Virtualization brings VMware to the forefront of Microsoft's upgrade

Bkjia.com exclusive quick translation from toutiao in October 27] VMware and Microsoft have been fighting. With the launch of Windows Server 2008 R2 last weekend, Microsoft has brought major updates to its virtualization software Hyper-v, this also makes their competition more tense. Although Microsoft has pushed VMware to the menopause according to bkjia.com's previous report "Virtualization: Microsoft in adolescence", some experts believe that Microsoft is a little thin in terms of enterprise-level virtualization applications.

VMware dominates the server virtualization market, but Microsoft hopes that the new version of Hyper-V R2 will change this situation. The latest update adds several important features to help Microsoft narrow the functional gap with VMware and other competitors. However, analysts pointed out that Hyper-V R2 is still a little inadequate in several key aspects, and it is difficult to cope with the running of enterprise-level applications. VMware also claims that virtualization is no longer an adventure technology that is always ahead of Microsoft.

"Microsoft has covered a lot of basic scopes this time. It is good to use Hyper-V R2 to complete basic integration work, however, advanced applications such as business continuity, resource optimization, and underlying VDI virtual desktop architecture are not enough, "said Gary Chen, Research Manager of IDC enterprise virtualization software.

He said these problems should be solved in the next version of the product. At the same time, Microsoft will certainly use its experience in promoting Data Center Server products, including lower prices and the advantages of close cooperation with other Microsoft software, "The price will certainly be more competitive ".

Hyper-V R2 is provided free of charge in Windows Server 2008 R2, but you want to make full use of more advanced features, users have to pay for the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (System Center Virtual Machine Manager), which is priced at $869 per physical server.

New features includeLive Migration for on-site Migration), The virtual machine can be moved from one physical server to another without interrupting the service. Hyper-V R2 supports more powerful servers. Now it supports up to 64 physical processors and allows virtual machines to be moved between two servers with the same series of processors, for example, AMD Opteron chips.

Finally, in Microsoft and VMware,The user-selected product may depend on what they think about the future of virtualization.

Microsoft always believes that virtual servers will not eventually exceed 50% of the underlying architecture of enterprise servers, and the rest will still be physical servers. In this case, Hyper-V's ability to manage both physical and virtual servers gives it a slight advantage over VMware Tools that only manage the virtual underlying architecture.

In terms of virtualization deployment, VMware is very different from Microsoft. It believes that almost all servers, including storage and network devices, should run in virtual environments.

"Although the current competition for virtualization is concentrated on the functions of the server hypervisor, we have always had a long-term vision and have been asking ourselves, 'Where is this going? '"Said Bob Kelly, vice president of bottom-layer architecture server marketing at Microsoft.

In Microsoft's view, adding additional physical servers for enterprises is a logical natural response worried that key applications will be overwhelmed during peak hours. Virtualization enables enterprises to increase server density while maintaining enough additional servers to handle peak loads, said Kelly.

"That's why I still think that, in some sense, you need virtualization from 40% to 50%, but the remaining 50% still should be physical servers, which is an important concept. You need to recognize this before you can set a policy. This is fundamental, So I think VMware is a little troublesome, "he said.

However, according to analysts, the new version of Hyper-V still lags behind VMware in several aspects and cannot meet all the virtualization requirements of large enterprises.

In a study published in September, Burton Group said Hyper-V R2 lacked two of the 27 essential features it considered to run enterprise-level applications: the first is the ability to assign priority to each virtual machine on the server, which can determine the order of restart after hardware failure; the second is to support multiple virtual CPUs when running Linux and Windows 2000 as the guest operating system.

"These capabilities prevent Hyper-V R2 from meeting the production needs of typical large enterprises," Chris Wolf, an analyst at the Burton Group, wrote in a recent report.

Therefore, Hyper-V R2 primarily targets small and medium-sized enterprises or enterprise-level use, as stated in the report. However, large enterprises that have long-term stable technology, business, and strategic investment in Microsoft products may be willing to accept Hyper-V R2, even if these key features are missing, this is to avoid high cost of switching to another virtualization platform.

"We have always tried our best to do our best in every field," Kelly said. "Sometimes others will be in front of us, so we have to catch up with each other, sometimes we lead others. This is the essence of the game ."

While Microsoft is trying to catch up with VMware, VMware has begun the next stage of its virtualization philosophy, namelyEnterprises will deploy applications in all cloud computing-based Virtual Server pools and move the workload between internal and external data centers.

This is an ambitious strategy, and considering the general concerns of corporate CIOs about the security and reliability of cloud computing, its return cannot be determined. But this does not prevent VMware from seeing it as the future of virtualization. Of course, we cannot ignore this. In addition to Microsoft and VMware, there are still many competitors. If you are interested in bkjia.com, you can refer to Virtualization: Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft.

"If I am a software development company and want to overturn the monopoly of those giants above, what I need to do is to see the market trend and defeat them there. This is what Paul MaritzVMware, President and CEO, "Burton analyst Wolf said in an interview. "He determined that 'The market is moving towards cloud computing, and VMware should join as many cloud service providers as possible before competitors ', and they did, over 1000 service providers are now on the VMware Partner Network, which is a huge number."

VMware believes that it can retain its technical advantages in the foreseeable future, even if Microsoft increases its investment in virtualization.

"This is not something you can do with multiple programmers and spend a lot of time doing," said Andrew Dutton, general manager of VMware Asia Pacific. "This is a very difficult coding task and involves a lot of patent issues. Newcomers who have just entered the market cannot go beyond the good wishes ."

Despite this, Microsoft still has to give it a try, and VMware is not so irritating. "virtualization potential: Can VMware reverse Microsoft administrators?"

"Obviously, no matter how the media hypes, the current virtualization market is still in its early stages, far from over, no matter how many people think," Kelly said.

1. Microsoft vs. VMware: real war in Virtualization
2. Virtualization stage, fierce competition, and fierce competition, VMware's dominant position
3. Experts analyze the differences between Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization architecture and VMware
4. Microsoft launches Hyper-V server virtualization software named VMware

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Microsoft releases major update to Hyper-V R2, closes feature gap with VMware Author: Sumner Lemon and James Niccolai