Dave Northey's Blog

a lot of FUD??? like the explanation of Microsoft of doing something like vmotion with Virtual Server?? come on, Microsoft is king of FUD!!

I totally agree with you on this Dave, there's a lot of FUD out here.

Features like small footprint, maximized for virtualization, possible to embed into hardware, etc should be ignored in this whole FUD discussion.

Hmm, perhaps I should take my anti-cynisism pills again..

ESX 3i can't be compared to the Windows Server Virtualization at this time. As soon as WSV can be used embedded then it would be the right comparison.

Thinks like VMotion, HA, DRS makes that VMware is way ahead of Microsoft.

I do agree that some exciting this are going to happen with WSV, but it isn't there yet. It will be a nice alternative for (some) companies.

We've been using ESX since 2002, and were one of the only two external beta testers of VMotion. I've heard and read Microsoft folks dismiss VMotion as something complicated to setup (it's much easier than MS Cluster Server), and rarely used.

Vmotion has changed the way we do servers, and with DRS and HA, we now virtualize close to 80% of our new server deployments.

I'm not sure what new features you have been doing "for ages" considering that you haven't even shipped your hypervisor yet.

As for the 128GB vs. 1TB RAM / 32bit vs. 64bit hypervisor - so what? A microscopic number of servers support more than 128GB of physical RAM anyway.

Yes, you are working with Novell (while Baller is threatening Red Hat) to eventually support paravirtualization. Of course ESX supports many more operating systems than WSV will.

Yes, ESX has a smaller HCL than windows does, but the vast majority of BSOD's are caused by crappy device drivers.

ESX is a very mature product. Microsoft's track   record for 1.0 releases is not exactly good.

I regularly defend Microsoft against it's badmouthers, but this article takes the cake and demonstrates that it's getting difficult to defend  Microsoft when articles like this are coming from their representatives.

You are actually calling out VMware on new features they are releasing now and ** saying they're not new because Windows WILL have them sometime next year **.

And you honestly don't see anything wrong with that line of thinking.

That's screwed up.

By far the worst post I have read from the technet blogs.

"512 VMs - we've tested on a 256GB machine."

And?  What kind of load was on those VM's?  We have tested VS 2005R2 and it can run VM's just not under any load once you start to stack them up.  ESX was easily able to get 3 to 1 vs. VS 2005 under load.

"Fail over a running VM in 2 seconds (for free)."

Fail over how?  I am truly interested in this piece of information.

Run on 64-bit systems.

Since ESX does not run under an OS like windows this in my book is a shortcoming of VS.  You can run 64bit vm's under ESX natively on 64bit hardware and have been able to for a long time.

"Can run on (pretty much) any hardware."

With pretty much any results, from ok to really poor.

"Take snapshots of running machines (for backup)."

ESX has done this for some time as well.  And with VCB can take live backups of machines that are shutdown consistant not crash consistant.

"Support SUSE & RedHat Linux."

Ok, any other distro's of linux?  And what versions of SUSE and RedHat.  I am sure you will find that ESX mops up the floor with VS when it comes to linux support.

"And with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (shipping product), do point and click Physical to Virtual conversions."

And with VMware Converter (shipping product) do point and click PtoV conversions for quite some time now.  

"And manage the whole lot."

VirtualCenter is the best manager of virtual machines on the market, I eagerly await the day that Microsoft puts the spurs to VMware by realeasing a better virtualization product.  That day has not arrived yet.

InIn all of these postings no one is talking money...

ESX Starter is ridiculous in its no SAN limitation, and it’s still expensive...

SAN vendors have made iSCSI storage affordable to the SMB

VMWare better make ESX more SMB price friendly, or the SMB will go to Microsoft.

The SMB does not care about VMotion or any other features, they just want to run as many VMs on a single server as possible.

incredible display of Micro$haft arrogance

who wants the overhead of a windows OS even before you start virtualising

I never thought I'd hear any representatives from Microsoft this desperate for attention. Are you in the team of developers for a product that is yet to prove anything and I mean anything at all better than products today on market from VMWare and others?

I do not even feel like commenting, but baseline is: This post is just plain rude and stupid. It lacks any potential bounds to reality at all. If I was employeer (in this case MS) I would close this blog instantly since it doesn't look good in the eyes of future customers.

Let's wait for 12 months and see how good doze product is.

Microsoft is not yet in a position to claim "FUD" on someone else.

Please stop abusing simple straightforward terms. Enough has "open" been bastardized by Microsoft.

I really wanna say that this blog is even worst then what MS device drivers are ! as they are only  helpful to there BSODs, this blog will only help Microsoft to build an even dirty image than what they have currently!

I rather suggest you to read at least a little bit on the technical side & the little bit on the achievements of the VS products you are gonna talk about.

by the way, one question ...

are you still a MS employee? didn't they kick you off after reading this crap ?

Typical ignorant Microsoft Employees.

For some of them Microsoft is God, and they really do care to FUD about it.

I work for a reseller selling virtualisation solutions (here in Ireland, so know Dave)and I have to say that Dave, you are talking crap my friend. Your posts (above and the others)( show an obvious lack of understanding of the Virtualization market with all the usual 'we are just good enough' spin from Microsoft. I CANNOT believe that you are acussing another company of putting out FUD - the words pot, kettle, black come to mind ???

Where is Microsoft's product, I'm not running it cost to much, ESX 3i server runs, with out a huge windows server footprint, yes ms is nice with support with driver, but at the same time not. Microsoft get your act together, get with open source so people who do this for a living and in the real wrold, can make ,"MAKE" your product work for them, if not end up like the rest that used to be your compatition

Did you hear about VMware FT? I just read a bit about it on http://www.virtualizationteam.com/virtualization-vmware/vmware-esx-40-ft-fault-tolerant-sneak-peek.html

Would u think that would replace VMware HA? I had seen a video even of FT on that link. Is it available yet?

Hi,

we are considering to buy a VMware Virtual Center.

We have two servers running VMware Standard edition.

Do you believe it will be worth it? Or do we have to

upgrade our VMware licenses to Enterprise before upgrading

virtual center to make it worth it. I had just read the

following article

<a href="http://www.virtualizationteam.com/virtualization-vmware/vmware-virtual-server-virtualization-vmware/virtualcenter-for-vm-ware-server-real-value.html"> VMware virtual center real value  </a>