traffic coming out of the server environment. He has about
20 virtual servers running and doesn’t see an immediate need to add more management tools.
“I use iLO to remotely manage hardware; it has features that tell me if a physical box will overheat. And I use VMware to get into the back door of the ESX servers,” DiPofi says.“For our needs right now, the management tools that came with my servers work excellent.”
Network World Lab Alliance member Tom Henderson explores this question an a deeper technical level in his testing based article.
Whatever your opinion of Microsoft, you can’t deny the company knows how to generate excitement over products. The operating system vendor’s much-anticipated Windows Server Virtualization hypervisor technology, code-named Viridian, isn’t expected to be released until 2008 at the earliest — which has some wondering if they should hold off their virtualization investment until then.
“Microsoft may want you to wait, but why wait? Whatever Microsoft does will be Micro-soft-specific,”Yankee Group’s Hamilton say. Others agree, saying that Microsoft’s product could make or break decisions in smaller Windows-centric shops, but not for large heterogeneous environments.
“I’m unconvinced it is
worth the wait for most large
enterprises with a specific server virtualization project that they want done now,” Noel says.
But if you are a Microsoft shop, you should take into consideration the vendor’s plans, Mann says. Waiting would be counterproductive, but planning a short-term tactical approach until Microsoft reveals its bigger plans makes sense. While users question if Microsoft will broaden its reach to manage hypervisors other than its own, industry watchers are positive the vendor will couple its virtualization play with more management technologies.
“Microsoft will absolutely come out with management tools around managing its and other hypervisors so it will be worth checking into when the time comes,” Mann says.
IT managers agree Microsoft’s technology should be evaluated with due diligence when it is released but that is no reason to hold off a compelling server virtualization project needed now.“You have good tools out there now, and they will only get better as Microsoft is releasing their toolset and aging it,” Cars. com’s Christensen says.
Others say Microsoft seems to be planning a different level of hosting for its hypervisor, which could make VMware more appealing for some.
“[Microsoft] is still basing its design on a scheme that runs on a basic Windows kernel. [Microsoft] cannot get the same performance out of their virtual layer when it sits on top of a full operating system kernel,” Antonowicz says.“Virtual machines running on the Microsoft Virtual Server are still treated as an
application running on a Windows server. Only with VMware’s ESX or Xen will you get true ‘bare-metal’ performance.”
Industry watchers have no doubt that when Microsoft enters the virtualization market, the landscape will change. The one platform that doesn’t have a hypervisor built into its operating system today is Windows and when that happens, IT managers will need to reassess their virtualization strategies, experts say.
“Microsoft has key questions it needs to answer around performance and reliability, and if it can nail down those two factors, it will be headed in the right direction to compete directly with VMware,” IDC’s Elliot says. “Microsoft has a pretty big footprint and while it is behind in some areas, it is quickly making up ground. So the question will be about if VMware functionality is so superior to Microsoft’s that it can overcome Microsoft’s lower price points?”
For IT managers with small environments and smaller IT budgets, freeware applications and open source software often meet their management needs.
Companies such as Hyperic and Veeam have released products designed to manage virtual environments. Hyperic, which released its Hyperic HQ for VMware software last year, built capabilities to extend the company’s flagship software into virtual environments. The vendor wrote integrations into VMware’s
APIs and Virtual Center interface to discover both physical and virtual servers and incorporate virtual instances into an inventory of all systems. If something changes, the software detects it, updates the repository and alerts IT. HQ performs what the company calls “physical to virtual mapping” that shows IT managers the virtual machines, their hosts, as well as operating systems and applications running within the virtual machines.
In Veeam’s case, the start-up is building a commercial software business off of the success of its freeware application. FastSCP 2.0 for VMware is a freeware file management product that helps customers move virtual machines and copy instances from one server to another. FastSCP was originally released in October 2006 and“became the de facto standard for ESX file management,” says Veeam President and CEO Ratmir Timashev.
IT managers say in a pinch, freeware fits the bill. Mark Devlin, virtualization consultant at Auracom Technologies in Perth, Australia, uses FastSCP because when he needed the virtual capabilities,Veeam’s application was the only available tool to address his needs.
“It is the fastest way to achieve real-time file system management of the ESX environment; in fact, there is nothing passive about this product — it really does deliver cost savings, reduces labor overhead and expedites the day,” Devlin says.
Others say with limited feature sets, the low-cost alternatives may only have a short life in the virtual environment.
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