VIRTUALBOY BLOG
A couple of days back, I wrote a war-and-peace-length (OK, not quite!) post on the investigation of the VMware Cost-Per-Application Calculator. If you haven’t read it, you can read it here. To summarise, it showed:
So, to today. I read this: http://blogs.vmware.com/virtualreality/2009/09/did-microsoft-just-agree-with-us-that-hyper-v-is-not-16th-the-cost-of-vsphere.html
The answer, plain and simple is, no, Microsoft, nor I, did not just agree with you that Hyper-V is not 1/6th of the cost of vSphere. What I proved in this post, is, when comparing a Microsoft and System Center solution, with Windows licenses, with a vSphere Enterprise Plus with Windows Licenses solution, providing you provide more RAM to compensate for the use of memory oversubscription (which not everyone, believe it or not, uses), Microsoft’s Cost-per-App is 31% cheaper than on vSphere.
Where Microsoft quote 1/3rd of the cost, 1/5th of the cost, or even 1/6th of the cost, it isn’t about Cost-per-Application. Cost-per-Application is a new method, conceived by VMware, to try to get away from the fact that the upfront licensing costs, of which the 1/3rd, 1/5th, or 1/6th refer to, is in fact, on a number of occasions, true.
Let’s have a look shall we, forgetting about the cost-per-application side of things, which I've shown is 31% cheaper on the Microsoft side, when, assuming common sense, you’d put more RAM instead of buying more hosts, and instead focus on the upfront software costs of a solution.
I’ll base this on an example I received through on email a while back, which was a quote for 15 Servers worth of Virtualisation and Management. Each of these servers had 4 Quad Cores. So, off I went to VMware’s website, added it to my basket – 60 CPU’s worth of vSphere Enterprise (not Plus) and a vCenter Server, both with 2 year Platinum S&S. What was the total software costs, regardless of infrastructure, hardware, power, cooling etc? $260,058.54.
Now let’s look at the Microsoft side – well, 60 CPUs of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, is $0. Good start. 60 CPU’s worth of Server Management Suite Datacenter (unlimited agents for SCOM, SCCM, SCDPM, SCVMM, and the SCVMM Server bits too) come in at $744 per CPU, and include 2 years SA. Add on to that, a Server license for SCCM SVR, SCOM SVR and SCDPM SVR, and you’re looking at about $2605 total including 2 years SA. Grand total? $47,425.
Both of these calculations exclude SQL, and Windows Licenses.
Now, let’s focus on the 1/3rd, 1/5th and the 1/6th cost differences that the Virtual reality post so kindly points out.
$260,058.54 / $47,425 = 5.483574907749077, which we’ll call 5.48 for simplicity.
So, to summarise with this simple example, it’s clear to see that in fact, a Hyper-V and System Center solution is between 1/5th and 1/6th of the VMware costs, and that was versus Enterprise. If you use Enterprise Plus, the total for the VMware software is $314,556.54 with 2 year Platinum S&S, which means that the the cost of Hyper-V and System Center is actually between 1/6th and 1/7th (6.63 times) of vSphere.
If I halve the number of CPUs, down to 30, we’re now at $160,937.34 for vSphere Enterprise Plus with vCenter and 2 years Platinum S&S, versus $24,925 on the Microsoft side, which, again, means that a Microsoft solution comes in at between 1/6th and 1/7th of the cost of the vSphere solution.
So, to wrap up – hopefully readers of this blog will share my frustration with the Virtual Reality blog post, and how they have taken a post that had a clear objective of looking at the cost-per-application calculator, and instead, turned it round to focus on something it clearly wasn’t aiming to address.
The final part of the Virtual Reality post reads as follows:
“The bottom line is that Microsoft’s blog doesn’t uncover anything new about the VMware Cost Per Application Calculator. Quite the opposite, it confirms it. Try our calculator for yourself and create a customized report. You will find that it includes a sensitivity analysis showing vSphere’s cost per application at different consolidation ratios. The analysis clearly demonstrates that even at equal consolidation ratios (worst case scenario for vSphere), Hyper-V’s total acquisition cost is, at best, only marginally lower. Once you factor in vSphere’s tremendous consolidation ratio advantage over Hyper-V and vSphere’s ability to scale up to 2X more VMs than Hyper-V (check-out the “Evaluating the ESX 4 Hypervisor and VM Density Advantage” report), vSphere delivers the lowest cost per application by up to 20-30%. In fact, often vSphere becomes a less expensive solution than Hyper-V with just 1-2 more VM’s per ESX host – in addition to being a much more functional, more scalable, more proven product. So you can either believe us when we say that Microsoft Hyper-V is actually about the same cost as VMware products or you can believe Microsoft when they say that VMware solutions cost about as much as Hyper-V – take your pick!”
“The bottom line is that Microsoft’s blog doesn’t uncover anything new about the VMware Cost Per Application Calculator. Quite the opposite, it confirms it. Try our calculator for yourself and create a customized report. You will find that it includes a sensitivity analysis showing vSphere’s cost per application at different consolidation ratios. The analysis clearly demonstrates that even at equal consolidation ratios (worst case scenario for vSphere), Hyper-V’s total acquisition cost is, at best, only marginally lower. Once you factor in vSphere’s tremendous consolidation ratio advantage over Hyper-V and vSphere’s ability to scale up to 2X more VMs than Hyper-V (check-out the “Evaluating the ESX 4 Hypervisor and VM Density Advantage” report), vSphere delivers the lowest cost per application by up to 20-30%. In fact, often vSphere becomes a less expensive solution than Hyper-V with just 1-2 more VM’s per ESX host – in addition to being a much more functional, more scalable, more proven product.
So you can either believe us when we say that Microsoft Hyper-V is actually about the same cost as VMware products or you can believe Microsoft when they say that VMware solutions cost about as much as Hyper-V – take your pick!”
My blog post does not actually confirm the cost-per-application calculator – did you stop reading? It confirms that, with an ability to spec hardware effectively, you can save 31% on a cost-per-application calculation, using Hyper-V and System Center. This is very different from the 20-30% cheaper in a cost-per-app calculation that VMware claims they have.
Sensitivity Analysis for different consolidation ratios? The analysis clearly demonstrates that even at equal consolidation ratios (worst case scenario for vSphere), Hyper-V’s total acquisition cost is, at best, only marginally lower? Let’s have a look at this table shall we?
At equal consolidation ratios, we’re only marginally lower? Come again? $2366 or $3257? That says to me that a Microsoft solution is 27% cheaper, cost-per-application than vSphere – don’t tell me you were actually comparing Hyper-V and System Center to vSphere Standard Edition…?
“Tremendous consolidation ratio advantage over Hyper-V and vSphere’s ability to scale up to 2X more VMs than Hyper-V” – or, you could buy more RAM? Yes, that’s a simplistic way of looking it it, but you’ve wound me up on this, so I tend to make things clear then!
“vSphere delivers the lowest cost per application by up to 20-30%” – Right, OK. Assuming you don’t upgrade the RAM, as detailed in the previous post.
“Believe Microsoft when they say that VMware solutions cost about as much as Hyper-V” – I’m not going to rise to this one, if you’ve read this far, and if you’ve read the previous post, if you think that it what I was trying to say, I’d suggest you read them again. Maybe I should just turn it round and say that VMware vSphere Cost-Per-Application Calculator Sensitivity Analysis proves Microsoft solution is 27% cheaper than a vSphere Enterprise Plus solution! How about that one?
Then we get on to the comments section of the Virtual Reality post, which starts off promisingly, discussing the deep management offering that the full System Center Suite can provide, to which the response discusses an add-on technology for vSphere, known as AppSpeed. On the surface, you could compare AppSpeed with SCOM, but then, we’d be in the reverse situation that we are in when we talk about Hypervisors, in the sense that you’re comparing AppSpeed, with a technology that Microsoft acquired in 2000, and has developed ever since. This is a well adopted, mature monitoring technology, and contrary to the comment in the post, now, in R2, comprehensively monitor heterogeneous environments, including hardware, storage, network I/O and more, across servers, and desktops, and in terms of SCOM only being useful in pure-Microsoft environments, again, check out the cross-platform monitoring, the extensive Management Pack catalog to monitor Microsoft, and non-Microsoft platforms (heard or Veeam, or Bridgeways, for VMware monitoring?) or what about the new announcements from HP, around integration with Insight Control, or IBM’s Integrated PRO Management Pack?
Final thing to add about AppSpeed – it’s on at $1832.18 per CPU with 2 Year Platinum S&S. The reason that I chose 2 year S&S, is to add-on to our example before:
“(If you use Enterprise Plus, the total for the VMware software is $314,556.54 with 2 year Platinum S&S, which means that the the cost of Hyper-V and System Center is actually between 1/6th and 1/7th (6.63 times) of vSphere.)”
So now we’ll add on 60 x $1832.18 = $109930.80, so add to that, our previous Enterprise Plus total of $314,556.54, and we’re at a total of $424487.34
So, $424,487.34 versus $47,425, which means we’re looking at 1/9th of the cost of vSphere and AppSpeed versus a Microsoft solution.
I’ll leave you with that.
As readers of this blog will be well aware, one of the key additions to Hyper-V R2, was Live Migration. Prior to R2, Hyper-V had a capability known as Quick Migration, which enabled a virtual machine (VM) to be migrated from one physical host to another, but included a pausing of the VM as it was moved. VMware, who’d had Live Migration, known as VMotion, for some time before this, inevitably picked up on this, and thus branded Hyper-V insufficient for an Enterprise’s needs. Still, 100+ case studies later, Hyper-V R1 has established a solid foundation, with a low TCO, ready for R2 to take over the baton.
Now R2 is here, and features like Live Migration, Hot-Add of storage, Cluster Shared Volumes, Redirected I/O, and more, are all baked into the product for free, the direction of the argument has changed. No longer is it about ‘We have Live Migration and you don’t’ – it’s all changed to a ‘We have a lower cost-per-application than you’. An application being a VM in this case. There’s a prime example of this argument being presented by VMware, in this video, aptly titled, “VMware slams Microsoft”. I’ll let you make your mind up on that one.
What’s interesting is, that neither VMware’s, nor Microsoft’s pricing models really reflect a cost-per-app comparison, yet the cost-per-app calculator is being used to prove that VMware vSphere does in fact have a lower cost-per-app than a Hyper-V & System Center combination.
In this post, we’re going to investigate how much of this is actually true…<disclaimer>I work for Microsoft, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate VMware technologies. My role is to ensure Microsoft Partners can build successful virtualisation practices around Microsoft virtualisation, and articulate the key values of our virtualisation technologies, so they, the Partner, can provide the right solution for their customers. This isn’t about slating any of their technologies, as they are the market leader, and in many ways, have defined where virtualisation has got to today. I am a VCP (not vSphere :-( ). This post is purely concerned with addressing the cost-per-application calculations.</disclaimer>
So, here we go…
Firstly, where can you find the cost-per-app calculator? Here: http://www.vmware.com/technology/whyvmware/calculator/
Let’s plug in some values:
OK, so that’s the values plugged in, what pops out the other side?
“The unique features and architectural design of VMware vSphere 4 allow you to run many more applications per server (higher VM density) at an acceptable level of performance than other virtualization solutions. In our own testing and from reviews of our customers, we have seen VMware vSphere 4 users commonly achieve 50-70% higher VM density per host than with Microsoft Hyper-V, resulting in a 20-30% lower cost per-application. Based on your inputs, the cost-per-application to virtualize 100 applications using VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition is $2,299 -- 3% lower* than with Microsoft Hyper-V R2 and System Center.”
“The unique features and architectural design of VMware vSphere 4 allow you to run many more applications per server (higher VM density) at an acceptable level of performance than other virtualization solutions. In our own testing and from reviews of our customers, we have seen VMware vSphere 4 users commonly achieve 50-70% higher VM density per host than with Microsoft Hyper-V, resulting in a 20-30% lower cost per-application.
Based on your inputs, the cost-per-application to virtualize 100 applications using VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition is $2,299 -- 3% lower* than with Microsoft Hyper-V R2 and System Center.”
Let’s just dissect what that is saying for a moment there. So, vSphere can provide higher levels of density, through the use, predominantly, of Memory Oversubscription/Overcommit (a feature Hyper-V, even in R2, doesn’t have). Based on this, you’d run more VMs per host, thus you’d need less hosts. We’ll investigate this more later. However, look at the last line of the first paragraph. “…resulting in a 20-30% lower cost-per-application. This is actually in line with what was said in the video I mentioned, and linked to, earlier. Also, what’s an acceptable level of performance? Hmmm!
However, the very next line, based on my inputs, suggests that the saving is actually 3% lower, (as opposed to 20-30%), and notice the little * after “3% lower”? This is to indicate, and I quote, “Assumes that a VMware ESX server can run 50% more applications than a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (Hyper-V) host”. Firstly, where’s R2 gone from the comparison, and secondly, its an assumption that everyone uses Memory Oversubscription, to that level, and thus makes those gains.
What is Memory Oversubscription?
I’m not going to take anything away from VMware here. What ESX can do with memory management is very impressive indeed. There’s a great whitepaper that’s just been made available to download discussing the main techniques ESX uses to manage memory, with little impact to performance in most cases. In a nutshell, Memory Oversubscription is made up of three key mechanisms, Transparent Page Sharing, Ballooning, and Hypervisor Swapping, with the latter being the least desirable, as it can have a considerable performance impact. For the purpose of this discussion, Memory Oversubscription is a mechanism where, if a VM isn’t using all of it’s allocated RAM, say, it’s using 800MB of it’s 2GB allocation, that remaining 1GB ish, can be returned to, almost like a pool of spare RAM, which can then be used by other VMs. This can, as the information above states, allow more VMs to run on a host, providing they don’t all need their full allocation of RAM at once. To simplify, if you had 16GB RAM, you could, potentially, get 16 x 2GB RAM VMs running on that host, with little performance impact, providing that the total working set of memory in the VMs is less than the 16GB RAM. TPS would obviously help here. However, if all of those 16 VMs starting to go mad with a craving for RAM, and they all needed their 2GB, you could find yourself in a situation where you are hypervisor swapping, which isn’t, and VMware would accept this, the best place to be. For more info on Memory Oversubscription, there is a great explanation here.
Do I wish Hyper-V had some of these memory management techniques? Sure! If only to give people the opportunity to evaluate, and test it, and see if it is the right fit to use in their environment. Plus, I could get more VMs on my Shuttle PC :-)
To contrast this, Hyper-V’s approach to memory, at a high level, is more simple and straightforward, in the sense that if you create a VM with 2GB RAM, it consumes 2GB RAM from the physical host, and this doesn’t change, whether the guest OS is using 10% or 90% of it’s 2GB allocation. In some ways, this is preferable, as you always know what your VMs have got in terms of RAM, and even if they use their full 100%, you know you’re not going to get into a position of hypervisor swapping, so it won’t impact performance of other VMs, however, on the flip side of that, your limits are a lot more hardcoded. You won’t be able to start that 16th VM, should you already be at capacity with 15 of your 1GB VMs on a 16GB host, even though each of those 15 VMs aren’t using their full 1GB allocation. So, in summary, it’s swings and roundabouts when it comes to memory management. There was a post a while back on one of the VMware blogs, which, I accept, was based on VI3, not vSphere, but still highlighted that only 57% of 110 customers surveyed, used memory oversubscription techniques, and 87% of that 57% used it in production, so not everyone is using it, but still, I’d rather have it in my kitbag, than not, but that’s just me.
For the purpose of this cost-per-app discussion however, we’re not going to talk about how many people do, or don’t use it – we’re going to focus on what the cost-per-app calculator states, and that is that you will ‘always’ achieve a 1.5:1 higher ratio (50%) of VMs to host on ESX4, than you will on Hyper-V R2.
Back to the Report…
The very next item in the report, is a graph, which you can view for yourself when you enter your figures, however what I find funny is the heading for the graph: “VMware vSphere 4 can deliver a much lower cost per application than Microsoft's virtualization offerings” I’ve bolded out much lower there, but reality is, in the very next table:
Let’s take a look at this for a second. I’ve highlighted that versus Enterprise Plus, the actual savings in terms of cost-per-app is only 3%. Bit different than 20-30%, but hey, it’s still a saving, right? Let’s look at the numbers a bit deeper though. Why do we need 105 VMs, and they need 102? Well, we said we’d be virtualising 100 VMs, plus the Management technologies and associated database server. So, with that in mind, we’d need a SQL Box, (as would they), and VMs for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Operations Manager 2007 R2, Configuration Manager 2007 R2, and Data Protection Manager R2. Fair enough, I'll give them that. 105 to 102 isn’t the end of the world anyway. However, where it starts to get interesting is the fact that due, predominantly, to the fact that memory oversubscription is being used, we can only get 12 VMs on a 32GB host, as oppose to 18 (50% higher) on the vSphere side. This means that we would in fact need 9 hosts, instead of 6, and thus every cost that’s associated with a host, which we’ll discuss in a minute, get’s added on 3 times too. We now have 3 more hosts’ worth of infrastructure costs, 3 more hosts’ worth of software costs (Windows licenses, Management licenses etc), thus our total costs are higher, thus our cost-per-app is higher, by 3%. Its important to note that no further information about the ‘VM’ is provided, in terms of CPU, I/O, RAM and so on, so, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got, apples for apples.
Let’s just take a step back for a minute. If you had done an accurate capacity plan, and decided to buy some new servers to host these VMs, how many Partners are realistically going to think ‘right, on VMware we’ll need 6 x 32GB RAM Servers, and on MS we’ll need 9 x 32GB Servers, so I’ll go and buy 9 x 32GB RAM Servers’. Why would you not just double the RAM, and potentially, half the number of servers you’d need on the Hyper-V side? Simplistically, if 32GB hosts 12 VMs, would 64GB not host 24? 105 / 24 = 4.375 hosts, which, at a push could be 4 hosts, but, we’ll say 5 for headroom. 4 less hosts than before reduces our figures around infrastructure costs quite considerably, along with reduced software costs, and thus, a lower cost-per-app.
The (very) simplistic way to look at this is, whilst vSphere Cost > RAM Cost (and you’ve got room in the server to increase the RAM), cost-per-app will be less on a Hyper-V platform.
You could say, well, what if they are older machines, that don’t have so many RAM slots – if we max out the box in terms of RAM, vSphere is going to have a higher density than Hyper-V. There is only one answer to that, and it is yes, that’s true. However, a large proportion of customers, when they embrace virtualisation, are pretty much coming from a very physical environment, and want to invest in newer, more powerful and scalable hardware to run these virtual infrastructures. Working with a Partner, to accurately capacity plan their estate, and thus translating this into the levels of kit they need can be a straightforward exercise, yet choosing the kit to map to this will need to factor in budget, but also things like slots for RAM. a 32 RAM-Slot server is cheaper to upgrade to 128GB RAM than a 16 RAM-slot server, based on the fact you can buy 32 x 4GB DIMMs cheaper than 16 x 8GB DIMMs, but the 8GB DIMMs will decrease in cost as we move forward. These are just a few of the important considerations to make, but still, if you had an older server, with 16 slots for RAM (fairly common) which were all filled with 1GB DIMMs – you could take those out, and replace them with 4GB DIMMs, to get to 64GB RAM, for a few thousand dollars, giving that server a new lease of life, and at the same time, maximising your investment in kit. This obviously assumes that the piece of kit is supported, but also has enough I/O capacity, and CPU grunt, to handle VMs!
As always, I digress! Point is, if memory oversubscription is a blocker to Hyper-V, for a much lower cost than vSphere, you could increase the RAM significantly, as we’ll explore in more detail now.
Breaking down the Infrastructure Costs.
Firstly, what makes up the infrastructure costs? Well, if you scroll to the bottom of your results page, and expand Appendix A and B, you’ll find all the info there, but let’s take a deeper look. Infrastructure costs are made up of Servers/Hardware, but also Power/Cooling etc. I’m going to put a bit more of a real-life spin on this, but at the same time, I’m going to use a number of VMware’s Calculator Information for Power/Cooling and Datacenter Costs etc. Bear with me on this one, it will make sense!
Hardware
For this discussion, I’m going to head on over to http://www.Dell.com. The reason I chose Dell.com, is, because, like the VMware cost-per-app calculator, you can head on over there, for yourself, and try it out. The use of Dell hardware has nothing to do with it’s performance, scalability, or cost. It’s purely down to being able to quickly customise a server, and get a price for doing so!
Based on VMware’s Server Profile Assumptions, our chosen server will be:
FYI – based on the rule of thumb for Hyper-V R2, of 1 physical core to 8 vCPUs, we would support 96 VMs with 1 vCPU on a Dual Six-Core Server, or 48 2-vCPU VMs.
Total Server Cost: $3,664
What about Storage? Well, this is the same for both parties, so we’re not going to go into the nitty-gritty about this. If you look at Appendix A on the cost-per-app calculator, on both sides of the fence, the total comes in at $30,000, and takes into account the number of GB we’d need, and an assumed cost of $3 per GB.
Total Storage Cost: $30,000
What about Networking? Well, we’ll stick with the VMware pricing of $4,000 per network switch, and a network switch has 24 ports.
Total Networking Cost: $4,000 per switch
What about Power & Cooling costs? Well, actual operating power is 424 Watts Per Server, according to the calculator, and 530 Watts per Server for cooling, but to keep things simple, I’m going to use the figure of $833 per server in terms of power/cooling costs per year. This is based on the power/cooling costs of VMware’s 6 hosts, coming in at $5000. $5000 / 6 = $833 per host.
Total Power/Cooling Cost: $833 per Host
What about Datacenter space? Well, these are identical for both parties, as they assume that all servers (2U) will fit in a single rack (24U), and that the datacenter space consumed by 1 rack is 7 square feet, which equates to a cost of $2710 for Datacenter space costs.
Total Datacenter Space Cost: $2710
So, what are the scores (George Dawes)?
Well, using our real-life hardware (and admittedly, this wouldn’t be real-life for all organisations, but hey ho):
As you can see, the infrastructure costs, based on 9 Hyper-V R2 Hosts vs. 6 ESX Hosts, aren’t quite as large as they were in the VMware table shown earlier, yet this is a real example, taken with live server information. Inevitably, because Hyper-V needs more hosts, we consume more power, we need more networking switches (5 switches at $4000 each, as oppose to 3 on the VMware side), and, inevitably, we need more software licenses, for things like Windows Server Datacenter edition. You’ll notice on there that our SQL costs are different too. I’ve chosen to use the Per Processor version of SQL, with 1 CPU’s worth of SQL 2008 Standard Edition retailing at $8998 including SA. This means we don’t need to worry about CALs for all devices that will be indirectly accessing the SQL box, plus, it means we can use it for more stuff in the infrastructure too. If we put that SQL Server inside a VM, and provide it with 1 vCPU, and assuming just SCOM, SCCM, SCDPM and SCVMM are using instances within that database, I believe this would be adequate, however, if we take the VMware side, if SQL is being used for anything else in that environment apart from vCenter, they too will have to think about licensing it differently, but for now, I’ll take the hit on the Microsoft side, and leave VMware with just the Standard Edition Server/CAL version of SQL 2008.
The results however, show a pretty much identical cost per application (for those who want to check, it’s the Total Costs / 100 (as this is how many workloads we wanted to virtualise, management workloads aside for both parties).
Let’s take a step back now, and think back to what I wrote earlier:
“If you had done an accurate capacity plan, and decided to buy some new servers to host these VMs, how many Partners are realistically going to think ‘right, on VMware we’ll need 6 x 32GB RAM Servers, and on MS we’ll need 9 x 32GB Servers, so I’ll go and buy 9 x 32GB RAM Servers’. Why would you not just double the RAM, and potentially, half the number of servers you’d need on the Hyper-V side? Simplistically, if 32GB hosts 12 VMs, would 64GB not host 24? 105 / 24 = 4.375 hosts, which, at a push could be 4 hosts, but, we’ll say 5 for headroom. 4 less hosts than before reduces our figures around infrastructure costs quite considerably, along with reduced software costs, and thus, a lower cost-per-app.”
Lets perform the same comparison, but this time, we’ll pay to double the RAM for the Hyper-V hosts, to offset the value that memory oversubscription provides. This time, the same server will be stacked with 64GB (16x4GB), 800MHz, Dual Ranked RAM. Let’s look at the difference in cost:
WOW. $889 per server to double the RAM to 64GB. Yes, the leap to 128GB on this server is an extra $9590 per server, but that’s because we’d need to use the 8GB DIMMs, as I explained earlier. That is where you’d perhaps think about moving from a 2U to a 4U, with 32 DIMM slots, to enable reaching 128GB for much less than $9590 more.
Anyway, what does this do to our calculations? Assuming we go down to 5 Hyper-V hosts (I’m sure we could do 4, but hey, we’ll stick with 5 for this discussion):
As you can see, things have changed quite considerably. By doubling the RAM on the Hyper-V side, for an extra $889 per host, we’ve actually been able to reduce our number of hosts to 5 (this could have been 4), which has resulted in less hardware, networking switches, power, cooling, and software licenses.
Those eagle-eyed among you are bound to say, well why wouldn’t I just buy 64GB RAM for my VMware vSphere hosts, and reduce my hosts down still further? To that I say, absolutely! You could in fact do that, and we’d be back to the start again, where we’d have 5 nodes, vSphere would be running on, say, 3 nodes (assuming around a 36:1 consolidation ratio), and the table would look something like this:
You can see that this time vSphere provides an 8% cost-per-app advantage over a Hyper-V and System Center combination, yet if we take the 43% of customers who don’t use memory oversubscription, from the survey earlier, those customers are actually 23% worse off. Looking at the first vSphere Enterprise Plus column, you can see now that the hosts are running at 36:1. Not every customer is going to be comfortable with running at 36:1, whether it is supported or not. One of Microsoft’s biggest public case studies is Kroll Factual Data, and they are running at around 30:1, with no memory oversubscription, on Hyper-V R1, and it’s enabled them to reduce their servers from 650+ to 22, cutting their power bill by 90%. Most customers and partners that I speak to, typically go in around the 10-15:1, maybe a little higher on occasion. Plus, at 36:1, what this example doesn’t take into account is the level of I/O that will be going on at this stage, and also the CPU utilisation. To feel comfortable, you may choose to move to a 4-way Server, with 4 x Quad Core processors, to give you that additional scalability, but remember, as soon as you add more processors, you’ll need to double your vSphere license costs, and also your System Center Suite costs on the Microsoft side. I hope you appreciate, that at this stage, there is a lot of “if’s, but’s and maybe’s”.
We could keep going round in circles, adding RAM to one, working out the figures, then repeating for the other. The whole point I’m trying to make around this cost-per-app calculator, is it’s not as black and white as it first appears. When you start to delve into the numbers, it's clear to see that if you’re clever with your hardware selections, and your calculations are accurate for your environment, based on strong capacity planning information, with Hyper-V and System Center, you can save a considerable amount of money.
Assume an organisation has already got Windows licenses that they can transfer into the environment, and what are you left with? vSphere & vCenter costs, vs. Hyper-V and System Center costs, which, as you’ll see from the final column in the table, vSphere license costs for a 5-node environment come in at $61,302, whereas Hyper-V and System Center come in at $19,043, and that’s with the more expensive SQL, which may also be needed on the VMware side. Clear saving of 2/3rds of the cost. That’s upfront costs, in the customer’s pocket, plus, with it being under an agreement, chances are it will be paid off over the 2 years, rather than upfront, which means you’ll get the returns, before you’ve fully paid for the software!
“But you’re getting so much more functionality with vSphere”
Judging by this table, yes!!
So, thankfully, we’re given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to ‘Single Server Provisioning’, i.e. you can run virtual machines, but straight away, we lose a tick for High VM Density. This is subjective. For me, 24:1, or even 30:1 as Kroll Factual Data deployed, is a High VM Density, so, if you’re going to use generalist terms, then as long as the hypervisor can support large numbers of VMs (regardless of how much you upgrade the RAM), then I can have a tick in that box. If on the other hand, you use a more technical way of describing the option, i.e. ‘Has Memory Oversubscription’, of which not everyone will understand, then yes, I accept that there shouldn’t be a tick there.
On to Clustered File System. Hmm. Does it matter that we don’t have a ‘clustered file system’, when in fact, we have a non-proprietary Cluster Shared Volume system, which actually out scales VMFS-3 from 2TB, up to 256TB, and has load-balanced MPIO, for FC and iSCSI, built in, for free. Just have a read about what Jason Perlow of ZDNet thinks of VMFS-3…
Ultra-thin Hypervisor? I’ll let you read Jeff Woolsey’s posts on the Hypervisor Footprint Debate:
- Part 1 - Part 1 Update - Part 2 - Part 3
Both systems provide the capability for automated failover, with VMware HA on the VMware side, and Failover Clustering on the Microsoft side, so that’s a tick in the box for both there, yet we lose a tick for online/offline VM patching. I assume by patching, they are referring to Update Manager. Well, with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, we have one of the most scalable, mature patch/update/app/OS deployment tools on the market, that can also be used to deploy patches/updates/apps/OSs out to the physical desktop estate too, which is something that Update Manager can’t address. It’ll also help you manage licenses through the Asset Intelligence feature, and deploy desired baselines out to OS’s, physical or virtual. It also integrates with App-V, and Intel vPro, to name but a few. These are just a few of the many features that make SCCM much more than just a ‘patching tool’. To handle offline patching, we have a free bolt on tool for SCCM/SCVMM, called the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool, so we deserve a tick there.
No integrated disk backup? How about Data Protection Manager 2007, which we’ve paid for as part of our suite? This will back up not only the VM (like Data Recovery on the VMware side), but also the key workloads inside the VM, like SharePoint, Exchange, SQL, Windows, File Servers, System State etc (unlike Data Recovery). The stuff that matters. It also has a single instance storage capability, which can help save on storage space. It can backup to tape, which Data Recovery can’t, plus it can protect into the cloud. We’ll have a tick for that, thanks very much.
Storage Thin Provisioning – do you mean dynamic disks, that have been in Hyper-V, and even in Virtual Server, for years? Well, that’s in Hyper-V, and guess what, if you’ve got System Center Operations Manager, you can monitor it! Alert on it! Create custom actions on it! Tick, thank you!
Hot Add is an interesting one, with both parties providing the capability to hot-add/remove storage, however when you start to look at the capability of hot-adding / removing CPU’s and memory, I’d strongly recommend you give Jason’s blog post a read…I agree wholeheartedly with Jason’s comment (in the comments section) “I think it’s going to be quite a while before change management is ready for hot add CPU or memory”.
On to Live Migration, of which we can perform 1 LM, between 2 nodes, at once. Does this mean that VMware can perform 2 simultaneous Live Migrations at the same time, quicker than we can do 2 separate ones? I doubt it, but does it matter? Live Migration gives the IT Admin more flexibility than they’ve ever had before, and the fact that whether the LM takes 1 minute, or 30 seconds, the OS/User is unaware this is happening to the VM which makes this point much less relevant. The fact that we include it, for free, opens this feature up to organisations of all shapes and sizes.
Fault Tolerance – this is an interesting one. We don’t have an answer to this right now, but we’re partnering with Marathon to provide one. I’d strongly suggest you have a look here. The list of caveats for this feature alone is, well, long. Some of my favourites include no DRS for those protected VMs, 1 vCPU for protected VMs, no Thin Provisioning, no Storage VMotion, No ballooning…
Firewall Virtual Appliance – nope, not a direct apples for apples comparison from MS on that one, although I’m sure some clever chap could come up with some kind of ISA-like appliance to do a similar job, but time will tell on that one.
Storage Live Migration – SCVMM 2008 R2 provides a very similar capability, albeit pausing the VM whilst the migration is taking place. A handy feature, but not used as much as regular Live Migration. Half a tick for us on that one I guess.
Dynamic Resource Scheduling – I think you’ll find that SCVMM & SCOM combined provide you with Performance & Resource Optimisation, a.k.a. PRO. Not as easy to set up as DRS, but a great deal more extensible, through the authoring of PRO-enabled Management Packs. Tick in the box there, thanks.
Power Management – I was with a VMware Partner the other day, who, in front of an audience, said “We’ve not actually seen anyone deploy DPM' – having their servers shut-off scares them!”. Windows Server 2008 R2 in general has a much better grasp on Power than previous versions, and consumption is thus reduced, however if you wanted to achieve a like for like powering down of servers, with SCOM, and a bit of scripting, I’m sure it’s something that could be achieved.
Host Profiles – I still can’t get over the fact that Host Profiles is an Enterprise+ feature only. In a nutshell, Host profiles streamlines the configuration of new ESX hosts, and makes it easier for administrators to check for compliance. It won’t actually deploy ESX onto the bare metal for you, you’ll still have to do that manually, yet once deployed, you can quickly make the ESX hosts the same. Compare that with SCCM however, where you can define a gold task sequence, deploy the OS out to blank hardware, with zero-touch from the end user, then once it’s booted, continue to update this host centrally, from the same place, with desired configuration baselines. Combine this with Group Policy, and you’ve got an incredibly centralised, scalable deployment and management mechanism.
Distributed Network Switch – This is a pretty powerful capability, that brings a much greater granularity around networking, and specifically allows 3rd party integration from vendors like Cisco, with their Nexus 1000V. At this time, I’ll be honest, Microsoft doesn’t have an apples-for-apples comparison with this capability. Sure Hyper-V networking supports vLANs, Jumbo Frames, TOE VMq and more, but if you need the Cisco integration, you’ll have to go for Enterprise+, then add on the Nexus 1000v too.
So what would my version of events look like?
Slightly different, yet you see that VMware’s vSphere starts to fall down where management is concerned. I don’t mean management of the black box that is the VM – vCenter is a prime example of a well executed technology that does exactly what it says on the tin, however, customers need more than this. It’s great to virtualise workloads like Exchange, or SQL, but without a monitoring technology, monitoring at the workload level, how does anyone know what’s going on, and how can they show this back to the business? Also, the whole VMware management ethos, is to manage virtual machines, but what about the stuff that isn’t virtual? Do you need a separate set of tools to manage these too? Do I go and invest in a Symantec for backup, and deploy Altiris for for my patch/update deployment, and use OpenManage to monitor my physical servers? All these extras add up to what System Center is providing out of the box. VMware are very strong in the virtualisation space, with mature, and performant technologies, but they know all too well that once virtualised, there is more to an estate, and customers are now looking to optimise their infrastructure, with OS Change Management, centralised deployment methodologies, patch control and more, and this is what System Center has been doing for a long time, and with a strong hypervisor offering to boot, Microsoft is in a strong position to offer maximum value and big ROI to customers. It’s not about being cheaper than VMware – it’s about offering the right level of value, to maximise current and future investments in technology.
Summary
Blimey this was a long post. If you’ve followed it to the end, well done. If you haven’t, you won’t know I’m writing this! I guess what I tried to demonstrate in this post, is you shouldn’t always believe what you read on either VMware’s, or Microsoft’s website. We’re both guilty of the ‘marketing’ stuff, yet when you sit down, with a Partner, and thrash through all this stuff, it starts to become clear, and that's what I hope I’ve provided here today. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m passionate about what I do, and wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to our technologies. I’m the first to admit when I think someone has something better than we do – I think I demonstrated that earlier when talking about Memory Oversubscription. I’m a fan of the technologies on both sides of the virtualisation fence, but do I think virtualisation is where the battle will be won? No. Will it be won on the management front? Yes. That’s the angle Microsoft is coming from. That’s what I’m talking to Partners about every day of the week. If you’re a Microsoft Partner, and you can deploy a System Center project, encompassing all 4 of those technologies, not only are you heavily optimising a customers’ infrastructure, but the number of consultancy days will be significantly more than they would have been for a ‘virtualisation project’, yet at the same time, the overall cost to the customer (licensing + consultancy) in most cases, will be less than just the vSphere licensing. Partner wins with services revenue (big margins), and customer wins with a trusted advisor (Mr Partner) and an optimised, well managed, “physical, virtual, desktop to datacenter” estate.
All that’s left to say is, thanks for reading, feedback welcome, and have a great weekend!
If you’re a Microsoft Partner, the above statement should be very important. This is the way your customers can find you. Plain and Simple.
Microsoft Pinpoint is your chance to put yourself in the shop window. If I’m a customer, and I want to consolidate my infrastructure using, say, Microsoft Virtualisation, I’d head on over to http://pinpoint.microsoft.com, I’d click in the main search window and enter a few bits:
Click search, and TA-DA:
Now, if I were a potential customer, looking for a solution around Microsoft Virtualisation, would I click to go to page 2? Possibly not. Think of your own Search Engine usage – if you don’t tend to find what you’re looking for on page 1, do you try page 2, or adapt your search term? Well, you don’t need to adapt your search term here, as we provide the categories that the Partners’ solutions fit within, so, it seems that the most important thing to do here, from a Partner perspective, is to start to differentiate yourself from others.
How is this done?
Well, it’s a combination of factors. Typical Search Engine Optimisation techniques within your descriptions/services etc can help you become more of the ‘best match’, so, if you’re a Partner, and you provide a particular ‘product or service’, then add it to you PinPoint! If you look at the top of the last screenshot, you’ll see that for my 11 companies found in the results, there are a total of 15 ‘products and services’ on offer, which, could almost be like bespoke packages of work you could offer a customer. Take Specialist Computer Holdings – they have a whopping 9 ‘products and services’ including Active Directory Design, Implementation and Migration, through to Collaboration and Messaging Services, whereas Solsis Limited haven’t uploaded any ‘products and services’, yet they are a Small Business Specialist, which may be important for some customers. The point is – add as many services as you can! Having multiple ‘services’ targeted at specific audiences/searches is very important!
That said, the most important factor in climbing up the results ladder is reviews and ratings. Ask for customers to provide their feedback – not only about your company on the whole, but also specifically about the solutions you’ve delivered. If you’ve got a specific ‘product or service’ that you’ve added to PinPoint, and a customer has taken you up on that service, and is happy with the work you’ve done, as them for a review! It could be the difference between the next lead coming to you, or going to a competitor! There are plenty of guidelines around reviews, here.
So, in a nutshell – Mr Partner – get yourself on PinPoint ASAP! If you’re on there, sell yourself, your services, and get some reviews!!
A couple more case studies have popped up on Microsoft.com, all around Hyper-V and System Center…
Accountancy and Legal Group Saves £20,000 Using Virtualisation for Disaster Recovery
Chartered accountancy and solicitor group Oury Clark wanted a multiserver off-site disaster recovery solution that could meet strict data security standards. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Direct Communications Software Limited (DCSL) responded by deploying Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V virtualisation technology. Oury Clark has now saved £20,000 in hardware costs and created a flexible disaster recovery solution that can retrieve lost data within 10 minutes.
Find out more here.
Eye Hospital Reduces Energy Costs by £10,000 a Year with Virtualised Servers
The IT department at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for deploying and hosting medical and business software for the whole of the organisation. With only five people on the team, it is often under pressure to get applications up and running in short timescales. By deploying the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-V virtualisation technology, new applications can be deployed in a matter of days.
More to add soon!
Licensing Centralised Desktops: Microsoft VDI and WS08 R2 Remote Desktop Services
Presented by Max Herrmann, Alex Balcanquall, Sean Suydam, Michael Cooper, and Balagopalan Nikhil
Monday, September 21st 2009 – 18:00-19:00 GMT
This session will provide you with an opportunity to learn about key licensing aspects for Microsoft’s latest offerings for centralising the desktop: the Microsoft VDI Suites and the Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services Client Access License (RDS-CAL). Interest from customers in a centralised desktop solution from Microsoft has been increasing significantly over the last year, and so have questions about the correct licensing - specifically related to the emerging Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) scenario. Microsoft’s new VDI offerings, the “VDI Standard Suite” and the “VDI Premium Suite”, slated to hit the price list in October, package key VDI infrastructure and management components from Microsoft and streamline the licensing to better line up with the existing VECD license. - In addition, the new RDS-CAL, which is replacing the familiar TS-CAL for traditional session virtualisation infrastructure (fka Terminal Services), offers even greater infrastructure capabilities in Windows Server 208 R2; in this Academy Live session, we will also provide an update to the licensing terms of the new RDS-CAL in the context of the new RDS capabilities.
Register for this webcast!
Microsoft Virtualisation: Best Choice for MS Server Applications
Presented by: Megan Kidd and Vipul Shah
Thursday, September 17th 2009 - 16:00-17:00 GMT
Today more than ever customers are looking for ways to cut costs and streamline their IT infrastructure. These needs can be addressed by choosing the MS Server Virtualisation Platform, which includes Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Server Management Suite Enterprise, to virtualise SQL Server, SharePoint or Exchange. Please join Vipul Shah, Sr. Product Manager, to hear about the benefits customers will realise including cost savings, enhanced business continuity, more agility and a comprehensive management solution and why the Microsoft virtualisation solution is the bet they should be making. We will discuss business benefits and the deployment scenarios where these benefits are realised, supported by customer and partner proof points.
A little off topic, but, I believe, of equal importance to virtualisation-related information. If you’re managing a desktop (or server actually), then managing updates can be complex, especially in larger environments. As a Microsoft house, you could simply let users update their machines themselves, using Windows Update, or alternatively, you could deploy something like WSUS, which would help to centralise updates somewhat. The problem, however, is that these two mechanisms focus on updates of the Windows OS, and potentially, associated Microsoft applications. What about, for instance, the BIOS of the machine? How do you keep that up to date? Ask the user? Bit risky! Upgrade it yourself, one by one? Bit time consuming! Not bother? Hmm, maybe, but manufacturers bring out new BIOS revisions to improve performance, reliability, and in some cases, introduce new capabilities, so why would you not want to take advantage of this? Well, System Center Configuration Manager, when combined with the Intel vPro platform, goes some way to addressing the centralisation of, among other things, BIOS upgrades.
It’s only 8 minutes long, but make sure you watch it in High Quality by clicking here, and then clicking the HQ button, so you can make out all the detail!
If you’re thinking about how best to upgrade machines within your environment from Windows XP to Windows 7, you’d be hard pressed to find a better solution than the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. MDT 2010 allows you to deploy Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and is the recommended process and toolset for automating desktop and server deployment. MDT provides you with the following benefits:
Now, before you go diving in there head-first to play with it, I’d take a look at these 2 short videos. These are the first 2 parts, of what I presume, will be a longer series, but these are certainly enough to get you going with MDT 2010.
Part 1: Building the Deployment Environment: Learn how to build media that will automatically migrate computers from Windows XP to Windows 7 with user data, custom applications and drivers. This demonstration will walk you through the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) Deployment Workbench and how it works.
Part 2: Initiating the Install and Migrating the PC: Explore the user experience for migrating the Windows XP computer to Windows 7 and how brief - or "lite touch" - interaction is required up front to automate the entire process of data migration, OS installation, driver and application customization, and domain join.
Pretty useful if you want to get a heads up on MDT 2010!
I was browsing around t’internet last night, looking for some App-V related information for a Partner (Paul S, this is you!), and stumbled on this non-Microsoft, App-V dedicated site, and having spent a good while on there, thought it was definitely worth a recommendation…
The App-V.in website, which, I presume is run from India, is, for me, one of the most usable, and information-rich App-V websites I’ve found on the web.
With sections on the architecture, benefits, the management & streaming servers, the sequencer, including best practices and guidance, and the different clients, you can see it’s a pretty comprehensive site, but combine with that, a knowledge base, and a competitive comparison table, and you’ve got pretty much all you need to get started and understand App-V to a pretty comprehensive level! One thing I will say is however, is the competitive comparison is based on App-V 4.2, which is a few versions back now, so I’d take that as a pinch of salt, but apart from that, from a pure App-V perspective, this is a great information resource.
Access it here: http://app-v.in//index.php
There’s also links to Case Studies, FAQ’s, blogs and more – check it out!
For those of you who aren’t aware of DirectAccess, it’s a pretty darn cool technology in my opinion. What better way to explain it, than to show you how it makes my working life that little bit easier.
I’m currently writing this post from home, on my home network, with no VPN connected:
As you can see, I have the option of using our ‘IT Connection Manager’ should I need to establish VPN, however, depending on my location, I may not always be able to get out with VPN, so what options do I have then? Well, this is where DirectAccess can help. Let’s try, still on my home network, to access an internal SharePoint site, which in this case, is my MySite.
As you can see, no luck I’m afraid – without establishing VPN, I’m not getting into my MySite, or am I? When I connect to my home network and unlock my machine with my domain credentials, I get a prompt that pops up, when I (or an application, like Outlook) tries to access an internal resource like a SharePoint site for example. In our rollout, we’re using Smart Cards as the mechanism to control access. If I was using my VPN IT Connection Manager, this too requires Smart Card, so this isn’t something we’ve had to roll out for DA specifically. If you don’t have Smart Cards in use in your organisation, there are other ways to control access, don’t worry. So…
Up pops the prompt, and if I don’t actually need internal access right now, I can safely ignore it, but as soon as I do require access, I can click on the little keys icon, put my Smart Card in, enter my Smart Card pin, and ‘jobs a gooden’. In terms of user interaction, that’s it. However, now that I’ve done that, is there anything different about my current network connection status?
No is the answer! I’m not VPN’d in, I’m still on my same home network, however the power of DA means that…
I’m in! No VPN! Easy!
If that sounds of interest to you, or your customers, the IPD Guide for DirectAccess could prove very useful to you indeed. Firstly though, what is an IPD Guide?
“The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario”
Basically, they are there to provide background information, design ideas, key decision areas etc, that are important prior to rolling out the technologies.
“Each guide leads the reader through critical infrastructure design decisions, in the appropriate order, evaluating the available options for each decision against its impact on critical characteristics of the infrastructure. The IPD Series highlights when service and infrastructure goals should be validated with the organization and provides additional questions that should be asked of service stakeholders and decision makers”
This IDP guide specifically addresses the following:
This IPD guide provides actionable guidance for designing a DirectAccess infrastructure. The guide’s easy-to-follow, four-step process gives a straightforward explanation of the infrastructure required for clients to be connected from the Internet to resources on the corporate network, whether or not the organization has begun deploying IPv6. The guide covers four key steps in the design process for DirectAccess:
Interested? Grab the IPD guide (still in beta!) from here.
The Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack is a set of technologies that is constantly evolving and growing in size, yet at the same time, the price never changes, which is great news for Partners and Customers. If you’re not familiar with what MDOP is, there is some great information here. In a nutshell, it’s a set of technologies that enables an organisation to optimise it’s desktop infrastructure, from applications, through to managing software licenses.
On to the news - The most up-to-date release of MDOP is coming towards the end of October, and, according to the MDOP blog MDOP 2009 R2 will:
“…add Windows 7 support for all components, except for MED-V. Server and management components will support Windows 2008 R2. Additionally, we are working to ensure that MED-V will support Windows 7, in the first quarter of calendar year 2010 via MED-V 1.0 SP1.”
Shame about MED-V not getting an update, but not too far to wait for MED-V for Windows 7 I suppose. The blog post also goes on to talk about an App-V casestudy…
“You can read more in the App-V Cost Reduction Study - savings of $156/PC/Yr in direct costs (11.6% of PC TCO) plus $125/PC/YR in user productivity gains. The sources of direct savings generated by App-V are across automated deployment, patching/updates, non-standard applications, image management, PC provisioning and replacement, and installation risk, as well as user productivity gains.”
Read all about it over on the MDOP blog and don’t forget about trying out the App-V 4.6 beta!