Virtual Computing

In the world of virtualization there are two kingpins; VMware and Microsoft. As I researched these two vendors it has become apparent that comparing these two giants would be like comparing apples and oranges; like apples and oranges are fruit, and VMware and Microsoft make virtualization software, they are different altogether. This happens to be the scenario that I have seen, not only between the two companies, but in blog posts and forums. VMware’s vSphere is a suite. In other words it’s like Microsoft office. You can’t use Microsoft office but you can use the applications that are in it. With Microsoft’s Hyper-v, It’s an all in one app. Microsoft’s Hyper-v has System Center which uses the Server Management Suite Datacenter. In my research this all-in-one Center is much more convenient for core functions. Microsoft is ahead in many of the areas required for a robust desktop to datacenter virtualization and management solution (Ali,M 2011). Granted that was with vSphere 4 and Hyper-v R2. Between those two versions Microsoft seemingly beat out VMware’s version mainly because of System Center.

When comparing VMware’s newer vSphere 5 version to Microsoft’s Hyper-v R2, there wasn’t really a comparison. vSphere outperformed Hyper-v in memory performance in a controlled scenario. But to me this is an un-fair comparison as Microsoft’s newer version Hyper-v 3 wasn’t out. In a comparison of vSphere 5 and Hyper-v 3 on Windows Server 8, they match up pretty well.
Here’s the short comparison:
Maximums Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 8 Vmware vSphere 5
Physical Machine Hardware 160 logical CPUs, 2TB RAM 160 logical CPUs, 2TB RAM
Virtual Machine Hardware 32 virtual CPUs, 512GB RAM
32 virtual CPUs, 1TB RAM
Virtual Machines per Cluster 4000 3000
Physical Machines per Cluster 63 32 Although this is a short comparison it doesn’t give much of the technical issues IT would need to face from implementing either one; like pricing vs. functionality. When it