Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Quick Migration

VMware vSphere pricing - Meet the new price; same as the old price, only more

WSV_GUY — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team. This past week, there were two key announcements made, one by Microsoft and one by VMware, that have an impact on how we compare Microsoft and VMware pricing.

The first announcement was actually off this blog, made by Zane Adam, announcing that with the upcoming release of our free, standalone hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, features like clustering, high availability (HA), and live migration would be included. This was a very important announcement, as many customers are currently paying a significant amount of money for those features, and as we'll see below, will potentially continue to pay for them. With Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, you can now implement HA and live migration without having to buy a premium management SKU, which could save you thousands of dollars.

The second announcement was VMware's announcement of vSphere, the next version of VMware's hypervisor. I spend a lot of time working and speaking with customers, both Microsoft and VMware users. The one theme repeated in those conversations is that everyone understands VMware is not a low cost solution and many have been re-evaluating how much they spend to implement virtualization. I think that everyone, including those of us at Microsoft, were wondering if VMware would drop their prices in the new version of vSphere. When the announcement came out, it had a bullet point on reduced costs and new SKUs for customers. When I sat down to actually figure out the pricing, it was pretty clear that the pricing really didn't change for many customers and the prices still don't compare to the offerings from Microsoft.

One of the key things I noticed is that for the SKU that most people bought, VI Enterprise or vSphere Enterprise, the price didn't actually change. It went from $5,750 for a two processors host to $2,875 per processor, which is the same thing. Thus, for many VMware customers, there is no cost savings in vSphere. Another interesting issue about vSphere can be seen on the version comparisons page off VMware's website. Many of the touted new features of vSphere, such as 8-way vSMP, >256GB of memory on the host, the vNetwork Switch, and Host Profiles, are only available if you buy new Enterprise Plus SKU, which is 18% more expensive than Enterprise and a cost increase for existing customers. This means, for those customers who want these new vSphere features, there is a net increase in their cost. Even when we compare just vSphere Enterprise SKU, the cost of vSphere Enterprise is five times that of buying the Microsoft solution with the Server Manage Suite Enterprise.

On the small and medium business side, VMware changed the name of their VI Foundation SKU to vSphere Essentials and added a new vSphere Essentials Plus SKU. Essentials is just like VI Foundation, but without consolidated backup. Essentials Plus is like Foundation, but with HA added. Essentials is priced at $995 for three two processors hosts and Essentials Plus is priced at $2995 for three two processor hosts. In contrast, a customer using Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) Workgroup Edition (WGE) will only have to pay $499 for five hosts. Thus, the Essentials SKU is four times more expensive compared to the Microsoft Solution, which also includes HA, clustering, and live migration. The Essentials Plus SKU is 12 times more expensive than the Microsoft solution, while still missing live migration. In fact, for customers who need live migration, they must purchase the vSphere Advanced SKU, which starts at $4490 for a single, two processor host. When we look at the chart below, we can easily how the costs add up on the VMware side.

Finally, VMware has also argued on evaluating price per VM, based on a white paper and calculator they published recently. We recently published a white paper that reviews why this model and the cost calculator associated with it are not applicable to most customers. One of the key issues to the price per VM model, especially with how VMware has been promoting it, is that it doesn't take into account the applications being run. The number of VMs that can be run on a host depends on how the applications inside the VMs run. Don't believe VMware marketing about low consolidation ratios on Hyper-V. For example, this case study about Kroll Factual Data shows them running 30 VMs on a single Hyper-V host.

The consolidation ratio can vary depending on what you are running and how you run them. Because of this, you can't just plug consolidation ratios into a calculator and try to apply this across your entire deployment. The best way to compare Hypervisors is to compare Hypervisors, running your applications and VMs. When you do that, it will be easy to see why Microsoft is still less expensive then VMware. You can read about other companies that have made the switch to Microsoft here.

Still, in the end, the big question to ask yourself is the following: Is it worth all this expense for VMware, when the Microsoft solution offers a comparable or even better feature set for much less cost? Is it worth the extra line item on the invoice, the extra line in the budget, to use VMware virtualization when it's built into Windows? That is a question I think many customers will be asking themselves in the coming months and that is just another reason that you should start using Microsoft Virtualization solutions.

Series on virtualizing SharePoint

porourke — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:20:00 GMT

The Microsoft-UK services team recently posted an in-depth virtualizing SharePoint series. It is a culmination of their experiences over the last couple years helping customers successfully host SharePoint in virtualized environments.

· Introduction

· Optimizing the performance of a virtualized SharePoint environment

· SharePoint server role recommendations in the virtualized SharePoint environment

· Monitoring and managing a virtualized SharePoint environment

· High availability and disaster recovery, deployment best practices, common mistakes and summary

This is fantastic guidance for those organisations currently running, or thinking of running SharePoint in virtualized environments. Enjoy!

Patrick

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 beta available

porourke — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:44:00 GMT

Exciting news for Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center, and VMWare customers. The beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is now available on the Microsoft Connect site for download. If you don't already have access to VMM on the Connect site you can get to it here by simply filling out a quick survey, which will help us better understand your virtualization needs. The new beta continues to extend the data center management capabilities of the System Center suite of offerings to build on the all up physical and virtual IT asset management features you already know, including the integration of Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager through the PRO functionality.

You can find current, full details on the VMM 2008 R2 beta in a post by Rakesh Malhotra at this location.

In summary, VMM 2008 R2 beta now supports new Windows Server 2008 R2 beta features such as Live Migration. Some additional features include:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Hyper-V host management

Enhanced migration including Live (Live Migration) and SAN migration in and out of clusters

Multiple VMs per LUN using Clustered share volumes

Hot add of VM storage

A reminder also that the Microsoft Management Summit is April 27 - May 1 in Las Vegas. This is an excellent time to learn more about all of the management offerings from Microsoft including the System Center suite and VMM 2008 R2. Hope to see you there.

Please go download the beta of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 today from the Microsoft Connect site and let us know what you think.

Microsoft customers showcased at VMworld Europe 2009

porourke — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:09:00 GMT

This week at VMworld Europe 2009 we're showcasing a number of European customers who have deployed Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center and App-v 4.5. You can watch two videos below.

One is of Bouygues Construction based in France. Bouygues does civil engineering, electrical contracting, and maintenance, employs 51,100 people and operates in more than 80 countries. This video is in French with English subtitles, and includes discussion of their Hyper-V and SCVMM deployment on Dell servers with EMC storage.

The second is Saxo Bank of Denmark. They’re an investment bank, and they used a Web-based trading platform and excellent customer service to drive rapid growth over 10 years, which in turn has led to a rapid expansion in the number of servers required to handle the bank’s data-intensive operations. Saxo Bank has deployed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to consolidate servers in the datacenter. Saxo plans to virtualize nearly all applications over the next few years, with the project expected to produce a 3-year internal rate of return of 150% and a net present value of 5.8 million Danish kroner (~U.S.$1.2 million).

Enjoy. A bientot.

Patrick

Guest post: Virtualization drives $250,000 in real savings

porourke — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:00:00 GMT

I’m David Straede, president of SBWH.com, a Windows managed server provider. Virtualization using Hyper-V and System Center is the most exciting thing SBWH has been a part of since we started beta testing IIS 4.0 in 1997.

SBWH in 1999

Twelve years ago we got 15 servers in a rack. Today, we can put 960 in one rack! It’s easier than we expected, and it is saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let me explain why we moved to Hyper-V. In late 2007 SBWH had been using HP BL20P Blade Servers for some time. We were getting 48 servers per rack, and adding more racks as customers came our way.

SBWH in 2007

Larger contracts can take months for customers to get approved, and a University had notified us they were ready to sign. When we went to order a new rack and power for it, the facility we were in advised us they were at capacity. To keep from losing the business, we suggested virtualization. Since they were “using VMware," we priced out the costs to setup the host systems. The VMware ESX solution came to over $30,000. When we went back to the University, they laughed, and said “We can’t afford that, we just use the free version. The features of ESX did not justify the cost.” Since we knew they were six months away from a go live, and we had just started testing Hyper-V Beta 1, we offered them a deal to be a pilot customer.

Knowing we needed a rock solid solution with our reputation on the line straying from the market leader in virtualization, we started deploying internal servers on Hyper-V. Things like domain controllers, external DNS, POP3 mail servers, stats servers, monitoring and other management servers were all moved to Hyper-V. We were blown away by how easy and how stable the beta was. We continued to load up the HP BL460c dual quad core servers that had 32 GB of RAM with guest operating systems. We found 15 guests per host to be the sweet spot.

To be honest, we were so focused on the need to expand without using more power, we did not look at cost savings until Microsoft asked us to do a total cost of ownership and return on investment study. We spent two days pulling bills, calculating power, cooling, equipment lease costs, and detailing the time we spent setting up and managing servers. The savings are huge.

To make a long and detailed study short, 120 operating system environments running on 120 HP BL460c servers (1 quad core, 2 GB RAM, 146 GB local disk) along with power, cooling, floor space, etc. came to about $190 per server per month. For the Hyper-V solution, we used faster dual quad core servers, 32 GB RAM each, connected to a mid-range HP SAN. Loading each host to only 10 guest systems, the cost per server came down to $65 per system per month. That’s $180,000 in annual savings!

Our saving became even greater when we detailed the management costs. Virtual servers require management. Without configuration, operations monitoring, backups, and tools to manage the virtualization, you turn any system admin’s job in to a headache. Without getting in to the details of service provider license agreements, we saved another $70,000 by using Microsoft’s System Management Suite Enterprise.

One final story I will share for today. I went to a large customer’s place to talk about virtualization in mid-2008. Two different divisions came to my talk, one that had implemented VMware ESX and one that needed to be virtualized. I connected to some of our Hyper-V systems, showed them how it was installed, configured a new guest, and explained costs. A guy from the ESX side said, “well you can’t move a live system from one server to another.” So I asked if they had ever used that feature. “Well once, when we needed to replace some RAM”. I asked him when he did that, and he replied 5 pm. Why at 5pm? “Well it is rare, but the move can crash the OS”. Given the option to do a fast move in Hyper-V, would two or three minutes of down time be an issue after hours? Most folks I ask that say no.

We are testing Windows Server 2008 R2 now with Live Migration. Need I say more?

David Straede

For more on how customers are saving with virtualization, click here and watch this video:

Cost Savings with Microsoft Virtualization

Guest Post: Virtual Eggs in One Virtualization Basket?

porourke — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:43:00 GMT

Hi, my name is Dave Demlow and I am the Chief Technology Officer at Double-Take Software.

Double-Take Software has been a leading provider of data replication and failover technologies for Microsoft Windows Server and applications going all the way back to Windows NT 3.51. So like many of you, we’ve seen many changes in the role that Windows Servers play in the enterprise and in the increased requirements for the availability and protection of Windows-based workloads. Hyper-V will accelerate those changes but at the same time make it much easier and more cost effective than ever to provide those higher levels of availability to an even broader range of workloads.

As Jeff Woolsey highlighted so well in his post on Hyper-V Quick Migration, “Virtualization actually creates a major problem: single point of failure.” And if the problem with that isn’t crystal clear,” If that virtualization server goes down and I don’t have a HA solution in place, I will lose my job.”

The hypervisor is only one of many possible points of failure to be concerned with. If the shared storage in a Hyper-V cluster is unavailable due to a site failure, power failure or corruption, ALL of your workloads that rely on that storage or site will also be down.

Fortunately, Windows Server 2008 provides two enabling technologies, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering, that when used with 3^rd party products such as our GeoCluster for Windows or Double-Take for Windows software can create clusters of Hyper-V servers that offer redundancy through replicated storage. Optionally, these can be geographically dispersed to maintain availability of virtualized workloads even when entire sites or datacenters are inoperative also providing for off-site disaster recovery. These are sometimes referred to as “multi-site” or “stretched” clusters and our customers often simply refer to them by our brand name GeoCluster.

As an example, with our GeoCluster product, multiple Hyper-V nodes in a cluster could store independent replicas of each protected virtual machine that are continuously updated as the virtual machine is changed. An example cluster might have 4 nodes in New York, Chicago, LA and Seattle. On the New York node, 10 virtual machines are running and replicating to the other 3 nodes. In LA, 5 other VMs are running in LA but only replicating to Chicago and so on. In the event of an unplanned outage, virtual machines could automatically failover to any site with a replica in a pre-set priority order…perhaps the VMs in New York failover to Chicago first, then Seattle then to any surviving site. The flexibility with software-based replication technologies is extensive, allowing replication between different types of servers, between different storage technologies and allowing very granular selection of which VMs should be replicated and which should not, even on the same disk or LUN.

While SANs and iSCSI storage are supported in a GeoCluster, cluster nodes can even use direct attached storage of nearly any type. VMs normally stored on high performance Fibre Channel or SAS drives could be replicated to a node with internal SATA drives to optimize costs. Hardware independence and flexibility are two key benefits of many software based replication and failover solutions such as Double-Take and GeoCluster software.

While the emphasis on multi-site clusters is often to maintain availability of VMs across unexpected site outages, it is also possible to use our GeoCluster product to perform planned migration of running virtual machines with minimal downtime, also known as Quick Migration. This process works exactly the same as it would between cluster nodes using a shared disk with the additional step that “under the hood” the saved memory state on the previous node is automatically replicated to the destination node before the VM is “resumed” and continues running exactly where it was previously.

In conclusion, if you are concerned about the availability of the virtual eggs in your virtualization basket, consider implementing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V along with 3^rd party multi-site cluster solutions to provide complete infrastructure and datacenter redundancy to maintain availability of your virtualized workloads across server, storage or even site level disasters.

Dave Demlow