Not to throw The Cloud under the bus, but somehow a glitch has allowed this Evernote note to circulate freely; it appears to be straight from Steve Ballmer’s MacBook Pro:

Your Turn!

What should Microsoft be looking for in the next STB leader?  Leave a comment below — funny or serious, your choice!

Disclaimer for the humor-impaired:  This is satire.  No, seriously.

Related posts:

1. Dear Red Hat…
2. Cloudy with a chance of vaporware
3. vComeback Contest: Microsoft Cloud Power Billboard
4. Storage vendors unanimously applaud SCVMM innovation

Hyper-V is under-performing. Maybe my expectations were too high, but Hyper-V has not grabbed as much market share as I was predicting. I especially thought that Microsoft would be the big beneficiary of midmarket virtualization. Surveys show otherwise – VMware is doing pretty well there. Here’s a theory. Clients repeatedly told us that live migration was a big hole in Microsoft’s offering – even for midmarket customers (to reduce planned downtime managing the parent OS). Microsoft’s Hyper-V R2 (with live migration) came out 8/2009. Was that too late? Did the economy put pressure on midsized enterprises to virtualize early, before Hyper-V R2 was proven in the market? Or did VMware just have too much mindshare?

VMware’s competition is growing (especially Microsoft, Citrix and Oracle), but VMware is still capturing plenty of new customers.

Microsoft ought to hurry — more and more companies are approaching that 40-50% limit on virtual workloads.  Or is it “all in” the cloud now?  It’s hard to keep track.

Could VMware vSphere Essentials Plus be hurting Hyper-V in the midmarket?

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V Market Share Lies
2. How to see if Quick Migration is right for your workload
3. Best of 2009
4. On Quick Storage Migration in R2

“That’s why I still maintain that at some point, you’ll be at 40 percent to 50 percent virtualized and you’re 50 percent physical, and that’s an important thing to recognize. If you recognize that, you can set the strategy. It’s not, ‘Oh God, we thought the world was going to be only virtual.’ That, fundamentally, is why I think VMware is in trouble,” he said.

In related news, Gartner recently predicted that 50% of all x86 server workloads will be virtualized by 2012.  Still no word on what happens in 2013, after global virtualization limits have been reached.  [Better start looking for some investors that can help me get VM cap-and-trade started.]

But seriously, many companies have already instituted “virtualization first” policies and deploying new apps on physical hardware requires sign-off from upper management.  If Bob Kelly is correct, half of all provisioning requests seek waivers from this policy?  Incomprehensible.

Bob Kelly also explained the true cause of server sprawl in that same article.  If you’re like me, you probably thought it was because of DLL Hell — complex product dependencies that made it extremely risky to manage multiple applications on a single Windows NT system — and SMP scalability problems.  Nope, it turns out that the real issue was the need for sufficient capacity to accommodate peak demand… wink, wink.

Which 50% will you virtualize?

Related posts:

1. VMware ESX 4 can even virtualize itself
2. Single Pane of Glass — Hyper-V Edition
3. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager released
4. Storage VMotion Q&A

Since VMware launched vSphere 12 weeks ago there have been over 350,000 downloads — 140 per hour!

And that’s not all:  in the first half of 2009, VMware acquired twenty-one thousand new customers — 121 new customers per day!

Can’t wait for more great news in the coming week — see you at VMworld.

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V Market Share Lies
2. Is SCVMM 2008 R2 really banned from VMworld?
3. SLES for VMware Entitlement Expands Broadly
4. VMware vCenter Server 4.0 installation video

Last week Microsoft COO Kevin Turner made a shocking proclamation in this Dow Jones article:

“We launched our first product in October of this past year. from then till now, we gained 24 points of market share against a very, very formidable competitor,” Turner said.

There are at least two problems with Turner’s statement:

1. Hyper-V 1.0 was released in June 2008, not October
2. There is absolutely no data available to support the fictitious “24 point gain”

Microsoft is still scrambling for a convoluted explanation of this lie — I can’t wait to hear what they come up with.  Please note, however, that the part about VMware being a “very, very, formidable competitor” was independently verified to be true.

Virtualization.info just published a short article on the topic and mentions some previous market share numbers — helps put things in perspective.

Between the “million Hyper-V downloads” and this new fabricated market share statement coming from the highest levels of Microsoft, it raises the question:

What else is Microsoft Virtualization making up? Customer wins?  Price comparisons with VMware vSphere?

Smells like desperation to me.

Related posts:

1. Gartner: Hyper-V Under-performing, Not Grabbing Share
2. The Million Hypervisor March
3. Which 50% will you virtualize?
4. Even GPL can’t make Hyper-V Linux VMs well

We’re pleased and humbled to announce that in the first 12 months of Hyper-V R1 availability with Windows Server 2008, there have been over 1+ million downloads of Hyper-V R1 Gold (RTM) software, making Hyper-V the fastest growing bare metal hypervisor in x86 history.

In case you are not familiar with this scam, please refer to the Million Hypervisor March and Hyper-V Deployments Suddenly Drop to Zero.

What will they do now?  Windows 2008 R2 will not be shipping with a beta version of the hypervisor like Windows 2008 did.  There will be no automatic download of the “Gold” code as the new R2 OS is deployed.  I suppose they will just have to count every single Windows 2008 R2 license as a Hyper-V host — just like they do right now.

What do you think?  Is there the slightest chance that this “1+ million” figure represents actual Hyper-V deployments?

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V deployments suddenly drop to zero
2. The Million Hypervisor March
3. Lighten Up
4. Windows Server 2008 R2 — Windows 7?

If you need a quick refresher on what they mean by downloads, please review The Milion Hypervisor March article.  In a nutshell, Microsoft Virtualization decided to get creative with the metric they use to track Hyper-V adoption.  Windows Server 2008 RTM shipped with a beta version of Hyper-V (interesting decision) that is automatically updated via the Windows Update patch management mechanism.  Any up-to-date Windows 2008 system is essentially counted as a Hyper-V host, which is totally unrealistic and, frankly, dishonest.

That decision now leads to an unfortunate dilemma.  Windows Server 2008 SP2 is now available and it includes the RTM version of Hyper-V — no longer any need to download and update Hyper-V.  That means:

As new Windows Server 2008 deployments move from RTM to SP2, the Hyper-V downloads cease.

The moral of this story is clear.  When selecting a metric to brag publicly about progress, make sure it’s legitimate — or the truth may bring unintended consequences.

Related posts:

1. Wild SCVMM 2008 R2 rumors and speculation
2. The Million Hypervisor March
3. Humble… but dishonest
4. SCVMM 2008 Management Pack Finally Released

There seems to be a problem with this highly-inflated claim;  the casual observer may even infer that over a million system administrators have downloaded and installed Hyper-V in order to run virtual machines.

Let me assure you that this is impossible, and here is why:

• Windows Server 2008 shipped with the beta version of Hyper-V
• Hyper-V is just another component of Windows Server 2008
• Windows Update is used to automatically download updates for all Windows components
• In July 2008, the RTM version of Hyper-V was made available on Windows Update
• After installation, all Windows Server systems automatically download the Hyper-V update — whether they intend to ever run virtual machines or not
• Hyper-V download count++

What’s that?  Hyper-V downloads occur whether or not a system is even being used as a hypervisor?

Yes!  Update 950050 is automatically downloaded to all Windows Server 2008 hosts — the standard Windows Update process.  Actually, the Hyper-V update is even downloaded to virtualized Windows systems (which are certainly not even capable of running Hyper-V):

With that new understanding, you can decide for yourself whether or not it is honest to claim that there have been one million Hyper-V downloads, or if it is statistically significant to use that number to compute the reliability of Hyper-V (“.02%”).

Market Share

While we are on the topic, at the Microsoft Management Summit David Greshler also reminded us of the IDC Virtualization Tracker stats, crediting Microsoft with 23% of the market — which is by units, not revenue.  Please refer to the slide at the top of this post.

It’s interesting to see the label “Momentum” and the “now has” statement, both of which imply progress.

Last year IDC released market share numbers that caused quite a stir.  You can read all about it from a VMware perspective at Mike D’s blog, but to quickly summarize: IDC stated that in Q2 2008 Microsoft had 23% market share (when Hyper-V had been actually shipping for less than a week).  Here we are — quarters later — Microsoft has increased their share to… 23%.  That’s some momentum.

I find it ironic that the whole point of the Microsoft blog post referenced above is to provide “facts” and dispel alleged VMware FUD.  It’s safe to say that this battle is far from over.

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V deployments suddenly drop to zero
2. Humble… but dishonest
3. Hyper-V Market Share Lies
4. Have you seen “the IDC report”?

Operations Manager 2007′s value diminishes when managing non-Microsoft IT elements, whether management is provided by Microsoft or a third party.

Sort of reminds me of the value of SCVMM-VirtualCenter integration, but that’s another topic.

Something that really caught my eye is that the product has racked up 4000 licenses in the year-and-a-half that it has been available.  But, if you know the product architecture, you would concur that most sites require several licenses, whether you run a business website or www.foxybingo.com. That implies about 2000 SCOM 2007 sites, to make a reasonable estimate.

Is that a lot?  Perhaps, since Gartner found one strength to be “A significant installed base.”

Consider this:  To take advantage of the highly-advertised SCVMM features like PRO Tips, topology diagrams and reporting (well, in 60 days…) you need to integrate with SCOM.  Does that mean that there are just a couple thousand environments out there that are actually ready to deploy Microsoft virtualization?

Are you one of the two thousand?  What about everyone else?  Read up on SCOM architecture and deployment just to get started with virtualization?  Doubtful.  For those with real work to do, today, take a look at VMware Infrastructure with a free 60-day trial.  You can use VMware DRS right away to intelligently place virtual machines on hosts and even move them around with zero downtime.  Kind of like PRO Tips, without the quick migration downtime and all the moving parts of SCOM:

Root Management Server?  Clusters?  Report Server?  Management Servers?  DW DB?  Agents?  Please pass the Tylenol.

Related posts:

1. PRO Tips: pros only, please
2. Save $14,970 on VMware ESX management
3. SCVMM/PRO Complexity: High
4. Hyper-V Console Disconnects During Live Migration

Folks, this report has some big problems.  According to the IDC Fact Sheet, “IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker consists of independent, unbiased data, updated quarterly.”  I’m not sure where this allegedly independent, unbiased data came from, but hopefully next time it will actually be independent and unbiased.

Mike DiPetrillo has written up an excellent analysis of the report.  Check it out!

Related posts:

1. The Million Hypervisor March
2. Incoming Google Traffic: Introduction
3. VMware is Hiring – Join the Competitive Lab
4. VM Encapsulation