Tag: VMware

System Center Operations Manager Saves The Day … Even In A vSphere Site

Way-back-when, I deployed Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 just after it had RTMd.  My boss, the IT infrastructure manager, decided that we should do our initial agent deployment in our DR site.  We had Windows and HP ProLiant management packs imported.  The DR site in question was rarely visited: pretty much whenever we needed to install something new or when we had a test invocation scheduled.

Within minutes, the agents started reporting degraded hardware: memory DIMMs, RAM, and PSUs.  That won my boss over.  Once the network team were happy, we started deploying agents 17 worldwide sites.

This week I’ve been involved with a proof-of-concept deployment of OpsMgr 2007 R2 CU5 in a VMware environment.  The customer wanted to see how it would handle monitoring of a critical service that had received significant investment and attention from the business.  The management group was built, and agents were deployed to the application servers (any consultant who deploys agents to hundreds machines at once is being negligent because the customer will reject the un-tuned full of noisy alerts monitoring solution).  A handful of management packs were imported, including Windows and SQL Server.  And within minutes we had detected an issue.  The SQL log file for the application was not able to expand and the critical LOB app was about to fail.  Nice timing Smile (I swear I didn’t cause it!).  The customer’s IT staff were on it and the problem was avoided.  Then a day later, once the data warehouse was populated with some info, I ran some performance reports and identified a vCPU bottleneck in the SQL server VM and a recommendation was made there.

To quote Charlie Sheen: WINNING!

It would be easy to think that SysCtr is irrelevant to VMware.  Sure, in my opinion System Center + Hyper-V exceeds the alternative.  But, elements of SysCtr + vSphere easily exceeds vSphere by itself or with some overpriced point solution with a “v” badge stuck on it.

We know the business values applications (or services).  They couldn’t care less about vSphere VS Hyper-VS any other virtualisation.  Now this customer has SLA monitoring/reporting on this particular LOB application and thanks to the early warning from OpsMgr, it’s sitting nicely at 100%, and the IT department’s customer is a happy camper.

Me in an Article on Network World About Windows Server 8 Hyper-V

I was contacted by journalist Julie Bort a few weeks ago to see if I would be willing to chat a little about Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (or Hyper-V v3.0) for a new article on Network World.  I was cool with that and did some prep.  There is an incredible amount of new stuff – I quickly had an A4 sheet full of notes with items prioritised for the conversation.  We talked tech and we talked business.  And of course, the subject of Microsoft vs VMware came up.

The article came out yesterday.

Do You Dislike Paying vTaxes?

Then you seriously need to look at Hyper-V.  Even now, if you strip vSphere down to it’s most economic deployment with the Standard edition, you can save quite a bit by going with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V (with Software Assurance or though a scheme with upgrade rights like OVS) and the System Center Management Suite (for managing the entire application/infrastructure stack AKA cloud).  And because Windows Server Hyper-V is not vTaxed cripple-ware, you get access to all of the features.

I mentioned upgrade rights for Windows Server because you will want Windows 8 Server Hyper-V.  If Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V has more features than vSphere Standard (which it does), then Windows 8 Server Hyper-V will leave VMware and their overpaying customers in the dust.

If you’re a VMware customer then you need to look now.  Get a lab machine or two and try it out – do some prep because they are different products.  System Center Virtual Machine Manager will allow you to migrate from vSphere, and you’ll get to focus systems management on what the business cares about: the service.

If you’re a Microsoft partner that’s focused on VMware then go looking for Symon Perriman’s content on Hyper-V training for VMware engineers.  Work with you local Microsoft PTA to get trained up.  in Ireland, MicroWarehouse customers can work with me – I will be running a number of virtualisation and System Center training classes for partners in MSFT Dublin, and I am available to call out to prepare sales staff and account managers.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V made an impact.  Windows 8 Server Hyper-V is a game changer.  Ignore it at your peril!

E2E London 2011, Virtualisation Conference

Once again, experts in all kinds of virtualisation technologies will be gathering to share their knowledge at E2E London 2011, a super-economic mini-conference, formerly known as PubForum.  I’ll be talking Hyper-V as usual with a 45 minute and a 900 seconds session.  Some other MVPs and Microsoft virtualisation experts from around Europe will be there presenting.  And as usual, there will be LOTS of Citrix, VMware and common virtualisation technology sessions.

Survey Says? Hyper-V Engineers Are More Manly

Hyper-V engineers are virtually whipping the competition

Last night a reputable source reported that Hyper-V engineers are more manly than those who manage other virtualisation technologies. Some say that Hyper-V engineers have higher levels of testosterone, matched only by Olympic weightlifters. Others say that Hyper-V engineers make DBAs tremble with fear as they walk past their cubicles.  Whatever the case, who would want to compete with that!?!?

Artists impression of a VMware engineer

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VMware Updates vSphere 5.0 Licensing

I guess 90 support forum pages of customers saying they’re going to dump your product and go to the competition really made an impression on VMware.  Trying to convince the world that VMware making more money from less was a good right-sizing process for their customers didn’t quite have the desired effect.

So VMware has responded:

  • They’ve increased the vRAM entitlements for “all” edition of vSphere.  Don’t plan your party yet (see below).  I don’t see any mention of the free edition being licensed to run more than the previously mentioned 8 GB RAM per physical CPU.
  • They’re not going to force you to buy multiple vSphere licenses for “monster” VMs.  The example they give is the 1 TB VM: 1 vSphere Enterprise Plus license (96 GB RAM now) will be enough for it.  Cos that will positively impact the vast majority of virtualisation customers!
  • Short term spikes in usage won’t be counted.  Instead, they’ll count “calculate a 12-month average of consumed vRAM to rather than tracking the high water mark of vRAM”.  Fair enough, that’s a good improvement.

EDIT: Marcel van den Berg let me know that it’s being blogged that vSphere 5.0 free is being increased to 32 GB.  It’s not on the VMware announcement but it’s on lots of blogs.

OK, let’s recalculate Hyper-V/System Center VS vSphere Standard + vOperations.  Last time with the original v5.0 licensing, Microsoft gave more virtualisation and systems management functionality at 52% of the cost of vSphere Standard + vOperations.  The scenario was a 2U host, with 2 CPUs, 92 GB RAM, with published retail licensing costs (both sides give discounts), and 40-50 VMs.

Product Microsoft VMware Comment
Virtualisation Free (guest licensing covers this cost) 6 * vSphere 5 Standard Plus $5,970 Hyper-V is included in Windows licensing so it’s free. The Microsoft option is already $5,970 ahead.
Windows for unlimited VMs

2 * Windows Server DC
$5,998

2 * Windows Server DC
$5,998

 This applies to anyone on any virtualisation platform.
Monitoring

System Center Management Suite DC
$5,240

vCenter Operations (25 VM pack) * 2

$7,564

 Not a good comparison: MSFT option includes licensing to use all of Microsoft’s System Center products and it’s still around 1/3 cheaper!
Total $11,238 $19,532 Now the MSFT option is only 57% of the cost of the VMware option, but thanks to System Center 2012, MSFT has some of those “critical” virtualisation features like power optimisation and DRS not in this vSphere 5 option.

Gee, thanks VMware, the comparative cost has improved 5% in your favour, and Hyper-V & System Center Management Suite (all of the Microsoft systems management products) actually has more virtualisation and systems management functionality.  Of course, I could be really mean, and price this up with System Center Essentials instead of System Center Management Suite.  I guess that would reduce the cost of the MSFT option by just over $4,000, and still leave it ahead of vSphere Standard/vOperations on all fronts.

I think it’s time once again to see if you’re still making carriages for horses.

More on the VMware Fiasco

Thanks to Kristian Nese for the tweet/heads up.  There’s a thread on VMware’s forums that is currently at 49 pages of VMware customers ranting about the eventual huge price increase. 

I did have someone criticise my pricing of VMware in my last post on the subject.  I chose 4 copies of vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus  to license a 2 CPU server with 192 GB RAM, costing $13,980 to license your virtualisation for that hardware.  The criticism was that I should have used 8 copies of vSphere 5 Standard instead.  That’s kind of tough to do.  Microsoft and VMware mix and match features differently.  For example DRS.  VMware put it in their vSphere package.  Hyper-V does not have DRS but SCVMM 2012 provides it under a different name.  You’ll also find the same is true of Distributed Power Management.  My previous comparison included System Center Management Suite, which by the way provides upgrade rights (like a built-in software assurance).  vSphere 5 Standard does not include DRS or Distributed Power Management.

Many VMware folks fail to remember that ESXi = Hyper-V, vSphere = Hyper-V + System Center (but the MSFT option is cheaper to buy and own).  Hyper-V + System Center is much more than vSphere Standard.

Anyway, to keep people happy … a copy of vSphere Standard costs $995:

Product Microsoft VMware Comment
Virtualisation Free 8 * vSphere 5 Standard Plus $7,960 Hyper-V is included in Windows licensing so it’s free. The Microsoft option is already $7,960 ahead.
Windows for unlimited VMs

2 * Windows Server DC
$5,998

2 * Windows Server DC
$5,998

 This applies to anyone on any virtualisation platform.
Monitoring

System Center Management Suite DC
$5,240

vCenter Operations (25 VM pack) * 2

$7,564

 Not a good comparison: MSFT option includes licensing to use all of Microsoft’s System Center products and it’s still around 1/3 cheaper!
Total $11,238 $21,522 Now the MSFT option is only 52% of the cost of the VMware option, but thanks to System Center 2012, MSFT has some of those “critical” virtualisation features like power optimisation and DRS not in this vSphere 5 option.

To be fair, one could monitor that VMware server and it’s VMs using System Center Operations Manager.  Given the density, a SMSD license (as in the VMware option) could be used to limit costs.  However, a 3rd party management pack from Veeam (which looks excellent) or Quest (which I have not seen) would have to be purchased to enable VMware virtualisation monitoring.  Then you could dump vCenter Operations.  I reckon that would cost around $6,200 (including 3rd party management pack), saving around $1,300 from the VMware column.

I got a very interesting email overnight.  The author (thanks by the way) said:

Renata Budko, vp marketing at HyTrust: “With vSphere 5.0 new licensing model, VMware is trying to capture a larger portion of the value, particularly from the customers who are reaping the benefits of virtualization with aggressive consolidation ratios of 10:1 or higher. The new model will put more emphasis on right-sizing the virtual machines and just in time provisioning.”

So here’s the message:

  • VMware are doing you a favour by increasing the cost of virtualisation.  It reinforces the value of their product.  I’m filing that under "Things that make you go hmmm”.
  • VMware are helping you “right-size” your virtualisation hosts by punishing you for “over speccing” your hosts.  That’s so generous of them!  I’m sure the plan wasn’t to hurt your budget and improve their bottom line.  Not at all.

I’ve also read/heard that VMware aren’t concerned about their customers switching to Hyper-V.  Maybe they should read that 49 page thread.  I talked to a few people over the last few days in the VMware market and it sure got them concerned.

Let me finish by saying (again) that VMware do make a great virtualisation product.  I just happen to believe that’s where they stop being great.  Saying you have superior management is easy.  But when your alleged superiority is a virtualisation layer product and a 1990’s style framework of recently acquired products then you’re really stretching it. 

Businesses don’t care all that much about virtualisation.  They care about line of business applications that enable operations and profit generation.  That’s why we have all this talk about cloud and consumerisation of IT. Some little strip of software is of little interest to a CIO/CEO.  But managing that CRM or web sales application, ensuring SLA, rapid provision and flexibility are.  And it’s that layer that Microsoft has everyone beat.  And that’s why I got into Hyper-V back in 2008.

New VMware Licensing – Really? Are they Mental or What?

You may just have noticed a slight pro-Hyper-V bias to this blog Smile  Yeah, I prefer it because I think it does what I need and there is more focus from Microsoft on what the business cares about: business applications.  But from time to time I’ve said that VMware have an excellent server virtualisation product.  Recently I’ve been heard to say that I think VMware got a huge leap on Microsoft by virtually stealing the term Private Cloud in their marketing efforts.  A few of us geeks know what Microsoft are up to.  VMware have been doing huge road shows to reach a much wider audience to say “we are the private, public, and hybrid cloud”.  That might be about to change.

VMware announced their new pricing structure.  It is moving away from a predictable per host model to a model that charges for processors and assigned memory. 

SKU

vRAM entitlement

vSphere 5 Essentials Kit

24 GB

vSphere 5 Essentials Plus Kit

24 GB

vSphere 5 Standard

24 GB

vSphere 5 Enterprise

32 GB

vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus

48 GB

By the way, ESXi 5 (the free one) entitles you to a not-so-massive 8GB of RAM.  An example is a typical DL380 or R710 host with 2 CPUs and 196 GB RAM.  To license it you will need 4 * vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus licenses.  They cost $3,495 retail each.  So virtualisation (only) on that host will cost $13,980

Rather confusingly, cloud deployments have a different licensing model for vCloud Director, etc.  They are sold on a VM-bundle basis.  vCloud Director costs $3,750 for 25 VMs.  Not cheap, not at all!  vOperations is more money and the much ballyhooed SRM is seriously mad money.

VMware customers are expressing their dissatisfaction all over the net.  Many are reporting that this vTax (as Microsoft cleverly calls it) is going to increase their virtualisation costs significantly.  And don’t forget, this gives you your virtualisation licensing and nothing else.

Let’s saunter over to the Microsoft alternative.  If you license your Windows VMs correctly (on any virtualisation platform) then you’re probably licensing per host, using DataCenter edition.  That licenses all the host (if required) and unlimited number of VMs on that host.  The retail (and no one pays retail!) price is $2,999.  That DL380 or R710 will be licensed for unlimited Windows Server VMs for $5,998. 

By the way, you can install that Windows Server Datacenter on the host (you’re entitled to) and enable Hyper-V instead of ESXi.  All of the features of Hyper-V are included at no hidden or extra cost.  Clustering, Live Migration, Dynamic Memory are all there.  Hyper-V Replica is on the way in Windows Server 8 (announced this week at WPC) to replicate VM workloads from host to host, site to site.  No need for VMware.

But aren’t VMware the private cloud?  Bollox!  If you want private cloud then look at the service (the business application) centric System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.  You can get that as part of a bundle from Microsoft called the System Center Management Suite.  You can license a 2 CPU host (and all VMs and applications on that host) for all of Microsoft’s systems management products for $5,240 (retail).  That’s private cloud, virtualisation management, enterprise monitoring, service/helpdesk management, backup, configuration management, and runbook automation.  In other words, you can manage the entire service stack – the stuff that the business cares about.

Let’s compare the two vendors on a single 2U server with 2 CPUs and 196 GB RAM (my hardware sweet spot by the way).  We’ll also assume that there are 50 VMs on this host:

Product Microsoft VMware Comments

Virtualisation

 Free 4 * vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus $13,980 Hyper-V is included in Windows licensing so it’s free.  The Microsoft option is already $13,980 ahead.
Windows for Unlimited VMs 2 * Windows Server DC
$5,998		 2 * Windows Server DC
$5,998		  
Monitoring System Center Management Suite DC
$5,240

vCenter Operations (25 VM pack) * 2

$7,564

 Not a good comparison: MSFT option includes licensing to use all of Microsoft’s System Center products and it’s still around 1/3 cheaper!
Total $11,238 $27,542 MSFT is $16,304 (59%) cheaper, doesn’t limit your RAM assignment to VMs, and includes all of their management products.

What is a private cloud?  It’s a mechanism where end users will freely deploy VMs as and when they need them, with no restrictions placed on them by IT.  We can measure and optionally cross-charge.  But do we really want to get into the whole “we can’t use that much RAM because it’ll add another $4K tax on our virtualisation.  Sorry the business will need to do without!”.  Not good. 

If I’m a customer, I have to seriously revisit the Microsoft option.  It’s 59% cheaper, does way more across the entire application stack, and the focus is on the business application in the private cloud, not on the irrelevant (yeah I said it) hypervisor layer that can probably fit on a tiny disk.  And with all those cash savings, I can refocus my budget on taking advantage of all those management systems.

If’ I’m a consulting company, I look at what I make margin on.  You’re lucky to make 10% margin on software.  Services are where the money really is.  If you’re selling VMware to your customer then you’re getting them to spend 59% more on software that you’ll make 10% margin on.  If you sold the MSFT alternative then you know that customer has 59% extra budget that can be spent on services.  They’ll have all that System Center licensing goodness that you can revisit to deploy and engineer.  That’s 70%+ margin on human effort.  What sounds better and more profitable?  And you know what: more of your competition are taking advantage of this.  Why aren’t you?

Veeam ESX Monitoring for SCOM

At yesterday’s VMware event, I wandered over to the Veeam stand to get myself a demo of their nworks Management Pack for VMware.  This allows OpsMgr (System Center Operations Manager 2007) to natively monitor ESX(i) without installing an agent on the host, with or without vSphere.  They fired up an RDP session and gave me a guided tour.  I was impressed with the solution.  It had all you would expect from an OpsMgr monitored object: alerts, knowledge base, diagrams, and reports.

This reinforces the fact that even if you do deploy ESXi then this does not rule out the use of what I believe to be the best monitoring solution out there (even if it is my job to convince you of that!).  With the nworks management pack and OpsMgr, you can include the mainframe-important-like virtualisation layer in the management of your hardware, operating system, services, application, and SLA stack.

BTW, if you are an SME then you can also use this management pack with System Center Essentials.

VMware Forum 2011 Dublin – And My 2 Cents

I decided to peek over the fence and registered for this event that ran yesterday.  I was really hoping to learn a little about vSphere 5.

On the positive side, VMware chose a great venue and it was very well dressed up.  There was also a very gut turnout with several hundred attendees.  And unfortunately, that’s where I end the + comments.

The keynotes kicked off.  The first one was some VMware Ireland bigwig who told us that VMware leads the way on management across the IT infrastructure.  We were shown a Gartner to back that up.  I’ll bite my tongue for a moment.  They were focusing on 3 strands:

  1. Private cloud: CIOs don’t want to throw away their data centre/computer room investments to go public cloud.  This is clever because this does not alienate people and it doesn’t threaten them with unemployment.  The public cloud message is that only 15% of apps will go there and VMware offers you a hybrid solution with lots of hosting partners.  With this “standards based” (with the “standard” being that all players would use ESXi for virtualisation) then you could have a hybrid cloud spread across private and several public providers, with no service provider lock-in.  It’s not that simple but it’s a nice concept.  I think they sold this well.
  2. Applications: The common message is that we recognize the priorities of the business.  Application and information – deployment/management/security/availability – are what they really care about.  I’ve been preaching this since I started talking about private cloud last year.  VMware have bought a bunch of point solutions and bundled them as vOperations Suite.  We saw nothing of it.  It smells like one of those awful enterprise management frameworks from the late 1990’s like CA Unicenter.  Integration came in the form of shortcuts appearing in a central control panel Smile
  3. End user environment: VDI! VDI! VDI! … in the form of VMware View.  Allegedly there would be no need to patch the user environment any more and you’d need less systems management.  Well, isn’t that special!

Then the second keynote started with some bigwig from VMware UK.  It was a repeat.  Break time, I mingled, and then went to a session on vOperations where I was tortured by a repetitive presentation (saying much of what covered in the keynotes and repeating itself over and over) and slide deck on vOperations.  The UK bigwig sat in the back and didn’t look too pleased at people paying more attention to their phones, iPads, or walking out.  I can absolutely confirm that I learned nothing from this session.  I wondered if the speakers were trained at the Stephen Elop school for presentation skills.

I was bored to tears.  And that’s when I decided to bail out before the free lunch and skip sessions from the platinum sponsors such as IBM, HP, and Cisco.  I was hoping for way more from this event.  I know for certain that I was not alone.

One thing became clear from this.  VMware are dreadful at communicating about what they sell.  They must really rely on their resellers to get the message across.

OK, let’s break some stuff down from my perspective.  I like how they sell the private cloud.  It’s pretty much how I sell it – but I don’t see it being pervasive.  I don’t see everyone needing a private cloud – it depends on who deploys business applications in the business and who manages the server infrastructure.

On  the application management side – which is the important part of the data center (and it pains me to say that), VMware are way behind Microsoft System Center.  SysCtr covers the entire stack from hardware to services with the user/service perspective, and it manages the entire lifecycle from deployment to recycling.  The newer focus on automation, compliance/governance, as well as consumerisation of IT (user centric computing) really puts System Center ahead of the pack.

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