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<\/p>\nTime to kick another wasp nest!\u00a0 I got so many nice comments after the last time <\/p>\n
In a previous post<\/a>, I documented the comparison of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V with vSphere 5.0 as it was back at TechEd 2012 in June.\u00a0 Of course, things have changed since then.\u00a0 Hyper-V has scaled out again, and VMware has announced vSphere 5.1.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to foolishly declare vSphere are only being suitable for SMEs.\u00a0 Given the facts<\/em>, you have to question that sort of opinion.<\/p>\n Instead, let\u2019s just compare numbers and features.\u00a0 Actually, Microsoft has already done quite a bit of that for us with a new comparison document that was released<\/a> overnight.\u00a0 Keep in mind that the Hyper-V features and scalability are identical across all of the 2012 editions:<\/p>\n Host\/Cluster Scalability<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Microsoft made a huge investment in WS2012 Hyper-V to achieve these scale up\/out numbers; it wasn\u2019t just a matter of editing some spreadsheet.\u00a0 For example, you can\u2019t just let a VM have lots of vCPUs; you need to make the VM\u2019s guest OS aware of the NUMA of the underlying hardware, which is what Microsoft has done.<\/p>\n vSphere 5.1 Enterprise supports up to 32 vCPUs in a VM.<\/em><\/p>\n Hyper-V scales out to over twice the cluster size\/capacity of vSphere.\u00a0 A host can have twice the number of VMs and physical RAM.\u00a0 That\u2019s makes Hyper-V much more scalable for public\/hosting and private clouds.\u00a0 And remember that ESXi free does not include Failover Clustering; you must have vSphere to have failover (application up time).<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t seen best practices, but I\u2019d probably want the equivalent of 4 failover hosts in a 64 node cluster.\u00a0 I\u2019d really have all 8,000 VMs balanced across the 64 nodes, but there would be the equivalent of 60 nodes active.\u00a0 That would mean there would be 133-134 VMs on each host in the cluster.\u00a0 That\u2019s quite dense.<\/p>\n Expect some FUD that goes like \u201chaving 133 VMs on a host is too risky\u201d.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019m already seeing that.\u00a0 OK, I dare VMware to reduce their max specs down to a max of 20 VMs per host.\u00a0 The fact is that you save money (hardware, licensing, power, space) by scaling up first, and then out.<\/p>\n You minimize risk by using guest clusters.\u00a0 Speaking of which, WS2012 Hyper-V supports guest clusters with up to 64 nodes with iSCSI, SMB 3.0, and Fibre Channel storage.\u00a0 vSphere maxes out at 2 nodes in a quest cluster that uses Fibre Channel storage.<\/p>\n You can choose which solution scales out to be the best enterprise or cloud solution.<\/p>\n Storage<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n A massive piece of the investment for Microsoft was storage, trying to scale out, offer new solutions, and to alleviate problems that exist in all sizes of business.<\/p>\n All versions of Hyper-V support guest MPIO by using the SAN manufacturer\u2019s own DSM\/MPIO solution, just as they would with a physical server, but by using NPIV.\u00a0 vSphere requires VAMP, a feature only in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus.<\/p>\n In a cloud, you need scalable (for big data) and flexible storage solution.\u00a0 Using passthrough or RDM disks is an oxymoron in the cloud because it completely removes the element of self-service.\u00a0 Microsoft\u2019s VHDX scales out to 64 TB whereas the VMware VMDK is limited to 2 TB.\u00a0 The Hyper-V VHDX is more suited to bigger applications.<\/p>\n VHDX is also the only 4K aligned<\/a> virtual hard disk.\u00a0 That has a big impact on storage performance, and therefore the performance of guest services\/applications.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t forget that hackers now have a way to use the architecture of VMDK to break out from the guest OS<\/a>, something that is a genuine threat in hosting or cloud computing (FACT).<\/p>\n Even though Hyper-V has the edge on physical LUNs, I\u2019m going to ignore it because I hate<\/em> passthrough\/RDM disks.<\/p>\n ODX greatly reduces the time required for file operations on compatible SANs.\u00a0 It is supported by all versions of Hyper-V, but only in the Enterprise\/Plus editions of vSphere 5.1.<\/p>\n Enhanced Resource Management<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n There is some text in the MSFT document but it there\u2019s so little difference here that it\u2019s negligible.\u00a0 The memory optimization approach is one of:<\/p>\n In a cluster, both systems will Live Migrate\/vMotion VMs to more suitable hosts so it\u2019s up to you if you want to split hairs on this subject.<\/p>\n The only other difference is QoS for networking.\u00a0 It\u2019s in all features of WS2012 Hyper-V and only in the Enterprise Plus version of vSphere 5.1.\u00a0 That impacts the ability to do converged fabrics with SLA when you don\u2019t have DCB enabled networking.<\/p>\n Virtual Switch<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This is the virtual device that maps VM virtual network cards to the physical\/virtual network.<\/p>\n Hyper-V has a clear advantage.\u00a0 Microsoft probably had the advantage here because they did come at this later in the game.\u00a0 Looking at how they designed the virtual network (previous to the virtual switch) in Hyper-V, you can see that there was a long term vision.\u00a0 The new virtual switch is a layer 2, programmatically managed device with lots more functionality than was in the older virtual network.<\/p>\n One of the key features is extensibility.\u00a0 Rather than replacing the virtual switch, we can stack third party extensions on the switch.\u00a0 VMware has 2 partners<\/span> 3 partners, including the heralded Cisco solution, that replace the VMware virtual switch.\u00a0 Cisco has 2 solutions for WS2012 Hyper-V.\u00a0 We already know of solutions from 5Nine, NEC, and InMon, and I\u2019ve heard whispers of more (no; I won\u2019t share).<\/p>\n Note: I was informed soon after posting that VMware \u201crecently added a 3rd partner for their \u2018disposable switch\u2019\u201d.<\/em> Heh \u2026 a dinosaur like IBM (who still thinks Lotus Notes is king of the email world) with dreadful support as a partner.\u00a0 Make of that what you want Through the chart, you can see that Hyper-V has more functionality, and it is built-in, ready to use, with no additional licensing.\u00a0 vCNS is an additional purchase in the vSphere Enterprise Plus (already the most expensive virtualisation around) world.<\/p>\n Network Performance Enhancements<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n More work went into this by Microsoft, to improve existing features and to also make the most of new available hardware.<\/p>\n VMware does offer DVMQ functionality (the ability to process VM networking across multiple physical processor cores, scaling up and down to meet demand), but it is only on \u201csome\u201d 10 GbE NICs.\u00a0 Microsoft supports DVMQ on any NIC with DVMQ functionality in the hardware\/driver, including 1 GbE.<\/p>\n IPsec if a CPU hungry network security feature that you can enable in your VM guest OSs.\u00a0 Anyone who wants network security for their applications will want to turn it on.\u00a0 Only WS2012 Hyper-V supports offloading IPsec to dedicated functionality on the NIC, thus saving CPU cycles for the applications that are running in the guests.<\/p>\n SR-IOV bypasses Management OS (host) networking for virtual machine traffic handling, thus reducing CPU overhead and reducing latency.\u00a0 vSphere does have SR-IOV support, but only in the distributed virtual switch which is only in vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus.\u00a0 However, you might give networking performance to a vSphere VM using SR-IOV, but you sacrifice vMotion.\u00a0 Hyper-V does not include features that prevent Live Migration.\u00a0 SR-IOV can be turned on for a VM, and it can be Live Migrated thanks to a clever zero-downtime switching process that does not assume that the destination host supports SR-IOV.<\/p>\n Security<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n My cousin works in the IT security world, often doing some very weird things.\u00a0 When I first got into virtualisation, he had an interesting observation: Virtualisation assumes you have amazing physical security and you can trust your operators.\u00a0 VHD(X) and VMDK are portable, therefore being easy to steal or copy.\u00a0 That means that data in the computer room is easier to steal than ever.<\/p>\n Windows Server 2008\/R2 Hyper-V supported BitLocker (AES disk encryption) on non-clustered hosts.\u00a0 That means the data is only visible to anyone who can log into the hosts.\u00a0 You can steal those disks all you want; if I have a backup then I can recover and you\u2019ll have no access to my encrypted VHD(X) files and the data contained within.<\/p>\n WS2012 Hyper-V supports encrypting clustered disks too.\u00a0 That means everything in a CSV can be safely encrypted when I have a cluster in a location that I can\u2019t entirely trust, or if I just want to be sure.<\/p>\n Enterprises value data security, right?<\/p>\n VM Mobility<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n WS2012 Hyper-V has the ability to move VMs anywhere between WS2012 Hyper-V hosts\/clusters in the same domain with:<\/p>\n vSphere 5.1 has done some catch-up to add Shared-Nothing Live Migration.<\/p>\n Hyper-V offers more flexibility, the number 2 reason (cost savings is number 1) for companies to adopt virtualisation, and a key requirement for a cloud.<\/p>\n Eric Gray, who poses as an independent blogger on his vCritical blog, but is actually a marketing employee of VMware<\/a> working for their compete group, has tried in the past to belittle the simultaneous Live Migration features of WS2012 Hyper-V.\u00a0 I had a read, and some of the commentators on the post called him out nicely.\u00a0 I especially loved the one that said I<\/em> was getting under the skin of VMware Eric, let\u2019s teach you a little about enterprise virtualisation and cloud computing.\u00a0 Big hosts have lots of memory and lots of VMs.\u00a0 When an admin wants to do some host maintenance, they don\u2019t want to wait a weekend while 2-3 TB of virtual machine RAM (the max physical RAM in a vSphere host is 2 TB) is synchronized to other hosts by vMotion.\u00a0 Maybe we can limit it to 8 vMotions on 10 GbE.\u00a0 But enterprise datacenters might want to use bigger networking.\u00a0 I\u2019ve happily hit a sweet spot of 20 VMs in my current lab setup.\u00a0 I can see how it might be much bigger with more network capacity \u2026 in the sorts of large enterprise data centres that would embrace Infiniband.\u00a0 Eric, you might be all about getting your customers to spend or waste more money, but Hyper-V\u2019s ability to to vacate a host more quickly means that admins don\u2019t have to wait around for a weekend when they need to change out some hardware and the company has less risk and less waste.<\/p>\n Fact: Hyper-V supports more simultaneous Live Migrations and offers more flexibility than vSphere 5.1.<\/p>\n Software Defined Networking<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n A multi-tenant public cloud (hosting) must support the migration of VMs and software defined networking (SDN).\u00a0 This is a built-in feature in WS2012 Hyper-V.\u00a0 VMware are playing catching by recently acquiring yet another point solution to add to their 1990\u2019s style framework.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ve bundled this into anything yet, or how \u201cintegrated\u201d it is beyond a rename.<\/p>\n High Availability<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Bigger clusters = fewer units of administration = easier management = less overhead and cost.<\/p>\n The table says it all.<\/p>\n VMware FT (Fault Tolerance)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This is the old reliable that the Clint Eastwood\u2019s of virtualisation rant about to an empty conference room chair when trying to deny Hyper-V and every other fact has them befuddled.\u00a0 FT is nothing but a chocolate kettle; it\u2019s nice to look at but totally useless:<\/p>\n DR Replication<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Hyper-V has Hyper-V Replica for free.\u00a0 VMware now include some sort of replication that I know zip about.\u00a0 SRM does the vSphere orchestration.\u00a0 As for orchestration of Hyper-V Replica, I can easily do that in just a few lines of PowerShell code for Hyper-V Replica.\u00a0 I know a certain book<\/a> that will teach you all about that.\u00a0 Otherwise, System Center 2012 SP1 will do what you need if you require a GUI.<\/p>\n Beware the FUD on this one.\u00a0 The vFanboys are all about the orchestration right now and they are quite simply wrong because I can orchestrate Hyper-V Replica right now.\u00a0 In fact, I can do some really nice things with it, which I\u2019ll be happy to share for the cost of a book in the new year Cost<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n No competition here.\u00a0 Hyper-V is free.\u00a0 If you run Windows Server in your VMs then you\u2019re already buying Standard or Datacenter edition at the host level and using the virtualisation rights.\u00a0 If that\u2019s not how you\u2019re doing it then please send me your company\/customers name(s) so I can make some easy money<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can learn how to license Windows Server VMs legally using my recent post<\/a>.<\/p>\n That means you get all of what Hyper-V does for free.\u00a0 Choosing to run vSphere 5.1 with Windows Server VMs means you are adding the cost<\/a> of vSphere.\u00a0 OK, but for less than that cost I can license myself for a System Center SML and have all of System Center\u2019s private cloud and integrated enterprise systems management functionality.\u00a0 Of course, you can choose to spend more money for a collection receently acquired confusing VMware point solutions.\u00a0 But that\u2019s just my opinion of it.<\/p>\n EDIT: Scripting<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n WS2012 Hyper-V has complete PowerShell support, an easy to pick up (I only started in March) high level scripting language.\u00a0 You can do just about everything in PowerShell, enabling easy and rapid deployment or configuration change without rampant time consuming and mind numbing hammering of a mouse.\u00a0 You can do PowerShell CLI or scripting, with lots of error checking and decision making built-in.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been showing consultants in my crash course classes how they can take a few scripts from client site to client site and rapidly deploy customers with very little tweaking\/engineering.\u00a0 And I know a certain book \u2026 vSphere does have a CLI.\u00a0 I had to Google it.\u00a0 I never hear it being talked about.\u00a0 I know nothing about it other than it looked very basic compared to the power of PowerShell in my quick glimpse.\u00a0 Yes, there\u2019s an API, but that\u2019s for software developers, not consultants, engineers, or administrators.<\/p>\n I have to give a significant decision in favour of WS2012 Hyper-V here because of the ability to rapidly change or manage an environment with a few or with thousands of virtual machines from a single line of PowerShell.<\/p>\n Summary<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The facts<\/em> speak for themselves.\u00a0 WS2012 Hyper-V does more, scales out more, is build as the foundation for an enterprise cloud, and is effectively free.\u00a0 You can go ahead and use vSphere 5.1 if you want, but why would you wan to pay more for less?<\/p>\n Please read the original Microsoft document<\/a> that I took the tables from where you will find much more detail.<\/p>\n EDIT:<\/p>\n You’ve read what I have to say. Now go take a look at what Gartner thinks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Time to kick another wasp nest!\u00a0 I got so many nice comments after the last time In a previous post, I documented the comparison of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V with vSphere 5.0 as it was back at TechEd 2012 in June.\u00a0 Of course, things have changed since then.\u00a0 Hyper-V has scaled out again, and VMware … Continue reading “Comparison of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Versus vSphere 5.1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[181,195,103,118],"class_list":["post-13483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v","tag-hyper-v","tag-virtualisation","tag-vmware","tag-windows-server-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTechnorati Tags: Windows Server 2012<\/a>,Hyper-V<\/a>,VMware<\/a>,Virtualisation<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"