A while ago, I discussed the seven disadvantages of server virtualization. Cost was one factor that I did not cover in that post. Questioning whether one can reduce costs with server virtualization sounds a bit like blasphemy these days. You will hardly find an article about server virtualization that does not claim that it is the best way to save costs in the data center. According to this view, server consolidation is the main benefit for virtualizing servers.

The arguments supporting this claim are so obvious that most IT managers do not dare question them. Replacing ten physical servers with just one seems to be the best cost-saving measure one can think of – and since the Green IT hype began, even CEOs talk about power-saving in the data center. The calculation seems to be quite easy, too: ten horses require ten times as much hay as one horse. Every CEO can understand that. So does it really make sense to challenge the costs saving axiom of server virtualization? I think it does.

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• Top 6 Replacements for Windows Notepad http://snurl.com/2zz6w I tried to replace Notepad alredy several times, but I never succeeded somehow #
• Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Application Virtualization 4.5 in Q4 2008 http://snurl.com/2zz8k VMM 2008 beta works fine. #
• VMware: Windows will be killed by virtual appliances. http://snurl.com/2zz9j Did anyone count how often Windows has been killed already? #
• Vista SP1 available on WSUS. WSUS team blog discusses the different packages. http://snurl.com/2zzb6 #
• Ready or Not, VMware, Here Comes Hyper-V. Nice review about Hyper-V on eWeek. http://snurl.com/2zzcn #
• Spammers Choose GMail. Google’s CAPTCHA system has been cracked. http://snurl.com/2zzd8 Expect more SPAM on your servers. #

The post entitled “Five Reasons Why VMware Virtualization is Better than Microsoft Hyper-V” on DABCC is already more than two weeks old. Perhaps I misunderstood some of the assertions in the article, but it seems to me that there are quite a few mistakes in it. I googled the topic to see if I had missed some essential news about Hyper-V; however, I wasn’t able to find anything that contradicts my view. So I decided to blog about it now because I am quite puzzled by the article’s arguments. Maybe you can tell me what I misunderstood.

I will reproduce the heading of DABCC article and sometimes a quote from Douglas Brown’s arguments, and add my comments afterwards.

1. Hyper-V is marketed as free but really isn’t.

Yeah it’s $28 bucks but that’s on top of a Windows 2008 License paid in full.

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Networkworld recently published an interesting article entitled “7 side effects of sloppy virtualization”. This title seems to indicate that the problems server virtualization might cause are solvable by being well prepared. Nevertheless, all seven arguments discussed can be considered disadvantages of server virtualization. Because I am seriously thinking of virtualizing all of our servers, I read the article with interest. So far, we have only four virtual servers with about fifteen virtual machines, but we have already encountered some of the problems mentioned in the article.

I will discuss all seven downsides from my own perspective and share some of the experiences we have had with server virtualization.

1. Magnified physical failures

Imagine you have ten important servers running on one physical host and its RAID controller runs amok, wiping out all of your hard disks. Don’t say that this is not very likely, as we have already had two or three incidents from malfunctioning RAID controllers from well-known brands.

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Ruben Spruijt wrote a comprehensive overview of Hyper-V over at Brian Madden’s site. In my view, Hyper-V is the most important component of Windows Server 2008. Although Microsoft’s new virtualization solution is still in beta, it can’t be wrong to get started with learning about it now. Even though, its user interface is fairly simple, Hyper-V is quite a sophisticated piece of software. This means that many different things can go wrong and you will only be able solve those problems if you understand the architecture of Hyper-V. Although parts of this overview are probably only for those who already have experience with virtualization solutions, it is also a good introduction into Hyper-V.

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Another year of blogging on 4sysops passed by. It was a good year. The number of page views doubled and so did the number of subscribers. So I say thank you to my loyal readers, especially to those who didn’t agree with me often. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you might be interested to know which articles have been read most often.

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I am currently evaluating Virtual Server plus Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) because I am thinking of replacing our VMware Server installations with Microsoft’s virtualization solution. Since I am still undecided, I was curious to test the beta of VMware Server 2. I was hoping that they added the feature I was waiting for (VSS support). Unfortunately, my test results didn’t end as I expected. Even though VMM didn’t really convince me to move to Virtual Server, my test of VMware Server 2 did.

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VMware Workstation 6.0.1 can now be downloaded. The new version supports a couple of additional operating system versions. Most noteworthy for 4sysops readers is probably that VMware Workstation 6.0.1 adds experimental support for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Server 2008 as host and guest operating systems.

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Virtualization.info reports that there will be a session about VMware Infrastructure VMware Server 2.0 at VMware World 2007 where they also will discuss some of the new features of VMware Server 2.

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The final of VMware Workstation 6 is now available for download. Virtualization.info discusses the new features.

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Today, I installed the Beta 3 of Windows Server Longhorn on the latest release candidate of VMware Workstation 6 (build 44426). Compared with the negative experiences I made with the beta versions of Vista and VMware Workstation, everything worked out smoothly. There are still two problems, though.

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The release candidate of VMware Workstation 6.0 has been available for some days already. I tried it now to see if the problems I had with Vista are solved. Unfortunately, I am still not able to use shared folders feature to access a host folder from a virtual machine.

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VMware Server 1.0.2 is available now. It fixes quite a few bugs; some of them are security-related. The upgrade is certainly recommended. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that we are quite content with VMware Server. This certainly is the best free virtualization solution in town. We have been using it in a productive environment since the version 1.0 came out. We have two physical servers running Windows Server Enterprise 2003 R2; each hosting a couple of virtual servers.

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I already reviewed Virtual PC 2007 beta sometime ago. My overall impression was not so positive at that time. Virtual PC 2007 RTM is available for download now. Today, I installed it again on a Vista machine.

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Some days ago, I was complaining that VMware Workstation 5.5 runs unstably on Vista and VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta is too slow. I suspected that the main reason for the latter is due to the fact that the beta runs in debug mode. When you boot-up a VM a pop-up message informs you that debug mode can’t be turned off. But a comment on 4sysops by Raj outlined an easy way to disable the debug mode.

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