VMWare Vs Hyper-V, can both do the job?

So I think I have convinced my NetAdmin that we need to Virtualize our NOC. We currently have an ESXi sever and Hyper-V server deployed. Only because they are free. But I’ve told them that I don’t feel comfortable deploying critical systems on those servers without any fault tolerance.

Most of our servers are between the 6 and 10 year mark and need to be replaced. We have about 30 to 35 running the typical W2k3, W2k8, some W2k, and a couple CentOS boxes. AD, DNS, DHCP, WSUS, some IIS dev boxes, Lotus Domino(hopefully moving to Exchange), CommVault Backup, Accounting, etc. We have a NetApp for our storage.

First question, can Hyper-V do the job of VMware for a small office?

You don’t have to convince me that VMWare is the best, but the price point is not. Probably the only way we’re going to do this is with MS because the budget is at a slow drip.

I was sent this today;
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/compare/vmware-cost-comparisons.mspx

Second, VSphere manages ESX servers like SCVMM manages Hyper-V servers, right? Can management be done without VSphere or SCVMM? Are they necessary for a proper deployment in a small office?

Third what kind of fault tolerance should I be looking at? Are MS failover clusters good enough for the job or should we think about something more complex?

Last, I keep hearing from CDW and VMWare they have a tool that I can run and see what servers are a good candidate for virtulization, but they don’t seem to want to tell me what tool that is without them coming in and running it themselves so they can of course try and sell me stuff.

What tools would you guys recommend to assess candidates for server virtualization?

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blargoe

What are you using for storage?

If you already have shared storage, you can get vSphere Essentials Plus for less about $3000 which will entitle you (also limit you) to 3 hosts and the management software, and you'll get HA with that.

jibbajabba

blargoe wrote: »

What are you using for storage?

If you already have shared storage, you can get vSphere Essentials Plus for less about $3000 which will entitle you (also limit you) to 3 hosts and the management software, and you'll get HA with that.

THe little nugget to know is that they have removed vmotion from the essential package

But you mention Fault Tolerance .. With Hyper-V you will have to create a clustered solution, which can easily add up on money as well ..

And yes, you don't need the vCenter (not vSphere as this is the actuall "Version" of the product, and not the management bit) to manage the infrastructure. But in order to get fault tolerance, such as HA , or vmotion including DRS, you will still need a virtual Center (vCenter) as this is the bit which will then manage the individual hosts.

If money is an issue, you will have to consider support costs as well ... how much downtime can you accept etc., but considering that NOC normally operates 24/7, you will probably have to get a platinum contract with vmware which isn't cheap either .. I don't know if Microsoft offers something similar though ...

Whether the MSS Cluster solution is what you need etc., depends all in how "fault tolerant" you want the setup to be ... If one node goes down, the vms are obviously off at that moment and turn back on on another node. vmware now has Fault Tolerance too which means you can get pretty much 100% uptime as two vms running at the same time on two different nodes (actually the same vm runs as a mirror on another node).. so if one node goes down - the user won't feel a difference ..

See an FT demo here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCMMwGC0hD8

But uptime costs ....

blargoe

Essentials Plus does include HA, but not DRS or vMotion:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

pwjohnston

Gomjaba wrote: »

Whether the MSS Cluster solution is what you need etc., depends all in how "fault tolerant" you want the setup to be ... If one node goes down, the vms are obviously off at that moment and turn back on on another node..

Well VMWare said they don't see any reason we couldn't get down to a 10:1 ratio. So I was thinking 6 servers converted into 3 failover clusters.

I was trying to convince them to get a Blade enclosure with 6 blades in it, but that's probably not going to be reasonable. They don't see a benefit from get the blade versus buying 6 rack servers outright.

astorrs

pwjohnston wrote: »

Well VMWare said they don't see any reason we couldn't get down to a 10:1 ratio. So I was thinking 6 servers converted into 3 failover clusters.

I was trying to convince them to get a Blade enclosure with 6 blades in it, but that's probably not going to be reasonable. They don't see a benefit from get the blade versus buying 6 rack servers outright.

10:1 is very conservative. With today's servers I'm seeing 25:1 to 40:1. 3 servers is likely more than adequate (assuming 1 is for HA). Obviously it will depend on the specific requirements of the VMs you are using.

You'll should either buy a project license for PlateSpin Recon and do it yourself or have someone come in and do a VMware Capacity Planner analysis so you have hard numbers to work with.

No matter whether you pick VMware or Microsoft, your biggest cost will be shared storage.

Edit: Also I wouldn't bother with blades in such a small environment. Rack servers are going to provide a lower TCO in this case.

blargoe

I agree on the rack servers over the blade servers. They also afford the most flexibility in configuration (and reconfiguration)

Hyper-Me

I know most of the guys here are VMware guys (and for good reason)

We use Hyper-V in a fairly sizeable organization and also run a Hyper-V Failover Cluster.

It works well, in fact it saved our rear end today. Dont skimp on your iSCSI storage device, though.

For a small to medium shop, Hyper-V is great (and cost effective). I dont think you need some of the more advanced features of Vmware until your company is of a certain size, or your servers are running your sources of revenue.

jibbajabba

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I know most of the guys here are VMware guys (and for good reason)

We use Hyper-V in a fairly sizeable organization and also run a Hyper-V Failover Cluster.

It works well, in fact it saved our rear end today. Dont skimp on your iSCSI storage device, though.

For a small to medium shop, Hyper-V is great (and cost effective). I dont think you need some of the more advanced features of Vmware until your company is of a certain size, or your servers are running your sources of revenue.

Don't think size actually matters to be honest. Some small companies probably have higher requirements than larger companies .... for example, we are a hosting companies and all our vms MUST be as close to an uptime of 100% as possible - simply because every customer who sits on those hosts has different requirement. Another company I know - is just open 5 days a week, 8 hours a day - they don't care really if something goes down ... they just switch back paper ... if you know what I mean ...

Hyper-Me

Gomjaba wrote: »

Don't think size actually matters to be honest. Some small companies probably have higher requirements than larger companies .... for example, we are a hosting companies and all our vms MUST be as close to an uptime of 100% as possible - simply because every customer who sits on those hosts has different requirement. Another company I know - is just open 5 days a week, 8 hours a day - they don't care really if something goes down ... they just switch back paper ... if you know what I mean ...

Thats why i said "or your servers run your source of revenue"

It would make sense for a hosting shop to want as much uptime as possible.

astorrs

There are a number of different editions of VMware- not just the top of the line Enterprise+ edition everyone always refers too. A bundle is available for <$3k that includes 6 CPU licenses (for use on 3x2 socket servers) and a copy of vCenter that would meet the requirements of this install.

Also the biggest different I find between Hyper-V and ESX is the consolidation ratio you can expect. 1.5:1 to 2:1 in favor of ESX is verified. When you factor in just the savings on Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter Edition licenses required you have saved many times over the difference in cost. It's important to always look at the total cost of acqusition and not just compare the list prices of two components of the solution.

pwjohnston

astorrs wrote: »

There are a number of different editions of VMware- not just the top of the line Enterprise+ edition everyone always refers too. A bundle is available for <$3k that includes 6 CPU licenses (for use on 3x2 socket servers) and a copy of vCenter that would meet the requirements of this install.

That was for which version of VMWare, Essentials?

Hyper-Me wrote:

I know most of the guys here are VMware guys (and for good reason)

We use Hyper-V in a fairly sizeable organization and also run a Hyper-V Failover Cluster.

It works well, in fact it saved our rear end today. Dont skimp on your iSCSI storage device, though.

For a small to medium shop, Hyper-V is great (and cost effective).

So lets say that I want 3 failover clusters, 2 servers each, running 2008 Enterprise or Data Center (which is cheaper?), SCVMM/Hyper-V, what kind of number ballpark would start with cost wise, not thinking about hardware specifics.

I mean looking at this;
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/compare/vmware-cost-comparisons.mspx

I mean MS quotes $6700 vs VMwares $13k for 5 servers? That seems a little low for MS to me. I mean are they not including the price of the Server license and CAL's in there?

(Pricing is based on five servers, two processors system, with management server costs (vCenter in the vSphere SKUs for VMware, Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Workgroup Edition for Microsoft) and no maintenance or operating system costs.)

Fugazi1000

If you are looking for a Type-1 Hypervisor then also consider XenServer (5.5) from Citrix. It's free (unless you need some specific features) and has a (IMHO) better approach to management. It's doesn't need vCenter, simply a Windows client to configure.

Vmotion equivalent is there (known as XenMotion) and in some cases, outperforms ESX 3.5.

tiersten

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

It's free

Not if you actually want support for it. Considering what the OP actually wants to consolidate, you'd be crazy to not get some sort of official support from your virtualization vendor.

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

in some cases, outperforms ESX 3.5.

4.0 has been out for a while now...

blargoe

I don't see why you couldn't get your physical servers down to 3 ESX (or whatever) hosts, unless your current applications are CPU hogs. Memory is (relatively) cheap until you get past the 64GB threshhold so you can load up.

Dell (and I'm sure others) has just started selling 6-core servers. So you could have 12 or 24 cores per server depending on the number of sockets you spec out and load it up with memory, you could run a boatload of little utility or file sharing servers from that easily.

tiersten

blargoe wrote: »

Dell (and I'm sure others) has just started selling 6-core servers. So you could have 12 or 24 cores per server depending on the number of sockets you spec out and load it up with memory, you could run a boatload of little utility or file sharing servers from that easily.

Got to be careful about creating IO bottlenecks though if you use some of the massive multicore servers.

Hyper-Me

pwjohnston wrote: »

That was for which version of VMWare, Essentials?

So lets say that I want 3 failover clusters, 2 servers each, running 2008 Enterprise or Data Center (which is cheaper?), SCVMM/Hyper-V, what kind of number ballpark would start with cost wise, not thinking about hardware specifics.

I mean looking at this;
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/compare/vmware-cost-comparisons.mspx

I mean MS quotes $6700 vs VMwares $13k for 5 servers? That seems a little low for MS to me. I mean are they not including the price of the Server license and CAL's in there?

(Pricing is based on five servers, two processors system, with management server costs (vCenter in the vSphere SKUs for VMware, Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Workgroup Edition for Microsoft) and no maintenance or operating system costs.)

One of the big differences is this.

2008 Datacenter x2 (licensed per CPU) (includes hypervisor) = $$$

or

2008 Datacenter x2 + vmware licenses x2 (also per cpu) = $$$$$$

You can get SCVMM Datacenter systems management suite and run as many hosts on it as you want. But its also per CPU.

Hyper-V will probably be cheaper on the overall, but you wont have as many features. Its a trade-off you have to consider heavily.

hypnotoad

Some things with Hyper-V...

2008 is going to go R2 soon (october i believe)...R2 beefs up Hyper-V:
1. Adds live migration, using a SAN. Similar to vMotion. 100% uptime (in theory

)
2. Increases the number of CPU cores available.
3. Adds support for Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
4. Improves networking (TCPIP offload capability, which is good for iSCSI).

You mentioned virtualizing your backup system -- are you using custom hardware who's drivers won't run in a VM - do you interface to a tape system?

AFAIK, MS Licensing works like this:
1. If you buy Standard, you are entitled to use the Host + 1 2008 VM (at no extra cost).
2. If you buy Enterprise, you are entitled to use the Host + 4 2008 VMs (at no extra cost).
3. If you buy DataCenter, you are entitled to use the Host + Unlimited 2008 VMs (at no extra cost).

In other words, it may make sense to run Datacenter if you will eventually be migrating all those boxes you mentioned to 2008 -- as you will already own licenses for the OS. If you don't migrate the boxes you mentioned to 2008, you keep your existing licensing. To clarify, this only applies to new 2008 licenses...not your old W2k/2003/CentOS stuff.

Also, how are you migrating the machines? VmWare offers Converter to rip the physical machine to a virtual image. MS offers System Center Virtual Machine Manager (which has a 180 day trial) that can do Physical to Virtual. I have also had good results ripping physical systems with a hardware-agnostic imaging tool such as Acronis.

Also, keep in mind that MS's Hyper-V Integration Tools won't run on anything less than XP SP2 or 2003 SP2.

Hope This Helps,
HT.

Claymoore

pwjohnston wrote: »

Last, I keep hearing from CDW and VMWare they have a tool that I can run and see what servers are a good candidate for virtulization, but they don’t seem to want to tell me what tool that is without them coming in and running it themselves so they can of course try and sell me stuff.

What tools would you guys recommend to assess candidates for server virtualization?

The VMWare partner will run the assessment tool for a week or so, but typically won't charge you anything. VMWare reimburses them for the cost of the assessment.

The Microsoft tool is the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit which you can download and run for yourself. The VMWare tool may give you slightly different results, but the MAP will get you started.

Hyper-Me

Dell was going to charge us for the VMware planning tool run and wouldnt budge on it at all.

blargoe

I think your local VMWare partners will work with you on that. We had a local company run it for free... of course, they're going to expect to sell you planning and deployment as well.

astorrs

blargoe wrote: »

I think your local VMWare partners will work with you on that. We had a local company run it for free... of course, they're going to expect to sell you planning and deployment as well.

You can also have a look at PlateSpin Recon, it's priced at $2/server/day; so assuming you have 35 servers it's $70/day for you. I would run it for ~14 days (make sure to run it so it overlaps a month end or whenever your busiest time is).

It can do workload planning for both Hyper-V and ESX so it will give you an idea of the number of physical hosts required for each and the specs of those servers so you can plan accordingly. It's straight-forward to setup and get running.

PlateSpin PowerStore

Zaits

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

I haven't used this tool personally to determine if the server is suitable for virtualization but I know the feature exists within it. I also believe VCenter has a capacity planner which is free with vcenter. Someone please correct me if I am wrong but you can get vCenter for a 60 day trial and use the capacity planner for free.

This is the tool I am assuming CDW or Dell is talking about running.

I hope it helps