get you started

Topics



• Other interesting tools, including Virtual Box, Citrix, Xen,Linux virtualization, etc

• Desktop or “presentation” virtualization

What is Excluded



• Virtual machine (VM) runs on a host, contains a guest OS

• Virtual machine monitor (VMM) implements virtualization layer on host

• Two types of VMM

• Type 1 has full host OS performing actions for a guest

• Type 2 has limited function special purpose OS (hypervisor ) running VMs

▫ Generally better – less room for bugs, security holes, less overhead

• VM stored in a file – VMware has VMDK and Hyper-V has VHD

▫ Industry is moving toward universal VM description – OVF

• Converting a physical OS to a virtual one is P-to-V

▫ The reverse is V-to-P

Virtualization Technology and Terms



• VMs are nothing without management▫ This analysis includes the vendor-provided management tools

• Microsoft provides System Center (SC), and the

component virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)• For VMware vSphere, the management component is

vCenter Server (previously called VirtualCenter )

• Certainly many datacenters add other tools to augmentthese

Management



Why Virtualize?



• What to do with all the cores coming our way?

• Certainly CPUs are currently scaling by adding cores,rather than increasing clock rate

• Even if two sockets stays in the "sweet spot" of ITdatacenter servers, Intel plans to have 8 cores per XeonCPU by early 2010

• The math and economics are inexorable▫ Basic servers costing a few thousand dollars will have 16 cores

within a few months▫ The highest-end x86 server will likely have 64 cores, and two

threads per core (Intel Nehalem EX- based 8-socket systems)

The Future is Virtual



▫ David Patterson, in his Super Computing '08 conference keynote,predicts the increasing-core trend will continue as CPU manufacturescan no longer greatly increase clock rates, due to the thermal envelopethat CPUs must live within

▫ Most individual applications do not need the performance that such high-core-count systems provide

▫ Most applications also cannot scale to that many cores They were written when CPU cores were scarce, and generally little effort was

put into efficient, highly threading programming

▫ Virtualization is the only way for datacenter managers to run both typesof applications

Certainly some applications can scale well to many cores, but those are in theminority considering all of the applications in the datacenter

Many of those will fall short of scaling to use all cores in a system as thenumber of cores continues to grow




• Therefore, over time, the subset of applications thatscale well and need scaling to the total number of coresin the system will shrink

• Increasingly, virtualization will be needed to efficientlyplace applications needing a subset of a system's coresonto a system, and to scale applications to use theavailable cores

• Another driver in increasing the ubiquity of virtualization

is its expected decreasing cost and increasinglyvirtualizing hardware from CPU vendors




Not “If”, but “When” and “How”



• Site specific• Frequently a catalyst is involved• For example, server farm refreshes and data center

moves• Budget considerations also impact move timing• Also staff knowledge, experience, and training• Business owners also weigh risks and rewards for their

users▫ Frequently, overweight the risk side and underweight the rewards▫ Likely perceive that they gain less than the risks justify▫ But generally the risks do not materialize as real problems and

benefits exist from the instant an application is virtualized

When?



• The question of "how" to virtualize is the topic this talk• Many virtualization choices, from open source through

commercial, from experimental to mature▫ Some are platform specific, depending on special hardware

features IBM LPARs, Sun LDOMs

▫ Others are OS specific BSD Jails, Solaris Containers

Do not allow other operating systems to run as guests, rather partition an operating system’s application and manage

resources

• The two candidates are x86 based▫ Allow multiple guest operating systems with guest applications to

run simultaneously

How?



• Other similar solutions exist, mostly based on the Xenproject▫ Such options continue pushing virtualization technology forward

▫ Are valid choices for some environments

• VMware is the market leader, and Microsoft has hugemarket presence (and marketing ability)▫ Many interested in how these two leaders compare

▫ (Does not mean that other solutions should be dismissed, if they

are a fit for the needs of a site)

How?



• Strong portfolio of virtualization solutions• ESX is hypervisor, ESXi is micro-hypervisor • vSphere 4 shipping now, includes:

▫ ESX and ESXi virtualization layer ▫ vCenter Server management▫ Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

Aggregates resources across one or more compute clusters and dynamicallyallocates them to VMs based on business logic

▫ Distributed Power Management (DPM) Automates energy efficiency in DRS clusters by optimizing power consumption

▫ Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) Clustered file system, shares storage among cluster nodes

▫ Thin Provisioning Dynamic allocation of storage as needed

▫ Virtual switch Provides advanced networking features per guest on a host

▫ vNetwork Distributed Switch Simplifies provisioning, control, and administration of VM networking

VMware



▫ vMotion

Live migration of VMs across servers in a cluster with no disruption or loss of service

▫ Storage vMotion

Relocate virtual disks among storage resources within a cluster (but not between clusters)

▫ High Availability (HA)

Automated restart (within minutes) of VMs on other cluster nodes in the event of server failure

▫ Fault Tolerance Second VM mirrors a primary one in lockstep, providing continued operation if the first VM or its hardware

fails (but limits VMs to only 1 vCPU, and use of many other features not allowed)

▫ Data Recovery

Agentless backup of VMs (for small environments).

▫ vShield Zones

Creates and enforces security zones that are maintained even during VMotion

▫ VMSafe Enables the use of 3rd party security products within VMs

▫ vApp

Logical collection of components of an application, described via OFV format

▫ Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

Automates DR failover between sites and failover testing, via integration with networking and storagecomponents

VMware



• Both VMware vSphere 4 and Microsoft Hyper-V managemultiple hosts as clusters of resources

• Cluster is the entity into which a VM is deployed

• Cluster resources are allocated to VMs• VMotion, can move VMs amongst hosts in a cluster

• If a cluster node fails, the VMs running on that node canbe automatically restarted on another node in thatcluster ▫ Clusters share storage▫ vSphere has no native ability to replicate storage between

clusters (such as to a DR site) Depends on storage-provided replication

VMware



• VMware vSphere 4 is available in several flavors▫ Essentials, Essentials Plus, Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus ▫ Enterprise version is only an interim bridge from ESX 3.5 to vSphere terminating end of 2009▫ Feature set grows from the first flavor through last

• Essentials for small office environments▫ Supporting up to 3 dual-processor servers - list price $166 per processor

• Essentials Plus▫ Adds VMware HA and Data Protection (backups) - list price $499 per processor

• Standard edition▫ Includes the ESX and ESXi hypervisors, a management agent, VMware H/A, and thin - list

price $795 per processor

• Advanced▫ Adds vMotion, Fault Tolerance, vShield Zones, and Data Protection – list price $2245 per

processor • Enterprise

▫ Adds Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS), Distributed Power Management (DPM),Storage vMotion – list price $2875 per processor

• Enterprise Plus▫ Adds the distributed switch and host profiles – list price $3495 per processor

VMware Versions



• To these product costs must be added▫ Any operating system licenses▫ (and application licenses)▫ Also needed is a license for one or more copies of vCenter Server

“Standard” version has no host limits, can link to other vCenter Servers for

consolidated management, and includes “Orchestrator” automation tool - $4,995 “Foundation” version costs $1,495 and is limited to 3 ESX hosts

▫ ESXi is free - but optional maintenance can add $495 per year

▫ Data Recovery can be added for $695 to the Standard edition▫ Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch can be added to Enterprise Plus for $695

• Many sites execute a site license greatly reducing the per-processor

cost▫ Generally not an unlimited license, rather a discount based on a volume

purchase of licenses▫ A “true up” occurs periodically in which the number of instances of use is

calculated and the total cost to the site tallied

VMware Price



VMware Versions



• Microsoft Hyper-V R2 very new, V1 (in essence) released Oct 2009 inWindows Server 2008 R2

• Microsoft claims that half of its infrastructure is currently virtualized (viaHyper-V presumably), clearly feels ready for production use

•

Difficult to draw conclusions about its use in the field, productiondeployments, and even final features and performance until it ships

• Hyper-V is Microsoft’s virtualization layer ▫ Hyper-V is simply a feature of Windows Server

▫ Technically it is a “type 2” hypervisor, however, this line is blurry, probably

provides type 1-like performance

• Microsoft System Center , the software generally used by Microsoftinfrastructure shops to manage their Windows Server deployments

▫ A new add-in to SC is SCVMM - Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine

Manager

▫ SCVMM can manage Hyper-V-hosted guests and Virtual Server, VMware Server,and VMware ESX and GSX guests

▫ SCVMM even manages VMotion of VMs between ESX hosts

Microsoft Hyper-V R2



• SCVMM has a host of features▫ Can intelligently place VMs onto the hosts with the most available

resources, based on the resource needs of the VMs in question

▫ Also included are P-to-V and V-to-P tools

• Full script-ability of SCVMM actions via the standardPowerShell tools▫ Scripting enables repeatability and transportability

• Hyper-V cluster provides high-availability functionality by

restarting VMs on other cluster nodes if a node fails• Hyper-V R1 has Quick Motion to move VMs within a

cluster, but takes several seconds

• Hyper-V R2 has Live Migration that should matchvMotion

Microsoft Hyper-V R2



• Features available depend on version of Windows being used▫ Available versions include Web, Foundation, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter

▫ Enterprise, Datacenter, and Standard can include Hyper-V but also versions that do notinclude it

▫ Server Core version of Enterprise, Datacenter, and Standard, which includes all the

functionality but without the GUI Intended for head-less servers, decreasing the size of the installation and installation time

• The Windows Server license includes the use of Windows Server as a guest under Hyper-V on that system within limits (below)

• Guest OS licenses (only SUSE linux today) must be added

• (Application licenses must be added to these costs) • “Virtual Image Use Rights” determines how many Windows Server guest virtual

machines can be created when the given operating system is the host• Unlimited guests are allowed, but only a limited number of Windows Server guests

are granted in the license

• Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition can have 1 Windows Server guest VM,Enterprise gets 4, and Datacenter limited only by available resources

Windows Server Versions



Windows Server 2008 R2 Versions



• Can use the various flavors of Windows as guests, depending onlicensing terms:▫ Windows 2008 without Hyper-V can be a guest and can use 1, 2, or 4 virtual

CPUs▫ Windows 2003 can use 1 or 2 virtual CPUs▫ Windows 2000 can use 1 virtual CPU▫ SUSE Enterprise Linux can use 1 virtual CPU

▫ Windows Vista can use 1 or 2 virtual CPUs▫ Windows XP can use 1 virtual CPU (although Windows XP Professional with

SP3 and XP Professional x64 Edition can use 2 virtual CPUs)

• Red Hat and Microsoft have announced a joint support agreement▫ RHEL will be supported as a guest within Hyper-V▫ Windows Server 2008 will be supported within RHEL guest VMs▫ Neither option in place at this moment, limits and licensing unknown

Windows Server 2008 R2 Guests



• Generally talk assumes Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter version

• No Microsoft equivalent of ESXi▫ Windows is installed as well as Hyper-V, with Windows being the

VMM

▫ The minimum installation of Windows Server Core plus Hyper-Vtakes 2.6GB of disk space, ESXi takes 70-100MB

▫ More memory use, more like security holes

• Hyper-V VM consists of a configuration file, the image file (inVHD format), saved state files, and differencing disks

(AVHDs)• Hyper-V supports full snapshot functions, including creation,

deletion, and merging

Windows Server as VMM



• Some aspects are easy to compare, while others aremore complicated

• Comparison includes the default management tools

(vCenter Server and Systems Center with VirtualMachine Manager)

• The comparison includes maximum values allowable (for example, if various guests have varying limits, thelargest values are selected)

• Some variations in purchased products and guests willresult in lower limits than those listed here

Comparison



Comparison - Hosts



Comparison - Guests



Comparison – Features 1



• The list of functions, features and limits needs to becompared with the needs of a data center

• It could be the case that, for a given deployment or

environment, the two options are equivalent• Relatively the same for a site needing Windows Server

2008 on a host with 8 processors, 64 cores, 256GB of memory, needing 4 vCPUs per guest, 8 guests, livemigration, H/A, and storage management

• Now consider cost

Cost Analysis 1



Cost Analysis 1



• Consider facility that includes 10 servers, each with four sockets of CPU, and each with 30 Windows Server guests

Cost Analysis 2



• VMware argues that their solution is more efficient in hardware use▫ They have a calculator to allow entry of per-site details and to drive this point

home, athttp://www.vmware.com/technology/whyvmware/calculator/index.php.

• In fact the entire issue of performance of VMMs and guests is open

and debated▫ There is no standard benchmark of virtualization performance currently

available, but SPEC organization is working on one

• Some reviews from third parties exist▫ Network World, in September 2008, compared ESX 3.5 and Hyper-V (first

release) and concluded that VMware was faster overall, but not in all tests(http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2008/090108-test-virtualization.html).

• As always, best to perform your own benchmarks of OSes,applications

Beyond Cost



• Industry has been through several generations of virtualizationproducts and tools▫ Tools are more feature-rich, functional, well performing, and stable than ever

before▫ The purchase of Virtual Iron by Oracle, and the subsequent termination of

Virtual Iron as a product line, shows that large application vendors will beembracing virtualization technology and incorporating it into their productlines

▫ Certainly the more the industry standardizes on areas such as virtualmachine format, the better for data center management

• Unification of VM formats can pave the way for applications to shippreinstalled in a VM with a customized OS▫ But who pays for the OS, site OS standards might clash, patching, etc

• Many 3rd party tools available (Vizioncore et al)• Virtualization increases complexity

▫ Consider AV software in a host OS, patching, backups• Self-service provisioning is a likely near-term improvement

Current State



• Virtualization requires administrative discipline▫ Avoid server sprawl▫ Track life cycle of VM▫ Create “golden images” of VMs, use as source of dev, test, QA,

pre-prod and production VMs▫ Create a “nursery” – servers with low utilization dedicated to

heavy-weight VM operations Use vMotion and Live Migration to move VMs in and out of the nursery

▫ Maintain dedicated hardware for specific apps, for V-to-P testing▫ Licensing of virtualization, and virtualized environments is overly

complex Software licensed by the CPU, by the server, by the core, OS

licenses, etc

▫ ISV support of their apps in VMs is good and increasing

Current State



• Likely hypervisors will be “free”▫ Support licenses and management tools will be the costs

▫ Ubiquity will drive more use of virtualization by everyone

▫ CPUs will keep increasing support for virtualization

Making it more efficient, reliable

▫ “Cloud” architectures will evolve blending virtualization with self-service provisioning and APIs to tie clouds together (publicprivate)

▫ Networking will evolve to ease implementation and management

of virtualization Security will need to catch up too

▫ Virtualization will become the rule, not the exception

Conclusions and the Future



▫ App vendors will embrace virtualization to improve performance,reliability, decrease support costs, manuals, implementationcomplexity

▫ Software licensing will have to change, increase flexibility, be

based on vCPUs or per-user ▫ Virtualization will spread from servers to desktops

▫ VMware will continue to dominate in features but will the industrypay their price

Or will they have to reduce pricing?

▫ Hyper-V market share will increase with R2 Mostly in Microsoft-centric shops and SMBs

Of course testing is a pre-requisite

Conclusions and the Future



• If VMware is already in use, the most straightforward path is to keepusing it

• If you are mostly Windows shop, compare Hyper-V features andvSphere features to determine which ones you need▫ If the need is within the Hyper-V functions then evaluate Hyper-V

•

The two tools look similar in many areas, but large variations can effectdatacenters▫ Hyper-V likely uses more memory, per guest, for example▫ Test both, as realistically as possible▫ If one solution needs more, then weigh the extra resource cost in your TCO

calculations

• The temptation to maximize resource use in virtualized servers shouldbe avoided▫ The virtualized facility needs available resources to account for server downtime,

and spikes in resource use by applications, for example

• Further, when consolidating servers, consider the impact of a VMM or server crash

• The impact on security of virtualizing servers, networking, and storagein a datacenter should be evaluated and included in decision criteria

Takeaways and Next Steps



• A virtualization plan should include back-out options (such as V-to-P), not only for problem diagnosis but also to assuage the fears of an ISV that the virtualization itself is causing a given problem

• A crucial pre-virtualization planning step is the creation of a matrix of all ISV components in an infrastructure, and their support for

virtualizing their application• One hindrance to the adoption of Hyper-V is that it is a componentonly of Windows Server 2008, and many sites are still runningprevious Windows Server releases

• Part of the planning process of moving to Windows Server 2008should include best practices for deploying and managing Hyper-V

• Virtualization can reap benefits even if an entire datacenter or

business application is not virtualized▫ Still worth considering virtualizing a given tier of a datacenter or application▫ Consider those virtualization gains compared with the costs and complexity

added by running virtualization




• Understand whether current hardware can be virtualized with Hyper-V or VMware▫ Possible hardware upgrades add into in the TCO cost of virtualizing

• When planning servers to host virtualization, expect those servers toneed increased memory and networking compared to non-

virtualization servers• Likewise, consider where and how to host the VM images▫ Central storage has several advantages, commonly including the ability to

replicate the VMs for easy DR▫ NAS is a popular solution due to its flexibility and easy access from multiple

servers to the same storage (for clustering, for example)▫ Also, some NAS has de-duplication

•

If the datacenter management has an interest in desktopvirtualization, then an evaluation of virtualization technologiesshould include desktop virtualization▫ Choosing a server virtualization technology could limit choices or the

functionality of desktop virtualization that could run in the same environment




VMware vs. Hyper-V Decision Aid Flowchart

The CTI Strategy Group

Need

more than 1

vCPU given to SUSE

guest? Or running

other Linux or

Solaris?

Currently

running VMware?

Planning

on upgrading to

Windows Server 2008

before expanding

virtualization?

Currently aWindows-only

shop?

RunningWindows Server

2008?

Large

number of physical

servers being

virtualized?

Already

virtualizing?

Considering

virtualizing?

Current

datacenter

infrastructure

You are already

running some other

virtualization solution.

You should consider it

if you have a reasonably

large (>10) number of servers

that are under-utilized.

Happy with it?

K e e p u s i n g c u r r e n t s o l u t i o n , r e - e v a l u a t e i n t h e f u t u r e

Come bac

k later

YESYES

NO

YES NO

NO

NONO

NO

YES

NO

YES

YES

YES

NO

YES

NO YES

Evaluate both

VMware vSphere and

Microsoft Hyper-V.

Start with White Paper.

Keep running or start

evaluating VMware vSphere.


Evaluate Windows

Hyper-V R2 running in

Windows Server 2008.


vmware vs hyperv

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