This session is targeted directly at discussing competition in the virtualization market place. They started out with an overview of the VMware advantage:

The first item discussed was that fact that VMware has been in the market since 2001 and are in their 3rd generation of releases. Microsoft’s Virtual Server is still trying to get Viridian out to beta, and Xen lacks a large customer base and is not included in the Linux Kernel by default.

The second item discussed is that VMware provides more guest OS’s. VMWare supports over 70 Operating Systems, while Microsoft supports 13 (no 64bit), XenSource and Virtual Iron only support 5 (2 versions of Windows, and 3 of Linux).

The third item discussed was overall TCO. Virtual Iron and XenSource try to compete saying that there per socket cost is less than VMware. However, because VMware is more scalable you can get a greater TCO.

Next, they dove into each competitor.

Microsoft and Xen use generic device drivers to manage the physical hardware and provide resources to the Guest VM’s. The advantage is that you have more hardware available to use. However, the trade off is that the generic drivers are not designed for the workload associated with virtualization. Part of the reason Microsoft’s Virdian is being pushed back is because Microsoft is trying to get better performance and scalability. VMware tried the same thing a few years back and found that writing new optimized driver provided better performance.

Some of the issues associated with OS-centric virtualization are:

Virtualization becomes a component of a monolithic operating system making it more vunerable to bugs and cunerabilities.

When you use a specific OS as a virtualization platform it favors that OS, locking you into that vendor, and provides poor support for other operating systems.

Next, they went into some myths that Microsoft is trying to perpetuate:

Myth: Microsoft Virtual Server gets better licensing for OS/Apps. - This is not true. Microsoft licensing applies to all virtualization platforms.

Myth: MS does not support VMware Platforms. - Not true. Microsoft will provide “commercially reasonable efforts” for VMware platforms. Also, Dell, HP, & IBM will provide support.

Myth: MS host clustering better than VMotion. - Not true. It’s hard to set up and has to be done for every VM.

Myth: MS to provide support for Linux VM’s. True, but not entirely. MS has outsourced the Linux compatibility layer to XenSource.

Then they demonstrationed MS Virtual Server host clustering.

The Microsoft Demonstration involved setting up a MS host cluster to provide VMotion-like functionality. I can’t imagine doing this for every VM in my environment. Also, when they “migrated” the VM from one host to another 7 pings were lost and a file copy that was going on timed out.

Then they presented some myths that Xen is trying to perpetuate:

Myth: VMware runs VM’s on a thick emulation layer. - Not true. VI3 is a true bare metal hypervisor with a similar code size to Xen.

Myth: Xen performance is better than VMWare. - Not true. VMware is faster with Windows Guests, binary translation is faster than hardware assist, and overall performance was similar. Even Xen’s papers support this.

Myth: Xen is ready for the enterprise. - Xen lacks reference customers, lacks a clustered filesystem, and there are reliability issues in their release notes.

They finished with a Xen Enterprise Management Interface demo. The interface was nice, but lacked advanced features.

Technorati Tags: VMware, TSX, VMware TSX

According to an interview a zdnet interview with RedHat CTO Brian Stevens, Fedora 7 will include KVM. This is a major step for the relatively new open source virtualization technology. KVM was recently officially added to the Linux kernel.

How will this effect Xen? It appears that RedHat is behind KVM and investing a significant amount of time and effort into developing it. According to the ZDNET article:

“Stevens also likes the technical approach that Moshe Bar, CTO of KVM backer Qumranet, took with KVM: “He absolutely nailed it,” Stevens said.

However, Stevens said, KVM lags another open-source virtualization technology, Xen, which is the single biggest new feature in the company’s upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. “There’s a year of work, I’d guess, to really make it at parity where Xen is today,” Stevens said.”

It would appear that will inclusion into the Linux kernel, and now inclusion into Fedora we can expect to see KVM offered in RedHat’s Enterprise Linux offering in the next few years.

You can read the interview here.

Tags: KVM, Linux, Open Sourse, RedHat, Virtualization, Xen

KVM has officially been released in Linux Kernel 2.6.20 as of Feb 4. The inclusion of KVM in the Linux kernel instead of Xen doesn’t seem to bother Xen project leader Ian Pratt according to http://www.devxnews.com/.

“Xen is a true hypervisor, whereas KVM is a legacy virtualization solution akin to VMware Workstation, VMserver and Microsoft Virtual PC,” Pratt told internetnews.com. “It lacks the benefits of para-virtualization performance enhancements that have been pioneered by Xen and are now being copied by VMware and Microsoft.”

Ian also stated that he isn’t looking for Xen to be included in the Linux kernel anymore stating:

“Putting Xen into Linux doesn’t make sense: hypervisors are different beasts from operating systems, so they share little code.”

Of particular interest are the comments about VMware copying Xen’s para-virtualization techniques. Although I doubt VMware will comment, I’d love to hear what they have to say about that.

You can read the Devx article here.

Alessandro Perilli has a great interview with IBM on virtualization on his site http://www.virtualization.info/. It’s definately worth a read.

You can read the interview here.

VMware is driving the hottest trend in the IT industry today. Therefore I decided to do to a little research in how VMware is being seen in the media. Now, when I say media, I mean mainstream media. Not http://www.eweek.com or http://www.itworld.com/, but CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. So went to each of those sites and did a little search. I decided to search for Microsoft, Linux, and VMware. I choose Microsoft because I knew they were going to have a lot of press.  I choose Linux because I knew there would be some press, but like VMware, Linux is a major force in the It industry, but not a household name.  Here are the results:

http://www.cnn.com/:

VMware: 7 results (Estimated). Most recent: 6/16/2000. Even then the article was more about Linux.

Microsoft: 4503 (Estimated). Most recent: 1/29/2007. No surprise with Windows Vista coming out.

Linux: 1054 (Estimated). Most recent: 1/2/2007. The article is about Novel’s $100 laptop initative.

http://www.msnbc.com/:

VMware: 2 results. Most recent: 1/24/2007. Wait before you get excited. 1 result was from a MotleyFool’s report on EMC, and the other was from a Symantec press release. Both times, VMware was mentioned in passing.

Microsoft: 160821. Most recent: 1/29/2007. Once again, Windows Vista. Also remember, the MSN in MSNBC does stand for MicroSoft Network

Linux: 5130. Most recent: 1/16/2007. The article is about Sun trying to compete with Linux.

http://www.foxnews.com:

VMware: 6 results. Most recent: 1/23/2007. 4 were about EMC, 1 was about Ubuntu, and 1 about the Microsoft XenSource deal..

Microsoft: 5310. Most recent: 1/29/2007. Vista, again.

Linux: 196. Most recent: 1/16/2007. Most of the articles were about Microsoft.

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that VMware needs to get more coverage. Pacific Gas and Electric announcing rebates for Virtualization should have been headlines in the mainstream media, and VMware’s name should have been all over that.

There are tons of articles about how Vista is going to change things. but what about the most logical platform for running Vista? What about a technology that saves companies thousands of dollars?

Virtualization is revolutionizing the data center and everyone needs to know now. Because mark my words, when Microsoft finally gets the bugs worked out of Virtual Server they will market it. Once that happens, VMware will be mentioned, but only in passing. This will give Microsoft the “perceived” advantage in the minds of those who aren’t educated in Virtualization.

As my buddy jtroyer pointed out, there is an aspect of the “Salary Graphs” that doesn’t get scene until you view the larger versions. That is the # of jobs with each keyword:

Notice the litle blue bars that I circled and how it’s much lower for XenSource.

If we use another service from http://www.indeed.com/ we can see the trend for new jobs with specific key words. Here’s a comparison of new jobs for VMware, Xen, Xensource, Virtual Iron:

The VMware Blogs just posted an article stating:

“Average VMware salaries for job postings nationwide are 115% higher than average data center salaries for job postings nationwide. (source: Indeed.com)”

This is interesting, but not very surprising. Specialization always brings a higher paycheck. Just for kicks and giggles I decided to use their source and add a few more search items.

XenSource scored higher than VMware! My first impression is that it’s because it’s harder to find someone with a good Xen background than it is to find someone with a good VMware background.

I was checking out the Virtual Iron blog and noticed a post from December 14th. This post titled “First VMware ignores you, then VMware laughs at you, then VMware fights you, then you win” tries to strike out at VMware in the same way the Linux community did against Microsoft.

In the beginning, Microsoft laughed at Linux and completely disregarded it. Next, they fought it trying to stop this “movement”. Finally, they’ve had to except it and learn to live with it. (See my previous posts about the Novell / Microsoft partnership.)

So what does this have to do with Xen? Apparently, a Xen customer received an quickly written email from a VMware sales rep that left some room for Xen to try and spin it in their favor. Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Virtual Iron. I’ve raised my eyebrow in regards to the deals that the Xen project has made in the past, but I have nothing against Xen. I just think that this spin on the email is a weak case to make for Xen over VMware.

Let’s go over some of the “points”:

“VMware” wrote: “Virtual Iron only runs on the latest servers equipped with virtualization hardware assist features. That requirement forces users to invest in the newest, most expensive servers, even for test and development pilot deployments.”

“Virtual Iron” responded: We are fully utilizing the latest advances made by the chip vendors (Moore’s Law marches on). Hardware enhancements to Intel® and AMD® processors improve software-based virtualization solutions. These chips go into servers from Dell, HP and IBM. I have no idea where VMware got the idea that these are the “most expensive servers” — I just checked prices at Dell.com and, for the price of just VMware’s ESX Server ($5750 per box), you can buy two Dell servers with VT and Virtual Iron 3.1 Enterprise Edition virtualization software and still have money left over to go to In-n-Out Burger.

Me: I LOVE In-n-Out Burger, but wouldn’t use that as motivation to make IT spending decisions. I think the point that the VMware rep was trying to make, is that for many customers running Virtual Iron means buying new hardware, whereas with VMware you can leverage your existing hardware. By the way, I checked Dell.com also and to get servers that cheap you need to strip quite a bit.

Let’s try again:

“VMware wrote”: “Virtual Iron supports only a small set of guest operating systems - RHEL 4 Update 2 (32 or 64-bit), SLES 9 Service Pack 3 (32 or 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) and Windows XP (32-bit). In contrast, VMware Infrastructure supports over 60 different versions of Windows, Linux and NetWare operating systems.”

“Virtual Iron” wrote: That’s true and, thankfully, you are probably using one that we support. With emerging businesses, the 90/10 rule rules - we focus on the servers used by the majority. This means that we don’t have to burden our cost structure with an obscure OS.

Me: OK, so they’ve got a point there. The majority of customer are using Windows 2003, and yes supporting only that does save Virtual Iron money. However, there is still a lot of Windows 2000, and Netware out there. Believe me, I’ve been in and out of a lot of datacenters in the last few years. I’ve seen some very suprising things.

“VMware wrote”: “Virtual Iron is missing a distributed clustered file system like VMware’s VMFS. This puts every virtual machine at risk of disk corruption when placed in shared storage.”

“Virtual Iron wrote”: Due to our system architecture, we do not need a clustered file system to perform migration of virtual machines. When we were designing the LiveMigration feature into our product, we looked at putting a clustered file system to support shared storage (a prerequisite for migrate). We know a thing or two about clustering. Some of our technical folks invented the early clustering systems. During development, we checked out VMware’s VMFS and come to conclusion that a clustered file system is the last thing we want. Why? It burdens you, the user, with heavy-duty maintenance and administration. So, instead, we built a clever mechanism that takes away that burden. With Virtual Iron, LiveMigration works on a regular file systems - without the need for clustering and without causing corruptions!

Me: OK, so Virtual Iron decided to not user a clustered filesystem. That’s nice. I can see getting away with not using one, but to say that managing a VMFS filesystem causes a burden is where they lost me. Maybe I’ve missed something, but I haven’t had to do a lot with my VMFS filesystems. I have had to plan appropriately to make sure I don’t over burden a LUN, but you have to do that same thing with Virtual Iron.

I just really don’t see their argument.

You can read the whole article here.

Here’s an article on converting VMware VMDK to VHD formats. Not sure why you’d want to, but if you do here’s an article about it.

I missed this when it was first released, but apparently Xensource has licensed the Microsoft VHD virtual disk specifications for Xen 3.0. Why does this bother me? Why should I care that an open source project is embracing Microsoft “standards”?

I care because the open source community has had great success in developing their own standards. Multiple people develop ideas, work on them, and then the best wins out. Not because Microsoft wants them to, but because it’s the best. Sure there are politics in the open source community, but it’s not the same.

This just helps Xen get in bed deeper with Microsoft. No wonder Linus chose to include KVM instead of Xen.

Read the article here:

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=31396&src=site-marq

Tags: Microsoft, Open Sourse, Xen