ESX vs Virtual Server
Alex Barrett over at searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com has posted an article comparing Microsoft Virtual Server to VMware ESX server. As John Troyer at VMware correctly points out, thats comparing apples to oranges. The correct comparison would be to compare Microsoft Virtual Server with VMware Server, not ESX server. One thing they both fail to mention though, and that is IO performance. Running IO intensive servers, like Domino/Exchange in a virtualization layer on top of Windows Server 2003, be it VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server limits you to the underlying OS IO limitations. Running several of these virtual machines on top of Server 2003 will cause serious slowdown of the virtual machines purely due to the native IO limitations. This is one area where VMware ESX server really excels. VMFS is designed for high speed access and large file sizes and is way more efficient than NTFS when it comes to multiple simultaneous IO requests. While I agree that VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server both provide an easy and very cost effective introduction to virtualization, it does come at a price in performance. There is no way, not currently at least, virtualization platforms that run on top of existing "full scale" Operating Systems will provide you with the performance that a thin hypervisor layer and a specially designed file system will give you. Nor will it provide you with the real failover and dynamic resource allocation features you'll find in an enterprise product. And thats the whole point, VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual Server are not enterprise products, and VMware sure hasn't positioned or marketed VMWare Server as one.Post metadata
Published December 5, 2006 10:48
5 comments
Tagged with computing, esx, microsoft, virtual infrastructure, virtual server, virtualization and VMware
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December 8, 2006 1:30pm, and a great walkthrough of NIC Teaming and VLAN Trunking on ESX Server. h0bbel. Christian Mohn works on web photo album Gallery, which is available as a virtual appliance. Recently he has talked about ESX Server vs Virtual Server and a 3-month progress report in his VI3 deployment. InfoWorld Virtualization Report. This is David Marshall’s second blog after VMblog. Of special interest is his regular podcast series. RoudyBob.NET
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May 14, 2007 7:58pm[…] ESX vs Virtual Server - h0bbel […]
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May 15, 2007 11:34am[…]
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August 15, 2007 4:26pm[…] would point out this one, though:http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/2006/12/05/esx-vs-virtual-server/as it clearly indicates that in most production environments, ESX server cannot be beaten (IO […]
December 8, 2006 1:30pm
, and a great walkthrough of NIC Teaming and VLAN Trunking on ESX Server. h0bbel. Christian Mohn works on web photo album Gallery, which is available as a virtual appliance. Recently he has talked about ESX Server vs Virtual Server and a 3-month progress report in his VI3 deployment. InfoWorld Virtualization Report. This is David Marshall’s second blog after VMblog. Of special interest is his regular podcast series. RoudyBob.NET
December 9, 2006 4:00am
I concur *and* I/O seems to be one of the biggest limiters (if not the biggest) on using multiple VMs per system. I think the stance of making people upgrade to ESX and shelling out ~4K per system is also unreasonable.
I’m very much a champion of the little guy on the virtualization front. I think this is a transformational technology and the more we get it into everyone’s hands and in a manner that enables them, the better.
It would be great if VMware would bring ESX to the masses or at least the core components that enhance key performance items like this. VMFS for Linux!
May 14, 2007 7:58pm
[…] ESX vs Virtual Server - h0bbel […]
May 15, 2007 11:34am
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August 15, 2007 4:26pm
[…] would point out this one, though:http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/2006/12/05/esx-vs-virtual-server/as it clearly indicates that in most production environments, ESX server cannot be beaten (IO […]