Scaling Hyper-v.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

James ONeill — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:27:42 GMT

Nick. I can only guess why you want to twist what say, quite so far. I made a minor point that VMware claim to be the oldest and the most advanced, and those too tend to be exclusive.

VMware was designed before processors supported virtualization, and support for latest CPU tricks gets fudged into each new release. Xen and Hyper-V were designed to exploit those. There is a difference.

It's no accident that the reference design on which both XEN and Hyper-V came out of the academic world who rejected the VM approach.

Sean. I **think** you're misreading the licence. As I understand it [and the following is not official licensing advice and conveys no rights ...] Each *box* CAN be licensed for number of instances of Windows it runs. Enterprise gives you 4 working instances. Those licences were never free floating, and never divisible. So if you had 8 VMs on one box you could give it 2 Enterprise licences. If you move a VM to another box it needs a licence on that box. If you move 4 VMs back and forth between boxes you can't keep flipping the licence back and forth. However if you buy single licenses for standard server and assign them to a VM you can move the VM round just like you'd move a server box.

We gave the 4 working instances away as part of server 2003 r2 back in 2005 and we had to keep working against VM FUD which said we didn't let people use it on non MS platforms. I may be wrong but I don't think we have changed anything in the License agreement since then, just clarified what it means.

Alternatively you assign a licence to a VM

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

Sean McAskill — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:48:41 GMT

If Hyper-V is as good as ESX, why did Microsoft explicitly change licensing rules to prevent users of ESX from legally taking advantage of the vmotion capabilities?

I'm referring to the license rewrite telling me that I can only use vmotion once every 6 months and can never move the virtual machine back to the original hardware. If I bought a Windows Server license for each VM what does MS benefit other than to force a less realistic product feature comparison via arbitrary restrictions?

And while I'm at it, licensing multiple desktop VMs ONLY with SA agreements (because otherwise SA agreements are valueless?) Come on, this is the act of a company running scared, not a company that is keeping ahead of the technology curve.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

Nick — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:49:03 GMT

James, for once I think I agree with you on one of your points in that I am being pushed far too much VMware FUD. Just looking at your initial quote about ESXi again:

“So a design that's more than 7(1) years old and wasn't designed (2) to exploit the latest Intel and AMD technology is also the most advanced(1)(2)?”

1: You are suggesting that the date of original release of a product is related to how advanced a current product can be classed. You subsequently and very eloquently called the relationship ‘BS’ after I tried turning the relationship between age/how advanced to the 23 year old Microsoft ‘Windows’ family of products.

2: You are suggesting that ESXi doesn’t support AMD-V / Intel-VT. It does and in a subsequent post you owned up to this phrase being a ‘bad choice of words’.

So, by your own admissions you’ve not really left a whole lot of credibility or substance in your original statement. I’m a Microsoft customer and I’ve had a go at engaging in some very reasoned discussion with you but you’ve just rudely dismissed me as having ‘swallowed the VMware book of FUD whole’. Well, I for one can think I can see where the book of VMware FUD is being authored.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

James ONeill — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:36:59 GMT

Nick, to a degree you're right anyone looking to go into full scale production with the Microsoft management tools has a few weeks to wait. Actually we've got real customers who went into production when Hyper-V was still in Beta (it was that good, and that reliable) and who are managing it with the pre-release SCVMM. I would advocate doing that but it does work. Hyper-V is not our first step into virtualization, and we're talking about the second generation of a management tool.

You seem to have swallowed the VMware book of FUD whole.What we're hearing from customers is either "We like the price, scalability performance and Windows integration" or "Come back when you have Live Migration"

Various people in VMware seem to be scared by Hyper-V into various kinds of dishonesty. When they lie, we're going to say "that's a lie" End of.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

Nick — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:05:57 GMT

James, I'm saying that VMware can currently offer the market a complete solution including hypervisor (now freely available) and management tools. Microsoft's tools might be absolutely cutting edge but since they aren't out of beta yet, they are currently utterly worthless in a production environment. Having 'advanced' software is a small achievement and surely having software that is actually 'usable' trumps it?

Personally, I wouldn't want your job of having to promote the current and relatively green Microsoft virtualisation technologies over your competitors but I agree with Juan that this very negative 'BS' business really does not look at all professional.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

James ONeill — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:53:39 GMT

Juan, that's going to be some wait, as Windows7 isn't going to be around for a bit. Wait for 8 has become the running joke inside MSFT.

Have you run Hyper-V ? My guess is not, so you're not really in a position to say if it is good, bad or indifferent. Plain and simple fact is that VM won't just go away because Microsoft got into the market which they're used to a share 70% plus. They will charge more than we will, and they will justify it with features we don't have. But if they try to defend their market share by dishonesty then they deserve to get called on it. (We did that once, we got called, and most people would say we deserved it).

I guess you don't run Vista. Here a simple fact, it does the job better than XP. I held off upgrading the relic that I have at home from XP to Vista and grew so sick of XP (for stuff I couldn't do on work's laptop) that I finally put 2GB of RAM in it and leaves XP in the dust. We know how many companies are buying Vista licences and how many are deploying. The rate for the first year of Vista was the same as the first year of XP - which had much the same complaints, even though it was a small face lift to Win2K. (Hardly anyone shifted to Win2K on the desktop).

Choosing XP over Vista is choosing the path of lower productivity. You're free to make that choice.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

Juan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:28:58 GMT

James, I don´t think you´re acting like a IT Pro (much less like an MS IT Pro!!!!), calling things BS and stuff... I´m a MS user proud and through, but VMware is clearly better in TCO and delivery than Hyper-V.

I hope MS deliver a better virtualization solution in a couple years, but trying to make Hyper-V look better than ESX is like trying to make Vista look as a better choice than XP. Intel dumped Vista from it´s internal usage roadmap in favor of XP, as many other (including me) have done. And we all know this is happening in almost every company.

I´ll be waiting for Hyper-V2 and Windows 10, ESX and XP are the winners, even if MS doesn´t like it.

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

James ONeill — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:12:28 GMT

Nick, you're saying because the (superior and cheaper) management product for Hyper-V is so new it isn't even released means that the underlying hypervisor technology is less advanced ? that's nonsense.

You and I seem to be making the same point. The VMware folks post suggests "Most advanced" and "longest established" is somehow linked. That's BS. Generally backwards compatibility holds back development. Hyper-V was designed with those chips in mind, VMware wasn't. Bad choice of words on my part to suggest they don't support AMD-V / Intel-VT.

There have been so many instance of folk from VMware going out and telling people things which are simply not true. I think we should call them on that when it happens. People call Microsoft on things like that ... and rightly so.

James C

Thanks ... I'm trying to figure out what the VMWare change means in practice. I may just provide a link to what someone from the Hyper-V team ends up posting

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

James ONeill — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:12:27 GMT

James C

Thanks ... I'm trying to figure out what the VMWare change means in practice. I may just provide a link to what someone from the Hyper-V team ends up posting

re: Scaling Hyper-v.

James Crawshaw — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:15:00 GMT

Hi James,

Excellent article as usual and I fully agree with your summation that some other companies are fine purveyors of BS if nothing else.

As a matter of interest it would be good to hear a follow on to your article bearing in mind the recent announcement from VMWARE that ESXi will be provided free - http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99830/vmware-announces-q2-08-earnings-makes-esxi-hypervisor-a-free-download.html

James.