XenServer and VMware vSphere – A Cost Comparison

I work for a reseller of both Citrix and VMware products.  In many client meetings we often debate over which virtualization platform a client should use for server virtualization and which one is “better”.  Now, if I were to ask all of our engineers (and I have) which hypervisor they would choose (XenServer or VMware) if all things were equal (price, performance, features….) they would almost unanimously say VMware vSphere/ESX.  As we know ALL things are seldom equal especially pricing and this is where the debate gets interesting.

 Usually the statement “XenServer is free which saves us lots of money.  Why should we look at VMware which is much more expensive?” comes into play at some point.  There is no question that this is a very valid point.  So let’s take a look at the two solutions and see where they net out.

First off, the blanket marketing statement “XenServer is free” is, in my opinion, not completely accurate.  If you are just looking for a base hypervisor that will let you consolidate servers, simplify management and perform some other basic feature then yes the “free” XenServer will work, so will ESXi or HyperV.  In fact, you won’t get much argument out of me that XenServer has the most rich feature set of all the free hypervisors.  That being said in most production environments there are going to be certain enterprise level features that you will want and in most cases need, like High Availability and the ability to “vMotion” or move vm’s live between hosts.

For me I see the minimum level of enterprise features being present in VMware vSphere Advanced and Citrix XenServer with Essentials for XenServer Enterprise.  Both of these solutions give you High Availability and vMotion and some other functionality.  So let’s take a look at what each one really costs.  I’ll use MSRP pricing and an environment consisting of 3 hosts.

VMware vSphere                                                                           

Advanced Acceleration Kit (3 servers)                                                                                                    $10,495

Platinum Support (24×7 unlimited)                                                                                                           $2,395

Total                                                                                                                                                                      $12,890

  

Citrix XenServer with Essentials Enterprise

Essentials for XenServer Enterprise ($2500 each)                                                                              $7500

24×7 Support (5 incidents max)                                                                                                                  $3000

Total                                                                                                                                                                      $10,500

 Difference                                                                                                                                                          $2390

 

Now, $2390 is still a decent chunk of money but all of a sudden the price gap between the two solutions is not nearly as drastic as $12,890 vs. FREE and this is a much more accurate comparison in my opinion.  Both products are very good and capable of running in a production environment and have similar core feature sets.  You should look at competing products before your spend your or your companies money but in my opinion and experience vSphere Advanced is well worth the extra $2390.  So test them both and you decide. 

So I guess the short answer to “Which one is better?” is the infamous IT answer “it depends”!

In my opinion some things to consider above and beyond price should include:

-          How proven is the solution in production environments?

-          How stable?

-          How easy is it to use and maintain?

-          How scalable?

-          How does it handle backups and DR?

-          General availability of third party products?

-          How well does it integrate with your storage?

Here are a few links to compare products:

VMware

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/mid-size-and-enterprise-business/features.html – vSphere

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html – vSphere editions chart

Citrix

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1686942 – XenServer

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1680964 – XenServer Essentials

WYSE TCX Flash Redirection

When it comes to Thin Client computing there are several questions that typically come up.  The big one is usually “What about video performance?”.   Video performance was typically subpar or “choppy”, how choppy usually depending on what protocol (ICA or RDP) you were using.  WYSE responded with it TCX Multimedia Redirection software which significantly improved video performance by redirecting the processing associated with certain video files to the local client.

Now with the advent of more and more flash content in web pages and web apps, “What about flash video performance?” is becoming a much bigger concern.  Yet again WYSE is answering the call with its new TCX Flash Redirection software (still in BETA).  Whereas TCX Multimedia redirects video files to the local client, TCX Flash redirects flash video.  Now your end users can watch YouTube videos all day at work with minimal irritation and stop calling the help desk to complain.

Speaking of YouTube…..there is a good YouTube video demonstrating the flash video performance both with and without TCX enabled.  You can check it out here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4rPs84-FgY

Here is a little technical documentation about the product as well:

TCX server components required for TCX Flash Redirection Tech Preview

-          Rich sound Server  ver.1.1.7

Supported Thin Clients:

-          V class and R class with XPe (WFR2 SP2 & WES) and

                                i) Rich sound Client ver. 1.1.7  (Only for Xpe Clients)

                                ii) MMR client ver.1.24.0.0  (Only for Xpe Clients)             

-          V class Wyse Thin OS client (6.3.0_25)

Supported 32-bit operating system platforms:

-          XP Pro SP3

-          Vista (all flavors)

-          Windows 2003 Enterprise SP2

-          XenApp 4.5 & 5.0

Supported Protocols:

-          Microsoft RDP

-          Citrix ICA

-          Citrix PortICA

Supported Connection Brokers:

-          VMware View

-          Citrix XenDesktop

Supported Browsers:

-          Internet Explore Version 6

-          Internet Explore Version 7

Why VMware ESX/vSphere Over Other Virtualization Platforms?

This week we had a client meeting where I was asked specifically, “Why should we go with VMware over Citrix or Hyper-V for server virtualization?”  It forced me to really sit down and map out what I see as the advantages to using VMware ESX/vSphere as an enterprise virtualization solution.  Let me just preface this by saying that we are partners/resellers of both Citrix and VMware and both companies make excellent products.  I’ve used and tested Citrix XenServer and the product worked great and was easy to use and let’s face it they have a very strong pricing model.  Price aside, if I was going to run my production systems in a virtual environment today they would be installed on VMware ESX/vSphere.  So in my OPINION here are some of the advantages I see to the VMware product.

-          True Enterprise Solution

• Tested, Proven, very stable
• 100% of Fortune 100 companies use it.  85% of them use it in Production
• Huge investment in R&D
• Capable of running the most I/O intensive apps

-          Higher Consolidation Ratios

• Handles memory and resources better
  • Memory Ballooning and memory over allocation
• Supports the most number of OS’s of any virtualization platform

-          Ease of Use

• vCenter – Single pane of glass, simple and intuitive
• Very configurable and customizable
• Excellent alerts and reporting

-          Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS)

• Active and automated load balancing using vMotion
• Currently not available with other virtualization platforms

-          vMotion and Storage vMotion

• vMotion type functionality is available with other products but with VMware it is virtually flawless and has been perfected over several versions of the product.
• Storage vMotion to move VM’s live across storage platforms with no downtime

-          Backup / VCB

• Better backup solution(s)
• VCB integrates with most 3^rd party backup solutions
• Data Recovery in vSphere (new) – eliminates need for 3^rd party backup software
  • De-Dupe enabled

-          Fault Tolerance (new in vSphere)

• Real-time, zero data loss clustering solution
  • Enabled with a single checkbox

-          Thin Provisioning

• Built in to vSphere and enables you eliminate over  provisioning of storage resources

-          vNetwork Distributed Switch

• Centralized/Simplified management of networking
• Nexus v1000 option – manage virtual switches like other Cisco switches
  • Excellent if your company has a Storage Team and a Network Team

-          Site Recovery Manager – automated disaster recovery

• Only solution like it on the market.  Plug-in to vCenter
• Simplifies DR testing, documentation and execution once replicated SANs are implemented for DR/BC

-          VDI Ready

• Tight integration with VMware View VDI solution

-          3^rd Party Tools

• Currently more 3^rd party tools available than other platforms

VMware vSphere 4 Launched Today!

Intro

Today VMware announced the rollout of its newest product, vSphere 4, which will be the successor to ESX 3.5.  Via webcast the launch was broadcast live.  Once we got past the 45 minutes with the CEO’s of Cisco, VMware, HP and Intel all holding hands, singing kumbaya and professing their love for each other’s companies there were some real good demos and product details by the VMware CTO.  I’ll try to keep this blog much more geared to a high level overview of the techno stuff.

So here we go!

Some of main areas of excitement were around the amount of collaboration VMware did with companies like Cisco, EMC, Intel and HP.  From Cisco the anticipated release of the Nexus 1000 vSwitch functionality will be integrated into the new vSphere (for an additional license cost).  This new switch will enable network admins to manage virtual switches within VMware like they would other physical Cisco switches.

Intel talked a little about the release of their new Xeon 5500 series processor which will use less power and provide much more processing power.  A short demo was done showing how the new 5500 series processor enables companies to virtualize many apps that couldn’t be virtual before.  As an example they had both a highend ORACLE database and SQL database running at near 100%.  The system performance was illustrated both physical and then virtual on a 5500 series vSphere environment….. the performance improved.

The CTO of VMware eventually came to the stage and talked about the new product and its feature set.  Overall the new vSphere offers (according to VWware) ….. 150 new features.  The presentation was focused around 3 key areas that vSphere aimed to improve on….Efficiency, Control and Choice.

Efficiency

Some of the key new capabilities included:

-          Support for 8 virtual processors per vm

-          256GB RAM supported per vm (love to see the price tag on that!)

-          Over 300,000 IOPS supported

o   One example shown was a single vm driving 510 disk spindles

-          Support for 2048 processor cores

-          vStorage – a thin provisioning technology that is estimated to save you as much as 50% in storage requirements

-          Distributed Power Management – this is a cool feature that uses vMotion to collapse down server (host) loads to the minimum number of host when loads are idle (after 5 or 6 pm for instance).  When loads ramp back up more host are brought on line to support the demand.

o   This technology is estimated to save an additional 20% over the power savings generated by Vi3.

Finally due to these and other improvements in efficiency you can expect to see up to 30% greater consolidation ratios over existing ESX 3.5 infrastructure.  Combine this with other new technology like the HP G6 server using the Xeon 5500 processors and you could see very significant cost savings in addition to performance increases.

Control

Here is where some really cool and useful features were announced.  The focus was on vCenter Host Profiles, Fault Tolerance and Security.

vCenter Host Profiles will give you instant provisioning of new hosts/hardware.  In other word you can guarantee that all of your VMware hosts are configured the same including DNS settings, NTP, hardware, etc.. The cool thing is it is all done right from vCenter via GUI in a new tab.  Through the use of green and red alerts the system tells you both when a host is out of compliance and what exactly is out of compliance.

VMware Fault Tolerance was shown as a live demo.  By simply right clicking on a vm and enabling FT, vCenter spins up a second exact copy of the vm to be protected on another host.  Once the second vm is running the system configures the two vm’s to run in lock step with each other.  If one dies the other takes over without missing a step.  This was demo’d using a Blackberry server.  A blackberry device, shown on screen using an emulator and connected to a local blackberry server running on a VMware host installed on an HP blade was configured for FT.  The original server blade was then removed (hot) and emails continued to stream to the Blackberry.  There will be an additional cost (license) for the FT feature but it essentially will enable you to cluster any application that can run on a vm.

The final feature set was geared toward Security.  There are now vm-safe APIs that have been made available to third party vendors to create security appliances and software for the virtual space.  vSphere now also has what were called vShield Zones which is a new built-in security feature that enables the creation and management of logical security zones (ie DMZ) with specific security profiles.

Choice

The final area discussed was Choice.  This had a lot to do with the flexibility that vSphere gives to IT departments.  The new vSphere touts supporting 4x more operating systems than the next nearest competitor.  The new Storage vMotion was also demo’d.  Now you have the choice, via GUI now, to vMotion vm’s via regular vMotion or Storage vMotion directly from the vCenter console.  Not only will the new Storage vMotion allow you to move datastores on the fly from one array to another should you need to replace you storage array but it is really geared more toward the ability to tier your vm’s and datastores between say SATA or high speed FC resources.

Summary

Overall the new vSphere is a very impressive product.  VMware has really made a huge leap forward in how datacenters of the future will operate and be designed.  vSphere will be a FREE upgrade to those of you who have ESXi 3 under current support.  There are several new licensing levels and some of the functionality listed above comes at an additional cost so check with your authorized VMware partner  like Varrow. J

VMware Fault Tolerance

VMware Fault Tolerance

Currently the VMware Vi3 infrastructure has many features that make life a little easier for IT departments.  vMotion allows the hot migration of virtual machines from one host to another and allowing hardware maintenance to occur during business hours.  HA enable the automatic reboot of a VM on a new host should its primary host fail. Finally DRS allows us to load balance across multiple hosts automatically.  These features provide a lot of flexibility and can improve the overall performance and uptime of your environment but VMware is soon to release a new feature that is real cool. 

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) will be released in the next version of the virtual infrastructure product.  In short it will provide real-time clustering for any vm’s that need it.  Anyone that has worked with Microsoft Clustering knows there are certain challenges to setting it up and managing it.  Applications also need to be cluster aware for Microsoft Clustering such as SQL and Exchange.  With FT you will now be able to cluster almost any application in your environment by simply selecting a check box.  A duplicate vm is created and runs in lock step with the primary.   I think this technology will really make clustering much easier and help to keep apps that are not cluster aware up and running.  Check out the link to the video below to see the VMware demo. 

http://download3.vmware.com/vdcos/demos/FT_Demo_800×600.html

VMware View 3 Multimedia Performance

VMware View 3 Multimedia Performance

Implementing a VDI infrastructure in your environment can have lots of advantages including simplified management and lower hardware costs.  This is attractive to most companies but one concern that almost always comes up is that of performance, in particular multimedia performance.  How well will video and other multimedia files perform over a VDI session and will they be tolerable to the end users?

The last thing any IT admin or manager wants is a bunch of end users screaming that their YouTube videos or Windows Media files (purely business related of course) are choppy and impossible to watch.  The newest version of VMware View 3 integrates a technology from WYSE called TCX to help overcome this shortcoming.  TCX has a server and client component which detects certain types of files and redirects them to the local device (Thin Client) and works with RDP.  More info on TCX can be found on WYSE’s website.  http://www.wyse.com/products/software/tcx/index.asp

VDI still has its challenges but the list is getting shorter.  Better multimedia performance and the ability to check out sessions and work offline (experimental) are just a few of the things that has addressed in its latest release of View.  Check it out.

VMware Lifecycle Manager – Demo Video

Here is a demo video of VMware Lifecycle manager I created.  It gives a very basic overview of what LCM can do.  Almost all fields and processes can be customized in the product.  This gives the administrator very granular control over who can request and create different types of VM’s within an ESX environment.  LCM can essentially automate the VM process from birth to death with little or no administrator intervention.  For larger ESX enviroments this can save the IT staff lots of time.  In addition, it provides a reporting function so you always know who created or requested a VM, when and for how long they need it.  If your company has a helpdesk tool such as Remedy or other ILM tools, LCM can be customized and integrated into those tools.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7573527852458327777

TriLead VM Explorer – Backup Solution for VMware

I haven’t had a chance to play around with this yet but it looks like it could be a good option for smaller companies. The standard version is FREE and the full featured product is about $700.

TriLead VM Explorer article

VDI: Citrix vs VMware

I came across this while surfing around.

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2008/11/25/do-you-think-vmware-is-catching-up-to-citrix-in-the-desktop-space-balderdash-citrix-needs-to-catch-up-to-vmware.aspx

http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/weblog.aspx?blog=2975

VMware – Distributed Power Management (DPM)

While at a training class for EMC last week we had several interesting conversations around the use of Vmware Distributed Power Management or DPM. Whether it is datacenters that are at the limit of their available power consumption or just businesses looking for additional power savings, DPM could be a great option. Here is a good YouTube video on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbRS0GGuNc

(Depending on your musical tastes you may need to mute the sound)