Windows Virtualization Team Blog : VMWare

Update: More than recession: IDC's server virtualization tracker report

porourke — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:24:00 GMT

Update: The folks at IDC asked that I remove this blog post until further notice.

That said, do check out Roger Johnson's post. He discusses Dell PowerEdge R910 and his Hyper-V deployment at Crutchfield. I met Roger at VMworld 2009. He's a VCP, having run an ESX Server-based datacenter for some time before Crutchfield moved away from VMware and onto Hyper-V/SCVMM earlier this year.

Patrick

Virtualization: desktop to datacenter

porourke — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:54:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted a blog ... but that one really caused a stir in the Virt circles in the Bay Area. Hopefully it doesn't mean I can't hit up those people for Sharks tickets.

I've stumbled across some interesting items that I wanted to share with you.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 is now available. The big thing is support for Windows 7. Read the blog here. Here's an excerpt:

If you are an MDOP customer, you can download MDOP 2009 R2 through Microsoft Volume Licensing Site (MVLS). For others who wish to evaluate MDOP products, the MDOP software is available at MSDN and TechNet (in accordance with your MSDN or TechNet agreements, except for AIS).

MDOP has been licensed for over 21 million desktops worldwide! In a recent survey completed for Microsoft by Answers Research, and including 1000 IT professionals across five countries, we learned several interesting facts:

66% of MDOP customers deployed three or more of the MDOP products

52% of them deployed MDOP across more than half of their PCs

94% of MDOP customers said they would recommend MDOP to a colleague

When comparing MDOP and non-MDOP customers, customer satisfaction with Software Assurance increases by 25%

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) V 1.0 SP1 - This updated tool will support Windows 7 and enable enterprise deployment of virtual Windows XP environments to support incompatible applications. A Beta version of MED-V 1.0 SP1 will be available by the end of 2009 and final release is scheduled for the first quarter of calendar year 2010.

On the server side, the latest is from Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Gartner announced their top 10 strategic technologies for 2010. Not surprisingly, virtualization is named or underlying several of the strategic technologies. And speaking of, Gartner also shared data on server virtualization adoption today and forecasted through 2012. Read this article. Here's an excerpt:

According to Gartner, 18% of server workloads this year run on virtualized servers; that share will grow to 28% next year and reach almost half by 2012. But growth is anticipated among the small-to-midsize businesses (SMB), and it's in this segment that Microsoft has a good chance to build a customer base. By 2012, VMware's share is expected to shrink to 65% but the base of VMs will have grown to 58 million, a 10-fold leap. By that time, Gartner believes, Microsoft will hold 27% share, Citrix 6%, Red Hat 2% and others about 1%.

Along those lines, I had a great email exchange a couple weeks ago with Steve at PoundHost in Maidenhead, UK. I was giving a presentation at IP Expo / VM Expo conference in London, and wanted to highlight PoundHost's business results since switching to Hyper-V and System Center away from VMware tools, and since PoundHost has deployed the Dynamic Datacenter Tookit for hosters. PoundHost has a very compelling story of how technology can really help a business transform itself and create new opportunities. The Microsoft case study doesn't really do it justice. Here's some of what Steve shared with me:

Cost. "It meant we could offer Linux and Windows at the same price (when we went live with the beta of R2 we had Linux guests but we don’t now). It means we can offer low cost VMs on high quality (and cost!) host servers which ultimately give the end user a better experience. [It] works out about £1.00 per guest assuming 60 guests per host."
Common management tools. "We were also very impressed with a demo we had seen of System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Ops Manager so we now use both in our infrastructure."
Choice. "I’m a VCP and have a lot of experience with ESX but I’d never use it again now I’ve used Hyper-V under R2"
Grow business. "[We've] expanded our Hyper-V/System Center offerings into our managed services company Server Arcade "
Grow business: profitability boost by 55%
Customer service. "We’re also doing the customer control panel now for Poundhost which is based on the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit."

Check out more about the Dynamic Datacenter toolkits and partner alliance at their blog.

Patrick O'Rourke

Follow us on Twitter and get a chance to win a Zune HD

vtango — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:09:00 GMT

I now have the final list of sessions that I will be attending at VMworld. As I noted last time I had a lot of waitlists which it now appears I have not made the cut for most of the sessions. That means I will be at our booth (#2422) almost all of today (Aug 31, 2009) and at the times when I am not attending a session.

There is a great opportunity to win a 32GB Zune HD. All you have to do is to follow the Microsoft Virtualization experts on Twitter. By the way this is open to folks who are not attending VMworld as well. So follow along with us!! You can follow me here.

I am heading over to the Moscone Center to register and see if I can get into some of the labs being offered today.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Server Virtualization

Update: What you won't see at VMworld 2009

porourke — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:30:00 GMT

This post is for the readers out there that will be attending VMworld, or have colleagues attending VMworld.

There’s been some speculative statements made in the press and blogs in the past 24 hours, so I want to try to set the record straight:

1. Microsoft will be exhibiting at VMworld 2009. Can't wait! We have a 10x10 booth, #2422. If you have a chance, please stop by booth. It's right next to the Blogger lounge. See more below.

2. Unlike prior VMworld conferences, we’re no longer allowed to sponsor the event. We can only be an exhibitor. Why? Let's look at excerpts from VMworld’s rules (my highlights):

VMworld 2009 Sponsor and Exhibitor Rules and Regulations

Booth/Session Demonstrations (pg. 2)

Sponsors and exhibitors must market or demonstrate products on the exhibition floor and in the sessions

which are complementary to VMware products and technologies. Complementary products and services are

defined as products/services that do not overlap/substitute with VMware’s products/capabilities, and help

expand the reach and solution scope of VMware’s capabilities solely as deemed by VMware. All sponsors

and exhibitors must adhere to following guidelines in regards to booth demonstrations (please also review

the “Promotion, Giveaways, Contests” section below):

Eligibility (pg. 4)

To sponsor or exhibit at VMworld a company must be a VMware partner in good standing in our TAP,

Strategic Global Partner or VIP Partner Programs. Companies that are not VMware partners may be allowed

to exhibit at VMworld under exception by VMware.

Both sides (us and VMware) agreed that, apart from the features in System Center Virtual Machine Manager that manage ESX, Microsoft products aren’t complementary to VMware’s products. We discussed and confirmed their intent of these clauses in early August, and had a follow-up Aug. 11 email from VMware, that reads in part:

As I mentioned, the rules require all exhibitors to market and demonstrate products that are complimentary to VMware products and technologies. We are open to reviewing any proposals for complimentary positioning of Microsoft products and demos at the show…

As a result, based on the clause above, phone/email with VMware employees, we don't believe we have the right to demo our products in the booth. This decision runs counter to Microsoft’s geek culture, as you can imagine, but we've also become more pragmatic over the years :-).

So what is Microsoft doing at VMworld?

We’ve learned over the course of 4 years attending VMworld (first was Vegas 2005) that there are many attendees who use, admin, manage, sell, support Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Windows XP/Vista, System Center, etc. They want the opportunity to engage and receive information from Microsoft virtualization experts. So we’ll have Microsoft virtualization experts in the booth. These experts will be there to answer your questions. They’ll also be Tweeting about their experiences and impressions as they talk to customers and attend sessions. I encourage you to follow them on Twitter - see the table below for their usernames.

Expert in	Name	Twitter Username
Disaster Recovery, Backup	Allen Stewart	dynamic_dc
Desktop Virtualization	Ben Armstrong	virtualpcguy
App & Desktop Virtualization	Jeff Johnson	JJ_VDI
Virtualization Management	Stuart Schaefer	Sshaffer_MS
Cloud	Isaac Roybal	DDACloudGuy
Business value	Edwin Yuen	edwinyuen
Workloads, partners, licensing	Kenon Owen	MS_Int_Virt
Server Virtualization	Vijay Tewari	vtango

We’ll also have two customers in the booth at different times. I’ll be there. See you there!

Patrick O’Rourke

VMworld 2009 an oppurtunity to meet our customers

vtango — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Hi, I am Vijay Tewari a program manager with the Virtualization team here at Microsoft. Having spent the last 15 months or so deeply involved in the development of Hyper-V I am really looking forward to meeting customers and partners at VMworld 2009.

Much is being made about the fact that we are not showing Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager at this event due to the show policies. I will stay away from that debate although coming on the heels of our RTM I would have loved to show the product. However, a lot of us will be there at the event and are really looking forward to interacting with customers. At the end of the day the product is only useful if it meets our customers’ demands and there is nothing like having a face to face interaction with our customers to hear firsthand what they like and hate about the product.

Below is my tentative schedule for VMworld. As you can see a lot of wait lists, but I am hoping that I can squeeze in. Would like your feedback if there are sessions you would like to see covered.

We will be tweeting (follow vtango on Twitter) and blogging all through the event, so follow along.

Looking forward to seeing you!!

Vijay

Vijay Tewari, Principal Program Manager, Virtualization

Personal Schedule for Vijay Tewari

Monday


7:30 AM-9:30 AM (Waiting List)	LAB01	VMware vSphere™ 4 - New Features, Best of, Advanced Topics

10:00 AM-11:00 AM (Waiting List)	V13100	The VMware Competitive Advantage - A Comparison of Server Virtualization Offerings

11:30 AM-12:30 PM (Waiting List)	V13229	Introduction to VMware vSphere

1:30 PM-2:30 PM (Waiting List)	V11721	Best Practices for Successful VI Design

2:30 PM-3:30 PM (Waiting List)	V13478	Executing Enterprise Virtualization - Continuing Case Study with USMC

4:00 PM-5:00 PM	V12226	Building a High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution with VMware

Tuesday


9:30 AM-10:30 AM	SS5160	Stop Virtualizing Servers, Start Virtualizing Infrastructure

11:30 AM-12:30 PM	VM3142	Large Scale Virtualization

1:00 PM-2:00 PM	VM3235	Introducing VMware vCenter Product Family: Managing Service Levels Across Dynamic IT Infrastructure

2:30 PM-3:30 PM (Waiting List)	VM1960	Datacenter Consolidation and Migration with VMware Site Recovery Manager

4:30 PM-5:30 PM (Waiting List)	BC2761	ESX Networking for High Availability and Disaster Recovery

5:30 PM-7:00 PM	TA2544	A Comprehensive Look at the Security and Compliance of vSphere 4

Wednesday


9:00 AM-10:00 AM (Waiting List)	BOF105	Technology and Architecture -- Virtual Networking

10:00 AM-11:00 AM	TA3220	VMware vStorage VMFS-3: Architectural Advances since ESX 3.0

11:00 AM-12:00 PM (Waiting List)	BOF104	Cloud Computing

12:00 PM-1:30 PM (Waiting List)	VM1700	vApps and advanced VM templates in vSphere 4

2:00 PM-3:30 PM	TA3880	Head-To-Head Comparison: VMware vSphere and ESX vs. Hyper-V and XenServer

4:30 PM-6:00 PM	BC3301	DR Architecture Design Workshop with SRM

Thursday


9:30 AM-10:30 AM (Waiting List)	BC2961	VMware Fault Tolerance Architecture and Performance

11:00 AM-12:00 PM	BC3387	Advanced Data Protection for Microsoft SQL and Exchange Server in a VMware Environment

12:30 PM-2:30 PM	LAB07	VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4

2:30 PM-3:30 PM (Waiting List)	BC3421	SRM Architecture & Features: The Road Ahead

4:00 PM-5:30 PM	TA2525	VMware vSphere 4 Networking Deep Dive

What you won't see at VMworld 2009 - a demo of SCVMM 2008 R2

porourke — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:32:00 GMT

Ordinarily it'd be great news that we RTM'd System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 ahead of schedule, so close to the RTM of WS08 R2 Hyper-V and one week before VMworld conference. You can't beat the timing of it all. And the ~10,000 beta testers of SCVMM08 R2 are a big part of why we were able to deliver a high-quality release in the time we did. Some of the early adopters included Continental Airlines, Lionbridge Techologies, Sporton, Indiana University Auxilary IT and MaximumASP. Thanks to all!

But unfortunately, next week at VMworld 2009 we can't show SCVMM 2008 R2, or any other products, in our booth. You've probably read about it. In short, it's their show, it's not an industry show, and they set the rules. So we'll make the best of it; always lots of Microsoft customers and partners on the floor. Stop by the booth to meet some of the best/brightest minds at Microsoft.

As for the RTM of SCVMM 2008 R2, Zane summarizes his thoughts here. Kerim blogged about upgrade path to R2 from SCVMM 2008. See here. And on May 11, Vishhwa provided some details on features of SCVMM 2008 R2 here.

As Cheng wrote in his blog (I can't say it any better)

Go download a trial and give it a try, go get it now, and unleash the virtualization power that Microsoft brings to you.

Patrick

Hypervisor Footprint Debate Part 1 UPDATE: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 & VMware ESXi 3.5

WSV_GUY — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:56:00 GMT

Virtualization Nation,

In my last blog post, I started an in depth analysis tackling VMware’s claims head on that because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi are single purpose hypervisors, they are therefore more secure. I read some posts on the blogosphere that had questions about the methodology. Let’s dive in.

Didn’t Compare The Number Of Reboots

You’re right I didn’t. I didn’t think comparing the number of reboots was needed after:

establishing that VMware’s own patches caused customers two days of downtime without the use of VMotion to mitigate that downtime
referring to VMware’s own updates that caused VMs to spontaneously reboot due to bugs in VMware HA
pointing out that every ESXi patch requires a reboot

Even if every Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 patch came out on a different day (that wasn’t the case most of the patches came out in groups) and required a reboot at the time, there’s no way on earth that the cumulative time would be in the ball park of two days per server.

Service Pack 2

You’re right I didn’t include Service Pack 2. Service Pack 2 is an optional download. You can test this out very easily. Go to any server running Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 and run Windows Update.

Here’s what I included:

Both Microsoft and VMware also have optional patches, but I didn't include this type because they are optional, so we could focus on the most acute patches. Finally, let me very clear about the Microsoft patches. These counts include ALL critical and recommended patches, meaning if there was a critical patch for IE or some other Windows component I counted it. Had I ignored these types of patches, that wouldn’t be a fair comparison.

However, for the sake of comparison and transparency, I added Service Pack 2 to the count and here’s what we found:

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008: 27 patches, totaling 845 MB.
VMware ESXi 3.5: 13 patches, totaling over 2.7 GB.

To put it another way,

VMware ESXi 3.5 still had a 4.3x greater patch footprint

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 RTM’d Later Than Windows Server 2008

That’s a great point and my mistake. I apologize for that error and have corrected it. (BTW: It doesn’t take me a month to apologize and make corrections, but I digress..)

Let me tell you how this happened.

In doing the patch comparison, I started with VMware’s favorite example, VMware ESXi 3.5 and Windows Server 2008 which RTM’d in Q4 2007. I wanted to take a reasonable, historical sample size of both platforms. Going back 18 months ensures the sample set covers the majority of Windows Server 2008 time in market and tackles VMware’s fundamental claim that because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi are single purpose hypervisors, they are therefore more secure. If anything this should work in VMware’s favor.

As I pored through data I realized I wanted to do the full matrix and include:

VMware ESXi
VMware ESX
Windows Server 2008 (Full)
Windows Server 2008 (Core)
and finally Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008

This way, customers get the most comprehensive data and can make an informed decision. As you can see, MS Hyper-V Server 2008 was at the end of the analysis and this mistake crept because it slipped my mind that MS Hyper-V Server 2008 shipped after Windows Server 2008. (For example, MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are sim shipping this time around…)

The Notion Of Truth

This is an ideal time to make an important and fundamental point about competitive comparisons. The reason we’re able to perform this analysis and debate this topic openly is because the facts are freely available in the public domain without restriction. I’m happy to discuss the methodology used and make corrections as needed, but the point is we can have these discussions.

This point may sound obvious, reasonable and rational, but it’s not what VMware believes when it comes to competitive benchmarking. VMware has decided that they want to tightly control the concept of truth and only want the public to hear the VMware version of the truth. This is an unfortunate situation for customers who value open debate and basic fairness.

That’s another blog for another time.

Cheers, -Jeff

Hypervisor Footprint Debate Part 1: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 & VMware ESXi 3.5

WSV_GUY — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Virtualization Nation,

After my recent blog discussing the release of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback. At the same time, there's still some skepticism about free Live Migration and almost daily we keep hearing, "This is too good to be true, is Live Migration really free? Is High Availability also free? What's the catch?" Yes, both Live Migration and HA are free. Check out this earlier blog for details.

At the same time, we've also received questions about Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and VMware ESX/ESXi in terms of disk footprint. The disk footprint argument is a favorite bit of FUD by VMware which appears to making the rounds again in the blogosphere. In the past couple of weeks, I've seen a few articles reprinting this pabulum almost verbatim. So today, I thought we'd analyze the whole disk footprint argument and, as usual, let's analyze the facts.

The Thin Hypervisor Debate In A Nutshell

Rather than attempt to restate VMware's argument, let's just use their exact verbiage. From VMware's website:

It's interesting to point out that VMware uses ESX & ESXi 3.5 in the column title, but then only uses ESXi for comparison in the right hand column and then rushes to compares ESXi to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

Gosh, I wonder why ESX 3.5 isn't included? We'll cover that too.

Pay special attention to the last paragraph:

"VMware ESXi is a fully functional hypervisor in a 32 MB disk footprint, which reduces the risk of down time and increases reliability."

There are three metrics to VMware's argument:

Disk footprint. Disk footprint. Disk footprint. They're quite fixated on that.
Reduce the risk of downtime due to fewer patches (i.e. fewer patches is good)
Increase reliability (and, in turn, availability)

VMware's overarching point is because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi is a single purpose hypervisor, they are therefore more secure. If that's the case, then it stands to reason that ESX/ESXi:

should have fewer patches (they have less code to patch)
patches should be smaller in disk footprint (they have a smaller codebase and you want to keep code churn to a minimum; otherwise one could ship a 1k stub file and claim to be smaller)
should offer higher availability, reliability and uptime

We're going to put that to the test.

Before We Get Started

Before we delve into the analysis, I'd like to point out that VMware touts ESXi as a 32 MB hypervisor, yet the download is over 200 MB. So, are we too assume that the other 170+ MB doesn't count? I point this out because both Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 do have larger disk footprints, but also provide incredible value and capabilities that our customers desire such as driver compatibility with a vast catalog of hardware, widely used management interfaces, scripting capability (PowerShell anyone?), MPIO, High Availability, etc.

If you really want to focus on the disk footprint that matters, the amount of software that could be directly exposed to VM attack, the Hyper-V hypervisor and virtualization stack combined is about 20 MB, ~19.4 MB for the virtualization stack and ~600k for the hypervisor.

In short, VMware has focused on our entire footprint which is made up mostly of stuff that isn't exposed to VM traffic at all or only exposed indirectly, while ignoring the part that matters most and for which VMware doesn't have a strong track record.

Time For Some Analysis

With VMware's own metrics in mind, I decided we should perform an apples to apples comparison. Specifically, over a 12 month period from June 30th 2008 to June 30th 2009, comparing: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 (R1) and VMware ESXi 3.5 in terms of numbers of patches, size of patches and availability. I specifically chose these versions because I wanted to take a reasonable, historical sample size (12 months) of both platforms. Both Hyper-V R2 and VSphere have RTM'd within the last 90 days and that wouldn't be statistically relevant.

What did we compare? Wanting to keep the comparisons as close as possible, here's what we analyzed:

VMware: Security and Critical Patches
Microsoft: Critical and Important Patches

Both Microsoft and VMware also have optional patches, but I didn't include this type because they are optional, so we could focus on the most acute patches.. Finally, let me very clear about the Microsoft patches. These counts include ALL critical and recommended patches, meaning if there was a critical patch for IE or some other Windows component I counted it. Had I ignored these types of patches, that wouldn’t be a fair comparison.

Comparison #1: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 & VMware ESXi 3.5

Disk Footprint & Patch Count. Here's what we found:

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008: 26 patches, totaling 82 MB.
VMware ESXi 3.5: 13 patches, totaling over 2.7 GB.

Yes, I said over 2.7 GB. To put it another way,

VMware ESXi 3.5 had a 33x greater patch footprint

So much for the disk footprint argument. How can the ESXi patch footprint be so huge?

Because VMware releases a whole new ESXi image every time they release a patch. Furthermore, because VMware releases a whole new ESXi image every time they release a patch it also means that every ESXi patch requires a reboot. At this point, a VMware salesman, may concede the point that every ESXi server has to be rebooted for every patch, but they will then state that they have VMotion (Live Migration), so it doesn't affect their uptime.

Except when their own patches cause days of downtime and render VMotion impotent.

Reliability/Availability. With VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2, it included a serious flaw which resulted in two days of downtime for their customers including the loss of VMotion:

"Starting this morning, we could not power on nor VMotion any of our virtual machines," said someone identified as "mattjk" on a VMware support forum. "The VI Client threw the error 'A general system error occurred: Internal Error.'"

It was so bad, VMware's CEO had to apologize on numerous occasions. (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE). VMware then rushed out the VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 3 which introduced instability to VMware High Availability and could cause virtual machines to spontaneously, unexpectedly reboot. (HERE & HERE)

Virtual machines that unexpectedly reboot due to bugs in VMware high availability. Think about that for a minute.

The News Gets Worse

Not only did VMware ESXi have a 31x greater patch footprint, but they also had the most serious virtualization security flaws. Specifically,

Guest code able to break out of VM and into the ESX Hypervisor

For those you who may not know, code running in a guest operating system that is able to break out of a VM and into a hypervisor is THE WORST type of security flaw you can have for a virtualization platform. Period. VMware has had exploits on both their "thin hypervisor (ESXi)" and on their "thick hypervisor (ESX)" as recently as a few months ago.

For example, April 2009 CVE-2009-1244: A critical vulnerability in the virtual machine display function allows a guest operating system users to execute arbitrary code on the host OS.

Impact: Provides administrator access, Allows complete confidentiality, integrity, and availability violation; Allows unauthorized disclosure of information; Allows disruption of service.

Something to consider when VMware wants to host your data in "their cloud."

Now consider the fact that there were two significant quality and reliability issues with two major updates in a row (ESX/ESXi Update 2 & Update 3). While the initial Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 release didn't offer Live Migration (MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 now includes Live Migration/HA for free), it didn't include two days of potential downtime and virtual machines unexpectedly rebooting either. For those that track availability in terms of nines (five nines is 5.26 minutes of downtime a year) VMware Update ESXi 3.5 Update 2 dropped customers to "two nines" of availability.

Using VMware's own metrics, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is clearly the winner over ESXi 3.5.

One more interesting observation

After VMware released Update 2, which affected both ESXi & ESX, they rushed to get a fix out the door and did so in a few days. One interesting thing I noticed was that in the span of a few days, the patch grew 17 MB.

17 MB in a few days????

Now, I'm not sure what's in that 17 MB (potentially more than 50% of their hypervisor footprint could have been churned using VMware's 32 MB hypervisor claim, but I digress.), but if I had just released a patch that resulted in multiple days of downtime for my customers let me tell you what I would have done:

Created a highly scoped, well tested, surgical fix with minimal code churn.

To see a 17 MB change in just a few days would be cause for concern and an immediate code review.

Maybe that's just me.

In my next blog, we'll compare Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX 3.5.

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey

Principal Group Program Manager

Windows Server, Hyper-V

R2 Veeam Too

porourke — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:36:00 GMT

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

Windows Server 2008 R2 & Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RTM!!!!

WSV_GUY — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:40:00 GMT

Virtualization Nation,

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 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.

You got it.

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?"

You got it.

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:

Multi-monitor support
Bi-directional audio support (VoIP anyone?)
Aero Glass Support
Enhanced Bitmap Acceleration

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,

a TV show streaming over the Internet using the Hulu desktop application (the show was “The Greatest Generation” by Tom Brokaw. Highly recommended.)
a large resolution QuickTime movie preview also streaming
an online Silverlight demo

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.

Live Migration

#1 Customer Requested Feature
Processor Compatibility Mode

New Processor Support

Improved Performance
Lower Power Costs

Enhanced Scalability (4x Improvement)

Support for 64 Logical Processors
Support for up to 384 Running VMs or up to 512 virtual processors
Greater VM Density
Lower TCO

Networking Enhancements

Improved Network Performance
10 Gb/E Ready

Dynamic Virtual Machine Capabilities

Live Migration
Hot Add/Remove Virtual Storage

Usability Enhancements

SCONFIG for Server Core

In short, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V delivers more of everything:

Capabilities
Efficiency
Performance
Scalability
Flexibility
Ease of use

Windows Server 2008 R2: Customers Win

Ultimately, Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers the richest overall platform by offering:

Hyper-V
Remote Desktop Services
Rich RDP enhancements
Powerful Hardware and Scaling Capabilities
Reduced Power Consumption
Connection Broker for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Ubiquitous Remote Access
Improved Branch Office Performance and Management
Simplified Management for SMBs
Remote Application and Desktop Access

and its numerous roles such as:

Active Directory
Application Server
DHCP
DNS
Fax
File
Network Policy & Access Services
Print
and many more

In the end, Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers in spades and ultimately, our customers win.

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey

Principal Group Program Manager

Windows Server, Hyper-V

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

Too many Virtual Iron customers in the fire?

porourke — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:38:00 GMT

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

Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites

porourke — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:48:00 GMT

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 3^rd 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.

If you would like to see a demo of Microsoft VDI solution running on Windows Server 2008 R2, please come to the Microsoft booth at WPC if you’re attending the conference. For all others, please post your comments in the section below.

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.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 - Quick Storage Migration

WSV_GUY — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team. In today's blog, I'd like to discuss another type of migration being added to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Quick Storage Migration.

Quick Storage Migration (QSM) In Brief

As you may have seen, we recently released the Release Candidate for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. One of the most anticipated features of SCVMM 2008 R2 is Quick Storage Migration (QSM) which enables the migration of the storage of VM from one location to another. For example, suppose you have virtual machines on a leased SAN (SAN 1). The lease runs out and you decide to upgrade to a new SAN (SAN 2) with more capacity, better performance and additional capabilities. Quick Storage Migration allows you to move the virtual machine which resides on SAN 1 to SAN 2. I have had a number of request for more details on how this works so we've written this brief guide to QSM. (In addition, we wanted to make this technology broadly available, not just the biggest enterprises. More on that below.)

QSM relies on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). QSM can move the virtual disks of a running virtual machine independent of storage protocols (iSCSI, FC) or storage type (local, DAS, SAN), with minimal downtime.

QSM Is One of Many Migration Technologies Supported in Virtual Machine Manager's Portfolio

VM Migration Type	Platforms available on	Technology used for transfer	Expected downtime for VM
Live Migration	Hyper-V (2008 R2) ESX 3.0, 3.5	Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Hyper-V vMotion for ESX	None No service interruption while virtual machine is moved
Quick Migration	Hyper-V	Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Hyper-V	Under 1 minute in most cases VM is put into save-state while it is moved from one cluster node to another using the cluster failover mechanism
SAN Migration	Virtual Server Hyper-V	Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Virtual Disk Service (VDS) Hardware Providers N-Port Identification Virtualization (NPIV) on Emulex and QLogic Fibre Channel HBAs iSCSI on EMC, HP, Hitachi, NetApp, EquiLogic arrays	Under 1 minute in most cases VM is put into save-state while it is moved from one virtual machine host to another using unmasking and masking operations at the SAN level
Network based migration (aka LAN migration)	Virtual Server Hyper-V ESX	BITS for Virtual Server and Hyper-V sFTP for ESX	Minutes to hours (W2K8, W2K3 hosts) VM needs to be stopped or in saved state for the entire duration of transfer Under 1 minute in most cases (W2K8 R2) VM can remain running for the almost entire duration of the transfer of its virtual disks from once storage location to another VM is put into save-state for a brief interval to migrate its memory state and associated differencing disks.

Storage Migration Type

Platforms available on

Technology used for transfer

Expected downtime

Storage vMotion

ESX 3.5

Storage vMotion

None

No perceived service interruption while the virtual disks associated with a virtual machine are moved from storage location to another

Quick Storage Migration

Hyper-V
(2008 R2)

BITS and Hyper-V

Under 1 minute in most cases (W2K8 R2)

VM can remain running for the almost the entire duration of the transfer of its virtual disks from once storage location to another
VM is put into save-state for a brief interval to migrate its memory state and associated differencing disks.

Note on Processor Compatibility Mode:

To increase the mobility of a running virtual machine across hosts with different processor versions (with in the same processor family), Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V offers Processor Compatibility Mode. This feature masks processor feature differences between the source and destination hosts. With this enabled, you can migrate a virtual machine from a host with Pentium 4 VT processors to a host with Nehalem processors. Processor Compatibility Mode does not require advanced processor features like Intel VT Flex Migration or AMD-V Extended Migration. For more on Processor Compatibility Mode, check out Jeff's Blog a few weeks ago where he goes into detail here.

How QSM Works

QSM uses native Windows platform technologies: Hyper-V and BITS. There are 2 scenarios of interest:

Scenario 1: VM Storage Migration: VM Compute Stays on the Same Server and the VM Storage Migrates from One Storage to Another

1. In the SCVMM console, a new action labeled Storage Migration is now available.

2. When the user right-clicks on a running virtual machine and selects the Migrate Storage action, a wizard is presented. The user provides the path to the new location to be used by the VM. If all the VMs files (configuration and VHD files) are to be placed in a single location the user has only to provide the "Virtual Machine Path". If one or more VHD files for the VM need to be placed at a separate location, the user can explicitly change the location of each VHD by selecting it from the list under "Disks" and clicking the "Browse" button next to it to specify the path for the VHD.

3. SCVMM takes a Hyper-V snapshot of the running virtual machine. This will create a differencing disk for each VHD connected to the VM. All disk write operations from that point forward go into the differencing disk. The original base VHD is no longer changing since it is in a read-only state.

4. With the base VHD in a read-only state, SCVMM starts to transfer the file from the source location to the target location using BITS. This represents the bulk of the data that needs to be transferred and the VM remains running during this transfer. In addition, QSM does not depend on storage types, and the user is free to select any storage destination that is accessible to the Hyper-V host.

5. Once the base VHD is transferred, the virtual machine is put into "Saved State".

6. In "Saved State", SCVMM can transfer the differencing disk created by the snapshot and memory associated with the "Saved State" to the destination location for the VM.

7. Once all the files are transferred, SCVMM exports and then re-imports the virtual machine on the same Hyper-V host with any necessary modifications to the configuration.

8. The snapshot created on step 3 is merged back into the base VHDs

9. Virtual machine is re-started from saved state

10. Job completes

11. The diagram below illustrates the steps performed by QSM on a Hyper-V R2 host.

Scenario 2: VM Migration (Relocation): VM Compute Moves to a News Server AND VM Storage Moves from One Storage to Another

1. In the SCVMM console, the user right-clicks on a running virtual machine and selects the Migrate action, a wizard is presented to help with the migration. The Migrate action initiates the migration of a VM from one host to another host. As part of the VM migration, all of the VMs files are moved to storage that is attached to the destination host. Storage Migration technology enhances the experience by allowing the move for a running virtual machine and limiting the down time of the VM to just the window required to move the save state files (as explained below).

2. The user first selects the destination host based on the desired star rating presented by Intelligent Placement. The user then provides a destination folder for the configuration file and the associated virtual disks. By default, the wizard will put all disks in the same location as the configuration file. After completing the wizard, the migration job is submitted.

3. SCVMM creates a placeholder virtual machine on the destination host. The virtual machine is not powered on so there is no need to reserve CPU or memory resources at this time. Intelligent placement has already accounted for the impact on the destination host of the VM being migrated.

4. SCVMM takes a Hyper-V snapshot of the running virtual machine. This will create a differencing disk for each VHD connected to the VM. All disk write operations from that point forward go into the differencing disk. The original base VHD is no longer changing since it is in a read-only state.

5. With the base VHD in a read-only state, SCVMM starts to transfer the file from the storage location on the source host to a storage location on the target host using BITS. Since QSM does not depend on storage protocols or storage types, the user is free to select any storage destination as long as the Hyper-V can access it.

6. Once the base VHDs are transferred, the virtual machine is put into Saved State.
In Saved State, SCVMM can transfer the differencing disks created by the snapshot and associated memory state.

7. Once all the files are transferred, SCVMM exports the virtual machine and transfers the exported virtual machine configuration to the target host and then imports the virtual machine to Hyper-V host with any necessary modifications to the configuration.

8. The snapshots are merged back into the base VHDs as part of the import process.

9. Virtual machine is started from saved state

10. Job completes

How QSM Compares To VMware Storage VMotion

	VMM 2008 R2 + Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V	VMware (vCenter 2.5 + ESX 3.5)
Migration of virtual machines across two hosts with independent storage	Supported	Not Supported
Migration of virtual machines with snapshots	Supported	Not Supported
Migration of Virtual machine with Virtual Disks	Supported	Supported (persistent mode)
Requires sufficient resources to support two instances of the virtual machines running concurrently	Not Required	Required
Additional Licensed Required	None	VMotion License
Number of concurrent storage Migrations allowed	10	4
Storage Migrations supported in the Administrator Console	Yes (QSM and Storage vMotion)	No
Storage Migrations supported in the CLI	Yes (QSM and Storage vMotion)	Yes
Protocol agnostic	Yes	Yes
Support for migrations of VMs and storage between hosts with different processors versions (same manufacturer)	Yes (use Hyper-V R2 Processor Compatibility Mode to increase the number of compatible hosts )	Not Applicable

Microsoft: Driving Down Costs

One thing our customers have been telling us loud and clear is that they are very, very happy we are offering Live Migration for FREE with Hyper-V R2. With Quick Storage Migration, we knew we had another opportunity to drive down the costs for storage migration capability that has been largely priced out of the reach of most customers. Specifically, VMware Storage VMotion is only available in their Enterprise/Enterprise Plus SKUs ($2875 & $3495 per processor respectively). Contrast this with the fact that Quick Storage Migration is included with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 both the Enterprise Edition and the Workgroup Edition which will be available for starting at about $500.

For a small five node cluster consisting of two and four processors servers, that would cost at a minimum:

	Virtual Machine R2 QSM	VMware
Three Nodes; Two Processor Servers	~$500	$11,500
Five Nodes; Two Processor Servers	~$500	$28,750
Five Nodes Four Processor Servers	~$500	$57,500

That's customer focus.

Cheers,

Edwin Yuen

Sr. Technical Product Manager

Server & Tools Business Exec to discuss state of IT, answer your questions on June 23

porourke — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:27:00 GMT

Do you have questions about Microsoft’s efforts to deliver new server infra (Windows Server, virt, System Center, Forefront security) to customers and partners?

What is Microsoft doing about enterprise security?

Are you interested in hearing how other IT pros are reacting to economic conditions and where they’re investing?

On Tuesday, June 23rd from 10:30am – 11:00am (PDT), you're invited to join a teleconference with Bob Kelly, corporate VP of Infrastructure Server Marketing. Bob will talk about the state of IT within the context of results from a new Harris Interactive study. The study, of 1,200 IT professionals from the U.S., United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, was commissioned by Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business.

There will be time for your questions following the brief presentation. Submit questions over the phone or you can submit them at any time leading up to, or during, the teleconference by tweeting with the Twitter hashtag, #qs4ms. If you are interested in attending, please REGISTER NOW. Once you open the invite box, you can save and close to your calendar.

Patrick

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.