VMware

For those of you professionals or hobbyists following the general virtualization trends, you will see that that VMware is the current champion with the bulk of the marketshare (It was over 90% or higher as late as last year, but I think that lead is dwindling.) They have the most tools, and they are the best proven in Enterprise production environments.  Basically, they are a mature product in an arena of competitors going for the gold.

Main Competitors

It looks like the main competitors at the moment are Citrix and Microsoft.  Citrix XenServer is the best of the 2 at the moment.  It is the one that is closest to VMware in terms of their features, capabilities, and management.  Microsoft Hyper-V is new to the game, but they are really behind in the features and capabilities.  They do have on their side that they are shipping Hyper-V for free, and it is included with Windows 2008, but the fact is that a big time company is not going to implement Hyper-V at this moment for many reasons including that it is not “production” ready, especially without a V-motion type tool or a High Availability feature.  I do see Microsoft using their muscle in narrowing the gap with VMware in the next couple of years if they have a viable management interface, and they get more seasoned with the necessary features needed in a datacenter.

Other Competitors

Virtual Iron is the only competitor that was not mentioned that even has another piece of the marketshare (less than 5% last time I checked.)  The hypervisor does go on bare-metal (no OS layer to be installed on) like VMware.  From several articles I have read, Virtual Iron seems to be maturing and trying to keep up with the Jones’.  I am not as well versed in Virtual Iron (I will have a guest blog soon with someone that does), but it is built on the Xen Hypervisor, and I heard it is pretty easy to use. I know that is not much to judge it, but once I get my hands on it, I will fully test it out and report on it.

Now where is that complex lab environment for me to build these test servers?  Anyone willing to lend me 2 servers?  Well, maybe this blog can eventually fund it. That’s an idea.

This week was VMworld in Las Vegas, which around 15,000 virtualization buffs joined in.  Here are the major highlights of VMworld and from other Virtualization companies trying to steel the thunder.

• VMware and Cisco to work together to deliver joint solutions to incorporate Cisco Virtual Networking capabilities into VMware Infrastructure and improve performance of virtual desktops across Wide Area Networks.
• VMware announces the Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDOS) - This is no surprise and general information has been around about VMware’s stab at their own OS. VMware explains it as “The Virtual Datacenter OS allows businesses to efficiently pool all types of hardware resources - servers, storage and network – into an aggregated on-premise cloud – and, when needed, safely federate workloads to external clouds for additional compute capacity.  Datacenters running on the Virtual Datacenter OS are highly elastic, self-managing and self-healing.  With the Virtual Datacenter OS from VMware, businesses large and small can benefit from the flexibility and the efficiency of the “lights-out” datacenter.” The VDC-OS has three main components: “Infrastructure vServices,” “Application vServices” and “Cloud vServices.” More info on the VMware site.
• VMware to release new products 2009 - Some those announced were, 1. Cloud computing initiatives to enable the mobility of virtual machines (VMs) and data to and from local and remote datacenters, and tie those datacenters together with new security structure. 2. Network virtualization, including switches and routers. 3. Expanding the concept of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) beyond a user getting his desktop delivered remotely to a laptop or desktop, into that user being an endpoint for all his data, rather than a device being the endpoint.

• VMware announces bare-metal hypervisor that will run on a laptop or desktop.  No time frame was given for its release.
  

Other Virtualization information:

• Citrix announced XenServer 5 has been released.
• Microsoft kept reemphasizing that Hyper-V is free.  They had a massive product launch right before VMworld and kept at it while VMworld was going on.

No, I am not giving away Free Beer. I was just making a reference for an “Attention Getter” like those good old days in College, when Free Beer got you to a party.

Hyper-V

Microsoft announced today that they are making their Virtualization product, Hyper-V,will be available for FREE! (Formally $28 a license).  Microsoft is back to their old tricks to get their product to the front of the headlines.  I am not sure how many Enterprises are ready to switch over to Hyper-Vwith it not being as tested as VMware’s ESX product.  Of course let’s not forget that Hyper-V still has no live migration feature like VMotion or Failover function like VMware’s HA (High Avaiability) feature.

Microsoft Hyper-V will be available within the next 30 days according to Microsoft. Learn how to get started with Microsoft Hyper-V with this document by Microsoft “Getting Started with Hyper-V.”