Microsoft sets Hyper-V free
Microsoft said on Monday that it now plans to offer its server virtualization product for free.
Ahead of a virtualization event in Redmond, Wash., Microsoft said that its Hyper-V Server 2008 will be released within 30 days and be available at no cost via the Web. The software maker had planned to charge $28 for the product.
Also on Monday, Microsoft plans to show off a live migration feature that will be part of the next version of its Hyper-V virtualization technology. Live migration allows companies to move a running virtual machine from one server to another.
The feature will be part of Windows Server R2, Microsoft said Monday. The software maker had originally intended to make Live Migration part of the first Hyper-V product, but pulled the feature in order to try to make its shipping deadline.
Microsoft also said that major computer makers note that nearly all of their customers who order Windows Server 2008-based systems are opting to include Hyper-V. Microsoft finalized the Hyper-V code back in June.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
IOW, MSFT is only trying to keep up...
(*Now what you do pay for w/ VMWare is enterprise-grade tools to manage the VMs...)
I'm sorry... what? How does your comment have anything to do with the article?
Anyway, very informative post. Our company is still poking around the idea of virtualization, but we're getting caught up on the fact that we only have 5 servers, and wouldn't all virtual servers be offlined if you had to perform updates on the host OS? Interesting stuff indeed....
While I don't necessarily want to speak for Severmaker....I think s/he is trying to insinuate that Vmware's financial future is in serious jeopardy due to these developments. Vmware already began releasing a semi-crippled version of ESX for free to counter Hyper-V...and now that Hyper-V is free (and includes a few key features that is lacking from the free ESXi..namely live migration) then there is preciously little room for VMWare to maneuver and still maintain the margins they have become accustomed to.
Add to that VMWare's recent issues with quality control in their flagship product (google "vmware esx 3.5 bug") AND horrible customer service (which is VERY expensive)...and the toilet paper scenario for VMware's stock is looking more and more likely. Just one sysadmins' humble opinion, of course.
And to address your question regarding the update thing...that's what the live migration is meant for...to move the virtual machines from one physical host to another "seamlessly" so that you can bring down a physical host for upgrades or whatever. You can also do it "manually" with other products, but generally it involves shutting each down, then copying over the files, and re-starting the VM on the new host. All during that time, the services being provided by the VM are unavailable. There is generally some period of unavailability with live migration too, but it is much less and the process is more of a point-and-click operation making it much easier (especially when one is dealing with a lot of VM's at the same time).
MS doesn't support Live Migration today. They just demoed it, but it wont' be supported until Windows 2008 R2 ships (in early 2010). Hyper-V has what they call Quick Migration. It suspends the entire memory image to the disk and resumes it on another host. The downtime depends on the size of the VM memory and the speed of the disk. Quick Migration of a typical (8G) VM means about 160 seconds of downtime (80 seconds for suspending, 80 seconds for resuming, assuming a generous read/write thruput of 100 MBps). This pretty much makes quick migration unusable (think about your broker quick migrating the server when you are trying to buy MSFT shares, I am sure you will be annoyed when that happens and ditch your broker).
Hyper-V is free and is a decent product, but honsetly, that is ESX1.0. The free hypervisor that VMware throws has more functionality than the free Hyper-V (transparent page sharing, memory overcommit, a clustered file system so that you no longer need to do operations at the granularity of a LUN, better VM scheduling, support for pretty all x86 server guest OSes, I can go on). Its proven, has been around for ~7 years, all the Fortune 500 customers use it in production. And it's free. It's up to you to use it or drink MSFT kool-aid.
Granted, Hyper-V isn't a "ESX-killer", but it *is* an ESXi-killer based on price-points (both free), target audience, and anticipated near-term functionality...Live Migration being the biggest one. While it's true that Live Migration is not in production yet (my post above is related to my experience with VMotion), the fact that it is coming...and relatively soon...and free...spells major problems for VMWare in the very near future who will either 1) have to add some version of VMotion to ESXi to maintain mind share (and thereby cannabalizing a large % of their current ESX sales), 2) wither and die (or perhaps both..), or 3) hope to be purchased. The other functions that you mention that ESXi contains are really not of a concern to the small-medium scale MS-centric organizations who would be interested in Hyper-V (they are "nice to have" instead of "must have")...the live migration is the "killer app" of the equation as otherwise even the free VMWare Server product meets most of their needs. Right now, many of them buy ESXi solely for Vmotion (I recently worked for one in this category), but within a few months all those sales (and associated lucrative support contracts) are likely to disappear once Hyper-V can scratch the particular itch of live migration.
I personally prefer the ESX product over anything that MSFT will be coming up with in the next few years...I like the "independent" point of view towards technology and dislike the lock-in that Redmond likes to build into its stuff. But, I'm a minority in that matter (and generally don't write the checks where I work)...and when it comes time to justify a purchase of tens of thousands of dollars versus "free" for many small-medium size companies I'm afraid the marginal performance benefits of the VMWare product just won't be able to convince the bean counters to take the plunge once Live Migration is up and running. Sure, there will definitely be a market for the "enterprise class" virtualization that VMware offers with its ESX line...those Fortune 500 customers you mentioned will continue to buy because they can afford to pay for the very best..but that's a fairly small pond to be fishing from in the long term for new sales and is disaster for future growth of the company even assuming the Hyper-V doesn't continue to improve over time.
A better comparison is the hypervisor-base ESXi, which sure hasn't been around for "7 years" and definitely not in use by "all the Fortune 500 customers." The free version VMWare "throws" has neither support for VMotion nor VMotion Storage (requires VI Enterprise licensing.)
ESX is a hypervisor, I don't I am dumb either :)
ESXi code base is same as the regular ESX code base, except that VMware has stripped out all the management console OS baggage that is part of the regular ESX. Other than this, everything else is same. It's very similar to MSFT stripping all the unwanted things from Windows and created Server Core -- that doesn't make server core a new product. Similarly, ESXi is the same old hypervisor that has been in use for around 7 years in the Fortune 500s.
Yes, free ESXi doesn't come with VMotion and Storage VMotion. VMware can't throw everything for free. But if you buy VMotion, it _does_ migrate things without a glitch. Not unlike Quick Migration -- free but things break when you use it. I am not an MS basher, just pointing out that you get what you pay for.
I have been using ESX for a long time, I know what ESX 1.0 was. I have evaluated Hyper-V, its stable and decent. But I know it's same as ESX 1.0.
Really? Someone should tell VMWare, then.
From the ESX product page:
"Create the foundation for the dynamic and automated data center with VMware ESX - the market leading hypervisor, production-proven at thousands of customers of all sizes."
I think you are confusing the different types of hypervisors (native/bare metal vs hosted)...and trying to imply that only hosted hypervisors are "hypervisors" with native/bare metal implementations are "something else". Yes, it's true that Hyper-V is not of the same type of hypervisor as ESX, being that Hyper-V is a hosted (though its native hooks into Windows Server and paravirtualization-like optimizations in Vista seem to make it a bit of a hybrid IMHO) and ESX being a full native/bare metal implementation. Also, ESXi is basically exactly the same as ESX as far as architecture...just with less features...so if ESX isn't a hypervisor (which it obviously is, of course) then ESXi can't be either. Maybe you are confusing ESXi with the VMware Server (formally GSX) product?
So, be careful about throwing around that "makes you look dumb" stuff...just sayin' ;)
- by inachu September 15, 2008 11:16 AM PDT
- The 64bit file is 30.x med and is a MSU file.....
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(11 Comments)The 32 bit Hyper V version is only 3.x megs? huh?
Nice goin not offering an exe or MSI version....