The Price Is Right
A big difference between VMware’s ESX
Server and Microsoft’s Hyper-V is the price.
Despite the trend toward free virtualization
products, ESX Server has always been
a chargeable product and is the staple of
VMware’s product line.
The fact that VMware charges for ESX
Server hasn’t hindered the product’s adoption.
Its performance and robustness have
convinced many organizations to use it as
their primary virtualization platform. For
this review I used the VMware Infrastructure
Foundation product, which includes ESX
Server 3.5, VMware Virtual Machine File
System (VMFS), VMware Virtual Symmetric
Multi-Processing (vSMP), the VirtualCenter
agent, VMware Consolidated Backup, and
VMware Update Manager.
In contrast, Hyper-V is part of the Server
2008 OS, making it essentially free to organizations
running Server 2008. Hyper-V is included in the following x64 editions of
Server 2008:
- Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
x64
- Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
x64
- Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition
x64
Because Hyper-V is a 64-bit technology, you
need x64 hardware and you need to run one
of the x64 editions of Server 2008. Mysteriously,
Microsoft does make three versions
of Server 2008 that don’t include Hyper-V
(aptly named Windows Server 2008 without
Hyper-V)—but the price difference is negligible,
at $28. Hyper-V is also not included in
Windows Web Server 2008, Windows HPC
Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 for
Itanium-Based Systems.
Table 2 shows pricing for the two configurations
I tested. In each case the system
was set up to run eight VMs, all with
Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. This table
uses retail pricing. Most businesses use Microsoft’s volume licensing,
which has a lower cost for the
Windows Server OS. Remember
that in a production scenario
you would also need
CALs to access the Windows
Server OS. The retail prices in
Table 2 include 25 CALs. However,
in a production setting
you would typically require
additional CALs.
Windows Server 2003 R2 and Server
2008 Enterprise Edition allow as many as
four active virtual Windows instances at no
additional cost. This licensing is the same
whether you use Microsoft or VMware virtualization
products. Running eight active
VMs requires two Server 2008 Enterprise
Edition licenses. Although not used in this
comparison, Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter
Edition and Server 2008 Datacenter
Edition allow an unlimited number of virtual
Windows instances no matter which
virtualization platform you choose.
First Across the Line…
The basic virtualization and feature sets provided
by Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMware’s
ESX Server are quite comparable and so far
it’s a dead heat. ESX Server offers broader
support for more Linux distributions and
has a couple of more advanced features,
such as support for live migration and
shared memory between VMs. However, its
command-line management is unfamiliar
to most Windows administrators, its limited
device support requires a more restrictive
hardware platform, and it comes at a higher
price than Hyper-V—which is essentially
incorporated into Server 2008. Stay tuned
for part 2 where I continue this shootout
by looking at ESX Server’s and Hyper-V’s
advanced systems management and then
find out where the rubber meets that road
as I run some revealing performance tests.
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I'm also not entirely sure of your driver arguments - as I understand from looking at the ESX boot procedure, it only loads the ones it needs, and you're also relying on thirdparty drivers for hyper-v. In fact, I would agree with the infoworld post (http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/05/hypervs_achille.html), the drivers are just not up to snuff for me to trust running multiple servers in a production environment on it.
jutasuk May 29, 2008 (Article Rating: