ESX and Hyper-V

March 12, 2010 | 48 comments

The majority of Windows crashes are caused by third-party device drivers. See how Hyper-V reliability is compromised due to its dependence on a general-purpose OS.

March 1, 2010 | 4 comments

Yo Dawg! I heard you like to virtualize, but there is no truth to the rumor that Xzibit influenced the Hyper-V design.

February 17, 2010 | 20 comments

Microsoft has broken through numerous technological barriers, enabling Windows/Hyper-V to directly execute Linux applications.

January 21, 2010 | 26 comments

Microsoft Virtualization publishes an embarrassing guest post refuting vSphere advantages, doing more harm than good.

January 13, 2010 | 35 comments

Learn about Microsoft's attempt to implement memory overcommit in Hyper-V.

December 3, 2009 | 14 comments

While Microsoft marketing material claims Hyper-V and SCVMM can transfer large virtual machine files and templates over a SAN, the truth is that all VM transfers are done over the network. Only VMware ESX leverages high-speed storage area networking for VM migration.

November 18, 2009 | 12 comments

VMware vSphere 4 offers multiple options for expanding virtual machine storage with zero downtime, including the ability to grow a running virtual disk. Hyper-V marketing literature makes a similar claim, but is limited to simply adding another virtual disk.

November 3, 2009 | 40 comments

Microsoft stretches the truth when claiming that VMware adds an additional layer to your architecture. The fact is, Hyper-V relies on its own instance of Windows and requires more instances for running apps.

August 19, 2009 | 9 comments

If your server OEM supports it, you might be able to get the free Hyper-V Server R2 to boot from a flash drive someday. VMware ESXi supports this feature today.

May 20, 2009 | 3 comments

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt — FUD.  The expression may have started with the mainframe generation, but these days most technology pros associate the term with Microsoft tactics.  That’s why I find it more than a little humorous to see the Microsoft Virtualization Team using it on their blog right now in an attempt to defend Hyper-V’s [...]

May 13, 2009 | 6 comments

Hyper-V is often downloaded to Windows Server systems that will never be used to run virtual machines. Making this an irrelevant metric for Hyper-V installed base figures.

April 9, 2009 | 4 comments

The SVVP identifies VMware ESX releases that are supported by Microsoft. Customers are sometimes turned away unnecessarily due to lack of awareness.

April 6, 2009 | 9 comments

Recently, Microsoft published a questionable video dispelling numerous VMware myths.  The only problem, at least for Microsoft, is that they really didn’t do a very convincing job.  In fact, the video is so sorry that I don’t mind promoting it here on VCritical — check it out! Mythbusters Busted Gabe’s Virtual World has an excellent rebuttal of [...]

March 12, 2009 | 1 comment

Question When is it okay to disregard the EULA clause on publishing hypervisor performance benchmarks? Answer Never.

March 10, 2009 | 7 comments

Yesterday I wrote a summary of the hazards of using SCVMM to manage VI3 — highlighting previously published VCritical articles as well as linking to a new series of videos on Why Choose VMware.  Looks like VMware may have hit a nerve, as the Microsoft virtualization team scrambled to issue a barrage of rebuttals. My work [...]

March 9, 2009 | 6 comments

Features found in VMware ESX are unnecessarily neutered when attempting to manage by using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

February 19, 2009 | 4 comments

Hyper-V Linux guests (SUSE) do not yet have integration components or customization capabilities. Nor can you P2V a Linux system to Hyper-V.

February 17, 2009 | 5 comments

Encapsulation is one of the four key benefits of VMware virtual machines.  On the surface it may seem like this is a common feature across all virtualization platforms — but it’s not. If you are a VMware ESX administrator, you know that a VMware virtual machine consists of several files,  normally contained in a single directory.  [...]

February 6, 2009 | 10 comments

Unlike Hyper-V, VMware ESX ships with complete network interface (NIC) teaming capabilities, a critical feature for hypervisors.

January 9, 2009 | 2 comments

By design, System Center Virtual Machine Manager copies ISO CD/DVD images to managed hosts instead of sharing. For VMware ESX it uses SFTP. For ESXi, it fails.

December 23, 2008 | 1 comment

Users that wish to implement Hyper-V CPU reservations and limits are forced to open another tool, Hyper-V Manager, instead of configure these with SCVMM.

December 19, 2008 | 1 comment

Virtual machine snapshots are a quick way to recover from unexpected incompatibilities you may encounter when patching guest operating systems.  In fact, VMware Update Manager even provides an option to automatically snapshot a VM before applying updates and then delete the snapshot after a specified amount of time. Even if you are not using VMware Update [...]

December 18, 2008 | 1 comment

Although the Hyper-V Manager and SCVMM allow removing snapshots from running VMs, they are not actually merged until the VM is powered off.

December 5, 2008 | No comments

When managing a virtual environment, there are two layers of patching that need to be considered.  Guest operating systems and applications inside the virtual machines need regular updates — patch Tuesday for Windows.  And the hypervisor platforms themselves, like any other software, also need to be patched. What happens to the virtual machines when the hypervisor [...]

November 5, 2008 | 8 comments

Initially, Hyper-V Server was sort of a mystery.  Some kind of “bare metal hypervisor” that “is not Windows” sounded peculiar.  Details were scarce.  Some thought it would be like ESXi, a small-footprint design that can be embedded in a server via flash memory.  As you know, it turned out to be nothing more than Windows [...]

October 23, 2008 | 4 comments

If you have been using VMware ESX, then you might be a little spoiled by VMFS, VMware’s clustered filesystem. I have a hunch that many of us just take it for granted: create large LUNs, add to multiple ESX servers, create your virtual machines and be done with it. And, oh, migrate the [...]

October 1, 2008 | 5 comments

Now that Microsoft has released the much-hyped Hyper-V Server, it’s a good time to take a look at the steps you would need to go through to configure iSCSI LUNs. As you can see in this video, it is incredibly complex.  ESXi, on the other hand, walks you through without a lot of fuss.  VMware is [...]

October 1, 2008 | 1 comment

I took a look at the Hyper-V installation process to see how it compares with ESXi and decided to install it on Server Core, since that has been touted by Microsoft as the preferred and recommended way of deploying Hyper-V.  Well, after significant research and learning, I was able to distill the process down to [...]