Friend, your analysis of Microsoft's virtualization solutions is somewhat removed from reality. First of all Microsoft has two types of virtualization solutions - operating system virtualization and application virtualization. Let us narrow in on operating system virtualization. In that arena there are 4 products - Virtual PC (Desktop virtualization) - Virtual Server - Built in OS Virtualization (Offered by Windows 7 and Server 2008), a variant of Hyper-V - Standalone Hyper-V Your assertion that Hyper-V comes with the full Windows Server 2008 shows you have not done sufficient research. Not true. You can have as much of the Windows Server as you like, but the default is the server core which is pretty much almost nothing. There isn't even a GUI http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms723891%28VS.85%29.aspx. You can pick and choose which features you would like installed on the server (file server, application server, printing, etc) As to how its is bloated and a memory hog, I doubt very much that you are speaking from practical experience. I run a Windows 2008 server on a laptop with 1 GB of RAM and 1.2 GHz and it is anything but resource hungry. You can at least try to be impartial. More details on Hyper-V here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-faq.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-main.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V Lastly, do share your 'independent' comparison. 2009/6/16 Phares Kariuki <pkariuki@gmail.com>
Hi,
Wash, with regards to Virtualisation, there have always been free applications, it's the industry practice. Microsoft bought Kidaro, which offers free desktop virtualization, Sun offer Virtual Box and VMware themselves offer VMware Server. Though I could get killed for saying this, I hate VMware Workstation as a product. Thing is, compared to VMware fusion (which costs 99 USD), it's overpriced at 300 USD. The reason they have the disparity is simply because Mac's had alternative Virtualisation applications, which cost 100 odd USD and hence had to price it that way to stay competitive, but I dare say it is a superior application to it's Windows brother.
I have a bias, I have to admit, to VMware. Thing is, when it comes to virtualisation, they have the most mature product. Their latest product goes all the way to providing full blown cloud computing. They have always allowed for live virtual machine migration between two hosts (the VM runs, as you move it from one physical box to another, but you need to have shared storage for this). Secondly VMware has a very light footprint. You realise with Microsoft's hyper-v, you have a full (I dare say) bloated Windows Server 2008, real memory hog, already running atop your virtual machine. It may be free, but you are paying a premium on the hardware resources you need. Further from this, if you must have a free virtualisation application, Citrix XenServer has a free product, along with VMware (ESXi) and XenSource (which in my opinion are better products that MS). When it comes to 3rd party plugins, VMware again is the most supported platform with several plugins to allow you to backup, restore and move your virtual machines around.
Technology wise, all (save for Microsoft) are based on linux/unix. VMware has a heavily modified Red Hat Kernel. Citrix purchased XenSource, and released XenServer (though XenSource is still an Open Source product available for download). Sun have a server virtualisation product out, xVM also based on Xen.
I have a full blown independent comparison of all Virtualisation applications available though it's not up to date (its one year old, in the meantime, both XenServer and VMware have added a hefty number of features), but it can give a good picture, for those who are interested....