The new version of OpenStack, which will be released in Q2 of 2012, does not support Microsoft Hyper-V anymore. The developers have had enough with the buggy code.
One of the developers of OpenStack has written a patch with which the Hyper-V code and support will be removed from the cloud platform. The patch has already been approved and constitutes a part ofthe next version of OpenStack, codename Essex, which is expected to be released in Q2.
At the end of 2010 Microsoft announced that they would deliver code which would enable the use of Hyper-V in a cloud solution based on the open-source cloud platform, OpenStack. Microsoft never finished and maintained this, causing the code to be full of errors. After people in the OpenStack-forum suggested to remove the Hyper-V code, Microsoft quickly released a statement saying “Microsoft is committed to working with the community to resolve the current issues with Hyper-V and OpenStack“. However, the OpenStack developers decided not to wait until Microsoft finally fixed their code and decided to remove Hyper-V support with the new release.
OpenStack, Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA, is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.
During the last few years we published several Enterprise Hypervisor comparisons and we got very positive comments and feedback on it. With the release of vSphere 5, XenServer 6 and a service pack for Hyper-V it was time for an update.
It very interesting to see how some of the products have improved over the years and how the three major manufacturers look at each other and copy features. But you can’t trust all manufacturers by just a simple green checkbox. Some claimed features need third party add-ons, aren’t suitable for production workloads or are only supported on a limited set of operating systems. You have to investigate further and I hope I’ve done most of that work for you with this new enterprise hypervisor comparison.
Some time ago.. actually, a long time ago, we here at VMGuru.nl received a sample of a training DVD from TrainSignal. I promised to write a review on it, but I honestly didn’t come around to it due to all sorts of personal stuff. But the DVD box made it safely through the move from one house to the next. So, today I sat down and opened the DVD box.
So, first of all, it’s definitely a proper training. This isn’t your average ‘we demo, you watch’ kind of training. It’s aimed to let you pass the Exchange 2010 exam, but it does more. This 3 DVD box set covers all topics you need to understand to successfully implement Exchange 2010 into an organization in 40 lessons. It does not only show you how and where to configure things, but most importantly, it tries to show you why. This is the first time I’ve encountered such an approach in a self-paced training package. It really is pretty extensive.
We here at VMGuru.nl hope you all had a proper start of 2011. We sure did!
But what will 2011 bring us? Some curtains have been lifted a little. We know we can expect a brand new version of vSphere in 2011. But what features will vSphere 5 have. Personally I hope we will finally see a vSphere Client for Linux/OSX with this version.
We will certainly see Citrix and Microsoft push the boundaries more and more in the desktop virtualization area. But do you think we will finally see the major shift to 64 bit in this field too? It has been predicted for years and years (some folks even mention 128 bit systems in the near future).
After installing the patches described in Microsoft Knowledge Base articles 2482017 or 2467023 Windows 7 clients are unable to connect from the View Client to the View Connection Server.
According to a VMware Knowledge Base article there is a conflict with two security bulletins issued for Windows 7, causing disruptions for VMware’s View Client and creating connection failures for users attempting to access the View Client Server.
One of my coworkers pointed me to a video from this years Tech-Ed Europe about VDI protocols. Bernhard Tritsch did an interesting comparison between the different remote protocols used in today’s VDI solutions. In a 60 minute session Bernhard explains the differences between location (host vs client), type (hardware vs software) rendering and compression types (lossless vs lossy).
Although the results aren’t that good for PCoIP (software version) it still is a very interesting video.
There are a lot of products and product features available for creating a (more or less) high available environment. If you look at Microsoft SQL Server you have the option to create a Microsoft Cluster, you can use Marathon everRun, VMware Fault Tolerance if you have a 1 vCPU SQL server, etc.
When I was researching the possibility to create a redundant Microsoft SQL Server environment without the use of shared storage I noticed that a lot of the options needed shared storage: clustering, FT, etc. Some products, like everRun, can be used without shared storage, but are very costly.
An alternative to the options above is Database Mirroring (DBM), which is a part of Microsoft SQL Server. Database Mirroring (DBM) is in essence the possibility to replicate/mirror all database content to a second database server. With DBM you can achieve high availability for your databases without the hassle of Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS) and without the need for shared storage.
Last year we published an Enterprise Hypervisor comparison and we got very positive comments and feedback on it.
During the last few weeks I received many update requests so I decided to update the old hypervisor comparison but this time I changed the setup a bit.
Changes:
No beta or pre-release versions are used. In the last document we also compared Hyper-V R2 beta which wasn’t officially released.
This time all software is available and no features are subject to change due to beta-test, etc.;
The versions used are the platinum/ultimate/fully-featured versions of the hypervisors. Product features can be limited by lower license versions;
No free versions have been used in this comparison.
After attending the dutch Citrix Partner Exchange 2010 I realized that there is a lot of FUD out there:
in the Citrix community with regards to VMware View and PCoIP;
with me personally with regards to XenDesktop (no F, but a lot of UD)
This is also what we saw when Alex shared his experience with Citrix XenDesktop, which was not so positive, and we got a lot of comments comparing XenDesktop to VMware View.
But the Citrix Partner Exchange got me interested in XenDesktop and XenClient and I decided to do a little research. Then I came across Brian Maddens site to find that he had just finished his ‘Geek week VDI‘ in which he did a ‘real life’ lab-test with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft VDI. They tested all three vendor in their lab environment but added a WAN ‘simulator’ to create real life and worst case scenarios by introducing packet loss and latency.
And honestly I was surprised by some of their their conclusions. Not because I have no faith in Brian Madden but because I know Brian Madden to be a real Citrix enthusiast and a PCoIP critic. At the end he was very honest by admitting that Citrix XenDesktop looks like a mash-up of a bunch of different things, he was surprised by the simple, straightforward installation and configuration of VMware View and the good performance of PC-o-IP.
So bottom line?
VMware View shines because of simplicity and has good user experience even with PC-o-IP over a WAN connection.
XenDesktop is, at the moment, certainly the more mature and complete product but it’s complexity is a drawback.
And Microsoft ‘in box’ VDI? Well as expected, it’s complex, not enterprise ready and it’s no match for Citrix or VMware.
So as always, there is no clear winner, it all depends on the customer’s wishes.
Special thanks to Brian Madden and his team for creating this great VDI test!
I won’t summarize the total VDI test, you can read it yourself here but I will quote some of the conclusions which I found to be very interesting.
This week I got the question if I could draw up a short lists of pro’s and cons for MED-V. Since I’m doing virtualization in the widest possible way, this fits well in my job description.
But heck, what a question! Before I could even try to answer the question I really had to dive into the Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization solution (hence MED-V) which is part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). Sure, I already seen some comments on the internet about MED-V and I already was somewhat biased. Still I tried to make it an objective report.
Let’s start with what it is not in my opinion. Although it enables management of virtualized desktops it is not a full blown desktop virtualization solution like XenDesktop and VMware View.
At the end of May of this year we wrote a article concerning Hypervisor comparisons and we got a lot of positive feedback on it. The downside to that is that people want an update as soon as one of the companies launches a new version of its product, and who can blame them. However the issue is that this takes a lot of research and because of that, a lot of time. And because two of us are ill and in bed wearing a sombrero and the other two are extremely busy, we simply don’t have that time right now.
It’s not as extensive as the Enterprise hypervisor comparison we did earlier but it gives you a good image how both products relate to each other. To extend the picture I added a list of supported operating systems.
Last Friday we had a session with Microsoft about ‘the Cloud’. We already heard a lot about clouds, but I must admit that both Microsoft presentations that day were refreshing.
Every cloud provider does his best to bring cloud thinking to the mind, but what exactly is ‘the Cloud’ ? There seems to be more than 76 different definitions for cloud computing. While Googling for some background information I came across a quote from Larry Ellison (Oracle) which he did at Oracle OpenWorld:
The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing [..] The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
Yesterday I attended the ‘TechNet – Get Ready for all Microsoft virtualization products’ session in Utrecht (NL). This was a new style paid (€99,-) Technet session, max of 20-30 professionals in a classroom. The program consisted of Hyper-V, App-V, Med-V, Terminal services and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.
Hyper-V
We started with an introduction to Hyper-V, luckily the trainer had updated his lab to Hyper-V 2, so we could check out the new features which should compete with VMware. After explaining the architecture, networking and storage it was very obvious that this was the standard Microsoft propaganda. They were comparing Hyper-V 2 to VI 3.5, which were practically the same, but of course Microsoft’s hyper-V solution was much cheaper. Grrrrr! Again, when you do a comparison, do a fair comparison and compare Hyper-V to vSphere 4 (because the release is not far away I will allow Microsoft to use Hyper-V 2 in this comparison). Then the numbers are very different and maybe the VMware solution costs more but obviously you will get a lot more.
I also disliked the insinuation that when they compare a microkernel hypervisor to a monolithic hypervisor Microsoft makes it look like VMware’s hypervisor is one out of the stone ages. Play fair, win the fight based on your own strong points.
When he explained the Hyper-V I/O architecture with the parent partition, VM Bus, synthetic drivers, etc, I asked him if this didn’t introduce a singe point of failure and a possible I/O bottleneck. In true MS fashion he denied both, claiming that I/O was tested and you shouldn’t install Exchange in the parent partition. Duh!
As we all know we’re in the midst of a hypervisor battle. VMware vs (Microsoft / Citrix).
VMware focuses on their broad range of products for server-, desktop- and application virtualization including the necessary management and automation tools and disaster recovery solutions to enable the virtualization of a complete data center and desktops.
Microsoft focuses on the cost perspective and claims that their Hyper-V solution is cheaper then VMware’s vSphere.
No problems so far but if you want to compare cost, keep the fight clean and do an honest comparison. In his article Steve points out the areas were he thinks the comparison is not fair or not clear. I’ve read the comparison multiple times and I must agree this is one of those cases where Microsoft does not play fair as we encountered earlier with Citrix’s misleading comparison of HA, 2.
As you may have noticed, we at VMGuru.nl have been extremely busy the last few week. Tons of work accompanied with the right amount of stress, illness and personally the build of my new house. This certainly shows in the amount of article we posted lately.
But I try to keep up-to-date, certainly with the release of vSphere 4. So today I read a great article on vTeardown by E. Horschman which I did not want to keep from you.
The article describes the quick migration feature in Microsoft’s Hyper-V, compares this to the live migration feature in the new version and warns customers on the ‘Quick’ features provided in the next version of Hyper-V.
In the past Microsoft claimed that their Quick Migration feature was enough and Live Migration, as VMware’s vMotion, was not needed. In vTeardown’s article you can see how quickly Microsoft changes its opinion as soon as they have finally added the feature themselves.
‘Now that Microsoft has live migration on their Hyper-V roadmap, we’re starting to learn that they never really thought much of Quick Migration themselves. I heard Mark Russinovich, one of their technical luminaries who gave a talk about Hyper-V R2 futures, actually come out and say what we all knew to be true, “Quick Migration was our first attempt to do a live migration, and to put a nice spin on it, we called it Quick Migration. [...] Even though we said, [...] ‘trust us this is really cool, this is what you want, you don’t want instant, that’s not as good as this, this is quick, but people didn’t seem to buy that, so we ended up [...] implementing live migration, so that Quick Migration stuff is crap, this is really good.’” Mark’s honesty got some laughs from the packed session, but it puts us on notice that we should be skeptical when Microsoft tags a feature as “Quick”.
Not very trustworthy in my opinion. E. Horschman agrees and adds a warning to beware of Microsoft’s ‘Quick’ features as they now use the same b*lls*!t motivation on their new Quick Storage Migration feature.
The last few weeks many blogs and forums have spend time on hypervisor comparisons and I have read tons of articles on the subject. Many only compare hypervisors based on performance, features or cost. I think it’s a bit more complicated then that. After Citrix announced that their XenServer product is available for free I spend a fair deal of my time explaining to colleagues and clients that this is a hoax and that cost is not the only reason to base their decision on. Especially in the case of XenServer the choice and the long term effects make it a little bit more complicated.
When I read Chris Wolfe’s article on ‘Production-class Hypervisor Evaluation criteria‘ and saw his VMworld Europe 2009 presentation (DC15) I found someone who read my mind. Chris knows what he is talking about and uses the right criteria to select the right hypervisor for the job. Now you probably think ‘These VMGuru.nl guys are VMware fans so here we go again‘ but the opposite is true.
Like Chris I think every situation has its own ideal solution and you should select the hypervisor based on well-considered selection criteria and because my employer, Centric, focuses on clients with 500+ workstations/employees these criteria are Enterprise-class hypervisor selection criteria.
Although this has nothing to do with virtualization I do not want to keep this from you. This weekend I tried to update one of my desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7 build 7077. Under the assumption that the Windows 7 setup would warn me in case this was a not supported upgrade path I inserted the DVD and started the setup.
All looked well and the setup started normally. I was somewhat surprised that I could upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7, on the other hand Vista has never been very populair so it could be a wise move from Microsoft to provide a direct upgrade path from XP.
This joy and happiness didn’t last very long as the Windows 7 setup reported that this upgrade was not supported. Again I was a little bit surprised as the setup did start and it even started to copy new files to my Windows XP hard drive. Joy and hapiness were certainly out the window when I discovered that the Windows 7 setup destroyed my boot record/settings and my previous OS would not start.
Last March I wrote an article on vendors trying to market their products by bashing the competition and not having a clean discussion. At that moment I thought ‘Am I the only one making this into a problem?’ Today I read a great post by Gabrie van Zanten of Gabes Virtual World and it seems I am not alone!
Gabrie watched a video on Microsoft’s Virtualiztion Team Blog in which two gentlemen try to bust 10 VMware ESX vs MS Hyper-V myths. I intentionally use the word ‘try’ because they do a pretty terrible job.
They compare the current release of VMware ESX 3.5 to the R2 version of Microsoft’s Hyper-V which still has to be released (release 2010(?)). Now this is something that sounds familiar, this is exactly what I commented on in this article. Citrix comparing VMware and Citrix HA and not explaining that Citrix HA is Live Migration. If the MS gentlemen want to do some real mythbusting, try comparing VMware ESX 3.5 U4 to Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 (both out now) or compare VMware ESX4/vSphere to Microsoft Hyper-V 2.0 (both not publically available yet). But I think they’re too chicken to do that and they are right. Microsoft would come out way behind if you do a real comparison and claiming to have an enterprise ready hypervisor.
In my opinion in these kind of marketing campaigns you can recognize good vendors/product from bad ones. When you are not operating out of your own strengths and weaknesses but need to stoop down to bashing the competition to try to look good, you’re a myth yourself.
Want to see what all the fuss is about read the complete article in which Gabrie busts some mythbuting himself, look here!
The new version of OpenStack, which will be released in Q2 of 2012, does not support Microsoft Hyper-V anymore. The developers have had enough with the buggy code.
During the last few years we published several Enterprise Hypervisor comparisons and we got very positive comments and feedback on it. With the release of vSphere 5, XenServer 6 and a service pack for Hyper-V it was time for an update.
and the other two are extremely busy, we simply don’t have that time right now.
