| Features | Vmware | Microsoft |
| Primary usage | Production Environment
| sneaking into production, but for most companies still at testing & development environment. |
| After the release of MS Windows server HyperV R2, HyperV started sneaking into the production of enterprise companies. Its not nearly as spread as VMware into the enterprise production environment, but it started to show up.
In the other side VMware have captured the major share of the virtualization solutions used in production environment for a while.
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| Supported CPUs | 64-bit Intel/AMD | 64-bit Intel-VT/AMD-V capable CPU |
| Hyper-V R2 require an Intel-VT/AMD-V capable CPU, where VMware ESX 4.0 does not require it unless you need to run 64-bit VMs on it. That allow you to run VMware ESX 4 over a relatively older servers than possible with Hyper-V. An example of these servers would be IBM X346, which support 64-bit but does not have Intel-VT. X346 is capable of running VMware ESX 4, but not Hyper-V. Its worth noticing in case you are planning to re-use servers of that generation in your virtualization environment. | ||
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| Host Specifications | ||
| Logical Processors/host | 64 | 64 |
| Memory Supported | 1TB | 1TB |
| Max allowed Failover Nodes | 32 | 16 |
| Running guest/host | 320 | 384 |
| Running guest/ cluster node | 160 | 64 |
| I/O Devices Supported | IDE, SCSI, SAS, SATA, FC, 1Gb | IDE, SCSI, SAS, SATA, FC, 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet, iSCSI, CIFS, FCOE, Infiniband |
| Memory over-commitment | Yes | No |
| Transparent Page Sharing | Yes | No |
| Most of the host specifications numbers above are very close, & you might not even need to reach most of these limits.
Though it is important to note the memory over-commitment & Transparent Page Sharing in VMware is claimed to allow you to run VMs with up to twice the amount of the memory in your system. In most environments 1.6 memory over-commitment ratio is quite achievable. Memory over-commitment & Transparent Page Sharing can cut the number of required hosts to run your environment. | ||
| Supported Hardware | Refer to VMware supported Hardware list. | Most hardware that supported by Windows 2008 is supported by Hyper-V. |
| Used Drivers | Specialized Virtualization Drivers | General Windows 2008 Drivers |
| Storage Multi-pathing | Supported Out of the box | Depend on the HBA & storage vendor. |
| Network card teaming | Supported out of the box. | Depend on the Network Card Vendor |
| When it come to supported hardware & used drivers, VMware & Microsoft has followed a totally different path. There is a tradeoff for each approach. While Microsoft Hyper-V R2 support more hardware as it support every piece of Hardware that MS Windows 2008 R2 support, there is a large trade off for that they use a general operating system drivers. The problem with the general operating system drivers its totally dependant on the hardware vendor & at many cases can tear windows unstable. Its well-known that the major some of windows crashes are due to a bad hardware driver. In addition, a generic operating system driver is not always optimized to run a virtualization load.
As MS Hyper-V R2 is totally dependant on the hardware vendor in providing their drivers, the availability of NIC Teaming & multipathing support is highly dependant on your hardware vendor.
VMware has used a different approach, where they have integrated a virtualization optimized drivers into their out of the box installation. This approach guarantee the performance & stability of the drivers, as well ensure NIC Teaming & Multipathing is available out of the box with any VMware installation without depending on what the hardware vendor provide. The trade-off to VMware approach is they get to support a bit less hardware. Though its worth noticing that VMware supported hardware matrix has grown to include most of the well-known hardware vendor to the limit it does not really limit your hardware choices any more. | ||
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| Virtual Machine Specifications | ||
| Max Virtual SMP | 8 | 4 |
| Max Memory/VM | 255 GB | 64 GB |
| Direct I/O | VMDirectPath I/O | Not Available |
| Snapshot/VM | 32 | 50 |
| Thin Provisioning | Yes | Yes |
| Supported storage of guest
| VMs Direct, SAN, NAS, iSCSI
| Direct, SAN, iSCSI |
| Supported Guest OS | Microsoft Supported Server Operating Systems - MS Windows 2008 R2 (Up to 8 vCPU) (Standard/Enterprise/Datacenter/Web/ Small Business) - MS Windows 2008 x86/x64 (up to 8 vCPU) (Standard/Enterprise/Datacenter/Web/ Small Business)
- MS Windows 2003 R2 (x86/x64) (Up to 8 vCPU) (all service packs) - MS Windows 2003 (x86/x64) (Up to 8 vCPU) (all service packs)
- MS Windows 2000 x86 (up to 8 vCPU) (SP3/SP4)
- Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a Server
(Microsoft Supported Client Operating Systems)- MS Windows 7 x86/x64 (up to 8 vCPU) (All editions are supported)
- Windows Vista x86/x64 (up to 8 vCPU) (minimum of SP1)
- Windows XP Professional x86/64 (with or without SP1/SP2/SP3) (up to 8 vCPU)
- Windows 2000 Professional - Windows 3.1/95/98 - Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a Workstation.
Non-Microsoft Supported Operating Systems VMware support a massive list of Linux/Unix & Non Microsoft Operating Systems. the below is just a wide selection of them for the full list you will need to visit: VMware OS Compatibility Guide - Redhat Enterprise Linux 2.1/3/4/5 x32/x64 (up to 8 vCPU) - Redhat Linux 7/8/9 (up to 8 vCPU) - Suse Linux (most versions are supported including 7/8/9/10/11 & Open Suse) - Ubuntu (many version are supported) - Solaris 10/ Netware/ FreeBSD/CentOS/ & other Linux OS's.
| - MS Windows 2008 R2 (Up to 4 vCPU) (Standard/Enterprise/Datacenter) - MS Windows 2008 x86/x64 (up to 4 vCPU)(Standard/Enterprise/Datacenter)
- MS Windows 2003 R2 (x86/x64) (Up to 2 vCPU) (minimum SP2) - MS Windows 2003 (x86/x64) (Up to 2 vCPU) (minimum SP2)
- MS Windows 2000 x86 (up to 1 vCPU) (minimum SP4)
- MS Windows 7 x86/x64 (up to 4 vCPU) (Professional & above)
- Windows Vista x86/x64 (up to 2 vCPU) (minimum of SP1)
- Windows XP Professional x86 SP3 (up to 2vCPU) - Windows XP Professional x86 SP2 (up to 1vCPU) - Windows XP Professional x64 SP2 (up to 2 vCPU)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 x86/x64 SP1 (up to 1 vCPU) - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 x86/x64 SP2 (up to 1 vCPU) - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 x86/x64 (up to 1 vCPU) - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 x86/x64 (up to 1 vCPU) |
| Its obvious that VMware has the lead on the number of supported operating systems on its Virtualization platform. Even when looking at Microsoft own OS, you are limited by the number of supported CPUs & older operating systems are not supported at all. Even Windows 2008 is limited to 4 vCPU, Windows 2003 for 2 vCPU, & Windows 2000 for 1 vCPU. Even with the very limited of non Microsoft operating systems hyper-V R2 support, It impose a killing limitation of only 1 vCPU supported for any Non-Microsoft OS.
The limit on the number of vCPUs & amount of memory allowed to VMs can degrade the performance & put boundaries in front of virtualizing larger workloads on Hyper-V. Vmware has the lead on supported a higher specs VMs, which gives it advantage at handling larger workload.
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| Features | ||
| Management tools | VMware vCenter 4.0 | System Center Server Management Suites |
| If you have wondered why System Center Server Management Suite is used at this comparison & not Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, then we must mention that MS SCVMM alone does not offer much comparing to vCenter. MS SCVMM get most of its value by integrating with:
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 - System Center Configuraiton Manager 2007 R2 - System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
Although after integrating SCVMM with SCOM, SCCM, SCDPM it get a nice set of functionality setting them up & getting them functioning is quite more intense than vCenter. Its worth mentioning the extra amount of resources required to install them hardware wise & Administration wise. It definitely has took us a considerably longer & more hardware to setup System Center Server Management Suites that vCenter. | ||
| Live Migration | Yes | Yes |
| Simultaneous Live Migration | Yes | No |
| One of the major improvement of Hyper-V R2 over Hyper-V V1 is the inclusion of Live Migration, though its limited to one virtual machine migration at a time. The lag of Simultaneous Live migration in Hyper-v R2 can be a major slow down in case you need to evacuate the host as fast as possible, as you will have to wait for each machine to finish the migration to start the next VM migration. Its worth noticing that VMware support Simultaneous migration. While evaluating Hyper-V R2 live migration continuously in the same fashion we have stressed VMware VMotion, we have found out VMware VMotion to prove being more mature & stable. We have faced few kernel panic on Redhat 4 & 5 VMs & Blue Screen on Windows 2003 SP2 that we were running on Hyper-V while migrating them across hosts continuously. Its worth mentioning these failures were not consistent & the migration often worked where it failed about 5% of the time for these particular operating systems. | ||
| Storage Live Migration | Yes | No |
| Storage live migration is still a feature that Hyper-V does not offer & lag behind VMware on it. VMware has offered Storage VMotion since VMware VI3. Our team was actually surprised that Microsoft did not offer it in Hyper-V R2, as most of MS Hyper-V customers would be moving from a single VM per store to Multiple VM per store design with Hyper-V R2 where storage live migration would have been very handy. Microsoft Hyper-V R2 customers who decided to move to multi-VM per store design will have to go through downtime for every VM they want to move to the new datastores. The same will be required for any storage restructuring, where no downtime is required for the same on VMware. | ||
| Virtual Machine Balancing Across hosts | Yes, Dynamic Resource Scheduler | Yes, but require integration with System Center Operations Manager. |
| Although virtual machine balancing across hosts can be made available on Hyper-V, it requires a good amount of configuration. It actually require the integration between SCVMM & SCOM. Its for the same reason we have said that vCenter should be compared to System Center Server Management Suites rather than SCVMM. | ||
| H/A via clustering and failover | Yes | Yes |
| Clustered File System | Yes, VMFS | Yes, CSV |
| CSV is actually one of the major improvement in MS Hyper-V R2, as it allow having multiple VMs on the same datastore & still live migrate or failover them separately just like it has been possible on VMware for a while. The only draw back of CSV its still kinda new file system when compared to VMFS which has been proven solid for a while. Anyway it still a great advantage over Hyper-V V1. | ||
| VM synchronization | Yes (VMware FT), With limits (1 vCPU, few features disabled) | No |
| VMware Fault Tolerance or as known by VMware FT offer a zero downtime failover for VMs in case the server they are running on fail. Although VMware FT is still limited to 1 vCPU at the moment, it get to be very useful for applications that can not afford any downtime & can be run with 1 vCPU. Furthermore, as the CPU cores get more boosted more application can fit in this limit. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V still does not offer any equivalent to VMware FT. | ||
| Online Backup | VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) & VMware Data Recovery (VDR) | Live Backups with VSS/System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 |
| For MS Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to offer similar capabilities of VMware Data Recovery, you will have to integrate SCVMM with SCDPM. This one again prove the requirement of Microsoft System Center Server Management Suites, when comparing Hyper-V with VMware rather than just SCVMM which if implemented a lone would lag behind vCenter big time. | ||
| Distributed Switches | Yes | No |
| VMware Distributed switches are great for larger environments, as they can save the administrators from having to provision the same virtual switches and policies per host basis & move the management of the virtual switches to be per datacenter or cluster basis. MS Hyper-V R2 still does not over an equivalent to VMware Distributed Switches. | ||
| Transparent Page Sharing | Yes | No |
| Utilize available memory more efficiently by storing memory pages identical across multiple virtual machines only once. For example, if several virtual machines are running Windows Server 2003, they will have many identical memory pages. Transparent page sharing consolidates those identical pages pages into a single memory location. | ||
| Guest memory resources shares | Yes | No |
| Prioritize memory allocations to VMs by assignable shares. Ensures critical VMs get memory needed to meet service level agreements. | ||
| Software Application | Yes, over 1400 apps available from the Vmware Virtual Appliance Marketplace | Only 18 Microsoft products and 7 partner products available in “ VHD Test Drive” |
| Host level power management. | Yes | Limited, Hyper-V R2 will support Core Parking but not server power down |
| VMware vSphere 4.1 supports Intel Speed Step/AMD Power Now technologies allowing power savings through dynamic voltage and frequency scaling when hosts are not being utilized at full capacity. VMware vSphere 4 also supports Turbo Mode for saving power in Intel Xeon 5500 series of processors. New— ESX 4.1 takes advantage of processor deep sleep states to further reduce power consumption during idle periods. | ||
| Aggregate resources across many servers into shared resource pools.
| Yes | No, Hyper-V R2 doesn’t have resource pools. Will require SCVMM |
| Manage resources independently of the physical servers that contribute the resources. | ||
| Flexible hierarchical organization. | Yes | No, Hyper-V R2 doesn’t have resource pools or DRS. Will require SCVMM and SCOM for PRO Tips |
| Organize resource pools hierarchically to match available IT resources to the business organization. DRS ensures that resource utilization is maximized while business units retain control and autonomy of their infrastructure. Resource pools can be flexibly added, removed, or reorganized as business needs or organization change. | ||
| Distributed Power Management. | Yes | Limited, Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V R2 supports Core Parking but not server power down |
| Reduce energy consumption in the datacenter by optimizing workload placement for low power consumption with VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM). DPM consolidates workloads when DRS clusters need fewer resources and powers off host servers to conserve energy. When resource requirements increase, DPM brings hosts back online to ensure service levels are met. DPM uses WOL and IPMI and iLO to control servers in production environments. | ||
| Security | ||
| Bare-metal Architecture | Yes | Yes, but Hyper-V requires Windows Server 2008. The stand-alone Hyper-V Server R2 requires a large portion of Windows Server 2008 |
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| Foot print | Small | Large |
| MS Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-v has a full Windows Server 2008 R2 in its Domain 0, which make it affected by most of Windows Server 2008 R2 security holes & attacks. VMware ESX 4 has a very small foot print subset version of RedHat in its service console, which make it more prune to attacks and security holes than Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. | ||
| Patching | Hypervisor, Windows, & some Linux | Normal Windows Patching |
| VMware Update Manager can push Hypervisor, Windows guest, & some Linux guest OS patches. In the other hand, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper management suite can only push the updates to windows hosts/guests. | ||
| VMSafe | Yes | No |
| Applicaiton Firewall (vshield) | Yes | No |
| VMware VMSafe allow third parties to provide many network protection features like Intrusion Detection System & Intrusion Protection systems that work on the level of virtual switches & between virtual machines. In addition, VMware vShield Zones offer the capability to cut your virtual environment in multiple zones using a virtual firewall that control traffic access the different virtual machines zones.
Hyper-V still does not offer any equivalent to VMsafe & vShield Zones, which make it harder to secure your virtual environment & harder to cut it into multiple security zones. | ||
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| Management | ||
| Central Management | ||
| Virtual and Physical | No | Yes |
| RBAC / AD-Integration | ||
| OVF Support | ||
| Boot from USB | Yes | Yes |
