back to article If hypervisor is commodity, why is VMware still on top?

The hypervisor is a commodity. VMware's ESXi, Microsoft's Hyper-V and the open-source community's Xen and KVM are all right and proper tools for virtualising workloads. Does that mean we should all stampede away from expensive proprietary hypervisors and dine on the open-source freebies? This being IT, the answer is "it depends …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So Trevor finally learnt the difference between Hyper-V as part of Windows Server and Hyper-V Server (Free)!

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Always known the difference. The thing you never understood is that the difference doesn't matter. It's the management tools that matter.

      But since you sup on marketing, not infrastructure management, I expect you don't understand that yet.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        " Always known the difference"

        You should have won an Oscar for your feined ignorance during the Hyper-V video sessions you did via the Register before then...

        "The thing you never understood is that the difference doesn't matter."

        But it does. No license fees if you move your legacy / Linux systems onto Hyper-V Server. Versus you have to buy full Windows Server licenses for Hyper-V under Windows Server....Also Hyper-V Server has a lower overhead with a reduced attack surface, so is more secure and efficient with less downtime.

        "It's the management tools that matter."

        The choice of remote management tools is not limited by which version of Hyper-V you use.

        1. future research

          If you are not running windows and hence do not need a Windows server license. Why the hell would you be using Hyper-V.

          That's like wanting a motorbike, but getting a car instead and removing 2 of the wheels.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "If you are not running windows and hence do not need a Windows server license. Why the hell would you be using Hyper-V."

            Because it's totally free for the full featured version and is a very efficient, secure and scalable hypervisor.

        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Microsoft has a WONTFIX-class broken freebie version of Hyper-V server that is nothing more than a crippled version of Server Core + Hyper-V role. Congratulations. Free ESXi is *still* better, and KVM is a better choice than both. OOooooOOooOOooooo.

          Of course, nobody actually uses it. If you look at the adoption stats, much to my great dismay, virtually everyone using Hyper-V as their hypervisor is doing so not only with full versions of Windows Server...they do it with the GUI installed.

          Now, why might that be? It's because of the management tools, and because they want ease of setup. Management tools are important. I know that's something you are terrified to discuss - because it's where Microsoft looks like der lumpenfools - but it's true. Real people and real sysadmins in the real world actually give fucks about ease of use.

          Hyper-V server is broken. Server Core + Hyper-V is a miserable bitch to work with if something's gone wrong. So virtually everyone deploys full fat Windows as a hypervisor. Study after study after study finds this.

          What's interesting is that in terms of total deployed nodes, hyper-v server manages to almost equal Windows Server /w GUI deployments because a handful of really large deployments use it.

          Now, what's more interesting is that despite installing the full-GUI version of Windows Server, virtually nobody deploying more tan two nodes uses the Windows Server native Hyper-V tools. Hyper-V in practice for virtually every deployment means the full fat GUI to run the nodes and SCVMM to run the clusters.

          While 5nine has cult-like status amongst the SMB market they have only recently made any sort of break through into the midmarket and they are functionally absent from the enterprise. This means that small clusters can be - and increasingly are - run by 5nine, but large (or multiple) clusters are run by SCVMM.

          So when discussing Hyper-V in any practical sense you have the following:

          1) Full fat Windows installed in order to run VMs and have an actual GUI to configure the underlying hypervisor.

          2) 5Nine for small deployments.

          3) A drop-and-cut upgrade to SCVMM after you reach the magic pumpkin point with 5Nine.

          More critically, 5Nine's uptake has been dramatic in the past, oh 18 months or so. The last 8ish months have in really been the part where the name has spread and it is discussed openly. (Which is critical, because before about 8 months ago people treated using 5Nine as a point of shame.)

          What's not happening is people installing the broken Hyper-V server, fighting with each node and then using Windows 8 to remotely manage it with Microsoft's frustrating remote management tools. (Which is the other part of this that you always ignore. Only truly ill people want to use Windows 8 for anything, which has really suppressed the uptake of Hyper-V server.)

          So a discussion about Hyper-V is a discussion about Windows Server. Like it or not. Cheers.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "Hyper-V server that is nothing more than a crippled version of Server Core + Hyper-V role"

            Sounds like you have not learned the difference yet. Hyper-V server is not ain any way crippled. It's fully functional with all the Hyper-V features but with lower resource requirements and reduced attack surface.

            "they do it with the GUI installed."

            Only if you are incompetent. We run nearly all our Windows Servers and Hyper-V servers without a GUI, unless required for a specific third party application. As everyone should do. Hence why no GUI is the default when you install Windows Server.

            "Now, why might that be? It's because of the management tools, and because they want ease of setup."

            All the management tools can be run remotely from your desktop, if you can't cope with Powershell. The tools are identical to if you had a GUI on the server.

            "Study after study after study finds this."

            Azure doesn't, we don't, no one I know in senior Windows engineering roles does in new deployments, so link to these studies plural please? Sounds like you are way behind the times.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              "we don't, no one I know in senior Windows engineering roles does in new deployments,"

              To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish.

            2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              "Sounds like you have not learned the difference yet. Hyper-V server is not ain any way crippled. It's fully functional with all the Hyper-V features but with lower resource requirements and reduced attack surface."

              All the Hyper-V features, sure. But not the other features that make Windows Server such a great operating system, nor with a usable GUI. But hey, if you focus your thoughts narrowly enough you can prove any point, eh?

              "Only if you are incompetent. We run nearly all our Windows Servers and Hyper-V servers without a GUI, unless required for a specific third party application. As everyone should do. Hence why no GUI is the default when you install Windows Server."

              So the overwhelming majority of humans who are visually oriented are "incompetent"? Even those who can manage things via command line but prefer easier, simpler, faster and more intuitive interfaces? They're "incompetent" because they don't share your mutation that allows you to bypass billions of years of visual reference response wiring?

              Jibbers fucking Crabst. you're arrogant.

              "All the management tools can be run remotely from your desktop, if you can't cope with Powershell. The tools are identical to if you had a GUI on the server."

              Again, you completely ignore what I actually wrote. These tools require you to use an operating system that has been overwhelmingly rejected by the world, and they are significantly inferior to the tools offered by other hypervisors.

              All you are doing here is spouting Microsoft marketing propaganda. Again. Why do you feel the need to do this? Don't you have friends? A family? Or even an overused prono mag that occupies your attention such that you aren't constantly online haranguing people with Microsoft's broken vision for solving problems of 5 years ago?

              Microsoft isn't the solution to all problems. Their approach to management interfaces, UIs, or even how they treat their customers, partners and staff sure as hell aren't great. They are one possible solution to today's problems, with a passable hypervisor and shitty management tools. They also have a fetish for subscription licensing and getting my data into an insecure country run by madmen.

              And even if they somehow, magically, were to become the ultimate solution to all ills, your hostile and arrogant approach to "selling" people on the benefits of your tribal brand is completely fucking cracked. At this point, I wouldn't care if Microsoft handed out unicorns and bags of cash with every copy of Hyper-V, I wouldn't use the goddamned thing because it would mean that my user community was people like you!

              We get it. You really love Microsoft. Congratulations. Do you want a statue or something? The rest of us aren't fucking robots,ingesting integrals and pissing derivatives. We don't want to sit in a dark room and string together scripts to run our infrastructure. We don't even consider "running infrastructure" to be a full time job.

              The rest of the world has too many important things to do to waste our time becoming "specialists" in some bit of infrastructure. We have to go forth and make the company money by doing things like working out how to integrate and automate that infrastructure so that we can make more money with less manpower, or make more widgets with fewer mistakes.

              To do that, we rely on intuitive user interfaces. Things that allow us to not touch some element of the infrastructure for months - even years - but figure it out when needed in a matter of seconds. No memorizing commands. No scripts in a folder buried in some hierarchy. No debugging piles of linked PowerShell.

              We have money to make, things to do, lives to live. And we don't want to spend it dicking around setting up 8 fucking servers just to get a basic environment working, or "retraining" every 18 months to learn another college semester's worth of commands just to manage something that should have been easily handled by the goddamned developers in their UI to start with.

              All the other major companies playing this game seem able to crank out usable interfaces. Even the bloody open source projects. But Microsoft can't. And they don't care enough to even try. I mean hell, Microsoft have even killed Technet because they give zero fucks about hobbiests, junior admins or those who don't have enterprise resources backing their expensive and perpetual ongoing training.

              You advocate a world where systems administration is a massively specialized and specialist-focused endeavor and you champion the vendor that still perpetuates this myth. Everyone else wants you to be able to learn the basics and then adapt smoothly as new technologies come out.

              If for no other reason than sheer self preservation it makes sense not to engage with Microsoft. Because Microsoft wants to make such specialists that we all know more and more about less and less until we all know absolutely everything there is about absolutely nothing.

              And when our area of expertise is rolled into their cloud service and no longer available locally? Too bad, so sad. Reskill. At enormous cost in time and money.

              Why, why, why, WHY would anyone choose that? Why would they choose this archaic approach to things when superior alternatives exist? Microsoft isn't faster. It's not more efficient. It's not "better" in any objective sense.

              Microsoft is merely one competitor amongst many, and if they want to win the hearts, minds and wallets of the many then they have to offer a better experience - in the short term and the long term - than their competitors.

              They have flat out fucking failed at this for some time, an nowhere is that more clear than with hypervisors and their management tools.

              Maybe if you are ever able to comprehend the above you'll understand why so very many have left Microsoft's orbit, and why oh so very many are never going back.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      learnt the difference

      So what is the difference? It's Microsoft shit, and as we know the same product name can cunningly hide vastly differing UX (different apparent colors of gastrointestinal upheavals), so in this concrete case? Is the "free" part yet another kind of bait-and-switch trick?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "It's Microsoft shit, and as we know the same product name can cunningly hide vastly differing UX "

        Hyper-V Server doesn't have a GUI.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          UX != GUI.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            " UX != GUI."

            The UX reference above clearly did refer to the Windows 8 / Server 2012 GUI.

          2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            "UX != GUI"

            Certainly not for those who keep their pee in jars, nope. But a substantial percentage of the human race is visually oriented. So let's agree to disagree, hmm? There's the niche of people who do quadratic equations in their head for fun, then there's the entire rest of our species. For the overwhelming majority UX = GUI.

    3. Antonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Don't feed the RICHTO!

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      See http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2014/07/hyper-v-is-eating-vmwares-lunch/

  2. Spaceman Spiff

    Better the devil

    Better the devil you know, than the saint you don't?

  3. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    Sort of.. Xen/Xenserver are different

    Xenserver is built on Xen, and is pretty much a turnkey product as long as you like the way it works, not unlike ESXi in many ways. It's also now open source (except for, yes, VDI bits and a few other things)

    Xen itself is a tad different - it's the base hypervisor, and sometimes a bit of an arse to get going depending on what you're doing with it. You can tweak it at a fairly low level, though, which has its advantages, as is the fact it can work with just about any (x86, arm) Linux distrubution, NetBSD x86 (does a few things better than Linux, others not so well) and Solaris (never tried).

    However, it's a solid product and the design is mostly good. KVM is better and faster at a few things (PCI passthrough, for one), but doesn't seem to hang together quite as well - it's basically an (optional) qemu accelerator with a (rather good) vfio addon for hardware passthrough, rather than a bare metal hypervisor with a coupled host OS that drives devices.

    Just don't be tempted to use xen -unstable if your favourite feature of the day isn't around yet, you're likely to regret it. Specific, tested xen releases are fine, and if included in your distribution much easier than compiling from source.

    ESXi is bloody fantastic *if* all your hardware is supported, your network is perfect, nothing needs to be tweaked and you don't need to also use the glass console of the ESXi server. The problem comes when it doesn't work, the management tools decide not to play ball, or the next version with a killer feature is released, and it decides to kill off support for your motherboard/network card/raid controller for no particular reason other than because they can't be arsed to support it. In that case, just buy the new hardware - do *not* try and hack it to work.

    For work usage, I'd consider ESXi on nice certified hardware, Xenserver or at a pinch RHEL with KVM. For home, if VMWare Player/Workstation isn't sufficient and ESXi is overkill, I'd go for KVM first, then Xen.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

    Hyper-V is not a hypervisor. It is a phat insecure OS with an add-on like installing VirtualBox.

    The up time of the 1000+ VMWare and XEN servers I have installed over the years is typically equal to the age of the hardware. With Hyper-V up time is rarely more than a month (Since last Patch Tuesday)

    No sane IT guy uses the resources Windows server requires just for the role of a hypervisor, and an inferior one at that.

    Then besides the legitimate gripes of the management interface brought up here there is inconsistent reliability of clusters, you have to down a VM to expand a disk, all kinds of WTF shortfalls.

    1. Lusty

      Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

      So you don't patch your VMware boxes then? My Hyper-v implementations have all been very stable, but then I understand the difference between the hypervisor and the management partition. I also understand how to secure Windows, which these days is a hell of a lot easier than securing any other OS on the market free or otherwise.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        yum update -y added to cron

        Webmin for firewall config and changing default ports

        Fail2ban

        For the love of Jibbers *anything* other than Microsoft's CA

        Oh look, more secure than 90% of what's out there in 10 minutes. *shrug*

        1. Lusty

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          10 minutes is a long time. Policy in AD allows machines to be secure as soon as they boot after install including setting appropriate firewall rules for the intended role. Other solutions are gradually copying this kind of stuff but the MS implementation is second to none for large networks. Sadly most people assume it's insecure rather than doing the necessary research.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

            Puppet.

            *sigh* Noobs.

            1. Lusty

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              Lol if you think Puppet comes close to Windows management functionality you know even less than I thought about securing and managing enterprise Windows environments. Server 2003 had more advanced functionality and Windows has moved ahead significantly since then.

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                I know Puppet not only comes close to Windows management functionality, it surpasses it in many ways. The fact that you don't demonstrates nothing more than that you haven't actually learned anything about that which you are deriding.

                1. Loki688
                  Megaphone

                  Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                  @Trevor_Pott; If you like puppet, you will love salt (from saltstack). It's like puppet on steroids ... and then some. But, the best part of salt is not it's technical prowess, but to see your git repo shrink by 70%+ if you move from puppet to salt...

              2. Mentalfloss-1966

                Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                "Windows has moved ahead significantly since then." I can't wait for MS's AD to catch up to where Novell's eDirectory was in the 90's.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              "Puppet"

              Limited PoS that you have to CODE SCRIPTS!!! in RUBY!!! to get it to do what you want. Utterly inferior in pretty much every way to SCCM and Opalis. We binned it long ago and never looked back.

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                "Limited PoS that you have to CODE SCRIPTS!!! in RUBY!!! to get it to do what you want. Utterly inferior in pretty much every way to SCCM and Opalis. We binned it long ago and never looked back."

                So you don't actually know at all what you're talking about. Congratulations. You have proven your ignorance. Now why don't you attach your name to your words and own them, or are you the coward your tickbox says you are?

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                  "So you don't actually know at all what you're talking about."

                  Sounds pretty accurate to me:

                  "Puppet is a tool designed to manage the configuration of Unix-like and Microsoft Windows systems declaratively. The user describes system resources and their state, either using Puppet's declarative language or a Ruby DSL (domain-specific language)."

                  Opalis as part of System Centre (Orchestrator) is leagues ahead of Puppet in Windows centric multi platform automation, features and ease of use. I'm guessing you don't even know what it is. See http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2009/12/11/microsoft-acquires-opalis-software.aspx

                  and http://www.scorchcenter.com/IP-List for some of the integration options....

          2. wayward4now

            Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

            "10 minutes is a long time" WTF? This 10 minute example includes updating security patches via RPM. It's far far better than waiting months for patches when the Linux community can get updates within hours of a noted breach. I happen to use apt, but that is just another horse of course. Same same, I can get updates daily instead of bi-monthly. And I don't have to pay for stinkin' licenses to make the world's richest white guy richer.

            1. Lusty

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              "This 10 minute example includes updating security patches via RPM."

              A properly configured Hyper-v deployment patches before deploying to the hardware or virtual machine using offline servicing on the image. The administrator doesn't need to do anything, and the new deployment is immediately secure wi the latest patches. So yes, 10 minutes seems like an age when you're used to instant.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          "yum update -y added to cron

          etc

          etc"

          Versus Hyper-V Server:

          Install it - and it's secure and auto updated by default.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

            "Versus Hyper-V Server:

            Install it - and it's secure and auto updated by default."

            From this you are implying that Linux is insecure and does not auto-update by default. You're wrong.

            CentOS is secure by default. You have to add things to it if you want to more easily manage it, or you want to make it more usable whilst staying secure. This is no different than Hyper-V.

            Hyper-V needs to be joined to a domain controller to be actually usable. Then it gets it's config from the domain controller. CentOS needs the puppet agent installed, then it pulls down it's config from puppet. No real difference.

            What is different is that CentOS isn't completely fucking broken if I need to work on the node individually without the primary management tools. Hyper-V is.

            As virtually nobody uses Hyper-V server - stats are very clear on this, they use Windows Server - both OSes can grow from a "core" install containing not bloody much of anything to complete OSes capable of doing anything. By default, they install very small, very secure and with not bloody much to them.

            Oh, and I'll take my unpatched CentOS with SELINUX on by default over the unpatched Windows any day. There's a gap between "installed" and "fully up to date" while the systems are doing their update thing, and Linux is a hell of a lot less likely to be pwned during that time. (Always assume your network is compromised!)

            Meanwhile, I only have to reboot once after install with CentOS. Puppet goes on, configs it all, updates download, it reboots once and it's ready to rock. Secure the whole time, and actually usable, from console, remotely, what-have-you.

            And I don't need a domain controller! I'm not locked in to an ecosystem by one vendor that will just turn the knobs on pricing whenever they feel like it! In fact, I don't even have to pay for licences for my production systems at all. I only need support for my test & dev systems, where we'll actually be prototyping workloads. I can run entire datacenters off CentOS (or derivatives) as the production distro for free...just like tens of thousands of other companies.

            And no, there's no real difference between the "free" version and the "support included" version. The delta between Microsoft's "free" Hyper-V server and the full Windows Server is so big that Hyper-V server's adoption is limited to a handful of hyper-scale deployments and some real die hard Microsoft fans.

            But if you know Redhat then you know CentOS. They're the same goddamned thing. For that matter, there difference between SuSE and RedHat isn't that big anymore, and the skills cross over (and the default configs are so close) that it is less of a jump than going from Server 2003 to Server 2008 R2.

            Microsoft has a great hypervisor. But they've fucked up every aspect of the ecosystem, from pricing and limitations to management tools to chasing away all their partners in the name of getting their hostages moved to Azure.

            Put your fanboy goggles down and actually look at the bloody ecosystems as a whole, will you? It isn't about "company A has this feature" or "company B can do this, if you beat them properly". It's about the whole of the experience. And it's about the experience over years.

            How is actually setting up an environment from scratch? How is maintianing that environment over time? What are the long term costs? The time commitments? The training requirements? What is lock-in like? How does the vendor - and/or the community - treat customers/users/administrators?

            Are they trying to push you away from running your own infrastructure and towards paying even more to run your workloads on their American public cloud where they're beholden to a sociopathic government that doesn't' recognize the basic rights of it's own citizens, let alone the citizens of other countries?

            If I pick a hypervisor ecosystem what can I expect for myself (as the administrator) and my company over the next decade? The next two?

            Right from the installation of the "free" server through to "how you are treated over the course of decades" Microsoft is consistently "only just acceptable enough to not get binned, if you are already locked in to them." "They do the bare minimum and not one iota more" is not a great recommendation. It works if you're a monopoly, but it's worth nothing where there's actual competition.

            Microsoft will never learn that lesson. I can only pray VMware does. In the meantime, there are alternatives, and they're damned fine alternatives. Finally. they took long enough to get that way.

            1. wayward4now

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              Trevor, you certainly seem to attract your share of the Windows 50-centers. If one third of what they write is true, then the market share of Windows as server would be much much more.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                "then the market share of Windows as server would be much much more."

                75% market share for Windows Server (as per Forbes) is pretty good already imo. Making the 90%+ they have on the desktop isn't going to happen overnight as server OS requirements are far more varied...

      3. Mentalfloss-1966

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        No, I don't patch my VMWare hosts. In larger deployments all the management interfaces are on a VLAN only accessible by on site IT staff. The 100's of single, two server, and small HA deployments I've done have never had a problem. When I retire a host after replacing it with a newer box the up time is 3, 4, 5 years. You can't let a Windows server run idle anywhere near that long without crashing.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          "the up time is 3, 4, 5 years"

          And you think this somehow makes you a good administrator because you've ignored security patching and maintenance for 5 years? Time to grow up a bit kid. Uptime is not impressive, secure and stable systems are the goal and staying current with firmware and patches is the only way to achieve that sensibly. Anyone with experience will tell you that firmware will often prevent outages. Disk SMART updates often pre-fail disks from known bad batches to prevent downtime and data loss. Drivers must match firmwares, and software must match drivers. I've seen many a system fail because a driver was changes and not the firmware, and many vulnerabilities left open due to unmatched systems which led to malware spreading like wildfire. You may have been lucky so far, but you most certainly are not a good admin if you ignore patches for 5 years.

          1. Mentalfloss-1966

            Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

            Try to listen to yourself for a moment...Secure and stable, especially the stable...how much more stable of an environment can one deliver than letting it run for 5 years without a single problem? IDK...And look at the vulnerability list VMWare posted for the last few years. Look at the actual impact they have, add them all up and I feel safer leaving a VMWare server naked to the DMZ than one month's worth of MS updates.

          2. Richard Plinston

            Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

            > you've ignored security patching and maintenance for 5 years?

            Having an uptime of 5 years does not mean that "security patching and maintenance" has not been done.

            Windows has a file system with a flaw (or feature!) that a file cannot be deleted and replaced while the file is open. This is because the directory entry has both the filename and the start of the allocated file space. When a file that is open, such as a DLL, is to be updated it cannot be done while the system is running. It needs to be closed down and rebooted. The final part of the updating is done by a script when the system restarts.

            In Unix like file systems the directory entry has the filename and an inode number. The inode is used for the actual file access after the file has been opened. When a file is deleted the directory entry is removed but the inode remains until all file opens on that inode are closed. This ensure that the allocated space for the file is not overwritten. A new file of the same name can be created with a new inode and file blocks. Any new opens of that filename will get the new file.

            So, except for the core kernel, all system files, and all other files, can be updated 'in flight' without any problem. This is something that Windows can never do (until it adopts a Unix like file system).

            Windows admins and users think that rebooting is something that needs to be done on a regular basis, not just for updates. Unix/Linus/BSD, Novell Netware, and others think that reboots only happen when the power fails or hardware is to be upgraded.

            1. Lusty

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              "Having an uptime of 5 years does not mean that "security patching and maintenance" has not been done."

              He was talking about VMware, so yes it does mean no patching or maintenance. It's also very hard to update your firmware without downtime on the box. The smart people design so that components can be taken offline without service downtime. This involves redundancy, clustering, load balancing etc. and is the only way to create a resilient service. Having a massive uptime on a single box is a sign of a naive administrator who will eventually come unstuck and cause massive issues for the company.

              1. Mentalfloss-1966

                Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                Lusty, byte me, if I upgraded my 4.x boxes when 5.0 first came out how many 100's of PSOD's would I have been dealing with? Hard core VMWare admins who know better are nodding their heads...Don't touch what isn't broken is something learned by the best of engineers out there. Maybe someday you too,

                1. Lusty

                  Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

                  You have yet to learn your lessons by the look of it. That's generally the attitude of small environment admins who are king of their world, or BOFHs as we call them. Real admins do their job and keep things up to date with proper change control and testing to ensure platform stability AND SECURITY. Just because it didn't crash doesn't mean it isn't vulnerable, and there have been numerous stability and security issues with VMware 5.x, along with patches which have added functionality such as Windows 2012 support. Of course, you probably still run Windows Server 2003 so that wouldn't bother you, because that's also "stable".

            2. Groaning Ninny

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              Any kernel update (on Linux at least, I think it'll be the same for BSD) requires a kernel reload.

              You can do this without a power cycle using kexec, but even this gives me a 30 second downtime.

              I know ksplice has been available for a while now, were you talking about using that? Or perhaps, were you not updating your kernel properly?

            3. Lysenko

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              >>Unix/Linus/BSD, Novell Netware, and others think that reboots only happen when the power fails...

              Which happens every 90 days or so at minimum as you deliberately kill the power to your critical systems in order to verify that failover to the auxiliary systems work as expected and that the systems you knocked offline come back up again correctly?

            4. Getmo
              Holmes

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              And yet my phone, Edge router, Playstation, and Smart TV all have to reboot after firmware upgrades.... so maybe the problem is not so unique to Windows?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          "No, I don't patch my VMWare hosts"

          Then you take a risk:

          Vulnerability Report: VMware vCenter Server 5.x

          http://secunia.com/advisories/product/40141/

          Affected By 296 Vulnerabilities

          Vulnerability Report: VMware ESXi 5.x

          http://secunia.com/community/advisories/product/39098

          Affected By 243 Vulnerabilities

          "You can't let a Windows server run idle anywhere near that long without crashing."

          Not true - We have recently found a number of Server 2003 boxes with over 5 years uptime and still working fine.

          1. Mentalfloss-1966

            Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

            http://secunia.com/advisories/product/40141/

            Troll. You know it. Not one of the advisories matters as much as one month of MS updates.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

              "Not one of the advisories matters as much as one month of MS updates."

              Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 has had far fewer vulnerabilities than any competing commercially supported hypervisor of similar age. The vast majority of MS updates don't apply to Hyper-V Server...

        3. Gostev

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          Well, you don't only patch hosts for security reasons... I don't know if you are reading patch notes at all, but some issues being patched can cause data corruption, or production VMs being impacted with certain operations... so this is a strange practice to me.

      4. Aernoud

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        Yes VSphere has patches, but very few compared to Hyper-V. Also vSphere patches, if they happen almost never require amhost reboot, while Hyper-V does all the time. I once saw some stats, about 20-30 critical pachs with host reboot per year formHyper-V vs an avg of 1 patch per year for vSphere without reboot. And most of thOse patches probably have nothing to do with The Hyper-V part of Windos...

    2. thondwe

      Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

      (VMware Site, just starting to look at HyperV)

      Usual FUD around Hyper-V then - Hyper-V shares it's architecture model with Xen I believe - i.e. it's a Microkernel with the drivers in a privileged Virtual Machine (Domain 0 in Xen terms). HyperV "free" includes a limited number of services - Firewall, Management bits, etc. which run in this VM.

      ESXi bundles all its services into one system - so drivers, firewalls, management bits, etc.

      Patch management is required for both systems, and ESXi has been broken on more than one occasion by patches. However, the Patch Tuesday patches so far appear not to apply to Hyper-V - others may confirm this, but my test box hasn't been touched for 4 months so far.

      So I see ESXi and HyperV on a par nowadays - they just work - the management tools (SCVMM vs vCenter) is a different story

      1. a_milan

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        For me, this was the point of the article - virtualization is solved problem, management is the next battlefield. And so far MS SCxxx is what's killing Hyper-V.

        From what I've seen (in a mixed shop, half Linux/Unix, half Windows), you need 60% more Windows sysadmins for comparable server landscape. on virtualization, Hyper-V seemed to take at least 100% more work compared to VMWare - we had it for 4 years but killed it off because of this.

        Major difference is that Linux guys typically also do SAN, backup and storage, so turn out to be at least 100% more effective for the money. There are such multitasking Windows guys (and gals) but those are much much rarer beasts.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        "HyperV "free" includes a limited number of services - Firewall, Management bits, etc. which run in this VM."

        Hyper-v Server (Free) includes EVERYTHING for Hyper-V that the paid version does.

      3. Mentalfloss-1966

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        thondwe, no Hyper-V is not on par with anything. VMs perform less efficiently, cost of ownership is much higher, all the typical MS disadvantages.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          "VMs perform less efficiently"

          Hyper-V significantly outperforms KVM in most regards, and outperforms VMware 5 for IOs, and was the first hypervisor to hit 1 million IOPS in a single OS instance. (I havn't seen benchmark numbers for VMware 6 yet, so it might have caught up).

          "cost of ownership is much higher"

          Hyper-V Server has the lowest TCO of any commercially supported Hypervisor.

          "all the typical MS disadvantages."

          All the usual made up rubbish.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

      "Hyper-V is not a hypervisor. It is a phat insecure OS with an add-on like installing VirtualBox."

      I think you are confused. That is what virtualisation under Linux is like.

      Hyper-V Server on the other hand IS a dedicated Hypervisor with no need for an OS.

      "The up time of the 1000+ VMWare and XEN servers I have installed over the years is typically equal to the age of the hardware."

      So you don't patch the vastly largely number of holes that VMware has versus Hyper-V ?

      "you have to down a VM to expand a disk, all kinds of WTF shortfalls."

      No you don't. You can expand an online disk on an online VM with no downtime under Hyper-V.

      1. Getmo
        Unhappy

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        "No you don't. You can expand an online disk on an online VM with no downtime under Hyper-V."

        This is a new feature that was just added to Server 2012 R2. I know because I'm studying for MS Cert exams and that was a part I was told to study. I got excited at work one day when I needed to expand a file server's VHD, perfect opportunity to practice my new skillz.... only to find that in Server 2012 the feature wasn't implemented yet.

        Must take VM down to resize VHD :'(

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          @Getmo Ah, but don't forget the first rule of brand tribalism: compare the latest, greatest from your favourite brand to something several years out of date by the competition. Don't do things like "compare the most deployed version of your favourite brand versus the most deployed version of the competition", or even newest to newest. Cherry pick!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

          "This is a new feature that was just added to Server 2012 R2"

          Which was released about 2 years ago. Hardly new...

      2. Mentalfloss-1966

        Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

        "you have to down a VM to expand a disk, all kinds of WTF shortfalls."

        No you don't. You can expand an online disk on an online VM with no downtime under Hyper-V.

        No, you can not expand a VM on a SAN in a Microsoft <not>HA environment.

  5. Nate Amsden

    Maybe not a commodity

    The article seems to try to claim it is a commodity then goes and says why it's apparently not yet (I would agree it is not yet too).

    Citrix has been interesting to me for a while, they won't (in my experience) bat an eye and try to sell you Xen if you say you're interested in VMware. They know VMware is better, Xen is an option if you are *really* cost conscious, but I've admired them to some extent to know that it's not a competitive product and don't try to sell it to the wrong customers. I haven't used XenServer myself but am a Netscaler and XenApp(tiny installation) customer.

    It's too bad the state of tools for KVM haven't gotten better yet. There's quite an opportunity out there for someone to step up.. (I haven't used KVM either). But of course historically the open source crew can't stay focused for more than 30 seconds on usability they get bored and start bolting on new features (I say this as a Linux server+desktop user for almost 20 years now).

    Maybe KVM's future is just being a background thing in Openstack and the management layers will be built for openstack (again haven't used Openstack but people that I trust that use it tell me it's still not stable, so I have no interest in touching it in the meantime).

    For me, VMware has been probably the most solid piece of software I've ever used in my career. I have had a single PSOD in almost 10 years of using ESX/ESXi (PSOD was triggered by a failing voltage regulator). Other than that no crashes, very few bugs (practically a rounding error, but keep in mind I leverage only a fraction of the platforms abilities, probably sticking to things that are the most mature). I've certainly had FAR fewer support tickets with vmware than I have for any other software or even hardware product I have used. Citrix just called me yesterday saying me opening 10 tickets so far this year on Netscaler set off a alarm on their end thinking maybe I'm having a lot of problems and maybe I need more dedicated support resources. I told them no, that is pretty typical. Lots of issues but I am still a happy customer. I've had one memory leak they have been unable to trace for the past 18 months.

    VMware just runs and runs and runs......the track record with me is impeccable. The only thing that got me even THINKING about changing was the vRAM tax a few years ago. I have seen absolutely nothing from hyper-v, Xen, or KVM which makes me even want to even look at them still(I do keep very loose track of them).

    The cost for vSphere for me is still quite reasonable(enterprise+). I do not subscribe to the most sophisticated management tools, our needs are pretty basic. Especially as systems become more powerful, my newest DL380Gen9s have the newer 18 core/36 thread Intel chips in them. I want to say my early ESX 3.5 systems were DL380G5 with dual socket quad core, I think the entry level ESX at the time(no vmotion etc) was $3500 for 2 sockets. Which came to $437/core (not sure if that included support or not). Latest systems are about $10k for 2 sockets w/3 year support enterprise+ which is about $277/core. So overall cost is down quite a bit(while features are way up), not only that of course per core performance is much better than 9 years ago. I'm happy.

    I've been a vmware customer since 1999, I still have my 'vmware for linux 1.0.2' CD around here somewhere. Their stuff works really well, and for my organization and myself the cost is still very worth it. Now that vRAM tax with my 384G servers would of been too much, but fortunately that never materialized as a problem for us (we never used the versions that had that tax imposed).

  6. ecarlseen

    How far out can you depend on Microsoft?

    One major thing keeping us away from HyperV is Microsoft's schizophrenic management culture over the past decade+. At this particular moment their ship looks like it's headed in the right direction, but they seem to always tack off on some weird, suicidal notion every few years. VMWare has had its share of stupid (being forced to use the deeply awful web console in ESX 5.5, combined with partial reliance on the .NET client), but they've never done anything "Metro interface on Windows 2012 server" stupid.

    1. Lusty

      Re: How far out can you depend on Microsoft?

      "they've never done anything "Metro interface on Windows 2012 server" stupid."

      Moving TO Flash when world+dog was going HTML5 for the web interface must surely count? Metro at least had good reasoning behind the decision if you care to read the dev blogs.

      1. ecarlseen

        Re: How far out can you depend on Microsoft?

        I'd agree that building the web client on Flash was an inexplicable and inexcusable decision (part of my reason for calling it "deeply awful"), especially when you consider how good some of the HTML5 interfaces to complex systems are these days (Cisco's brand-new HTML5 management tool for UCS comes to mind).

        But, sorry, Metro on a server has exactly zero redeeming value in my book. Heck, Metro on a desktop is a fairly broken paradigm as well. On a phone or tablet where you don't have the screen real estate for a properly windowed UI, then fine, whatever. On a full-sized screen it's reminds me of switching between graphical applications under DOS with Desqview. I already lived through the 1980s once and don't need to do it again.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: How far out can you depend on Microsoft?

          "Metro on a server has exactly zero redeeming value in my book"

          The default on Windows Server is no Metro, no GUI.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Wreck", "wrecking"

    English, dude, do you speak it?

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: "Wreck", "wrecking"

      Her Majesty's Canadian English, yes sir. Why, what bastard variant do you speak?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "Wreck", "wrecking"

        Why, the Queen's own English, thank you for asking!

        "A is (perceived to be) better than B" => "A ****WRECKS*** B stop the presses"

        The bias of the author is evident in the use of such emotive wordology (I'll be submitting that word to Liz next week after a good sleep.) If you are paid per word, you could have used such terms as "kicks into touch", "absolutely trounces", or perhaps "is a bit better". Too high brow?

        1. YetAnotherJoeBlow

          Re: "Wreck", "wrecking"

          I sent this review to a client of mine who switches his opinions and requirements on a daily basis. He called me after reading the article and made up his mind - informed. Thanks Trevor.

        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: "Wreck", "wrecking"

          You are correct, I am extremely biased towards ease of use and lack of frustration when managing a product. And the delta between some of the experiences here is far more than "a little bit better". It is most definitely into "completely fucking wrecks it" territory.

          Also: if you speak "the Queen's English" you should understand the use of "wrecks" in this context. Unless you're from that bizarre island of poncy gits with sticks up their pigus. Then you don't so much "speak" the language as snark it. That's okay, from down here all we notice from beyond your long noses is the disturbing amount of hair in them.

          1. Antonymous Coward
            Facepalm

            Re: "Wreck", "wrecking"

            *PLEASE* stop feeding the RICHTO!

            It was a good, informative, considered, helpful article. The Microsoft Corporation Inc. didn't "win" it. The RICHTO has been activated. Please don't feed it.

            PS I don't think that even the gross and unforgivable crime against humanity of spawning and harbouring the RICHTO justifies this: "bizarre island of poncy gits with sticks up their pigus"

            *PLEASE* stop feeding the RICHTO!

          2. lucki bstard

            Re: "Wreck", "wrecking"

            Don't forget there is a big difference between 'Formal English' and everyday English. It’s all about ease of use, if I use formal English I'm going to confuse people. If I use colloquialisms and everyday English then it gets the message over quickly and effectively.

            Although I have to agree that with the odd people down south in the US, speaking slowly also helps. For some reason they can't cope with an English accent that isn't straight out of Pride and Prejudice.

  8. W. Anderson

    Marketing and being established is king

    The fact that Xen and KVM are not offered with nationally recognized professional support services and brands that are "perceived" to be on same level as VMWare solutions is probably one of the reasons that ESXi and VSphere remain dominant. Business owners only recognize technology from major marketing and propaganda programs.

    In regard to Microsoft Hyper-V, the answer to question posed - "For that matter, why is Hyper-V – which is a perfectly capable and credible hypervisor – lagging so far behind ESXi?" has everything to do with the fact that Hyper-V is a Microsoft Windows Operating System (OS) ONLY based virtualization, and that in mid-range and high end virtualization and Cloud Comupting commercial environments, Window is a frog by comparison to Enterprise Linux and *NIX (some UNIX and BSD UNIX-like) - for robust Reliability, Flexibility, Scalability/Performance, and most "critically" enterprise class (or even desktop) strong Security.

    The additional annual cost of "putting out security and reliability fires" constantly must therefore be also calculated into the overall Microsoft solution in such comparisons.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Marketing and being established is king

      ""For that matter, why is Hyper-V – which is a perfectly capable and credible hypervisor – lagging so far behind ESXi?" "

      It's not that far behind - hyper-V has over 30% market share versus 46% for VMware.

      "everything to do with the fact that Hyper-V is a Microsoft Windows Operating System (OS) ONLY based virtualization"

      Utter bollocks. Hyper-V Server has no version of Windows installed. Unlike say Linux where virtualisation is always a bolt on to the standard OS.

  9. E 2

    Admin tools, management tools, monitoring tools, APIs, instrumentation and documentation

    None of the competitors can touch VMWare for admin tools, management tools, monitoring tools, APIs, instrumentation and documentation.

    1. Lusty

      Re: Admin tools, management tools, monitoring tools, APIs, instrumentation and documentation

      AWS is a direct competitor as far as I'm concerned and the tools there make VMware look over complicated.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Admin tools, management tools, monitoring tools, APIs, instrumentation and documentation

        "AWS is a direct competitor"

        Fucking Americans. there ate 7 billion of us that don't live inside your Orwellian nightmare and who don't want to. Your yankee-run public clouds aren't a competitor at all. Not for us. If we're going to use cloud computing it needs to be from companies run in countries that acknowledge that we have rights. And no, a foreign datacenter isn't enough. Ask the Irish.

  10. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    WTF?

    What is this I don't even

    I see the Microsoft fanboys are out in force.

    Microsoft fanboys.

    Microsoft. Fanboys.

    Fanboys for Microsoft.

    Hmm, no, I just can't wrap my head around their existence, no matter how I try.

  11. Terafirma-NZ

    doesn't have to be like this

    I bet if you put all the developers and people working on different KVM management tools onto a single track you would surpass the number of engineers VMware has on vCenter. This would mean we could have an actual replacement or at least threaten VMware with something. Currently the only option is to mention MS and even if you do they just laugh and say "good luck"

    This is the inherent problem with Open Source people get pissy and fork or do their own thing. You can't fire a developer who is a volunteer and you cannot stop them doing their own thing. Linux itself has this problem when Linus finishes up who will be the voice of control to keep things together or will it become a room of shouting idiots pushing for their need over moving forward with a common goal.

    1. FrankAlphaXII
      Trollface

      Re: doesn't have to be like this

      >>Linux itself has this problem when Linus finishes up who will be the voice of control to keep things together or will it become a room of shouting idiots pushing for their need over moving forward with a common goal.

      If you're lucky, it'll be Lennart that takes over. If you're unlucky, it'll be Theo instead.

      And I'd say you're probably screwed either way in that case, so you'd better figure out how to make Linus live forever.

      (And yes, I'm kidding, before anyone gets their knickers in a knot over it)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: doesn't have to be like this

        Can't imagine what part you're kidding about. Lennart is already well underway with the task of destroying Linux from within, and Theo would simply scorch the Linux earth altogether.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Snort.

    "OpenStack is well into "people who keep pee in jars" territory all on its own"

    Thank you sir for turning my mug of coffee into a neti pot and my nose into a scalded, hairless and vaguely java-smelling appendage.

  13. Desidero

    I was left pondering whether that monkey could actually wig out if he'd been lobotomized, and if the crack actually cut through the stupor, shouldn't it be considered "good"? The Reg has become quite the site for contemplating life's deepest meanings... through your nose.

  14. FrankAlphaXII
    Thumb Up

    Trevor, I must say I haven't genuinely laughed at an article on The Register this hard in a long time.

    Not because of the actual subject matter or content, mind, which like usual with your articles I learned a bit about virtualization, as I've only ever really used virtualization on a very small scale with VirtualBox to test out operating systems with, but because of some of the expressions you used, like "a lobotomized monkey wigging out on bad crack" or the openstack/pee in jars thing.

    If they still had voting on articles you'd be getting a 10 for being funny. Keep it up Sir.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
      Pint

      RIght. Barkeep, drinks all around. And make sure they're flammable, damn it!

  15. steamrunner

    The comment "VMware GUI-based management tools, however, absolutely wreck Microsoft's, especially when dealing with large deployments" particularly caught my eye here. Considering how bloody awful VMware's GUI tools actually are, for that statement to be true then Microsoft's must truly be beyond abysmal.

    (Disclosure, I do basic VMware management and network-y stuff most days, and I don't know Hyper-V from Adam - and I'm now thanking [$deity] for that.)

    Following on from that, though, I must be fair and give a little tip-of-the-hat to Citrix for XenServer. In particular, XenCenter. Basic(ish) XenServer may be, feature-wise, compared to the juggernaut (and massive eco-system) that is vSphere, but XenCenter is to the vSphere Client(s)/vCenter hash-up what a decent, quality fish-and-chips is to the dog's left-over four-day-old dinner: simple, effective, easy-to-use and fills the (admittedly dietarily basic) spot. Despite the fact my use of XenServer is now very limited compared to the competition, in those few remaining times I fire up XenCenter I still get that "oh my [$deity], this is so clean and easy" vibe that I don't get from anything VMware. As this article focussed a fair bit on practical usability, XenCenter not being mentioned is maybe a wee a bit unfair. If you just want to fire up a bunch of VMs on a server easily, without much fuss, don't care about the toys, and just want the basics provided in an understandable interface, it does the job pretty well and is worth ten minutes of anyone's time to play with.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      "Considering how bloody awful VMware's GUI tools actually are, for that statement to be true then Microsoft's must truly be beyond abysmal."

      They are. Read the whole bit about the fustercluck you have to go through just to mount an ISO to install a VM. Microsoft gives negative fucks about their user base. If Windows 8 didn't teach you that, well...nothing will.

      1. wayward4now

        Trevor, just where does OpenVZ fit in this scheme of things?? I use Proxmox, which uses openVZ (and KVM which I haven't had reason to use) and it's been a cake walk to use for a small personal Linux cluster, while I have heard of Proxmox clusters running into thousands of nodes. So, in the middle of this discussion, should it be mentioned?? Keep it up, Ric

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          I haven't seen much OpenVZ in production, nor heard of it used in more than some niche cases. It's out there, to be sure, but like all container tech it's not yet ascendant. Try this series of 4 articles for my look at containers, including OpenVZ:

          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/28/docker_part_1_the_history_of_docker/

          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/01/docker_part_2_the_libcontainer_evolution/

          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/02/docker_part_3_containers_versus_hypervisors/

          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/04/docker_part_4_prognostication_microsoft_and_the_red_wedding/

  16. AndrewDu

    " because there is a free edition for home labs "

    Well of course there used to be a free edition of Hyper-V (the real thing, not the toy one) for home labs...until Microsoft, in the biggest and most accurate shot-in-the-foot of recent years, abolished the Technet subscription. It's almost like they don't want anyone to learn their technologies any more...

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Just buy a subscription from Azure! What do you mean you don't want to pay every month forever? And what do you mean "data sovereignty" and "foreigner rights"? Now you're just being difficult.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Well of course there used to be a free edition of Hyper-V (the real thing, not the toy one) for home labs...until Microsoft, in the biggest and most accurate shot-in-the-foot of recent years, abolished the Technet subscription. "

      Hyper-V server latest version is still totally free - anyone can download it. The fully featured version with no limitations.

  17. @CharbelNemnom

    Why Hyper-V is On Top?

    @Trevor,

    I believe that you learnt a lot about Hyper-V from this thread... so it's the time to correct this sentence:

    [because as soon as you're trying to use Hyper-V Server (or as part of Windows Core) it's a right pain to get going].

    Hyper-V Server is not part of Windows Core!

    And before you start your comparison between the giant Hypervisors, start learning PowerShell so you can manage all your Hypervisors from Microsoft top management tool that has been adopted by VMware!

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Why Hyper-V is On Top?

      I don't recall saying Hyper-V server is "part of Windows Core". I recall saying the difference between Windows Core + Hyper-V and Hyper-V server is functionally non existent, so long as you leave Windows Core at a minimal install.

      Except, you know, the part where Windows Core costs money, isn't completely fucking WONTFIX broken and can be turned into a real server with a few commands. But if you're doing everything remotely, then the difference between the two is "licensing" and "Hyper-V server is slightly more miserable to get connected and set up than Windows Core".

      As for "learn some PowerShell", I know lots of PowerShell. Knowing PowerShell and liking it are completely different things. I also am aware of how people actually use their tools in the real world. Survey after survey, study after study.

      You'll find "people who use PowerShell for day to day management" are a pretty small subset. most administrators are just fine using PowerShell for automation. Only the "pee in jars" types use it for management.

      And to be perfectly blunt, if I was going to go full "pee in jars" on something, why the metric fnord wouldn't I just go full Openstack? It doesn't cost me my left testicle, and is so modular and open I don't get locked into anything. Openstack is superior in virtually every way to Microsoft and their wretched ecosystem.

      And holy pants batman, they even recognize that real human being need proper GUIs to work with tools on a day to day basis without going completely batshit bananas bonkers. That's right, ladies and germs: it's the open source community are the ones who have embraced ease of use and Microsoft and their fanboys are the ones telling us to manage every little thing from a command line.

      So yeah, take your brand tribalism and go right back under your bridge. You can come back out when Microsoft gives enough fucks about their community to bring back Technet subscriptions and not a moment before.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why Hyper-V is On Top?

        "Survey after survey, study after study."

        Links to at least 2 of each?

        "Only the "pee in jars" types use it for management."

        So that makes all *NIX admins pee in the jar types?

        "Openstack is superior in virtually every way to Microsoft and their wretched ecosystem."

        Openstack runs Hyper-V just fine. It's the best free Hypervisor option imo.

  18. lucki bstard

    Soft skills

    Judging by the comments etc especially about patching and having to have redundancy, scheduled downtime etc Maybe an article on soft skills required for IT and the ability to manager your manager is long overdue.

    There is a point where having technical skills alone is not enough if your unable to communicate effectively with your management.

  19. Clopy

    Privacy and security in cloud management

    That was a truly interesting take on the hypervisor wars.

    I'm a co-founder on one of the management services mentioned in the article, Mist.io. The lack of simple yet powerfull management and monitoring tools (especially for KVM at the time) was one of the main reasons we decided to built our service.

    Security-wise, the whole "giving an American company access to the servers/cloud accounts that my entire business runs on" thing, makes sense, and that is why the management interface is open-source and available for in-house installations. By using the open-source version, you get to keep all your SSH and API keys locally, so no sensitive data will be stored on our servers. Here is the github url for anyone that wants to give it a try:

    https://github.com/mistio/mist.io

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Privacy and security in cloud management

      Hey Clopy,

      The think about Mist.io is that the whole "it's in the cloud" is a huge seller. It would be really cool if you could set up partnerships with companies in different geos and license the full version out to them. They could then run a Mist.io cloud service for geolocal customers and still be within their legal framework. Those customers get the full advantage of the Mist.io cloud offering without the lengthy setup.

      Now THAT arrangement...that would be worth some damned good money, because Mist.io is a great product. :)

  20. Maventi
    Pint

    Fantastic read Trevor, and totally reflects my own experience with all of those platforms! Pity I don't have such a way with words.

  21. Sirius Lee

    VMWare is the only one to charge

    If your criterion is which company make more from selling a commodity product then, yes, VMWare may win. But if your criteron is, say, workloads run I'll bet it doesn't come close. AWS uses a variant of Xen so in terms of workload this one use of Xen is enormous but no one is counting the revenue attributable to its use. I'm typing this response on a Windows machine hosted by Xen-powered hardware. Likewise with Hyper-V. I have used Hyper-V extensively and I've found it to be great. I am sure there are many scenarios where those with different use-cases will find Hyper-V lacking but they are not ones affecting me and, I suspect, do not affect many others.

    It seems to me that the same mindset that buys into VMWare is similar to that which buys into the iPhone. To some people it is a no-brainer to pay a premium for an iPhone. To others it's insane.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Xen and KVM

    Having run both platforms, my experience tilts to the effectiveness of Xen over KVM. Both Packages offer great Linux guest vm support and agent drivers. Linux vm's just fly using either. Support for MS window agents and drivers is where Xen/Citrix excel.

    We went from Xen/Citrix to KVM for about a year. After seeing the abysmal Windows performance on KVM, we tested the same setup using Citrix xen 6.2 and quickly switched again.

    With the release of Xen 6.5, We are all smiling at the incredible speed and memory improvements made with this edition. We applaud the engineers at Citrix for their work on 6.5!

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