Virtualisation – more than just a passing phase

This Tech rocks!

I am very much impressed by it! I believe it is here to stay and get even better!
 
lilDeath said:
This Tech rocks!

I am very much impressed by it! I believe it is here to stay and get even better!
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I agree... I am already using the technology in my company quite extensively. I have virtual servers running in production and development environments....
 
We use virtualization extensively in our dev environment. Works like a charm. No need for multiple dev servers anymore.
 
running a huge virtual farm at my work. via xpm i'm running few virtual dev machines on my box- a lot easier that having multi pc's having around.
 
this raises an interesting question..... Hyper-V or VMWare?
 
for me, hyper-V. xpm is the so called latest virtuaPC on windows 7.
 
Or Xen? Its 100% free, and offers more than HyperV. Plus its compatible with the MS offering....
 
Hyper-v? Really? A 1.0 release from a company that believes that a hypervisor should be part of the operating system? ESXi is free dudes - and it's VMware. Do yourself a favour and compare the one next to the other...
 
VMWARE ESX3x or the new VSphere is the only visualization technology you should be using in a production environment.
 
Cujo said:
VMWARE ESX3x or the new VSphere is the only visualization technology you should be using in a production environment.
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The question is whether you can truly justify the price? Ironically, the biggest barrier to entry to virtualisation is the cost....

We have customers who are keen to virtualise, but cannot afford VMWare, so we POC Xen and it does everything that they need (and more), at no cost. Make no mistake, VMWare is a fantastic product; but it is no longer the only solution available. It has quickly become a buyers market, and people should look at all their options before spending lots of money....
 
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darrencon said:
this raises an interesting question..... Hyper-V or VMWare?
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VMWare (and the new VSPhere) is KING. Especially for Enterprise environments.

IT has been a buyer's market for the last 5 years, if not more. You must look at all the different solutions to cater for your NEEDS as a business and only then buy what you NEED. If you do not do this, then you do not deserve to be an IT decision-maker and running a Business.

Hyper-V is still in its infant stages and does not come close to all the features in VMWare v3.5.

Even ESXi is better than Hyper V. Xen competed very well in this area, but did not make the cut (for us).

I am curious to know what people consider to be 'huge server farms' and dev / production environments. ;)
 
I would consider "huge" to be Global Enterprise (5000+ servers). VMWare builds a strong Enterprise case thanks to its EMC holding, which includes SAN storage products. Also, feature for feature, VMWare is ahead; those features, if required, represent a deal breaker.

However, having worked with the so called "Big Three (Citrix, Vmware and MS)" products from a business case, and technical level - VMWare offers very little if you do not require the high level of functionality that it offers. Case in point, one of our most recent customers decided against the R600 000 asking price for VMWare and went for Xen - they simply could not justify the extra cost, based on the requirement.

The stage that the market is in, means that there is no "best" product - only the product that is best suited to the particular situation....

BTW lilDeath, where to you work??
 
If we're taking about costs here, we should all remember that VMware's ESXi is completely free. So I'm not sure that the old argument that VMware is too expensive holds much water any more. Also look at consolidation ratios...
 
I haven't jumped on Xen because you need a patched kernel. And the latest unstable Xen kernel out there is 2.6.21 according to my distribution. In the roadmap Xen states that it should be part of the 2.6.30 kernel. Has that happened yet?
 
hammell said:
If we're taking about costs here, we should all remember that VMware's ESXi is completely free. So I'm not sure that the old argument that VMware is too expensive holds much water any more. Also look at consolidation ratios...
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ESXi is completely free, but it does not compare to either its VMWare stable partner (VSphere) or to the free Citrix XenServer, i.e. multi server management etc:

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939.

WRT price, VMWare is expensive, and they have per processor licensing which does not help. Consolidation ratios XEN vs. VMWar vs. HyperV e is an even match; you may see marketing material comparing 12:1 vs 8:1 vs 5:1, but you cannot just assume that the figures are correct.

Again, VMWare is a great product, with great features; but if you don't require those features, or would rather spend budget on hardware (storage etc), then Xen is a viable option....
 
I'm using virtualization for one of my clients who has a legacy NT4 box housing a single mission critical system. Upgrading it isn't an option, so they are stuck with the status quo.

By creating a VM of the box, they are now hardware agnostic, have secure backup copies and are Disaster recovery plan compliant.
 
For loss of performance use a virtual server. If you want a real world solution use BSD Jails.

No matter what you lose performance with a virtual machine. The only people I know who go virtual server are people who bought Vmware`s sales pitch...

The only use I can see for virtual servers is for legacy systems.
 
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