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.