[quote]and VMware, newsflash: most SME have more than 3 servers[/quote]
I think this misses the mark a little. Of course SME's have more than three servers. They will become virtual machines on 3 brand new servers that you will buy and license with these VMWare SMB packages. The Essentials and Essentials Plus kits are limited to three ESX hosts. If you can buy some new hardware with lots of RAM, you can runs dozens of VM's on three ESX hosts. For the price of Essentials Plus, three hosts with HA is a good deal.
That being said, I try to steer even some of my smallest clients to regular vSphere licensing since there is no upgrade path from the SMB packages.
For the price of Essentials Plus, three hosts with HA is a good deal.
My free XenServer v5.5 farm is excellent except two things:
1. no high availability (it's a commercial feature with a laughably high 2.5k per server price tag)
2. no role-based virtualization (I need to use full-blown VMs even for the smallest service or role)
Now that MS recently rolled out Hyper-V 2008 R2, free with HA included I am taking another long, hard look at MS' historically horrible, dismay clustering feature... only if they could get it right - my initial test setup shows that while they greatly improved the installation-deployment of a cluster and even included great validation ajnd management tools it's still mind-bogging how many tries it requires to get it done RIGHT, how idiotically complex they made a farily straighforward procedure. Microsoft - the lamest of all and it's still an issue.
Just a quick thought, you think that Vmware with vSphere didn't do that much for SMB market? There is the ESXi which is free and you have the essentials plus package, I don't call a company any longer SMB if they require more then 6 lics in a HA environment, if you have some hardware knowledge and know what you buy you are easy set to go for about decent 15-20VM in these servers or upto 30 real small ones. I can't imagine that a SMB requires more OS in a HA environment then that, others can go very easy in just the freeware solution with just a bit of decent IT department. The essential plus also provides you with a lic of the new backup solution really designed for SMB.
Even the standard edition is reduced by 50% in price and now you have the advanced lic that is 25% less then the old enterprise.
What is wrong with a poll that everyone can see and consult? (°) You can see what the rest of the Anandtech readers are doing. It is important for us to know which hypervisors are evaluated, so that we can focus on what matters to our readers. I talked to probably 50 SMEs or so, and less than a handful were interested in KVM for example. This poll tell us there is more interest in KVM than we thought.
(°) Do you prefer the gartner and IDC way where you have to pay $2000 to get the numbers? :-)
Are you referring to Qumranet when you talk about Red Hat? I know Brian Madden did a review and it is still one of the best when it comes to multimedia functions.
Are you going to do a user/server review the given software? Xen, Qumranet, Vmware?
The last choice in each of the polls should have been in it's own poll. It would have made it easier to compare the results, and the option really doesn't mean much when compared against the other choices.
The last option means: no, we don't evalualate anymore, because this particular hypervisor is the number one in our datacenter. As opposed to option 2, where it is obviously another hypervisor than the one mentioned.
Im looking into Solaris Zones as well as ESX. they both have their place and both have their pros and cons. yes there are Linux zones for Solaris. I wonder how these type of virtualizations options affect things lol
Anandtech has spectacular technical articles. But seriously, for years you guys have seriously needed an english-speaking editor (or at least run spell-check before you post).
Where's the option for "Already evaluated and decided against"?
I our case, we evaluated both Hyper-V and ESX and ended up going with Hyper-V because of cost issues... So my response to ESX wouldn't fit any of these.
choosing hyper-v because of cost issues???? pls try to explain this to me, really interested to know, examples would be good. just talk about how you compare prices, not about features here.
you have the limit of amount of VM's depending on the win2008 os you buy and the price of any os in the VM you also have to buy (os for each vm is the same with vmware), so you will end up with win2008 datacenter since with enterprise you are only allowed to run 4 vm, if you have a ha failure you need other free slots in your pool to run these from the failing host, with vmware you buy the cheapest lic and you allow as many vm as you want until you find a certain performance tresh hold.
so the only real virtualization solution from hyper-v is datacenter which is not cheap.
quote: choosing hyper-v because of cost issues???? pls try to explain this to me, really interested to know, examples would be good. just talk about how you compare prices, not about features here.
you have the limit of amount of VM's depending on the win2008 os you buy and the price of any os in the VM you also have to buy (os for each vm is the same with vmware), so you will end up with win2008 datacenter since with enterprise you are only allowed to run 4 vm, if you have a ha failure you need other free slots in your pool to run these from the failing host, with vmware you buy the cheapest lic and you allow as many vm as you want until you find a certain performance tresh hold.
so the only real virtualization solution from hyper-v is datacenter which is not cheap.
You are an IDIOT, yelling BS due to your complete lack of knowledge.
There's no additional cost for Hyper-V. The limitations you mention like 4 hosts for Enterprise is right but this doesn't differ in comparison to VMWare licensing (note also that in the case of Enterprise this is 4 without counting the Hyper-V host).
In a typical Windows environment Hyper-V should be very interesting for virtualisation when it comes to cost. Off course if you're in a heterogeneous environment it's likely to fail when it comes to features.
well that depends, yes i know the Ms system, no additional cost to hyper-v perhaps, but you can only run 1 in a basic MS OS and even MS stating that they disadvice to run much in the main OS when using hyper-V.....
Enterprise is indeed main host + 4
but VMware ESXi which is 100% free 0 base cost has no VM limit other then the limits of your physical system... so tell me again what the added value of hyper-v is?
ESXi is free indeed yes but the OS of the virtuals is not. If you buy the virtuals in the most economic way you most likely end up with a DC edition or several enterprise editions. You need those both in case of ESXi and Hyper-V.
Now once you've bought these and have the choice I'm pretty sure Hyper-V will win it based on features when it's compared to ESXi.
If you're not running MS only,why would you ever chose to run ESXi over XenServer? Both are free and XenServer beats ESXi by miles when it comes to features.
Exactly. ALL HVs are free except MS is the ONLY HV that gives you HA for free.
The most expensive is VMware, no question about it.
Second is Citrix because you get almost everything for free (XenCenter is great) but HA, StorageLink etc for XenServer are commercial.
Cheapest of all is Microsoft, you get even HA for free.
Hyper-V 2008 R2's additional advantage is that once you decided to get into HA role virtualization etc these are right there, all you need is to upgrade your cluster nodes to Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (or Enterprise if you want application failover.)
Now here comes the catch: Microsoft, as always, is the MOST COMPLEX, MOST @SS-BACKWARD, MOST CLUNKY, MOST IDIOTIC, MOST ERROR-PRONE of all setups so yes, as always with MS, there is a trade-off in frustration - but there are functionality and money saved as well.
MS Hyper-V server is also "free" like ESXi. And do you mean to say that you are going to run ESXi without Virtual Center? You are not going to pay nothing to run/manage ESXi.
We focus on the future plans. What hypervisor technologies are still being evaluated out there. As it gets easier to port VMs from one hypervisor to another, some people continue to evaluate other hypervisors for cost or management/flexibility reasons. Also "already evaluated and decided against" can be translated into "not on my shortlist" (option 3)
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Typoman - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
[quote]and VMware, newsflash: most SME have more than 3 servers[/quote]I think this misses the mark a little. Of course SME's have more than three servers. They will become virtual machines on 3 brand new servers that you will buy and license with these VMWare SMB packages. The Essentials and Essentials Plus kits are limited to three ESX hosts. If you can buy some new hardware with lots of RAM, you can runs dozens of VM's on three ESX hosts. For the price of Essentials Plus, three hosts with HA is a good deal.
That being said, I try to steer even some of my smallest clients to regular vSphere licensing since there is no upgrade path from the SMB packages.
For the price of Essentials Plus, three hosts with HA is a good deal.
cbeltram - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link
In our company we are waiting for RH's RHEV-H to be available since we had a great experience with RH 5.4 with KVM.Regards
T2k - Thursday, November 5, 2009 - link
My free XenServer v5.5 farm is excellent except two things:1. no high availability (it's a commercial feature with a laughably high 2.5k per server price tag)
2. no role-based virtualization (I need to use full-blown VMs even for the smallest service or role)
Now that MS recently rolled out Hyper-V 2008 R2, free with HA included I am taking another long, hard look at MS' historically horrible, dismay clustering feature... only if they could get it right - my initial test setup shows that while they greatly improved the installation-deployment of a cluster and even included great validation ajnd management tools it's still mind-bogging how many tries it requires to get it done RIGHT, how idiotically complex they made a farily straighforward procedure. Microsoft - the lamest of all and it's still an issue.
kleshodnic - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
"Choosing the right foundation: which hypervisor do you evaluate?"Wouldn't you evaluate them all?
papounet - Thursday, November 5, 2009 - link
What about Opensolaris options such as zones, containers, xVM and virtualbox ?duploxxx - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
Nice article Johan as usual.Just a quick thought, you think that Vmware with vSphere didn't do that much for SMB market? There is the ESXi which is free and you have the essentials plus package, I don't call a company any longer SMB if they require more then 6 lics in a HA environment, if you have some hardware knowledge and know what you buy you are easy set to go for about decent 15-20VM in these servers or upto 30 real small ones. I can't imagine that a SMB requires more OS in a HA environment then that, others can go very easy in just the freeware solution with just a bit of decent IT department. The essential plus also provides you with a lic of the new backup solution really designed for SMB.
Even the standard edition is reduced by 50% in price and now you have the advanced lic that is 25% less then the old enterprise.
isp - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
Thank you for being part of our marketing research.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
What is wrong with a poll that everyone can see and consult? (°) You can see what the rest of the Anandtech readers are doing. It is important for us to know which hypervisors are evaluated, so that we can focus on what matters to our readers. I talked to probably 50 SMEs or so, and less than a handful were interested in KVM for example. This poll tell us there is more interest in KVM than we thought.(°) Do you prefer the gartner and IDC way where you have to pay $2000 to get the numbers? :-)
Zstream - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
Hey,Are you referring to Qumranet when you talk about Red Hat? I know Brian Madden did a review and it is still one of the best when it comes to multimedia functions.
Are you going to do a user/server review the given software? Xen, Qumranet, Vmware?
That would totally rock!
Lifted - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
The last choice in each of the polls should have been in it's own poll. It would have made it easier to compare the results, and the option really doesn't mean much when compared against the other choices.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
The last option means: no, we don't evalualate anymore, because this particular hypervisor is the number one in our datacenter. As opposed to option 2, where it is obviously another hypervisor than the one mentioned.MGSsancho - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
Im looking into Solaris Zones as well as ESX. they both have their place and both have their pros and cons. yes there are Linux zones for Solaris. I wonder how these type of virtualizations options affect things lolchris421 - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Chosing the right fundament: which hypervisor do you evaluate?"Chosing" isn't a word--it's "Choosing".
And poor word choice for "fundament". It primarily means anus.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fundament">http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fundament
Anandtech has spectacular technical articles. But seriously, for years you guys have seriously needed an english-speaking editor (or at least run spell-check before you post).
chris421 - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
--seriously.An "edit comment' button would be cool too.
"seriously' twice in the same sentence sounds seriously dumb.
verballydecapitating - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
It's a blog post.. Is this all you guys want to comment about? Do you guys read the posts for the content or to point out mistakes?HVAC - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Neither, we read the comments so that we can get your feedback about our criticisms.Spelling and grammatical errors are like a wart on a pretty girls face. She can still rock your world, but the only thing you see is the wart.
chris421 - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
The 2nd critique was of my own stupid mistake. The 1st--the article's title--was just too silly to not state. And yes I read the content too.
InsaneScientist - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Where's the option for "Already evaluated and decided against"?I our case, we evaluated both Hyper-V and ESX and ended up going with Hyper-V because of cost issues... So my response to ESX wouldn't fit any of these.
duploxxx - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
choosing hyper-v because of cost issues???? pls try to explain this to me, really interested to know, examples would be good. just talk about how you compare prices, not about features here.you have the limit of amount of VM's depending on the win2008 os you buy and the price of any os in the VM you also have to buy (os for each vm is the same with vmware), so you will end up with win2008 datacenter since with enterprise you are only allowed to run 4 vm, if you have a ha failure you need other free slots in your pool to run these from the failing host, with vmware you buy the cheapest lic and you allow as many vm as you want until you find a certain performance tresh hold.
so the only real virtualization solution from hyper-v is datacenter which is not cheap.
T2k - Thursday, November 5, 2009 - link
You are an IDIOT, yelling BS due to your complete lack of knowledge.
Do you even know WTF Type1 hypervisor means?
Hyper-V 2008 R2 IS FREE: http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/r2.a...">http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/r2.a...
DirkMo - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
Are your sure you understand Microsoft Licensing?There's no additional cost for Hyper-V. The limitations you mention like 4 hosts for Enterprise is right but this doesn't differ in comparison to VMWare licensing (note also that in the case of Enterprise this is 4 without counting the Hyper-V host).
In a typical Windows environment Hyper-V should be very interesting for virtualisation when it comes to cost. Off course if you're in a heterogeneous environment it's likely to fail when it comes to features.
duploxxx - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
well that depends, yes i know the Ms system, no additional cost to hyper-v perhaps, but you can only run 1 in a basic MS OS and even MS stating that they disadvice to run much in the main OS when using hyper-V.....Enterprise is indeed main host + 4
but VMware ESXi which is 100% free 0 base cost has no VM limit other then the limits of your physical system... so tell me again what the added value of hyper-v is?
DirkMo - Thursday, November 5, 2009 - link
ESXi is free indeed yes but the OS of the virtuals is not. If you buy the virtuals in the most economic way you most likely end up with a DC edition or several enterprise editions. You need those both in case of ESXi and Hyper-V.Now once you've bought these and have the choice I'm pretty sure Hyper-V will win it based on features when it's compared to ESXi.
If you're not running MS only,why would you ever chose to run ESXi over XenServer? Both are free and XenServer beats ESXi by miles when it comes to features.
sbrown23 - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
XenServer is free too. There is nothing special about ESXi bring free.T2k - Thursday, November 5, 2009 - link
Exactly. ALL HVs are free except MS is the ONLY HV that gives you HA for free.The most expensive is VMware, no question about it.
Second is Citrix because you get almost everything for free (XenCenter is great) but HA, StorageLink etc for XenServer are commercial.
Cheapest of all is Microsoft, you get even HA for free.
Hyper-V 2008 R2's additional advantage is that once you decided to get into HA role virtualization etc these are right there, all you need is to upgrade your cluster nodes to Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (or Enterprise if you want application failover.)
Now here comes the catch: Microsoft, as always, is the MOST COMPLEX, MOST @SS-BACKWARD, MOST CLUNKY, MOST IDIOTIC, MOST ERROR-PRONE of all setups so yes, as always with MS, there is a trade-off in frustration - but there are functionality and money saved as well.
sbrown23 - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - link
MS Hyper-V server is also "free" like ESXi. And do you mean to say that you are going to run ESXi without Virtual Center? You are not going to pay nothing to run/manage ESXi.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We focus on the future plans. What hypervisor technologies are still being evaluated out there. As it gets easier to port VMs from one hypervisor to another, some people continue to evaluate other hypervisors for cost or management/flexibility reasons. Also "already evaluated and decided against" can be translated into "not on my shortlist" (option 3)InsaneScientist - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Sorry... I should clarify, but we're still going back and evaluating the other options every once in a while, so it's not off the table either.cynic783 - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Spellcheck:impression it may loose the server virtualization battle
should be "lose".
You can delete this comment once you fix it.
Thanks for the great articles.
Dan