Hyper-V – ICT-Freak.nl

December 2, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, VMware

Series: Hyper-v, not in my Datacenter part3

Gabrie heeft part3 gepost.

In part 3 of this series, I want to shed a light on the difference between the types of Migration in ESX and Hyper-V and the differences in storage between the both of them. Although I think most of the readers know the differences, I will start with a brief summary.

Hyper-V QuickMigration: When you want to move a running Virtual Machine from one host to another with as little downtime as possible, you can use QuickMigration. On host-A the VM will be suspended to disk, and then host-B will unsuspend the VM and run it.

Hyper-V & ESX Cold Migration: Moving a VM that is not running, to different host and/or different storage.

ESX VMotion: Moving of a running VM to a different host, without downtime.

ESX Storage VMotion: Moving the disks of a VM to different storage without downtime (VM doesn’t move).

Lees de rest hier: http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=107

November 28, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, Virtualization, VMware

Series: Hyper-v, not in my Datacenter part2

Gabrie heeft Part 2 gepost van zijn serie Hyper-v, not in my Datacenter.

Guest OS

After you installed your hypervisor you want to virtualize your physical servers on it. When doing the research for my presentation I was very surprised to find some strange limitations in which guest are supported with Hyper-V. Can you believe that not all Windows Server versions are supported? Well neither could I.

The guest OS support of Hyper-V:

Windows 2000 Server is only supported with SP4 and 1 CPU.

Windows 2003 Server is only supported with SP2 and 1 or 2 CPUs.

Windows 2008 Server is supported with 1, 2 and 4 CPUs.

and there is Linux support for SUSE Linux Server 10 sp1 / sp2 with only 1 CPU.

This does look quite reasonable at first glance, because these are current versions. True, but when looking at the ESX environment I work in now, we would not be able to virtualize as many servers as we have running on ESX right now

Part 2 vind je hier: http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=104#more-104

November 27, 2008November 28, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, Virtualization, VMware

Series: Hyper-v, not in my Datacenter part1

Gabrie van Zanten (www.gabesvirtualworld.com) is bezig met een serie over Hyper-V, not in my Datacenter.

I’ve written about Hyper-V and ESX is an objective view on how things are at the moment, but still it looks like the only thing I’m doing is Windows-bashing. I decided to dedicate a blog post to it, so everyone can find out for them self if my points are valid. The big question of my presentation is: “Which is better for my datacenter, Hyper-V or ESX?”.
I’m looking at both hypervisors to see which features they have that would make them suited for running in the datacenter discounting nice features that I would rarely use. Here we go…….

Part 1 kun je hier vinden: http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=103#more-103.

Uit betrouwbare bron heb ik vernomen, dat morgen Part 2 gepost gaat worden. Dus hou www.gabesvirtualworld.com in de gaten.

November 26, 2008November 26, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, Virtualization, VMware

Benchmark: vConsolidate and ESX vs Hyper-V

Kenon Owens heeft een blogpost gemaakt over de benchmark tool van Intel, vConsolidate. Met deze tool zijn een aantal tests losgelaten op VMware ESX en Hyper-V.

Lees de bevindingen hier: http://dantedog29.blogspot.com/2008/11/esx-server-beats-hyper-v-in.html

October 1, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, Virtualization

Microsoft: Hyper-V Server 2008 RTM

So what exactly is Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008? Following are some bits I’ve collected that you might not see/read on the Web site or TechNet (or maybe you will).

Hyper-V Server 2008 was built using the Windows hypervisor and other components, including base kernel and driver technologies. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 shares kernel components with Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 contains a sub-set of components that make up Server Core deployment option of Windows Server 2008, and has a similar interface and look and feel. But as you know, Server Core has roles like DNS, DHCP, file. Hyper-V Server 2008 is just virtualization.

Because Hyper-V Server 2008 shares kernel components with Windows Server 2008, we don’t expect special hardware drivers to be required to run Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

The maximum number of guest instances that can run on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is 128 (of course this is dependent on the hardware, memory and workloads). Additionally, each guest OS must have a valid license.

Hyper-V Server 2008 runs/supports all the guest OSes supported by its big brother, WS08 Hyper-V. See here for a complete list.

Windows Server licenses are not included with Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. Client access licenses (CALs) are only required for Windows Server and all Windows Server images that are virtualized, regardless of virtualization platform (e.g., ESXi). No CALs are required for Hyper-V Server 2008.

Download Hyper-V Server here: http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/how-to-get.mspx

More info here: http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/product-information.mspx

Bron: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/

September 27, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, Virtualization, VMware

VMware: Hyper-V on Server Core vs ESXi

VMware heeft een vergelijking gemaakt tussen Hyper-V op Server Core vs ESXi. Hieronder zie je de uitkomst van deze test. Verder vind je twee videos met meer informatie over de installatie van beide Hypervisors en een video over het configureren van iSCSI op beide Hypervisors.

Video 1: http://www.vmware.com/technology/whyvmware/resources/esxi-hyper-v-installation.html

This first video shows every step required to install Hyper-V and ESXi on a fresh machine. We kept count of the elapsed time, reboots, mouse clicks and keystrokes each product needed and it clearly shows the huge advantage the truly thin and OS-free ESXi architecture has in installation speed and simplicity. ESXi goes from bare-metal to fully installed in one-third the time, half the mouse clicks, hundreds fewer keystrokes and just one reboot vs. seven compared to Hyper-V. The simplicity of the ESXi wizard-driven installation is striking compared to the arduous process needed to first get the Server Core OS installed and then configure Hyper-V in a command line environment.

Video 2: http://www.vmware.com/technology/whyvmware/resources/hyper-v-side-by-side-esxi.html

Our second video starts where the first left off and takes Hyper-V and ESXi through the steps needed to configure two iSCSI datastores for VM use. iSCSI setup is a standard task for any virtualization user that wants to take advantage of shared storage for VM migration and high availability. ESXi’s Windows-based Virtual Infrastructure client makes the iSCSI setup quick and easy. For Hyper-V, the "Windows you know" is nowhere to be seen. Instead, working with Server Core requires you to key in a long sequence of obscure commands to configure iSCSI initiators and targets, partitions and file systems. We generously showed the Hyper-V setup executed with no delays, although it took us hours of digging through Microsoft documents and knowledgebase articles to find the right commands to use when configuring iSCSI in Server Core.

Bron: http://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2008/09/esxi-vs-hyper-v.html

August 20, 2008August 20, 2008 afokkema Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware, Windows

Microsoft: New licensing Flexibility

Microsoft heeft eindelijk de licentie voorwaarden aangepast voor het haar software m.b.t. virtualisatie.

New Licensing Flexibility

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products. With the new terms, the company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems, increase agility, and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

Expanded Technical Support

Microsoft has updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform. Now customers can get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that they are accustomed to with nonvirtual environments. More information is available at http://support.microsoft.com.

To enable this support policy, Microsoft launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program in June 2008. The program is open to any software vendor to test and validate its virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. To date, Cisco Systems Inc., Citrix Systems Inc., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Virtual Iron Software Inc. are participating in the program.

“Technical support of virtualized images is an industrywide challenge,” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell. “Novell and Microsoft continue to collaborate to optimize bidirectional virtualization between Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise with Xen. Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program provides customers with additional peace of mind when they run Windows as a guest in a validated environment such as SUSE Linux Enterprise.”

Lees het hele artikel hier: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx

July 28, 2008July 28, 2008 afokkema Citrix, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualization, VMware

Virtual Infrastructure products: features comparison

Ik was al een tijdje aan het zoeken naar een goede features comparison sheet. Ik zat er zelfs al aan te denken om er zelf een te maken tot dat Aleks (virtualistic.nl) me de volgende site liet zien: http://www.it20.info/

Disclosures:

I have limited the scope to x86 virtualization solutions
Virtualization is such a broad topic that I have decided to limit this table to hardware virtualization only solutions. The only exceptions as of today are “SW Virtuozzo” and “Solaris Containers” which do not implement hw virtualization but rather OS virtualization. For a description of these various virtualization tehcnologies check this article.
I have limited the solutions and the ISV to what I personally believe to be those that currently matter for the commercial/enterprise customers.
To shape/structure and fill this table I have collected feedbacks from various communities and other tables I came across in the last few months (thanks to Andreas Groth for his inputs). I am trying to maintain this page for the sake of the community … not to get credit for a work that others have been doing and I am only integrating here.
It’s proving to be very difficult to rate thorugh a simple yes/no table the value of a solution over the other. This is becoming even more challanging since most ISV’s are pushing into the value-add features rather than the pure hypervisor …
…. but since so many people are looking for such a table I decided to try ….
If you are one one the ISV’s mentioned below feel free to send me feedbacks and suggestions to the e-mail address above.
Some of the info in the tables are facts. Other info are opinion of the author and as such should be treated.

Structure of the Comparison:

High-level info and general market scenario (this will position the offering in the market)
Host/Hypervisor specific information/characteristics (this will high-light the hypervisor features)
Virtual Machines specific information/characteristics (this will high-light the potential virtual environments characteristics)
Infrastructure Management specific information/characteristics (this will enlarge the scope to the out-of-the box infrastruxture management features)