Any comparison between Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere requires consideration of a large number of different aspects. First of all, their target customers and different models have different deployment functions. The number of actual machine instances is different, and the deployment requirements are also very different. These requirements also bring different infrastructure and configuration choices. Second, this is about management, and management is closely related to the scale of installation. In addition, we will also consider some other issues, including cost, performance, scalability and availability.
In terms of target customers:
When it comes to high-end, large-volume virtualization customers, VMware still has an advantage. VMware's various functions such as Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) meet the needs of large-scale environments to run a large number of VM devices under various resource requirements. In another case, we can only nod to Microsoft. If a small and medium enterprise purchases Windows Server 2012, no matter what, it is meaningless to purchase VMware vSphere to virtualize some specific functions.
Under what circumstances does it make sense to use VMware is a difficult question to answer. Hyper-V 2012 adds a lot of new features to SMB 3.0. Even the smallest enterprises using low-cost servers and commercial SAS disk drives can support high-availability clusters. The Hyper-V 2012 host-to-host VM replication function also provides an additional level of redundancy, which was not supported in the previous version. From this perspective, the duel between the two was evened out.
At the same time, VMware also has a similar function, that is, using the same Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) behind the scenes. These similarities and many other similarities make comparing the two products quite problematic. In the end, their products are all performing well, and users can make adjustments to meet most of any virtualization needs.
Administrative tools:
In the low-end situation, Microsoft provides users with basic supporting tools on the Hyper-V Manager as installable items for Windows Server 2012. VMware's traditional management tool, VMware vSphere client is a free client that users must install on their personal computers. Both provide services to connect to remote hosts, allowing users to manage any system in the network.
Some functions cannot be implemented in the basic management tools of the two products. The advantage of Microsoft Hyper-V Manager is that, for example, it can move into a virtual machine tool, then import it, and clone or copy the virtual machine tool. With VMware, users must connect to vCenter Server while moving in or cloning a virtual machine utility. However, out of respect for the hypervisor, the VMware vSphere client provides more information about the host server and the client virtual machine server. Because of the more detailed chart presentation, VMware scored a point in this comparison.
VMware provides vCenter Server for managing large installations, while Microsoft provides System Center 2012. The latest public vCenter (version 5.1) adds a web client portfolio that can manage users' VMware infrastructure from anywhere. Both VMware and Microsoft use Windows PowerSHEll (command line shell and script system management tool) to support automated management. VMware also added a free command-line tool called PowerCLI, which contains a long list of custom PowerShell cmdlet script files to manage the user's vSphere infrastructure.
Memory environment:
Does the hypervisor support memory overallocation? Overallocation of memory is a technology provided in vSphere that allows administrators to allocate more RAM capacity to virtual machines than in the host. There are many articles supporting or against this topic, but it is clear that allocating more resources than physical requirements will increase the overall density of virtual machines. Over-allocation of memory used in a production environment is suitable for every organization. In other words, in my opinion, this technology can bring important benefits when used in the right environment.
Transparent page sharing aspect:
Transparent page sharing is a way to achieve memory over-allocation. Using this technology, the common code shared between virtual machines is itself virtualized. For example, you have 100 virtual machines running Windows XP in your VDI environment. With transparent page sharing, RAM is not necessarily a major limiting factor in server desktop density. VMware is more prominent in this technology.
In conclusion, it can be seen that VMware still has an irreplaceable position in the virtualization field. Although Microsoft Hyper-V has continued to improve in the virtualization field in recent years, it has even surpassed VMware in some functions, but at present, regardless of In terms of user awareness or cost performance, VMware is even better.
