Virtualization Nation,
It's been a very good busy since the Windows Server 2008 R2 & Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RTM announcements. We're pleased that these releases have been warmly met by our early adopter customers and industry analysts alike. A few quotes include:
"Market dominant VMware has something to fear." -PC Magazine "Unlike VMware's offering, [Hyper-V] Live Migration doesn't cost extra and isn't particularly difficult to configure." -ZDNet "Windows Server 2008 R2 is Microsoft's Best-Ever Server OS." ChannelWeb
"Market dominant VMware has something to fear." -PC Magazine
"Unlike VMware's offering, [Hyper-V] Live Migration doesn't cost extra and isn't particularly difficult to configure." -ZDNet
"Windows Server 2008 R2 is Microsoft's Best-Ever Server OS." ChannelWeb
In short, Windows Server 2008 R2 is getting rave reviews and Hyper-V is just one part of this extraordinary server release. For more info on the all up Windows Server 2008 R2 release, here's a good blog and for more on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V check out this blog.
Thanks To The Folks At Veeam
I'd also like give a shout out to the folks at Veeam. We're pleased by their announcement that their developing solutions for Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. While VMware is dissuading companies from developing for their free ESXi and making many question whether the free version is even supported or not, we are actively encouraging developers to develop for both Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and yes, MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a fully supported offering. Speaking Of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RTM Overview
With our customers input first and foremost, we developed Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 to meet their requirements and you can see the results are dramatic.
Let me be very clear about line 1 "physical processor support" above. That refers to the number of physical processors (sockets) that Hyper-V Server supports, regardless of how many cores each processor up to a total of 64 logical processors. So, no Core Tax here.
One More Thing.
One thing our customers and partners requested was the ability to boot from flash. Customers told us they would like to purchase a server from their hardware partner of choice with Hyper-V included and they wanted the ability to choose whether it was on traditional spinning media or flash media.
You got it.
ANNOUNCING: MICROSOFT HYPER-V SERVER 2008 R2 BOOT FROM FLASH!
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 includes the unique ability (compared to Windows Server Hyper-V) to boot from flash. We're making the documentation available to our OEM partners as part of the OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK). Boot from flash is specifically designed for our OEM partners who want to ship an embedded Hyper-V hypervisor and thus will be supported via our OEM partners.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Features
Live Migration
New Processor Support
Enhanced Scalability (4x Improvement)
Networking Enhancements
Dynamic Virtual Machine Capabilities
Boot From Flash
Usability Enhancements
In short, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 addresses all the top customer asks: Live Migration, High Availability, Major Scalability Improvements and much more all while keeping it FREE. VMware's isn't even close to matching this value.
The Cost Of Live Migration
A few weeks ago, I blogged how Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 would include Live Migration and High Availability at no cost. No strings attached. I did a simple comparison showing how much it costs to get Live Migration capability from Microsoft and VMware. Here's the summary:
Since I wrote that blog, I've read interesting articles where VMware is trying to divert the discussion as far from cost as far as possible and trying to develop new and interesting ways to justify the fact that VMware Live Migration costs a minimum of $2245 per processor. Despite the fact that $13,470, $26,940, $22,450 and $44,900 in licensing costs to use Live Migration are greater than $0, VMware claims to cost less.
(As a reminder, the numbers above are just the cost (tax) of the virtualization layer. This doesn't include hardware, storage or any of software running within the VM.)
What Do The Analysts Think?
Here's a quote from a recent article (May 2009), on ServerWatch from Schorschi Decker:
...VMware just costs way too much. This view of mine was reinforced in a recent meeting with VMware, where the discussion of VMware feature set, and the associated pricing became, well, to be fair, enthusiastic to be sure. It was professional, it was honest, and it was quite clear, that VMware was not hearing us. VMware has for the last 5 or 6 years, continued to add features, failed to enhance existing features in reference to scale and scope, for enterprise clients.
Let's Look At This Another Way
I thought I'd look at this from a completely different viewpoint. Simply stated:
With the money saved by using our freely available
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2,
how much server hardware could you purchase?
Server Hardware Anyone?
I went up to HP.com a few weeks ago and spec'd out a few systems at various price points. Here are a few guidelines I used when I spec'd out these systems:
(BTW: Third party MPIO support from VMware jacks up the price yet again forcing you to the Enterprise Plus Edition at $3495 per processor which raises the price in the table above from $44,900 to $69,900 (a 56% increase), but I digress.)
Server Configurations
Configuration 1: For $13,833 ($4611 each), you could buy three HP ProLiant DL360 G5 servers, each configured with
OR
Configuration 2: For $15,606 ($5202 each), you could buy three HP ProLiant DL365 G5 servers, each configured with
Configuration 3: For $21,291 ($7097 each), you could buy three HP ProLiant DL360 G6 servers, each configured with
Configuration 4: For $45,900 (15,300 each), three HP ProLiant DL 585 G5 servers, each configured with
That's a heck of a lot of incredibly powerful, server systems to choose from. By using Hyper-V instead of VMware you can use the substantial $$$$ saved to reinvest in new server hardware. At this point, you just need to pick out a SAN.
Failover Cluster Configuration Program
One commonly asked question we hear is, "Do I need special storage to work with Live Migration? Is there a special Hyper-V Logo program?" NO. There are a couple of different options. To make things easy, you can choose a SAN that's validated via the Failover Cluster Configuration Program (FCCP) from our partners like Compellent, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, Hitachi, IBM, NetApp (Microsoft Storage Partner of the Year) or NEC for starters and you're ready to go. That said, FCCP is not required for support. Windows offers the largest, broadest ecosystem and our customers like having multiple options based on their business needs. To see if your storage is supported for Hyper-V Live Migration and Failover Clustering all you need to do is run the Microsoft Cluster Validate Tool provided in the OS to insure that the cluster is validated and thus supported.
Customers Win
In short, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 delivers more of everything compared to Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 V1:
and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 also happens to be the ideal foundation for a VDI infrastructure.
More on that in a future blog.
Cheers,
Principal Group Program Manager
Windows Server, Hyper-V
It comes as no surprise to the regular readers of this blog, that a key tenant of Microsoft’s virtualization strategy is that customers should be able to manage their physical and virtual IT resources from the same set of easy to use tools. It seems that customers agree, as demonstrated through the growth of the Microsoft Management and Services Division (30% growth year over year) offerings during some challenging economic times.
Today we’ve announced that Brad Anderson, one of the key drivers behind Microsoft’s management offerings, including the System Center suite and products such as VMM, has been promoted to corporate vice president. We wanted to share the news with those of you that have worked with or met him over the years through events such as the annual Microsoft Management Summit conference. Congratulations Brad!
Hello, I’m Doug Hazelman and I’m the director of the Global Systems Engineers Group at Veeam Software. I’ve been with Veeam for almost two years, and prior to that I was with Aelita Software (which was acquired by Quest Software) where I worked with the same management team now behind Veeam Software. I’d like to thank Microsoft for this opportunity to guest blog on Veeam’s direction around Hyper-V.
Veeam’s tagline is “listening to you, building the tools you need.” We’ve heard your requests and we’d like to announce now that Veeam is committed to fully supporting Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. While Veeam has continued to build some of the best software for data protection and management of VMware infrastructures, we realize that customers are now faced with more virtualization choices. By fully supporting Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere, Veeam can help you manage heterogeneous hypervisor deployments and clouds with the innovative solutions you’ve come to expect from Veeam. The management and R&D teams at Veeam have a long history of working with Microsoft going back to the Aelita days, and we’re all excited to be working with Microsoft again.
The Veeam engineers are currently focusing a lot of time and energy on how we can provide the best support for Hyper-V. Look for more information in the coming weeks as we disclose more about Veeam’s plans for Hyper-V. And congratulations to Microsoft for releasing R2.
Thanks,
-doug
Blog: http://www.VeeamMeUp.com
Twitter: @VMDoug or @Veeam
Today is a really big day at Microsoft and more importantly for our customers. Both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (our FREE standalone Hyper-V Server) have both been Released To Manufacturing (RTM)!! If you haven't seen the announcement on the main Windows Server blog, be sure to check it out. In this blog, I'm going to focus on the Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V release, I will follow-up with a blog on the standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 soon.
These R2 releases continue to highlight one of our core goals for Hyper-V. Simply:
We believe everyone should have access to high performance hypervisor based virtualization. Period.
Virtualization shouldn't only be available to the largest enterprises with the largest budgets and we're delivering on that goal. We're pleased and humbled to announce that in the first 12 months of Hyper-V R1 availability with Windows Server 2008, there have been over 1+ million downloads of Hyper-V R1 Gold (RTM) software, making Hyper-V the fastest growing bare metal hypervisor in x86 history.
To our customers: Our deepest and sincerest thanks. We appreciate your support and are pleased to present Hyper-V R2 based on your input.
Hyper-V R2: Customer Focus
After the initial Hyper-V R1 release, we went back to our valued customers and asked them quite simply, "We have a very long list of potential features, help us prioritize. What are the features you want most?" Here's what our customers told us.
"Keep Reducing Costs"
Server consolidation continues to be the driving force behind virtualization and the fundamental reason is to reduce costs. In this economy, customers need to maximize their investments. Green IT has been important the past few years, but we've seen an even greater focus in the last year. In addition, it doesn't matter how small or how large your business is, everyone pays a power bill, it's a constant cost, so anything we can do to reduce power use has an impact on everyone's bottom line.
With Hyper-V R1, we already help customers reduce their cost for power, here are a few examples:
"With virtualization, we will save about 50 percent of our annual energy budget for cooling and electricity." -Lukoil CEEB "The work that Microsoft has done in these areas-particularly the ability to shift workloads across CPUs-is doing wonders for reducing our energy consumption." Secure Endpoints "89% Energy Savings with Microsoft Virtualization" -Kroll Factual Data
"With virtualization, we will save about 50 percent of our annual energy budget for cooling and electricity." -Lukoil CEEB
"The work that Microsoft has done in these areas-particularly the ability to shift workloads across CPUs-is doing wonders for reducing our energy consumption." Secure Endpoints
"89% Energy Savings with Microsoft Virtualization" -Kroll Factual Data
With Hyper-V R2, we continue to drive down power usage when servers are idle (usually nights and weekends) AND now we drive down server power usage even under load throughout the day through new enhancements like Core Parking, Timer Coalescing and more.
Bottom Line: Windows Server 2008 R2 continues to drive down power usage and lower power costs.
"Protect Our Investments"
Today, the majority of servers ship with up to 16 logical processors. However, our customers watch the industry closely and point out that AMD and Intel are continuing to increase core counts quickly. In addition, Intel has reintroduced Symmetric Multi-Threading (SMT) with their Nehalem processors which doubles the thread count. As our customers plan their capital investments over the next 12-24 months, they want to make sure to invest in a virtualization platform today that will take advantage of the latest hardware capabilities tomorrow. Hyper-V R2 is that platform.
CPU. From a compute standpoint, Hyper-V R2 scales to run on systems with up 64 logical processors (up to 384 running virtual machines) and takes advantage of the latest processor enhancements such as AMD's Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) and Intel's Extended Page Tables (EPT). This provides performance improvements across the board when these processor capabilities are present. It also means that when folks decide to move up to larger servers with more counts Hyper-V R2 is ready out of the box. No core tax here. (BTW: Let me point out that Hyper-V R2 works with RVI and EPT, but does not require it. If you have older hardware without those capabilities, Hyper-V R2 will run just fine on those too.)
Networking. From a networking standpoint, Hyper-V includes significant networking improvements. For 1 Gb/E networks, Hyper-V R2 now includes Jumbo Frame Support. For 10 Gb/E networks, Hyper-V R2 adds support for Chimney support and Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ). These two technologies allows Hyper-V R2 to take advantage of network offload technologies so instead of a core on the CPU processing network packets, these packets can be shunted to the offload engine on the 10 Gb NIC which helps free up processor usage and improves performance. Support for these technologies ensures the most efficient use of your server resources. For our customers who haven't made the investment in 10 Gb/E quite yet, no worries. Hyper-V R2 is ready when you are.
Storage. In Hyper-V R1, we focused most of our performance efforts for storage on fixed virtual hard disks (VHDs). We did this primarily because fixed disks pre-allocate their storage upfront when you create the disk and help prevent a situation where you could run out of storage at a later time. Because we focused our performance efforts on fixed virtual hard disks, Hyper-V R1 performance for VMs with fixed VHDs was stellar and we recommended using fixed virtual hard disks in production environments. In fact, Hyper-V R1 can achieve as high as ~94% throughput of native.
Because we focused on fixed VHDs in R1 and knew that would be our recommendation for production environments, we didn't spend as much time focusing on dynamically expanding virtual hard disks in R1. While customers understand our recommendation for using fixed virtual hard disks, many of them told us that they'd like to use dynamically expanding virtual hard disks because they are more efficient in terms of storage, only growing as needed.
In Hyper-V R2, we spent time analyzing and optimizing the code path for dynamically expanding VHDs and found areas where we could significantly improve performance. In some cases we achieved a 15x improvement for dynamically expanding virtual hard disks. No, that's not a typo. With dynamically expanding VHDs we can achieve up to about ~87% performance of native throughput. While we were at it, we took another look at the fixed VHD code path and improved it further so that fixed VHD performance is now on par with native performance.
In the end, we still recommend fixed disks for production use with Hyper-V R2 because it pre-allocates disk usage upfront, but if you want to use dynamically expanding virtual hard disks and are willing to take a small performance hit, Hyper-V R2 is a must.
"Help Me Find The Right Hyper-V Hardware." Customers told us that they wanted to make sure that they were investing in "the right hardware" to use with Hyper-V. We made that easy with Hyper-V R1, but it's worth pointing out again. There's no special certification for Hyper-V. Just make sure that the hardware you're investing in (servers, storage, etc) have the Windows Server 2008 Logo and now, the new Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo and you're set. You can find certified hardware online at the Windows Server Catalog and the logos look like this:
"Help Us Obtain Broader Support For Our Applications in Virtual Machines"
One customer pain point we hear in the virtualization world is that "ISV X" doesn't support their application in a virtual machine. This impedes adoption and frustrates customers who see the tremendous benefits virtualization provides. We've heard this repeatedly from our valued customers who are trying to convince our ISV partners that virtualization adoption is only rising. As a company, we've been consistently messaging how important virtualization is to our customers and demonstrating that through our significant investments in all areas of virtualization whether it's Hyper-V, App-V, MED-V, Virtualized Desktops, Remote Desktop Services etc.
In response to rapid customer adoption of Hyper-V and the customer requirement that virtualization be treated as the standard way to deploy workloads, not the exception, the Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo program now reflects that customer requirement.
Specifically, for applications to receive the Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo, all applications must be tested and pass the Logo tests when running within virtual machine running on Microsoft Hyper-V.
(Note: If an application cannot be tested in this configuration ISVs must work with a Microsoft approved testing vendor to learn about alternate test paths. For example, an application needs access to a specific hardware device not present in a virtual machine.)
"Continue to Improve Interoperability"
Today, we currently distribute Linux Integration Components (ICs) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP2 x86 & x64 which improves performance when run within a Hyper-V VM. While our customers appreciate SLES support, they have also requested support for Red Hat as a guest OS. So, with the Windows Server 2008 R2 release of the ICs, we're adding support for both SLES 11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 and 5.3 for both x86 and x64.
While SLES and RHEL are the two most requested Linux distros supported within Hyper-V by far, we get requests now and then for other community supported distributions.
We wanted to do more.
Thus, the big Monday announcement. In case you missed it, on Monday, we released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community under GPLv2. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Hyper-V R1/Hyper-V R2.
I've read numerous articles and blogs on the Linux IC GPL announcement (most using phrases like "pigs with wings" or "hell experiencing snow flurries") and while there has been some interesting conjecture out there, let me be clear: Microsoft is committed to interoperability and providing our customers the solutions that meet their needs. Releasing these device drivers for Linux is another example of that commitment.
"Increase Flexibility"
Live Migration. Customers appreciate the flexibility that virtualization provides (deploy virtualized workloads in a fraction of the time versus physical) and wanted us to continue to improve in this area. To that end, the number #1 customer requested feature was Live Migration.
Done. Included. Live Migration Built-In.
We weren't done there. One thing that customers would always follow-up with is, "Do the processors have to be exactly the same? Can you ease that restriction a little?"
Processor Compatibility Mode. With Hyper-V R2's new processor compatibility mode, we're able to easily LIVE MIGRATE between four different generations of Intel hardware. From an Intel Pentium 4 VT circa 2005 to an Intel Core i7 circa 2009.
Just by checking a checkbox:
That's flexibility. You can also move virtual machines between different generations of AMD processors as well. Just so we're clear: Processor Compatibility still means AMD<->AMD and Intel<->Intel. It does not mean you can Live Migrate between different processor vendors AMD<->Intel or vice versa. For more info about processor compatibility mode, check out my earlier blog post here.
Dynamic Storage. Another request to increase flexibility from our customers was to be able to hot add/remove virtual storage. Think about it, you're running a virtualized SQL server or file server and you need additional storage, but don't want to bring down the VM. No problem, with Hyper-V R2 you can hot add/remove storage while the VM is running without downtime.
"Virtualized Desktops"
One area of interest that's been percolating the last few years is the concept of Virtualized Desktops. At a high level, virtualized desktops is the concept of using a virtualization server to serve virtual machines running client operating systems like Windows XP or Vista. There are a few reasons customers are interested in this model such as to centralize management operations or to securely manage IP for remote developers. This model is very much like using Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services), except instead of Remote Desktop sessions, users are provisioned virtual machines.
From a Hyper-V standpoint, we've supported Windows XP and Vista as Hyper-V guests since the R1 release and with Hyper-V R2 we've added support for Windows 7 (x86 & x64 with up to 4 virtual processors per VM). However, Hyper-V support for client operating systems is only one piece of the puzzle. To improve this experience for our customers, the Remote Desktop Services team made significant enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2 such as.
Connection Broker. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes a Connection Broker so that when a user logs in they can be brokered to their appropriate Virtual Machine OR Remote Desktop session on the back end. Yes, that's right. The Windows Server 2008 R2 broker actually brokers both Virtual Machines and Remote Desktops! This provides customers the flexibility to choose the solution based on their business requirements as opposed to being shoehorned into one technology.
RDP Protocol Enhancements. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes major enhancements for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) that greatly improve the user experience such as:
Read that again. That's huge.
One big reason is that in the past, RDP was more focused on lower bandwidth connections. Customers have since told us they're willing to use more network bandwidth to provide a richer, greater fidelity user experience.
How good is the remoting? I recently tested the new RDP enhancements by doing the following. I used my three year old laptop running Windows 7 RTM and the built-in Remote Desktop Connection client. I went to the Experience tab and set Performance for WAN settings.
I then remoted into a virtual machine running Windows 7 (the VM was allocated 1 GB of memory) and then fired up three videos running within the VM simultaneously. Specifically,
Here's a screenshot from my laptop running the Window 7 inbox RDP client and this all just worked using my little old 1 Gb/E switch.
These RDP enhancements are big folks. Really big.
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
With our customers input first and foremost, we developed Hyper-V R2 to meet their requirements.
In short, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V delivers more of everything:
Windows Server 2008 R2: Customers Win
Ultimately, Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers the richest overall platform by offering:
and its numerous roles such as:
In the end, Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers in spades and ultimately, our customers win.
Jeff Woolsey
Correction: I had a comment stating that VMware View only brokered VMs which was not correct and have since removed it. VMware View does, in fact, broker both VMs and Remote Desktop sessions. -JW
A funny thing happened on the way to work this morning ... the Hyper-V Linux integration components (ICs) appeared in Greg Kroah-Hartman's tree (aka, the Linux Driver Project) of the Linux community. This is the first time Microsoft is contributing code to the Linux kernel; see the Q&A announcement here. The Hyper-V Linux device drivers will be licensed under GPLv2. That's 20,000 lines of code that provide the synthetic device drivers and VM bus implementation needed for a Linux guest OS to run "enlightened" on either Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
Greg's tree is for all Linux device drivers being contributed to the community. I'm told that within 24-48 hours it will begin to be picked up by other developers in the community, and that it won't land in the mainline tree (Torvald's tree) until it has been generally accepted in other trees along the way.
So what does this mean? Here are a few thoughts:
You can watch/listen to Sam and Tom discuss today's news on Channel 9 here.
Patrick
With the recent announcement by Oracle to stop Virtual Iron development and sales, the past few weeks have certainly been eventful for Virtual Iron customers. A related announcement came out from VMware about a program to offer Virtual Iron customers discounts to move over. But a closer look at the VMware offer shows some serious limitations. These include:
· Only Virtual Iron 4.0 or newer customers are eligible
· Only those with active support subscriptions with Virtual Iron are eligible
· Customers must buy a VMware license for every socket on their Virtual Iron contract. This effectively locks in the customer to VMware for size of their Virtual Iron contract.
· The discount is 40% off the list price of the product but only 10% on one-year of support and subscription, 0% for more than one year of support subscription.
· The offer isn’t valid on all SKUs. This means for Virtual Iron customers who want to keep their Live Migration and CPU balancing capability, they need to buy vSphere Enterprise Plus, the most expensive SKU.
Even with the discounts, VMware is still very expensive. For vSphere Advanced, the cost after discount is still $1,347 per processor without support, which has a very small discount. For vSphere Enterprise Plus, which is required for DRS and other features, the cost is still $2,097 per processor without support. With two years of support, it’s $3,722.64 per processor.
As noted above, Virtual Iron customers must convert all their sockets to VMware and this can only be done once.
As an alternative, I would recommend Virtual Iron customers try Microsoft solutions. Our Hyper-V solutions are low cost, easy to use, and work well with Xen-based solutions like Virtual Iron. In fact, many Virtual Iron users are already running their VMs in the VHD format that’s used with Hyper-V.
If Virtual Iron customers are running Windows Server 2008 in their VMs, they can leverage Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. For those customers running non-Windows VMs or do not own Windows Server 2008, you can use the new Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 hypervisor. This is our free, standalone hypervisor, which now includes both high availability cluster and live migration at no cost. Both are available for download, a trial for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and a full download for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
Best of all, Virtual Iron customers can just try out the Microsoft solutions, see if it fits their needs, and migrate on their own schedule, all at a much lower cost than the VMware solution.
Edwin Yuen
Hi, my name is Manlio Vecchiet, and I am a director of product management on the Windows Server marketing team. I'm in New Orleans right now attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), and wanted to update you on new licenses we’ll offer for hosted virtual desktops, or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
When deciding whether to implement or even pilot VDI, most customers look for technical integration of the key VDI building blocks:
· the hypervisor,
· management of the virtual machines and the (physical) VDI host,
· a brokering and remoting infrastructure, and
· an application delivery technology for dynamic provisioning of applications to virtual desktops.
But customers also look for a simple and cost-effective way to license this scenario, as they will compare the technical and business benefits of VDI with more traditional desktop deployment options, such as session-based desktops and rich clients. Today we introduced two new licenses for VDI – the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Standard Suite and the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premium Suite. These licenses make it simple for customers to purchase the comprehensive Microsoft VDI technologies while providing excellent value compared with competing VDI offerings. The new VDI suite licenses will be available via Microsoft volume licensing in calendar Q4.
This is a pretty big deal, so let me explain what we mean by comprehensive, simple and excellent value. First, both new offerings include licenses for all the key technology components mentioned above when used in a VDI scenario: Hyper-V Server, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager, Remote Desktop Services (CAL) and MDOP. The Premium VDI Suite even includes additional use rights for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as well as App-V for RDS, to enable mixed environments with not only VM-based remote desktops, but also session-based desktops and applications. With these two new offerings, the only additional license you will need to correctly license a VDI environment from Microsoft is Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop or VECD (you will need VECD even to deploy VDI on a non-Microsoft platform)
By now, you are probably wondering how the licensing of these new VDI Suites will work given their standalone components have very different license schemes. The two new VDI Suites are designed to match the VECD license (which is a device subscription), so the math has become very simple now: As with VECD, the number of VDI Suite licenses equals the total number of client devices that accesses the VDI environment. The subscription-based license will ensure that customers always have access to the latest versions of the software.
But now comes actually the best part. At only $21 per year per device, the VDI Standard Suite is about one-third the cost of a corresponding VMware View edition (the comparison is based on the cost of licenses and software maintenance over a five-year period, which many customers tell me that’s what they base their desktop infrastructure investments on). Similarly, our VDI Premium Suite is about half the price of the premier VMware VDI offering, and it also offers the capability to deploy session-based desktops and applications, in addition to VM-based desktops. And for those customers who are still missing a feature or need an enterprise-ready solution, you can add a 3rd party connection broker for Hyper-V such as Citrix XenDesktop - and most likely still pay less than if you chose to deploy VMware. In fact, Citrix today announced continued alliance in the area of desktop virtualization.
Manlio
UPDATE: to answer morriswj's question. I'm excited, too, about this new single licensing for VDI’s server infrastructure, which will complement VECD for a VDI deployment. Regarding High Availability, it is included in MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (the no-cost, standalone hypervisor) and will therefore be available as part of the VDI Suite offering. No other license other than VDI Suite (Standard or Premium) and VECD will be required for a highly available VDI deployment.
UPDATE 2: I'm responding to the question from cstalhood, and the similar question in Brian Madden's post today. For session virtualization using WS08 R2 Remote Desktop Services (RDS), you don’t need the VECD license. The Premium VDI Suite license includes full rights of the RDS CAL, in addition to the other components for a VDI solution. The Premium VDI Suite license, when available in Q4, will be available as a device subscription, while RDS CAL (the new name for TS CAL) is available as a perpetual user or device license. After all, some customers don’t want to buy on a subscription basis.
It's been very busy in the world of Windows Server. With the launch of Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate, Tech Ed and the announcement of several new Hyper-V R2 capabilities such as 64 logical processor support and processor compatibility, it's been pretty non-stop. In fact, it's been so busy, that we haven't even had a chance to introduce one more really cool new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2, but first, some background.
Windows Server 2008 R1: Core Deployment
In Windows Server 2008, we introduced the ability to deploy Windows Server in a core deployment. Server Core is a minimal server installation option which provides a low-maintenance server environment with limited functionality. Just to be clear, Server Core isn't a SKU. You don't buy "Server Core" it's simply a deployment option presented during Windows Server Setup. For example, here's a screen shot during Windows Server Setup, notice that there are options for Full Installations and Server Core Installations.
The benefits are smaller attack surface, a reduction in patches and reduction of server reboots. If you compare the number of reboots between running a server running Windows Server 2008 core deployment versus Windows Server 2008 a full installation, there's a substantial reduction in the number of reboots which, in turn, helps reduce management costs.
While customers like the idea of core installations, the fact that a server core deployment is a command-line interface (CLI) only (no GUI, no Start Menu, etc) with a very differently deployment mechanism introduces a challenging learning curve for those considering core deployments. For those of you who've never seen a Windows Server 2008 server core deployment it looks like this:
Pretty spartan.
As you can see, there's no Start Menu. It's all command-line all the time. For enterprise customers, this isn't a big deal because very often they deploy Windows Server in an automated fashion. However, for small and mid-sized customers a command-line only interface can make some of the most rudimentary tasks a challenge. For example, here are the commands to rename your computer and then join a domain via a Windows Server 2008 core deployment.
Not the easiest thing to remember. We knew we could do better.
Improving Usability
While Windows Server 2008 R1 was in development, a few of us were quietly working on the Hyper-V Server 2008 standalone SKU which also uses a CLI. We spent time working on improving the server configuration experience with an easy to use CLI called HVCONFIG. Within hours of our first private releases of Hyper-V Server 2008 to testers, we received email asking/begging/pleading/cajoling/offering bribes for a similar tool for Windows Server as well.
Happy to oblige.
Introducing SCONFIG for Windows Server 2008 R2 Core Deployments
We are pleased to announce that in Windows Server 2008 R2, there's an easy to use CLI, SCONFIG. SCONFIG dramatically eases server configuration for Windows Server 2008 R2 core deployments. With SCONFIG, you can easily set your system up, get it on the network so you can easily manage the server remotely.
Simple and fast.
With SCONFIG you can easily have a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core deployment setup in minutes. I should also mention that SCONFIG is also localized in almost 20 languages.
Tasks include:
All you have to do is type sconfig at the command line.
Great! Now What?
Remember, the goal with a server core deployment is to get the server on the network so you can manage it remotely. With SCONFIG this is a snap. Now from another system you can enable roles, run PowerShell scripts, manage it using System Center, manage it using Server Manager from another server running Windows Server 2008 R2, or manage it using the free Remote System Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7.
In short, our goal is to provide customers multiple solutions based on their business needs.