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VMware vMotion: Over 5 Times Faster Than Hyper-V Live Migration

October 19, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 5 comments

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In a new head-to-head comparison published by independent technology assessment firm Principled Technologies, VMware vSphere once again trounces challenger Hyper-V by delivering superior speed, performance, and reliability for zero-downtime virtual machine migrations. Live VM migration is crucial for proactive maintenance on hypervisor hosts and for distributing workloads as demand shifts — optimizing for either performance or power savings. Once an exclusive feature of the industry-leading vSphere platform, live migration has become yet another casualty of the checkbox war — where a simple “yes” or “no” cannot sufficiently convey vital technological differences.

Microsoft may position Hyper-V Live Migration as good enough, but a side-by-side comparison clearly reveals that an imitation is never as good as the original. VMware vMotion continues to improve and vSphere 5 enjoys many new enhancements, including support for multiple 10GbE interfaces to increase bandwidth for migration traffic — complementing the well-proven ability to migrate up to 8 VMs at a time.

Hyper-V Live Migration, introduced two years ago after much delay, will evidently remain stagnant for quite some time to come. In fact, the shipping version of Hyper-V can still only accommodate a single migration at a time — whether a source or a destination. This leads to the somewhat disingenuous claim that Hyper-V supports up to 8 concurrent Live Migrations per [16-node] cluster!

Principled Technologies conducted migration testing in two different scenarios, providing objectivity to correct the inaccurate claims of parity between the platforms. In the first scenario, one host in a cluster is running 10 VMs and is put into maintenance mode. Comparing elapsed times to evacuate each hypervisor quantifies migration speed without conjecture. In the second scenario, a single busy VM is moved from one host to another. The elapsed time is considered, but more important is the performance impact to the application undergoing migration.

Take a look at the results and see for yourself: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Hyper-V, live migration, performance, vSphere

Cloud Power Caption Contest [Win VMware Workstation 8!]

October 5, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 16 comments

Earlier this year, the Cloud Power billboard vComeback Contest was a good chance to get creative — quite a few clever entries were submitted and a good time was had by [almost] all. But today something peculiar is afoot at the Cloud Power billboard. For those of you who don’t frequent highway 101 through Silicon Valley, here’s a glimpse:

As it turns out, this Microsoft Cloud wasn’t zoned for optimal utilization — it ended up in a construction site. Sort of like unsuspecting consumers of the Office 365 service, which is so prominently featured on the sign. Or, as they say at Azure: Temporary “DNS issue” folks. Nothing to see here.

Cloud Power: Under Construction. Hard Hat area. (Winner: Josh Atwell)

Submit Your Caption for a Chance to Win!

Think of your most clever caption to the photo above and post it below as a comment for a chance to win a copy of VMware Workstation 8 ($199 value). Hurry, contest ends October 11.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

This cloud looked a lot taller in the brochure.

Are they building an entrance? Or an exit?

Traffic fines doubled… and so have my operational costs!

Google vs. Microsoft

Want to know the real irony here? This obstruction is a pedestrian footbridge that will be frequented by Google employees on their commute to one of many buildings in the area. You can’t make this stuff up.

View Larger Map

Rules: Winner selection is subjective. If similar entries are received, the first submitter will have priority. Entry must be received by October 11, 2011 11:59 p.m. PDT. Prize not claimed within five days of notification will be forfeited. Contestants must be legal residents of earth. Not sponsored or endorsed by any third-party.

Tags: azure, cloud, Microsoft

VMware vSphere 5 outperforms Hyper-V by nearly 20%

August 26, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 29 comments

Independent technology assessment firm, Principled Technologies, recently conducted a comprehensive performance comparison between VMware vSphere 5 and Hyper-V R2 SP1. In a head-to-head competition, VMware ESXi once again smoked the Windows-based hypervisor in three amazing ways:

VMware vSphere 5 delivered 18.9% higher aggregate performance than Hyper-V
Performance among individual VMs was much more consistent with VMware than with Microsoft
Overall VMware ESXi performance actually improved with higher density, while Hyper-V declined with just 25% oversubscription

A chart tells the story very nicely:

Let’s take a closer look at these three victories. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Hyper-V, Industry, memory overcommit, performance, vSphere

VMware vCenter Server Appliance and vRAM Reporting

August 22, 2011 in Virtualizationism | 1 comment

VMware vSphere 5 now offers vCenter Server as a Linux-based virtual appliance in addition to the traditional release that runs on Windows. While there are a few limitations with the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (VCVA), please keep in mind this is just the first supported release. Old-timers may recall the excitement generated by the Technical Preview over two years ago.

VMware vSphere 5 License Reporting

The new vSphere 5 licensing model is accompanied by a new licensing report that allows customers to query vRAM utilization. Although this report is accessed through the standard vSphere Client, it is based on the next-generation Flex framework and served up via the vSphere Web Client — a server normally used by end-user web browsers. The report looks like this:

VCVA License Reporting Bug

Conveniently, the VCVA comes with the Web Client already installed. Unfortunately, a small workaround is needed before the license reporting feature can be used on the VCVA, which shows the following error by default: