Microsoft To Support CentOS Linux In Hyper-V

jbrodkin writes "Long the enemy of Linux users, Microsoft is apparently seeing dollar signs in the Linux-dominated Web server market. Microsoft's virtualization software, Hyper-V, will immediately add support for CentOS Linux, a community version of Red Hat that even Microsoft notes is a 'popular Linux distribution for hosters.' 'This enables our Hosting partners to consolidate their mixed Windows + Linux infrastructure on Windows Server Hyper-V,' Microsoft said. In addition to Web hosting, this targets another area where Microsoft is stuck in second place: the virtualization market dominated by VMware."

Comments

does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Anonymous Coward]

not trolling... just wondering about the practical implications of this.

Reboot host and have to shutdown all your VMs at least once a month?!!

Seems impractical to me.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[slazzy]

Yes, I believe there are almost as many hyper-V servers as zune music players.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Anonymous Coward]

"not trolling"

"Reboot host and have to shutdown all your VMs at least once a month?!!"

Not trolling you say? What's the last version of Windows you used? 98?

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[jdastrup]

While it's not nearly as widely used as VMware or other virtualization platforms, your argument is weak. Windows 2008 R2 hardly needs a reboot.

The facts are Hyper-V is behind in features and performance than others. For example, only since 2008 R2 SP1 a few months ago do they support shared memory. Before that, if you had 10 hosts and wanted to grant each 4 GB of RAM, you needed 40 GB in your host. If you didn't have enough RAM, you couldn't boot up your guests - lack of memory. That's a serious drawback, especially since the host OS can consume memory at will. There have been times that I've shutdown a Hyper-V guest and I couldn't boot it back up because the host had done something to use a few more MB's of RAM than before.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[jellomizer]

Well that is the answer to his question. Windows is actually quite stable now, on par with Linux. Especially if you set it up correctly so the Hyper-V system is the only thing running on the Master and use the other Virtual OS's as the systems that can bomb.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[LBArrettAnderson]

You don't need to patch IE, you don't need to patch Office, you don't really need to patch very much at all if all you're running is the virtualization software (which one would be doing if uptime of the guests is important).

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[mcrbids]

Well that is the answer to his question. Windows is actually quite stable now, on par with Linux.

Well, believe what you wish, I suppose. Over this last weekend, I set up my wife's laptop with Windows 7/64. The number of reboots I had to go through after the O/S install in order to get everything updated was no less than 10 or so, over a few hours. Mind you, this wasn't when setting up drivers, this was *after* I'd loaded the O/S and the drivers. This was just to apply security updates.

I have quite a number of Linux/RedHat/CentOS servers that I maintain, and when I build a new server, I have to reboot exactly one time after loading the O/S to apply updates. Literally, I type a single line as:

yum -y update && shutdown -r now;

That's it. That's the entire sum of the update process, after which I have a fully working, fully updated server with all updates updated.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[RightSaidFred99]

Yeah, features and performance. Let's talk price, shall we? Let's talk supportability. Let's talk integration. Hyper-V is awesome for the cases where Hyper-V suits your needs (yeah, nice tautology I know).

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[0123456]

While it's not nearly as widely used as VMware or other virtualization platforms, your argument is weak. Windows 2008 R2 hardly needs a reboot.

So long as you don't believe in installing security fixes. I can't imagine trying to run VMs on an OS that expects me to reboot to install another security fix every few days.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[batkiwi]

What security fixes have there been in windows 2008 R2 base server in the past 2 years?

I can't think of a single one, but I'm sure there has been at least 1-2.

Remember, with 2008 R2 MS went down the ubuntu/redhat/bsd-ish route by allowing you to install a VERY basic server with almost nothing on it, then add packages one by one. A hyper-V cluster member will not have a full IE, full IIS, Office, Flash, etc. Nor will it likely have any file shares open.

Microsoft's tactics around server vs desktop OSs are very different. They are finally taking servers seriously, allowing you to script everything via powershell and keeping things barebones.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[houghi]

If Hyper-V is the only thing running on Windows, just so you can run Linux, why would you run Windows in the first place? Just run XEN, KVM or even VirtualBox on Linux and have several Linux sessions run on that.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[jdastrup]

You don't have to patch and reboot every time MS releases a patch. You would be wise to do so if you have a Windows server exposed on the Internet. But if it's in a relatively safe environment then relax with the ultra-security nonsense. I have several Windows 2003 servers I patch maybe once a year, and they only get rebooted at those times, and during rare power outages, yet somehow, by some freak miracle, have I survived without getting hacked, attacked, infected, etc.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to patch IE, you don't need to patch Office, you don't really need to patch very much at all if all you're running is the virtualization software (which one would be doing if uptime of the guests is important).

But updating IE and Office shouldn't require a reboot.

So if one is required every patch cycle, it's because either:
a) The updates include kernel/driver updates.
b) The update system is horribly broken.

Either way it doesn't seem good.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[shutdown -p now]

What he meant is that your Hyper-V server shouldn't be serving anything else (which you could, in theory, do - say, configure a web server role on it as well). Doesn't mean that guest OSes can't be Windows.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[obarthelemy]

I think the GP is about regular use, not install.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[sconeu]

Have they fixed the Virtual Server Linux clock skew bug in Hyper-V?

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[mlts]

There is one use where Windows Server 2008 R2 + Hyper-V is the only game in town:

Encrypting a remote server, while still letting it boot, using BitLocker with a TPM.

Why is this important? A couple years ago, I did a gig for a some research project that had a remote server that went unmanned for months at a time. It had a Net connection via satellite. This server had a couple Linux VMs (unsupported [1] but worked perfectly.)

Bitlocker is the only game in town for not just providing hard disk encryption, but allowing a server to boot without intervention via remote. Of course, in theory, someone can dump the RAM or plug an IEE1394 dongle in, but the people that would be going for a remote, unprotected server almost completely would be low-tech thieves looking for hardware, or perhaps medium-tech, looking for stuff on the machine's image to sell on the ID theft market.

[1]: I advised the client that it was unsupported, but they went with this anyway.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[h4rr4r]

If no one enters a password or key how is it getting that information on boot? If you are using the key out of the TPM that seems like a recipe for failure when the hardware dies.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[EndlessNameless]

With the 2008 R2 service pack, this is no longer the case, as VMs can now be live-migrated. It is not as smooth as VMotion, however, so Hyper-V is still technically inferior.

There is a notable cost advantage when Enterprise or Datacenter versions of Windows are used on appropriate hardware, but I don't know if that will last if/when Microsoft reaches feature parity.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[IHawkMike]

When you encrypt the drive with BitLocker you save the recovery key to a text file, or have it stored in Active Directory. During normal operation, the key is

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[IHawkMike]

Weird cutoff -- preview looked fine. Was trying to say that during normal operation the key is pulled from the TPM chip but in the event of failure you can use the recovery key to unlock the drive.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[ArhcAngel]

Quite stable and *nix stable are still worlds apart.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[MattW]

Translation: if you're a Windows shop and want to run Windows stuff, then Hyper-V is a Windows product, and therefore will suit your needs. If you need performance, features, compatibility, or a rich ecosystem of partner products, then look elsewhere? Got it.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[EndlessNameless]

> Let's talk price, shall we?

Hyper-V is essentially free if you're already invested in the Microsoft platform.

With an Enterprise license, you are allowed up to 4 instances on the same box. If an instance is used only to support virtualization, it doesn't count toward this limit. Note that with 4 instances, Enterprise is the same cost per instance as Standard so the price will be equivalent assuming reasonable VM density.

In addition, since failover clusters and enterprise certificate servers require Enterprise, most Microsoft customers will already be licensing Enterprise anyway.

With Datacenter edition, an unlimited number of VMs can be run on the same box. This does, however, require attention to the underlying hardware as it is licensed per-CPU unlike the other editions. With Intel's current offerings, a cheap 2-CPU server can have 12 cores (24 with HT). If it can handle 6 VMs, it reaches price parity with Standard edition---and it can probably handle far more than that.

tl;dr - Hyper-V is more cost-effective than VMware for a Windows or hybrid shop, but there are some features it currently lacks or implements poorly.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[IHawkMike]

It's true that Hyper-V lacks the features of VMware, but it still has better bang for the buck simply because you can cluster and Live Migrate (vMotion) in the free edition. I don't know how Xen compares so maybe it's even better.

Also, much to my dismay SP1 doesn't support shared memory (overcommit). What it does have now is Dynamic Memory which I'm not all that impressed with. You can basically give a machine a minimum amount of memory and it can increase that on the fly based on the use of the guest OS.

VMware is still king when you have the money for it. ESX 4.1 allows vMotion now starting with Essentials Plus, but you need to shell out some big bucks for the really cool stuff like Storage vMotion and DRS.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Anonymous Coward]

But updating IE and Office shouldn't require a reboot.

So if one is required every patch cycle, it's because either:
a) The updates include kernel/driver updates.
b) The update system is horribly broken.

Either way it doesn't seem good.

Reboots are rarely about drivers. Reboots during IE and Office updates certainly aren't.

The fundamental issue is that Windows chooses not to update running executables and DLL's. This is more of a policy decision than a kernel/filesystem restriction. Windows won't let you delete an "in use" file, but you can rename the old file, schedule it for deletion on the next boot, and install the new file. With Transactional NTFS it could probably even do it atomically. Processes using the old files would keep running with them.

The problem is that currently running processes will have FOO.DLL version 1, and newly started processes will get FOO.DLL version 2. This can complicate IPC between the FOO.DLL instances, and there is a HUGE amount of IPC going on behind the scenes in Windows. Also, a process that had FOO.DLL version 1, unloads it, and then loads it again, will suddenly get version 2. This is usually harmless, but not always.

The bottom line is that some applications would fail in unpredictable and difficult to debug ways if shared DLL's changed out from under them. Microsoft chooses to be conservative and require reboots.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[smash]

Guess what? My esx hosts need updating and rebooting too. There's hot migration for that. Migrate VMs. Reboot host. Repeat.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[smash]

Integrated management tools. I don't run it, but it plugs into sccm where you have all your other windows network configuration.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Anthony Mouse]

Running insecure servers is fine until it isn't. Especially now with companies issuing mobile devices that employees take home to infect with all variety of trojans etc., you basically have to treat the internal network as the internet. Unless you're looking forward to cleaning up the enormous clusterfuck that results when some crime syndicate compromises one of your domain controllers, best to keep things patched.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Dcnjoe60]

I don't know, I still get a lot of messages in the morning that state something to the affect that "Windows was restarted after updating files" on desktop systems. May not need to be rebooted as in the past for memory leaks, etc., it still needs rebooted much more than a linux. Of course, one could turn off the automatic updates on a server. Regardless, Win7 stability is a major improvement over previous versions of Windows, with the possible exception of Windows 2000.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[WuphonsReach]

Remember, with 2008 R2 MS went down the ubuntu/redhat/bsd-ish route by allowing you to install a VERY basic server with almost nothing on it, then add packages one by one. A hyper-V cluster member will not have a full IE, full IIS, Office, Flash, etc. Nor will it likely have any file shares open.

If you're talking about the "Server Core" style in Windows Server 2008... it's extremely rudimentary. By default, there is no GUI shell in Server Core. No Desktop. No Start Menu. Just a command line.

Sounds wonderful right? Well, except that most packages that you would need to install on Server Core are still configured with MSCs or GUI widgets. So you have to learn arcane commands (worse then Linux) that bring up the GUI widget or MSC interface that lets you do the configuration. Configuration of the server is still kept in binary blobs instead of plain text files, so you can't choose to administer the server by tweaking config files with a text editor either. You're also still stuck using RDP to administer the server instead of being able to SSH in (and easily keep a log file of what you changed).

If you're considering deploying Server Core in any situation where you don't have a team of at least 3 people already, who are all technically adept, and you're going to be deploying at least a dozen of these things - then you're going to spend tons of time just figuring out how to configure something.

(We do Linux server admin via SSH and keep every config file versioned using FSVS. Server Core doesn't even come close to that power.)

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[im_thatoneguy]

You know... you can usually say no to those reboots and then do them all at once as well right?

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Lennie]

It did reboot automatically when Windows 2008 R2 SP1 came out. Thanks Microsoft !

No I think Microsoft has this wrong way around.

Linux as the host, Windows as the VM, much better.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Lennie]

Do you know what people do who run other VM-solutions (if that is more than 7 Windows VM, that is where the price point is) ?

They run Linux with KVM or whatever and buy a data center license they don't use so they can run as many Windows VM's they want.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[cavreader]

"Can't access the Internet except selected sites that are deemed 'safe'??? " What in the hell are you talking about? If you can only access selected sites it is your company firewall or you have entered sites manually in the Restricted Sites or Hosts file in the Internet security options.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Lennie]

With KVM you don't need to pay for VMWare or Microsoft ;-) Just run Linux as a host and Linux as VMs.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[gmhowell]

Quite stable and *nix stable are still worlds apart.

Shame that Linux =/= Unix.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[MurukeshM]

Usually, no. Once Windows Update starts whining for a reboot, it won't allow you to check for or install new updates. It won't work if you download the updates independently and try to install them, coz then the setup will say another update is pending or something to that effect. Which is not the case for Linux. And it may happen that for some updates, after rebooting, Windows will spend time configuring the shit out of them, and then restart again, no user interaction involved. That pisses me off.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[MurukeshM]

You are right. Linux is a proper subset of *nix.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[smash]

You're doing it wrong. There are plenty of tools out there to automate / speed up windows roll outs. And you seriously do not need 10 reboots. I know this, because I build/maintain our Win7 SOE images.

If its a personal machine, its a once off. If you're a business with more than 10-20 people you should seriously consider setting up a deployment server and maintaining an image.

I can go from borked machine to reinstalled OS with all updates in about 1 hour, including keeping of all the user data (assuming the OS is clean enough to boot and get onto the network). Out of that 1 hour, only 5 minutes of work is involved to set up the reinstall. And thats without using SCCM to automate the process entirely.

I think a large problem with Windows in the mind of the average slashdotter is that they aren't exposed to the proper enterprise tools. If you're a windows shop with an enterprise agreement, there are a whole heap of management tools that make things much, much easier.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a unix person at heart and given the choice would be on a BSD box (preferably a mac actually) for my desktop in a heartbeat. But there's so many examples of people trying to do stuff on Windows the brain damaged way and then complaining that it's brain damaged it's not funny.

But, its the same as with the Mac or Linux or any other OS. People try the way of doing things, find it doesn't work, and then bitch about it.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[smash]

But, its the same as with the Mac or Linux or any other OS. People try the way of doing things, find it doesn't work, and then bitch about it.

This was meant to read: But, its the same as with the Mac or Linux or any other OS. People try the [insert other OS] way of doing things, find it doesn't work, and then bitch about it.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[mlts]

BitLocker has four ways to recover the key:

1: It offers to save both a printed copy of the key and a key file.

2: It can save it in Active Directory.

3: It can use the Data Recovery Agent specified in a policy.

4: You can specify what 128 or 256 key pleases you. All zeroes? Step right up.

I really wish some other OS had the ability to use the TPM for hard disk encryption functionality. TrouSerS tries, but we need an actual initiative for other operating systems. It wouldn't be that hard to accomplish -- boot into a RAMdisk, pass checks to the TPM along the way, if the TPM wouldn't cough up the key to mount "/" and other filesystems, prompt the user for a keyfile or a passphrase.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[symbolset]

I'm a big fan of KVM. But you can't compare it to either Hyper-V or vSphere in terms ease of use. Let's be realistic here. It's nice to have the KVM option when you want to get started with virtualization and you just don't have the budget for any software. It's also great when your needs grow huge enough to employ a full-time crew of experts to herd it. In between those extremes the cost of VMWare or Windows Server or XenServer can be worth the money for the convenience, unless you're just into that sort of thing.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[QuantumRiff]

No its not.. Not at all. Most of my Unix boxes have uptime measured in years! YEARS.. One I worked on today was 980 days. And not just sitting idle, but running at a minimum system load of about 4 almost 24x7 this whole time, running Databases. Go ahead, update the network card driver on your windows hyper-v server without a reboot... I'll Wait. All my servers have two different models, its just a "modrpobe -r drivername; modprobe drivername".. About a 5 second hiccup that isn't noticed because the nic's were bonded.

Yes, windows has gotten better, no, its not anywhere near linux, at least an enterprise grade linux. I had to build a windows 2008 server and had to reboot something like 6 times last week to finish installing updates.. I would install something, then after a reboot, it would show that it had a hotfix, or service pack, or whatever.. What the heck is that about?

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[darkpixel2k]

Well that is the answer to his question. Windows is actually quite stable now, on par with Linux. Especially if you set it up correctly so the Hyper-V system is the only thing running on the Master and use the other Virtual OS's as the systems that can bomb.

Really? I don't have to setup my Linux boxes so that KVM is the only thing running--and I still manage to go approximately 10 months before I need to reboot because of security updates. It'd be 'never' if I bothered to go the ksplice route...

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[jd2112]

With KVM can you move running guests from one host to another? You can do that with Hyper-V (with the addition of System Center Virtual Machine Manager) or VMware (with the addition of VSphere).
So yes you can keep your Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V host fully patched (Typically monthly reboots at most) and still maintain multi-month or even multi-year uptimes on your guest OS.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[ooshna]

If its a personal machine, its a once off. If you're a business with more than 10-20 people you should seriously consider setting up a deployment server and maintaining an image.

Ok I know this is off topic but I have to ask. Is that when you have a server that allows you to log into multiple instances of an OS on different terminals? I hope you understand what I mean that's what they have at the community college by me and I would love to do that for the community out reach program in my neighborhood.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Lennie]

I'm more of a OpenVZ/Linux-VServer/Linux Containers (lxc) guy it uses a lot less resources and you don't need any special hardware.

So I've never done it, but people are doing that.

Is Google complicated or something ?: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=live+migration+kvm

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Lennie]

libvirt maybe ? It is a library and tooling for handling all kinds of VM.

http://libvirt.org/
http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/

Here is a list of applications:

http://libvirt.org/apps.html

Or maybe this ?:

http://community.abiquo.com/display/ABI17/Abiquo+Documentation+Home

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[smash]

Have fun running Surpac, minecad, or a million other industry specific de-factor standard apps on your linux box.

Operating systems are tools. If you need a particular OS (tool) then figure out how to make it work. Bitching that it doesn't work like Linux is not going to get the job done.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[smash]

If you have an enterprise license for Windows (as you get to a certain size, it gets cheaper to go this route) then MDT is included for free. Essentially you end up with a server machines can network boot off and install a standard operating system image that you customize.

Spend the time building your custom image and reinstalls are pretty painless.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[hawkinspeter]

The big problem with windows is the file locking. To update a file in use, often the only way to do so is with a reboot.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[ripnet]

I use Hyper-V at home . I was going to use ESXi (even bought a 'allowed' network card, and machine that was compatible), but after installing it I discovered that ESXi doesnt support dynamic disk images (ie you need to allocate the entire X Gb of space on physical disk), which makes simple backup tricky.
Switched over to Hyper-V (using my TechNet license), and its worked perfectly for several years. Ive not managed to crash it once, and it supports dynamic disks, AND dynamic memory (ie, you can tell it to always have 50% free ram in machine A and 25% in machine B), which is great.
Its also really nice to be able to RDP in for admin, rather than having to install special software on each client I may use. Of course I can also RDP in from my iPad / iPhone as well.
The only major feature that is missing from Hyper-V (for my home/geek use) is USB support / hardware passthrough, although my adventures with Xen trying to get that happening were fruitless...

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[MrNemesis]

I wish someone has modded you up for this. I assume the only reason why MS haven't transitioned to UNIX-like files is for backwards compatibility reasons, but I still don't see why they couldn't provide a means for applications to use the old you-can't-do-anything-to-this-file API whilst using a non-blocking API for the rest of the OS. This in itself would shoot windows right into the current linux strongholds - it'd be able to do decent clustering for a start, not this failover rubbish.

I know linux currently needs a reboot for kernel/glibc updates, but our linux patch cycles still rarely result in a reboot. Even with 2008 R2 we're rebooting at least once a month for patches.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Enter the Shoggoth]

I use Hyper-V at home . I was going to use ESXi (even bought a 'allowed' network card, and machine that was compatible), but after installing it I discovered that ESXi doesnt support dynamic disk images (ie you need to allocate the entire X Gb of space on physical disk), which makes simple backup tricky.
Switched over to Hyper-V (using my TechNet license), and its worked perfectly for several years. Ive not managed to crash it once, and it supports dynamic disks, AND dynamic memory (ie, you can tell it to always have 50% free ram in machine A and 25% in machine B), which is great.
Its also really nice to be able to RDP in for admin, rather than having to install special software on each client I may use. Of course I can also RDP in from my iPad / iPhone as well.
The only major feature that is missing from Hyper-V (for my home/geek use) is USB support / hardware passthrough, although my adventures with Xen trying to get that happening were fruitless...

Perhaps you should have RTFM first!

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[cavreader]

No moron. Companies restrict all kinds of sites like porn, social networking sites, sites like ebay, sites that are identified by their intrusion detection software, and the known dodgy advertising domains. The hosts file or firewall filters are in place just for this purpose. Locking down the browser is also a common practice. Different companies have different rules but the effort is to reduce the amount of time their employees surf the web instead of working, perserve bandwidth for official business, and of course it help maintain security but allowing any web access raises security risks especially if the IT department is not diligent in securing their firewalls,servers, and desktops. It is not the OS that is causing many of the infections today it is the users or companies who do not stay current on service packs and users who fall for social engineering gimmicks.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Sprouticus]

I call hyperbole on this.

A clean Win7/x64 install requires exactly 2 security updates to be completely up to date. Depending on your internet connection and PC that takes about 45 min. It can take far less. And if you are smart enough to install SP1 or get the SP1 integrated OS, it is 1 reboot. I will say it is annoying that MS update is not smart enough to install SP1 off the bat (it does it on the 2nd pass unless you manually install it), but that is not the end of the world.

I can say this for 100% sure because I have installed more win7/x64 machines in the last two months than I ever want to as part of design and testing phase of the win7 project at work.

As for comparing a linux server farm to a windows home machine.....really? I can say the same thing, if I use SCCM to deploy an OS, I can get a complete install from bare metal (physical or virtual) with by hitting f12 twice, 3 mouse clicks and entering a computername. Doesnt really have anything to do with the GP's post though.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[h0dg3s]

This is most definitely a user error.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[aclarke]

You can run a variety of OSs in VMs. For example, you might have 3 Windows Server VMs running, and 2 CentOS VMs. This way you can standardize on Hyper-V and not worry, "what if I need some Linux VMs too"?

Or maybe I misunderstood your question.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Kalriath]

You're referring to Terminal Services. Unfortunately that actually does incur extra costs on top of Windows CALs themselves, but Microsoft can do deals for charities. It's unlikely to be free though, but I honestly can't think of anything close to it on Linux barring remote X (which at least has the advantage of being free, though harder to set up).

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Kalriath]

Except that's a violation of the license.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Funnnny]

Cannot agree more! Recently I had to instal Window server onto one of our server, and the installing process need to reboot 5 times (yes, 5 times, that real life experience). And waiting for the server to startup is PITA.

Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first played with HyperV when it came out with server 2K8, I had no problem setting up linux images on the machine. I know I've setup both gentoo and ubuntu server.

I guess its an "official support" type of deal, not as if anything in the tech has changed.

Performance of the virtualized machines was great, the management of the VMs, however, is why you want VMWare if you're serious.

Re:Weird

[nxtw]

I guess its an "official support" type of deal, not as if anything in the tech has changed.

Performance of the virtualized machines was great, the management of the VMs, however, is why you want VMWare if you're serious.

"support" is probably in the form of first-class integration software and drivers, possibly for improved I/O performance, time synchronization, shutdown, disk shadow support, etc.

Second place?

[betterunixthanunix]

I would think Hyper-V is behind VMWare, KVM, Xen, z/VM, and a few other hypervisers. Has Microsoft really been able to gain that much market share?

Re:Second place?

[MightyMartian]

I doubt they have, which is why they're now going to try to hook folks by supporting more distros. I'll wager it will be a cold day in hell before they'll officially support Debian and its derivatives though.

Re:Second place?

[jdastrup]

If you count all the installations of Windows 2008 and R2 that include Hyper-V built-in, you get a pretty big number, whether it's used or not.

Re:Second place?

[RightSaidFred99]

It's behind VMWare, but it's a different domain. You get Hyper-V "free" with Win2k8. It's very useful in moderate VM deployments, and even in some large scale scenarios. But yeah, VMWare has a much broader solution to higher end needs.

Xen/KVM/etc...? Umm, no. Those are small time. In a crowd of Unix people in little piddly environments running shit on 20 servers you may find people using some of these, but large scale uses are few and far between.

Re:Second place?

[dhavleak]

Fact-free bullshit.

I too would post as AC if I were peddling nonsense like that

Re:Second place?

[scheme]

It's behind VMWare, but it's a different domain. You get Hyper-V "free" with Win2k8. It's very useful in moderate VM deployments, and even in some large scale scenarios. But yeah, VMWare has a much broader solution to higher end needs.

Xen/KVM/etc...? Umm, no. Those are small time. In a crowd of Unix people in little piddly environments running shit on 20 servers you may find people using some of these, but large scale uses are few and far between.

In the scientific and research communities, Xen/KVM deployments are fairly present. Right now, Nimbus running on future grid runs VMs on 4 different clusters with a total of about 800 cores available. Future grid itself has about 5000 cores available and provides a variety of IaaS and VM/cloud services. There's a few other places running moderately large installs using linux based virtualization solutions. It might not quite reach the scale of Amazon/Google/etc. but they're definitely up there in terms of # of systems.

Re:Second place?

[Malnar]

They actually have made some pretty serious improvements. This support is basically having properly supported drivers for the VHD and NIC interfaces plus a few "motherboard" functions and fixing the clock skew someone asked about above. The SCVMM console is not as good as vSphere, but its getting there, and not being Java is also a plus :) Full AD integration for permission management is nice for proper access accounting, etc.

My office has about 100 Windows and ~50 CentOS or RedHat Hyper-V VM's which work fine. Reboots are not the issue everyone things it is. The migration works OK, but does require that the guest undergo a reboot which is OK in a properly redundant environment (just time the reboots right).

Re:Second place?

[MattW]

You can get ESX free as well, and there are plenty of tools to help manage it. Both VMware and Hyper-V charge for features as you move up the stack. Maybe VMware is more expensive for the advanced features (which may be because they support doing things Hyper-V can't yet), but...

Well, look at this: http://virtacore.com/vcloud_pricing.cfm

That's running on VMware ESXi+vCenter+vCloud Director, and when you consider the bundled disk and network, it's cheaper than Amazon by a lot. (ie, $345/mo for their equivalent to an AWS large instance - 4 vcpu/8gb). If you used an amazon reserved instance with a 50GB EBS volume and 3000GB of xfer, you pay more like $550. (On demand obviously being higher). And they obviously don't have the scale that Amazon does. (Granted, the margins on AWS are rumored to be somewhere between ridiculous and obscene, but still...)

That said, there are some big Xen installs. Say, Rackspace Cloud, which uses Xen. It's hardly just a hobby any more, and companies like Red Hat and Canonical are supporting the Linux OSS efforts, because enterprises are going virtualized at an obscene rate, and they need to be on board. But there's a lot more to the whole stack than the hypervisor - it's free. The features on top of that are both the revenue stream and the differentiator.

Re:Second place?

[WuphonsReach]

You can get ESX free as well, and there are plenty of tools to help manage it. Both VMware and Hyper-V charge for features as you move up the stack. Maybe VMware is more expensive for the advanced features (which may be because they support doing things Hyper-V can't yet), but...

Yeah, when we priced out VMWare a few years ago it was so expensive that it dwarfed the price of the actual server. Which makes it a no-go for small/medium businesses if you want the useful features like moving VMs between servers with no downtime. It's slick, but not worth the few thousand dollars per server price tag.

At that price, small/medium businesses have to go with other solutions like Xen/KVM.

Re:Second place?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Yes they have. The fact that Microsoft is pushing integrated HyperV with Microsoft Server 2008, and integrating support for it in Win7+ with VDI and Shared Desktops means that if you are running corporate products, all new versions of Microsoft server products from Exchange to MSSQL to Active Directory are going to be integrated right out of the gate. For overworked IT people, it's sometimes a no-brainer.

If you already backed the MS horse by going with them as an OS and to Exchange and Active Directory for your major infrastructure, you're pretty damn excited because you don't have to sell a "new" product. And many executive level people have no clue even what VMWware is, but they damn well know MS. And that's who you have to convince to write the check.

So, it's integrated, you already bought into the boat, so you'll sink or swim by it anyways, and you can sell the name. Add to that that Microsoft has great internal legacy support. Say what you will about the crapware they put out like Vista, there aren't many companies that can say "Yes, the OSs we released decades ago still run in production environments and are integrated in our management tools we release today."

I'm no MS fan. Their CAL licenses are highway robbery, blackmail, whatever. But HyperV is a no brainer for me in an org that's already deeply invested in MS. Now... if they'd add USB dongle support, I'd be less inclined to release a pack of wild pitbulls to bite their nuts off!

Re:Second place?

[Kalriath]

Few thousand dollars? We ended up spending half a million dollars on ours.

duh

[bhcompy]

Microsoft doesn't care about linux, it cares about market domination while making money. This is one more way to add to their ability to dominate and make money. If they're still selling licenses and getting systems installed, caring about what you implement means little. True, it's only one OS at this point(presumably), but I imagine they'll add more as time comes. This is also about competition from IBM, with which these same points apply

Re:duh

[MonsterTrimble]

Microsoft doesn't care about linux, it cares about market domination while making money.

Almost. Microsoft doesn't care about Linux. It cares about making money. Market domination is just a consequence of that goal.

Re:duh

[imric]

All of the products it operates as loss leaders prove you wrong...

Re:duh

[Noughmad]

Loss leaders usually generate more money in other areas. Market domination is a means to achieve the goal of making money.

Re:duh

[lymond01]

Microsoft has the ability to play with all facets of the market. They have $50 billion in movie money. Trying out Phone OSes, hypervisors, gaming consoles, cluster technology...they can throw things out until something sticks. Hyper-V is a pretty damned good product and it integrates well with all the other administrative server software you need for a Microsoft-based shop. Only now all you have to do is shell out thousands for MS VM licenses instead of a massive server farm. Adding CentOS just means you can now homogenize your VM solution for your HPC infrastructure -- your VMs are now CentOS running your Linux compute cluster LDAP/Kerberos/BackupPC/Apache-Ganglia servers.

Microsoft is finally learning their place in the server industry: infrastructure. Not HPC or anything computing intensive. But they can be the software that runs that, or they can be the software that infrastructure runs on. Either way they are making money.

As seen in another Slashdot sig...

[GameboyRMH]

Running Linux in a VM on Windows is like strapping yourself to the outside of a car with a seatbelt.

Re:As seen in another Slashdot sig...

[jellomizer]

Not really,
Linux key strength over windows isn't stability or security. It is the fact that it is hugely customizable and great for making pre-packaged virtual machines that do one or two things and does them well. For the most part the office could be nearly all Microsoft and its administration staff are windows administrators and they treat that random Linux VM as just as an other application. Vs. the inverse of having to deal with a Linux system and each windows VM as its own OS that needs administration. Because Windows isn't customizable to an appliance as well as Linux can be.

Re:As seen in another Slashdot sig...

[Philip K Dickhead]

Running Linux in a VM on Windows is like strapping yourself to the outside of a car with a seatbelt.

If you wish to understand why Microsoft might offer to "support" CentOS on Hyper-V, I suggest you don your tinfoil Homburg, and review the Groklaw link: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080505113024239

Sandeep is the same fellow who wrote this nice letter from Microsoft.

Re:As seen in another Slashdot sig...

[jellomizer]

This is a different situation. Unplanned downtime which is due to stability of the OS. and Planned Downtime. I have had windows servers running fine over a year. They were often doing a particular task in a protected network.

They're a business

[rsilvergun]

Microsoft is good about not letting feelings get in the way of business. They famously ignored the Internet for a long time and then caught up fast. They saw the threat of Netbooks immediately. They might not always get things right, but they keep on trying.

Re:They're a business

[MightyMartian]

That may be true, but how many shops do you know of that actually use HyperV? VMware dominates, Xen a ways behind, and Linux KVM and VirtualBox back aways. I don't think anyone actually runs VMs under Windows, it's rather the other way around.

Re:They're a business

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Netwhats?

Re:They're a business

[LBArrettAnderson]

I don't think anyone actually runs VMs under Windows
 
Are you kidding?

Re:They're a business

[MightyMartian]

I meant in the corporate/bare metal world. Yes, lots of folks run XP under Windows 7 and run VirtualBox, but that ain't the same thing.

Re:They're a business

[bhcompy]

I think that will turn around sooner or later, though, particularly as cert paths trickle down to the community colleges and such. Plenty of businesses and government agencies love to run a unified solution, particularly for pricing. It has nothing to do with functionality and everything to do with pricing and finding "qualified" people all while pleasing some executive/bureaucrat who has no clue or no care about the fallout

Re:They're a business

[MightyMartian]

Well, maybe, but the technology still seems far enough behind the other players that I don't see the advantage. For any outfit with the cash and expertise to be rolling out VMs in a big way, nothing compares to VMWare. The other players are far behind in usability and scalability, and Microsoft is well behind even those guys.

Re:They're a business

[tepples]

"Netbooks" are budget subnotebook PCs. Someone got the bright idea to make a $200 laptop computer for K-12 school systems in developing countries, and then a bunch of companies jumped into the ring to make the same thing for the rest of the world. Initially these ran some sort of GNU/Linux because the Windows license was too expensive compared to the hardware until Microsoft started offering cheap copies of Windows XP and then Windows 7 Starter. In fact, Microsoft ended up largely dictating hardware specs for the "ultra-low-cost PC" product class for a long time because it wouldn't give an OS license discount for anything with more CPU, RAM, display, or storage than its specified maximum for ULCPCs.

Re:They're a business

[TheRealFixer]

That may be true, but how many shops do you know of that actually use HyperV? VMware dominates, Xen a ways behind, and Linux KVM and VirtualBox back aways. I don't think anyone actually runs VMs under Windows, it's rather the other way around.

Microsoft has been making some inroads with Hyper-V with mid-size businesses that are already 100% Windows environments - especially ones that haven't quite started down the virtualization path. Their licensing is attractive to these smaller companies, compared to VMware (at least the higher-end vSphere offerings). And it's Microsoft, which they're already comfortable with.

VMware destroys Hyper-V in just about every possible way at the enterprise level, but mid-size companies often don't need all the bells and whistles that vSphere offers, even as cool as they are.

Re:They're a business

[bloodhawk]

I contract at 2 very large government departments that are almost completely Hyper-V with a smattering of legacy VMWare that they are slowly migrating away from. It is certainly not as solid as VMWare but it gets the job done and costs a hell of a lot less.

Re:They're a business

[RightSaidFred99]

VMWare dominates, the rest is nonsense. You just have a very limited view of the world.

Re:They're a business

[Locutus]

there are lots and lots of "Windows shops" where they almost never venture outside of the Microsoft world. Lots of them run HyperV and do so because it means all their servers don't crash when one Windows VM crashes. It's called consolidation and improving reliability and is why virtual machines on PC hardware really kicked into full gear. Before virtual machines these Windows shops had to have one Windows software service run on its own hardware to isolate crashes and down time so that meant lots of hardware and lots of under utilized hardware at that.

so there's lots of Windows on Windows users out there running Microsoft HyperV. It would seem that a few are out there not willing to pony up for RHeL and cut over to the cheaper CentOS when they put their feet into the GNU/Linux waters. IMO, CentOS support is a no-brainer for Microsoft since it cuts into revenue which would otherwise go to Redhat and Redhat is a worthy opponent.

LoB

Re:They're a business

[hedwards]

I've grown to like Virtualbox, but a large part of that is that I have it available on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. It's been ages since VMWare has been available in a current version for FreeBSD. Especially considering that I'm just wanting to run a few financial apps and don't need all the extra tools for enterprise work.

Re:They're a business

[TooMuchToDo]

Depends on your company and sector. If you've got tech-savvy executives, you might deploy VMware. You might also deploy Openstack (developed by Rackspace, Dell, and NASA for their Nebula cloud computing initiative) or Xen (that little hypervisor that drives Amazon's AWS EC2 instances).

Re:They're a business

[hedwards]

The issue wasn't that MS wanted $15-30 or so for the license, the issue was that the specs required to run any flavor of Windows made the netbooks a lot more expensive and pushed them into the realm of sub notebooks. Just look at pretty much any netbook which has both a Linux and a Windows flavor and you'll see what I mean.

The main reason for netbooks was that they were cheap, ultra mobile and focused on the net, rather than more general purpose tasks.

Re:They're a business

[shutdown -p now]

Any company that already has a significant Windows server deployment on the intranet (of which there are plenty) will at least consider Hyper-V. If its features satisfy their requirements, then why not use it? It's one less vendor to deal with.

Re:They're a business

[jbplou]

Do you work in IT? Hyper-V is all over the place Microsoft has about 25% marketshare in the server virtualization market. It isn't as technically good as VMWare but it is significantly cheaper. I know of many shops that run it, so e actually run both VMWare and Hyper-V. I know of no place that runs Xen other than web hosts.

Re:They're a business

[cyber-vandal]

I don't think anyone actually runs VMs under Windows, it's rather the other way around.

Where I work now, we all use VMs running under Windows, and one of my jobs at the last place I worked was to create a VM with all the required software for the devs. One of the greatest things about virtualization is that you can give all your devs the same setup just by copying a VM to their physical machine. I also use virtualization under Windows at home for development purposes, where fucking up a VM is a lot easier to recover from than fucking up a host machine. I reckon you need to think again about your last statement.

Re:They're a business

[MightyMartian]

Could you provide some evidence of 25% market penetration. Color me skeptical.

Re:They're a business

[Archangel Michael]

You mean it is "free" if you buy the Windows OS. VMware is "Free" if you don't need infrastructure capable. Just run VMWare Player in Windows or Linux or whatever. Windows is great for VARs though. Sell Windows Solutions Cheap, and then rake in the dough through support. I'd sell Hyper-V all day long if I was a VAR. But I'm a user, and the low overhead of VMWare makes it easy choice.

I'd also like to see the performance comparison between the two.

Re:They're a business

[Anonymous Coward]

It is certainly not as solid as VMWare but it gets the job done and costs a hell of a lot less.

This

If you are running mostly Linux the math changes, but if you run a mix of Windows and Linux VMs you need to pay for the Windows licenses *and* the VMWare licenses. If you buy Server 2008 Datacenter you can run an unlimited number of Windows instances on your host machine. It gets pretty hard to justify why you need to spend $2000 for Unlimited MS Licenses and *then* spend $4000 on a VMWare license when Microsoft is including a functional Hypervisor already.

Sure, you can avoid all this if you go full Linux, but that just isn't in the cards for a lot of us. If you are *going* to run a bunch of Windows VMs Windows Datacenter is the way to license them all, and if you are already springing for Datacenter then Server 08R2 w/SP1 running Hyper-V is plenty robust for Production. Not an idealistically pure decision, but the numbers make sense.

Re:They're a business

[IHawkMike]

No, it's free as in beer.

http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx

Re:They're a business

[tepples]

the issue was that the specs required to run any flavor of Windows made the netbooks a lot more expensive

Windows XP ran fine on the early netbooks, which had a Celeron 900 or Atom CPU and half a GB of RAM, as long as the SSD was replaced with an HDD so that the OS would fit. It's just that Microsoft wanted to stop selling Windows XP in favor of Windows Vista and didn't have anything to replace it with until Moore's law made Windows 6.x-compatible parts cheap enough for budget subnotebooks.

Just look at pretty much any netbook which has both a Linux and a Windows flavor and you'll see what I mean.

Do the major companies still make Linux netbooks anymore? I haven't seen them in Best Buy or Staples for several months.

Re:They're a business

[Archangel Michael]

Free, as in Buy one, Get one Free.

Re:They're a business

[awpoopy]

... and one of my jobs at the last place I worked was to create a VM with all the required software for the devs..

If that vm was a windows machine, you are a software pirate. (at least according to MicroSnot)

Re:They're a business

[jbplou]

If you google it you'll find that hyper-v makes up around 18 - 28% based on who doing the counting, the way they counted, and what quarter they based their statistics on.

http://www.cio.com/article/505444/Gartner_Server_Virtualization_Now_At_18_of_Server_Workload

http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=8959

Re:They're a business

[Bengie]

The Hyper-V Stand alone server is free from MS. You don't even need to install Windows to use it(Clustering/1TB+ memory/8CPU-Host/4CPU-Guest/64VMs/Live-migration). Free is a very attractive "licensing".

Re:They're a business

[IHawkMike]

If you're referring to the guest OS licensing, then yes the Standard edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 includes one guest OS license as long as you don't run anything else on the hypervisor. Enterprise gives 4 guest licenses and Datacenter gives unlimited (although it's licensed per-socket). Only the latter two allow failover clustering.

I was referring to Microsoft Hyper-V Server which is completely free and allows clustering to boot.

Re:They're a business

[blazerw]

If you google it you'll find that hyper-v makes up around 18 - 28% based on who doing the counting

Both your articles are from 2009 or earlier. The gartner article put VMWare's market share at 85%. That leaves 15% for the rest. Best case, in 2009, MS had < 15%.
Is there updated data from Gartner?

The dabcc article (who are they first of all) explain their counting at the end. They count shipments for virtualization software, not usage. So, every copy of Windows Server 2008 counted as a Hyper-V purchase. Also, that article is from 2008. It gave VMWare a 78% market share. The IDC article, a year later gave VMWare an 85% market share.

From the provided articles I see a declining trend in Hyper-V usage.

Re:They're a business

[LordLimecat]

Protip: ESXi is utterly free.

Re:They're a business

[LordLimecat]

Their licensing is attractive to these smaller companies, compared to VMware (at least the higher-end vSphere offerings).

Why are you comparing the higher end vSphere options and then complaining about the cost? If all you need is fast, easy-to-manage virtualization, use the free ESXi. And you can upgrade it any time to get more features.

Re:They're a business

[jbplou]

If that is what you choose to believe go ahead. But their are really only two products that businesses use for server virtualization VMWare(by far the leader) and then Hyper-v. Gartner predicts 27% marketshare by the end of 2012, so I doubt it's share is declining yet they predict it at 27% in a year and a half.

Re:They're a business

[cyber-vandal]

Microsoft doesn't allow installation of Windows in a VM? Since when?

Re:They're a business

[vegiVamp]

Another way in which MS has been actively holding back technological progress, then.

Re:They're a business

[TheRealFixer]

I don't think quite you get the point. Mid-size businesses generally have progressed beyond the limitations of the free ESXi and vSphere Essentials level (which is a good fit for smaller businesses), but don't have needs that require vSphere Enterprise (which, realistically, Microsoft has nothing that can compare to). At that mid-level point, Hyper-V's pricing is very attractive compared to VMware, which is still fairly expensive, even with the Standard package. And when you're already an all-Windows shop, it's an easy jump to make.

It's still a bad decision, because if you grow, you're going to be stuck with the fairly limited Hyper-V and have a more difficult migration path into VMware when you're ready to join the big-boy world. But it's still a tempting deal.

Re:They're a business

[Kalriath]

We have dozens of Windows servers running in Hyper-V. We used to have more, until some manager got it into their head to sign up some high-priced consultants to move us to a VMWare platform at a cost ranging up above a million dollars. Guess which sector we're in.

Re:They're a business

[awpoopy]

I quoted the wrong part. I was talking about the quote:

One of the greatest things about virtualization is that you can give all your devs the same setup just by copying a VM to their physical machine.

Copying a vm to all of his devs *is* a violation of the MicroSnot EULA. If it was an Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS or the like, it is almost expected.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Can MS sell Unix-like systems?

[ciaran_o_riordan]

I thought there was a court case (antitrust?) where it was ruled that for competition reasons, Microsoft couldn't sell Unix systems - and this was always presumed to include GNU/Linux.

Is this gone with recent the end of the "oversight period" put in place in 2002?

Re:Can MS sell Unix-like systems?

[tepples]

Microsoft couldn't sell Unix systems - and this was always presumed to include GNU/Linux.

How? GNU's Not UNIX, and Linux Is Not UNIX either.

Re:Can MS sell Unix-like systems?

[larry bagina]

Microsoft used to have their own Unix (Xenix) which was sold to SCO in 1987. Perhaps as part of that they agreed not to sell Unix. They also have/had SFU/SUA

Re:Can MS sell Unix-like systems?

[cbhacking]

They haven't sold it in something well over a decade, but for a while, Microsoft Xenix (sold through SCO, before it got bought by Caldera) was the preferred form of Unix for most purposes, as it was low-cost and could run on commodity hardware (i.e. not just mainframes or "mini"computers).

There was some partnering with Novell to sell Suse Linux Enterprise licenses a while ago, although I don't really know the details.

In any case, that's irrelevant. They aren't selling CentOS (which would be silly anyhow). They're selling Windows Server hosting Hyper-V (hypervisor on which you can run pretty much any OS) and are selling and supporting additions that you can install in CentOS to get the best performance and interoperability for CentOS guests on a Hyper-V system. They've done the same for a few other OSes, including one or two Linux distros, for a while now.

Worst of both worlds?

[ron_ivi]

So all the stability and security of Microsoft running on the bare metal; combined with the user-friendliness and ease of use of Linux. :)

Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Jailbrekr]

KVM and Xen are both fully featured enterprise class hypervisors with the ability to live migrate. Hyper-V only *just* got live migration and only when you're using clustering (translation: large wads of cash are required). VMWare is undoubtedly the leader, but KVM and Xen are defaintely fighting for 2nd.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[HerculesMO]

Depends on your needs. MS seems to be adding features at a slow but steady pace (dynamic memory just came out too). If you're just making VMs out of dev/test boxes, Hyper-V works fine, and saves you a lot of cash. If you want to do live migration or "V-Motion" then yea, VMWare works really well, but you have to use the right tool for the job.

We are currently mixing Hyper-V and VMWare, and have managed to keep our budget in check as a result.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Anonymous Coward]

KVM and Xen are both fully featured enterprise class hypervisors with the ability to live migrate. Hyper-V only *just* got live migration and only when you're using clustering (translation: large wads of cash are required). VMWare is undoubtedly the leader, but KVM and Xen are defaintely fighting for 2nd.

Wads of cash? How? You buy SCVMM, and you're set. Now, the SAN and such? You'd have to outlay cash for that anyway under KVM/XEN/Citrix/VMWare.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[MightyMartian]

If I'm just testing things, VMWare is free, and so is VirtualBox. Why would I want to pay for a very expensive Microsoft OS when there are free alternatives. Heck, I could just install any of the modern Linux distros and get KVM, which has very much matured in the last year or two.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Anonymous Coward]

The free Hyper-V 'bare-metal' hypervisor is based on the Enterprise version of Windows 2008R2 which includes the clustering/live migration piece for free.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Jailbrekr]

"Hyper-V works fine, and saves you a lot of cash"

When using Hyper-V, you have to pay for the Host OS, as opposed to a KVM or Xen enabled Linux host which is free. How precisely does that "save you a lot of cash"? Hell, you may as well install the free version of VMWare on top of your Windows box. At least you'll get some of the features missing in Hyper-V.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[RightSaidFred99]

It's backwards world today. VMWare is inexpensive, and Hyper-V is "wads of cash". Ahh, backwards day.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[MightyMartian]

Where did I say I was talking about production servers? For testing purposes, the freebie ESX is useful enough to get a handle on VMWare.

And HyperV is not enterprise suitable, any more than KVM is enterprise suitable. They're interesting products, but if you're putting together an enterprise VM farm, I can almost guarantee you're going to be going to VMWare.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[RightSaidFred99]

Yeah, you're right. Microsoft doesn't understand the enterprise, and Hyper-V isn't used in any enterprise environments... Microsoft must survive on their charm I guess since apparently they have no clue about enterprise needs.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[MightyMartian]

This is what I don't get. Every time the Redmondroids use the words "cheap" and "easy", I just shake my head. Server 2008 is what, about $800 bucks for the DVD and five CALs? ESXi, KVM and Xen are free. I'm having a hard time figuring out where you save money with Hyper-V. I guess if you've already got a few Server 2008 machines hanging around with spare CPU and RAM capacity, it doesn't cost you any more, but from the ground up, I see absolutely no point to using Hyper-V. Beyond that, Windows is the one that has the most trouble moving to different hardware, so if I had those kinds of servers hanging around, I'd be using VMWare, KVM or Xen and installing Server 2008 as a VM on one of those. Then I can move the bloody install anywhere I want as long as I reasonably match host OS versions.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[MightyMartian]

Logical fallacy much?

I didn't say Microsoft didn't have Enterprise-ready products, but Hyper-V is so far behind feature wise that about the only people its going to attract is smaller businesses that already have Server 2008 on a decent bit of hardware and have some spare capacity and maybe want to run a Linux guest for some special functionality. But big time, VMWare beats Hyper-V in every possible way.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[shutdown -p now]

VMWare is undoubtedly the leader, but KVM and Xen are defaintely fighting for 2nd.

In terms of number of servers deployed? Do you have any numbers to back that claim?

(note that feature richness does not correlate directly to market share)

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[dhavleak]

Every time the Redmondroids...

This isn't about "us" vs. "them". You're sounding like an antiredmondroid.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[RightSaidFred99]

How does VMWare fare in price-performance? Rhetorical question - it fares poorly. Therefore it's certainly not every possible way.

There are deployments that absolutely require some of VMWare's high end features. I wonder, however, how many people are paying the exorbitant amount of money required for VMWare when Hyper-V would be perfectly adequate simply because people like you, who don't know any better and have an anti-MS bias, tell them only VMWare will work.

I shall call it the VMWare tax.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[MightyMartian]

If I am dealing with simpler setups, then I'd probably install Debian or CentOS and use KVM. All modern variants of Windows run pretty well in it (I'm running Server 2003 and Exchange in a couple of VMs on a KVM-based host, and it's rock solid).

Hyper-V really is stuck in the middle, and seems almost irrelevant.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[jbplou]

why isn't Hyper-V enterprise ready. They have white papers on major ERP products running on it, Oracle and SQL Server installations can even perform on it. It has failover capabilities. It isn't as advanced as VMWare but the cost savings in software licensing is significant.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience you don't even need SCVMM to do live migration. Just install Windows Server, add Clustering Services/Hyper-V, create a Cluster Shared Volume from shared storage, and have fun.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[h4rr4r]

If Hyper-V would work in your situtaion, KVM or XEN would be better and save you money.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[sirsnork]

Gah, why is everyone saying this... Google Hyper-V Server and learn something, it's free and can do Live Migration (which VMware doesn't give you for free).

Of course if you do pay for a host OS like Enterprise or Datacenter then you get some (or unlimited) free VM licenses too

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Reservoir Penguin]

A lot of large hosters have already deployed it as part of their infrastructure, it's there and being used.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[TheRealSlimShady]

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. Hyper-V got live migration 2 years ago (that's in 2009 when Windows Server 2008 R2 released). Clustering Hyper-V is available for free with Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (the absolutely 100% free hypervisor that supports things like live migration & dynamic memory). And as for market share - all the reputable analyst numbers show that Hyper-V is second to VMware, Xen is third & KVM doesn't feature.

Bet in all

[M0j0_j0j0]

Microsoft plays in all fronts , that has the cost we know, crappy products, why don't they focus Daniel why!!!

Convertible

[tepples]

Running Linux in a VM on Windows is like strapping yourself to the outside of a car with a seatbelt.

In other words, it's like driving a convertible with the top down.

But seriously, if you want to run Linux on some hardware configurations, you have to do it in a virtual machine because the hardware maker doesn't want to share specs with the developers of Linux or userspace subsystems.

Re:Convertible

[TooMuchToDo]

Can you describe one of these magical hardware configurations where a Windows VM host can run, but Linux can't?

Re:Convertible

[MightyMartian]

I imagine you could put together a machine that wouldn't run Linux, but I think you would have to put some effort into it, particularly for server-grade hardware, where you're not dealing the Super3DXXX video card that has a hacked-up binary blob kernel module that barely runs X. On server-grade hardware, you're dealing with a far smaller pool of hardware and I have yet to come across any of the server offerings from big guys like Dell and HP that doesn't run Linux out of the box. Hell, pretty much all of them come with or have available the Linux drivers and software for managing RAID controllers and the like.

Re:Convertible

[jittles]

My AsRock P67 Extreme6 does not have USB3 driver support. None of the USB ports (but two) work in Linux. I'd say that is pretty crippling if you need more than 2 USB devices. Of course you could get a hub to work around that, but that is just one more piece of junk to put on my desk. But I actually run several Linux VMs inside of Windows and on my Mac mini.

Re:Convertible

[scheme]

Can you describe one of these magical hardware configurations where a Windows VM host can run, but Linux can't?

The acerpower 2000 mini-systems have this issue. Linux (RHEL 4/5, SL 4/5/6) all install but don't recognize the network card. Windows vista and 7 can use the network card. A modern system without a network connection is pretty much functionally useless nowadays.

Re:Convertible

[RobbieThe1st]

Aand, that proves the parent post: You're not going to be running much if /anything/ via USB on a vm host - Maby a keyboard and mouse. And you're not going to be using a /gamer/ motherboard like that as a proper server.
Also, I wouldn't call a missing USB3 driver "cripping". Yea, it'll be a pain for a bit until someone makes a driver, but the rest of the device is usable, and all /without/ any mfgr support. And like you said, a usb hub will solve most of your current problems.

Re:Convertible

[black_lbi]

There you go:
http://extranet.marvell.com/drivers/files/install_v10.88.1.3.tar.bz2
You're welcome!

Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[Isaac-1]

User are leaving Centos left and right, security patches are months behind schedule, Centos 6 is over 6 months behind RH enterprise 6, the devs are a closed group and will not accept help, and do there best to allienate the user base.

Re:Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[flydpnkrtn]

Here's to that... I've been reading more and more about Scientific Linux as a replacement for CentOS.

Re:Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[DarkAnt]

Yeah, I switched to Scientific Linux because of the better KVM support. CentOS served me well for many years, but I can't recommend it to anyone at this point :/

Re:Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[vossman77]

User are leaving Centos left and right, security patches are months behind schedule, Centos 6 is over 6 months behind RH enterprise 6, the devs are a closed group and will not accept help, and do there best to allienate the user base

While I agree with you, they are working on the openness. The now have a QA dashboard website that lets you follow the progress of CentOS 6:

http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/dashboard

Re:Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[QuantumRiff]

I am no CentOS apologist, but.. Security updates have been coming out for a few weeks now since 5.6 was released, and today, QA is about 2 weeks away from releasing 6.

Re:Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[int69h]

They will accept help, but they're not willing to spend time bringing new people up to speed when they're already behind schedule.

Re:Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[zpiro]

You can expect Scientific Linux 6 to be released in the not too distant future.
http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/scientific6/

Why CentOS?

[hilldog]

Why not a more popular distro not to disparage Cent.....

Re:Why CentOS?

[LoudNoiseElitist]

Because CentOS is one of the most common distros used for web hosting.

Re:Why CentOS?

[Stormwatch]

Because CentOS is based on Red Hat, and Hyper-V already supports that.

Re:Why CentOS?

[WuphonsReach]

Why not a more popular distro not to disparage Cent.....

If you're doing Linux for business, there are only a few games in town.

RHEL - and CentOS / Scientific Linux are both based off of RHEL. Any book you pickup off the shelf that talks about RHEL 5/6 will apply to CentOS / Scientific Linux. Any software package out there which runs on RHEL 5/6 will run on CentOS. Which makes CentOS a very good distro for testing the waters and learning how Red Hat does things before you start paying for RHEL subscriptions. Red Hat is the big daddy in commercial / business Linux. Getting support from a local shop is a sure thing (as long as they have some Linux folks on staff).

Debian / Ubuntu - You can find books for it, but my impression over the years is that Canonical is really focused more on the desktop market then the server market. The primary reason for running a server on Ubuntu LTS would be because you're more used to how Debian does things then how RHEL does things. Big enough market share that a local Linux shop should know how to fix it.

SuSE - This used to be a great choice, until Novell bought them, did the patent deal with Microsoft, and things got really squirrel-like. I don't trust the company that owns SUSE, which makes it a non-choice for our business. It also doesn't seem to have as big of a market share as Debian/RHEL here in the USA, which makes getting support for it more difficult.

Slackware - very niche, very bare bones. But I'm not sure you could call up any local Linux shop and easily get support for it like you could with RHEL / Debian. Well, you probably would, as past certain things "Linux is Linux".

Gentoo - Very minimalistic, very powerful. But the distro maintainers have horrid QA and upgrades frequently break things. As much as I liked portage, and being able to strip a server down to minimal packages, Gentoo will be relegated to the hobbyist category until they get serious about keeping packages stable. (We started our Linux migration with a few Gentoo boxes w/ Xen, they've all been phased in favor of CentOS. I got tired of fixing things after upgrades.)

Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[spun]

My new home computer runs Windows 7 quite well, it hasn't blue screened or locked up once since I bought it a year ago. My coworker's Window's box locks up at least once a week. Just because Windows runs fine on your computer does not mean it will run well on everyone's.

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[LBArrettAnderson]

Unstable Windows installations *these days* are almost always the fault of 3rd party software. I've had unstable Linux installs because of third party software. We're talking about virtualization, which does not require a great deal of third party software to mess things up.

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[tom17]

So how many times has it automatically restarted to apply system patches?

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[WuphonsReach]

Unstable Windows installations *these days* are almost always the fault of 3rd party software. I've had unstable Linux installs because of third party software. We're talking about virtualization, which does not require a great deal of third party software to mess things up.

Or hardware. Odds are pretty high that if you're experiencing frequent lockups that there's bad hardware or maybe bad drivers. And for infrequent lockups, I always start by looking closely at RAM / CPU. Maybe the system is OC'd too much. Maybe the RAM is not really what it says on the package and it can't handle the timings. Maybe the disk has a bad sector and is causing the system to wait while it attempts to re-read the sector a dozen times.

Start with MemTest86+, then try Prime95 in torture test mode for a day or two.

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[atomicbutterfly]

Just because Windows runs fine on your computer does not mean it will run well on everyone's.

Correct, but I say EXACTLY the same thing about Ubuntu for example (with plenty of examples of people having issues), and people will eat me alive for it with every excuse in the book. Fucking hypocrites.

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[bryan1945]

Yup. My dad has Win7 on his machine, I have Win7 running on Parallels on my Mac. His stuff is constantly freezing & crashing (you wouldn't believe his process list), and mine runs faster as a VM. I also have WinXP on Parallels, and the performance difference is amazing. I'd say about 10X difference in speed. I can't stand Windows, but I do have to say 7 is decent if you don't add all kinds of useless crap to it. (A local weather program?! Look out the damn window, dad!)

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[spun]

A lot, but who applies patches automatically to production servers? Most of those patches were for IE anyhow. But I'm not trying to make excuses for Windows, I wouldn't use Windows as a server unless the software I needed to use required it. Luckily for me, I work for a state agency that has embraced open source. We have less than a handful of Windows servers.

I'm just saying this: "Windows. It doesn't suck quite as much as the most rabid open source zealots would have you believe." Hey! I think we found their new slogan!

Re:Windows: Stable on the right hardware

[spun]

Third party drivers. Even signed drivers. If operating systems didn't have to deal with drivers and hardware, they would all run fine. And yeah, drivers can blow chunks on Linux, too. Still. Call me prejudiced but I would never use Windows for virtualization. But then, I've been administrating a huge VMware installation for the past five years. I can make it jump through hoops. I wouldn't even know where to start with Hyper V.

What about para-virtualization?

[Britz]

OpenVZ (Virtuozzo) and Linux-VServer used to be the big names in virtualization. Now Linux has LXC in the mainline kernel. Virtualization with Xen and KVM are nice. But when you want to run Linux in virtualized guests you get a much better performance with para virtualization.

Xen and KVM are useful is you want to run Windows as a guest. But for Linux guests I really recommend the above.

But why would you buy a commercial Hyper-V? VMware is there. VirtualBox has excellent support for Windows hosts and is free. I don't see how Microsoft could make any headway with all the excellent products with every ninche (commercial, open source, free, expensive) already taken.

Re:What about para-virtualization?

[shallot]

OpenVZ (Virtuozzo) and Linux-VServer used to be the big names in virtualization. Now Linux has LXC in the mainline kernel. Virtualization with Xen and KVM are nice. But when you want to run Linux in virtualized guests you get a much better performance with para virtualization.

You messed up your terminology. Xen is paravirtualization by default. OpenVZ and VServer are OS-level virtualization.

Why would you even do it?

[hackus]

Honestly I cannot understand why you would virtualize anything but commercial software. It is a pain to manage without virtualization, it suffers from legacy problems due to all of the very big risks you take when you buy the license. You really have no benefits at all I can think of running commercial software.

Thanks to KVM, the commercial software I do have to buy, I can virtualize it, freeze the hardware requirements in time so it will always work forever and ever. Never need to reinstall it and it isn't if, but when the company goes tits up I am protected. I can dump the software on my terms.

I can even make a copy of it in case the hardware virtualizing the commercial software breaks.

Deploy it to a disaster recovery site and I don't have to have a huge checklist to go through to make sure it is configured right during recovery.

No stupid specific backup agents for commercial software's little proprietary databases they all like to create to make things even more expensive to use.

I left with the opinion that Hyper-V is a solution in search of a problem.

I would be using Cent OS with KVM to virtualize Microsoft's OS, where it is safely under the flipper of my penguin, where it can't make my life hell.

-Hack

Re:Why would you even do it?

[Confusador]

You've successfully argued that you should always virtualize commercial software, but claiming that you would not virtualize other software is another matter. Some of your points, e.g. DR, apply equally to all kinds of software.

MS going after commercial users not hobbyists

[perpenso]

Why CentOS? Why not a more popular distro not to disparage Cent.....

MS is going after commercial users of Linux not hobbyists. CentOS *is* Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) without the Red Hat branding, CentOS is built from the RHEL source code. While CentOS is not as popular as a desktop it is interesting to anyone using or thinking about using RHEL. If you know you are going to ultimately deploy on RHEL then developing on CentOS would make more sense than other Linux distributions.

Re:Hyper-V

[RightSaidFred99]

Complete bull. All you need is SSH? Why is it that I get the feeling most Slashdotters work in little UNIX environments and think they're cool managing 100 linux boxes all by themselves?

There's a reason VCenter exists, there's a reason SCVMM exists. There's a reason there's a whole god damn industry around VM management, in fact.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[RightSaidFred99]

Just because you're inept doesn't mean Hyper-V is a steaming pile of crap. May I recommend some remedial computing courses for you?

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[MightyMartian]

Ah hell, now that I've finally figured out bridging, I can get a Debian or Fedora KVM server up and running in about the install time +15 minutes (okay, more if I haven't refreshed my install ISOs recently).

The big thing KVM is missing is proper migration tools.

isn't that backwards?

[roc97007]

Shouldn't we be hosting Windows on CentOS instead of the other way around? I mean, usually you go with Linux for robustness or price, and you host Windows because of a requirement (IIS, Exchange, politics) that can't easily be met natively on Linux. Hosting an operating system with uptimes measured in hundreds of days on an OS that has to be rebooted every 45 days doesn't seem wise to me.

Re:isn't that backwards?

[jbplou]

Windows shops that run 95% Windows but have acquired some application that runs on Linux would do this. they are already configured for Windows Virtualization technologies and have no reason to run Linux on bare metal given the advantages of virtulization.

Re:isn't that backwards?

[jrumney]

Yes, this just seems like yet another attempt by Microsoft to get Linux users to pay for a Windows Server license. Why a hosting center would want to increase their costs like this I do not know.

Re:isn't that backwards?

[LordLimecat]

Why not run ESXi, since it is a zillion times nicer to use, has more features, and has a lot more history as a reliable hypervisor to boot?

Re:isn't that backwards?

[roc97007]

Probably, in the environments jbplou is talking about, because it's not Windows.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[dhavleak]

After banging my head against the Hyper-V headache for two days

I use hyper-v for testing my apps on multiple OS versions. It takes me less than 1 minute to configure a VM. This excludes any time spent copying VHDs across the network, if any. You took 2 days and you still haven't figured it out?

Do you ever accuse Microsoft of FUDing? Will you excuse me for pointing out the irony?

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[h4rr4r]

Define proper migration tools. You can do it on the command line, in virt-manager, using virsh. What more are you looking for?

ANYBODY WHO KNOWS MICROSOFT

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Understands this is not a concession or olive branch.

It is a way to damage the RedHat business model. Trust me - Redmond will get to the point they offer Premiere support for CentOS on HyperV, starving RedHat of oxygen.

Even if it made them no money at all, Redmond has people who'd love this outcome, and set MBOs for this.

Re:ANYBODY WHO KNOWS MICROSOFT

[styrotech]

Yeah it does seem strange.

Who would MS be catering for otherwise? Those customers that require official guest OS support from their hypervisor, but don't require official support for the guest OS itself?

Re:ANYBODY WHO KNOWS MICROSOFT

[nschubach]

I remember reading a while back someone said (not sure who) that they don't care what standard is used as long as it's their standard. I think it was .NET vs. Java.

I'm sure the same mentality is behind this. They don't care who's machine you are running on as long as they have their fingers in it. Of course, they want to be the one in control and closest to the bare metal.

Re:ANYBODY WHO KNOWS MICROSOFT

[MMC Monster]

Premium support in the Linux server market generally includes fixing problems with patches. This will have Microsoft (either directly or indirectly) submitting more patches to not just the Linux kernel but (conceivably) end user applications as well.

Interesting direction, to say the least.

Of course, if their support level doesn't include fixing kernel or user application problems, Red Hat can offer better.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently I have 2700 Hyper-V based VM's running across ~400 Hyper -V hosts, is that enough for you? 15 production servers doesn't even qualify you as anything more than a mickey mouse small business.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[dhavleak]

Ooooo, you test apps with it. Super impressive. I'm trying to figure how to make enough room in my office to bow down to your technical prowess.

If you don't like being called out, don't FUD.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[dave562]

Since when is speaking the truth FUD? Look over my posting history for the last few years. I have supported Microsoft on numerous occasions when the situation warranted it. When I first started posting here, people accused me of being a Microsoft astro-turfer. However when it comes to Hyper-V, the product sucks. Is it better than Virtual Server 2005? It sure is! There you go. How's this? Microsoft Hyper-V is the best Microsoft virtualization product to date. Happy now?

The Microsoft fanboys are out in force with mod points to burn today it seems.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[The Dawn Of Time]

You should realize you've not supported your opinion at all, you're just bashing.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you haven't given any reasons that you're right - which means your post is content free. You got called on it, and went directly back to unsupported bashing. Not exactly a compelling argument.

Linux does not belong in VM.

[Alex Belits]

...And I will say that again -- Linux in a production environment does not belong in VM in the first place. VMs are a solution to uniquely Windows problems (lack of package management, broken backup procedures, inflexible storage, abysmal security), and it does not significantly exacerbate uniquely Windows deficiencies (bad scheduler, bad virtual memory, bad filesystem and storage management). While VMs are useful for development,
"VMWare jockeys" (or whatever they should be called with this crap) should never be allowed to administer operating systems that they do not understand on the most fundamental level.

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[symbolset]

Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you too. There's lots of little Linux servers that consolidate well and really bring the watts per server down. Then there's live migration so you can do hardware firmware updates without bringing incidences down, network consolidation, hardware platform migration and lots of other things that virtual machines just make easier.

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[Alex Belits]

Linux has scheduler for those purposes -- you can have one server running multiple services.

Of course, Windows admins (and only Windows admins) can not imagine a system that accomplishes that by the virtue of its design, and insist on stupid "appliance images", then squishing them into VMs to run under the second worst scheduler in the world with second worst memory management in the world (first place, obviously, is permanently occupied by Windows itself).

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[Alex Belits]

It would be development effort spent much better if people worked on network and storage migration within Linux instead of mucking with VMs to accomplish the same by fighting against the OS design.

Yes, I realize that nothing at all can be accomplished with Windows unless it's done by fighting tooth and nail against the way how OS works. But that's what you get when you are dealing with the greatest engineering failure of the 20th century. There is no need to drag this shit into better-designed systems.

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[Rennt]

You have an end-user oriented world view, so can't see the massive production hosting clusters for the "Cloud".

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[buchanmilne]

...And I will say that again -- Linux in a production environment does not belong in VM in the first place.

How do you add memory to a large Java application (requiring >12GB memory), which can't be load-balanced without having significant downtime. To take a server down, pull it out the rack, add 8 DIMMs, get the server back in the rack, and boot it will take at least 15 minutes, but more likely about 30.

Sure, if we had HA clusters everywhere, we could do this without virtualisation, but at the cost of running (roughly) twice the hardware.

We live-migrate the production VM to the spare (Xen) hypervisor, take the hypervisor that getting a memory upgrade down, add DIMMs, boot the box, and live-migrate the VM back, then dynamically increase the memory available to the VM. The last bit that is required is a restart of the application (granted, a minute or two).

Since we were having some failures of the application, and wanted to reduce the proportion of users affected, we at one stage migrated from having 4 production (clustered - where clustering wasn't improving availability) instances to 8 (standalone) instances (where only one application instance can be accommodated on a single OS image). Virtualisation allowed us to do that with less impact than it would have been without virtualisation. We have since added more instances without the cost and delay of procuring/installing/zoning more hardware.

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[Alex Belits]

Financial services loooooove Windows and crooks.

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[Alex Belits]

How do you add memory to a large Java application (requiring >12GB memory), which can't be load-balanced without having significant downtime. To take a server down, pull it out the rack, add 8 DIMMs, get the server back in the rack, and boot it will take at least 15 minutes, but more likely about 30.

Process migration was implemented multiple times in all kinds of environments. It never took hold because all those efforts were far ahead of their time.

Then, almost a decade later, people started to use VMs as a replacement for that functionality, yet thanks to dominance of Windows-centric thinking in supposedly high-tech companies, no effort was made to continue on a well-developed but little used path of process-migration-based system/resource management.

Re:Linux does not belong in VM.

[Alex Belits]

If "hay guyz, here is a 1G VM, you can run your crackz and Sony DoS there!" is cloud, I would rather be an end-user of my own dedicated servers.

Re:Hyper-V belongs in last place

[dave562]

Valid point and fair enough. It has been about a year since I worked with it, but there were fundamental flaws with the program. The deal breaker for me was when the Hyper-V MMC would not create a virtual machine. I don't remember what the exact error was, but it was a problem with the MMC. The only way I could create a virtual machine was to use SCVMM. It worked fine through SCVMM, but that tool costs money and absolutely ruins the selling point of a "free with the OS" virtualization solution. I decided that if I was going to have to pay for a virtualization solution, I was going to pay for a tool that works.

I'm not bashing MS for the sake of bashing MS. I work in a Microsoft based SaaS shop that generated over $10 million in revenue last quarter between SharePoint and .Net apps running on IIS7.5 backed by SQL Server 2008 R2 clusters. If Hyper-V was the best tool for the job, I would not have any hesitation putting it into production. When core functionality does not even work and requires turning to yet another tool, it does not instill confidence in the product.

The other thing that turned me off to the product was the P2V utility built into SCVMM. It ran for hours upon hours on a couple of hosts, and failed to virtualize one out of the four hosts I ran it against. VMware's tool ran much faster, and worked 100% of the time.

Because Red Hat.

[Haeleth]

"Popular" distros like Ubuntu are not even relevant in Microsoft's world. Windows already won on the desktop. The battle is over. Ubuntu is the handful of Japanese soldiers in remote jungles who are still fighting WW2 in the 1960s. Red Hat, on the other hand? That's relevant. Red Hat gets used by real companies who have real IT budgets that they spend on real support contracts.

Supporting CentOS encourages people to stop buying those support contracts from Red Hat. That directly reduces a vital source of funding for a lot of core Linux development.

Also, it means that in a year or so Microsoft can start nudging shareholders to complain about the risk of using unsupported software since they terminated the Red Hat contracts, and why aren't they just consolidating on Windows since they already rely on Microsoft virtualization infrastructure? And then Windows gains market share from Linux.

And it does all this in a way that will also convince useful idiots that Microsoft has changed, honest, and they love OSS now! It's a brilliant move.

Really type 1?

[bakes]

I have trouble believing that Hyper-V _really_ is a Type-1 hypervisor as MS claims. How is it that adding a 'role' to a running server suddenly means that the server OS you just installed is now NOT the native/booted system and a separately-booted hypervisor gets installed? Does it create an new bootable partition for the hypervisor and put it there?

I've not experimented at all with Hyper-V, can anyone confirm what happens? Is it really a type-1 or is it just smoke-and-mirrors?

Re:Really type 1?

[Rennt]

Dunno about Hyper-V, but you perform basically the same trick when you install a Xen Dom0 kernel in Linux.

Missing the point...

[RegTooLate]

Most are missing the point of MS supporting this. It's all about the $ in licensing fees of VMware vs. Microsoft. Windows shops pay for windows licenses and always will have to if they want/have to use the OS. Microsoft recognizes that a lot of shops are probably mixed and are attempting to reverse the pay for VMware and drop Windows path that a lot of people are taking. They are offering the MS alternative, use Hyper-V and get Linux support without a VMware tax. Of course, others would say, its like pay MS and VMware tax and yes that is true as well. But in the end, for a business time is money. Being able to have an army of technical people motivated by real money supporting a product versus all us wonderful /. users telling them how they are doing it wrong in the world on Linux is what makes the world go round.

It's not free. Let's not pretend.

[symbolset]

If you're using Hyper-V in Production for business you pretty much need datacenter edition. 4 VMs per box is ridiculous - it doesn't even begin to pay off and Enterprise doesn't have the features you need. That means $3K per processor or $6K per 2 socket box, and a fairly automatic upgrade to Software Assurance where you pay again every year. And you need two servers worth, plus the High Availability program to start being a comfortable environment you would trust to use in business - otherwise you're just aggregating all your failure mode in one box so that when something fails everything goes down at once and nobody sane wants that. You need two servers worth because you have to have someplace to migrate your virtual servers to when you're updating the firmware, the hardware or the OS. It's better to have three so you can stay redundant while updates occur. That way you can start thinking about "0 planned downtime" and a fourth of July barbecue where your iPhone doesn't blow up and drag you back to work.

People do use Hyper-V, and they're selling more of it lately than ever. But please, let's not call it free: Software Assurance and support puts the price of Hyper-V close to the cost of VMWare Enterprise Plus in the long run. Say it costs less than a Xen geek, or that it costs less than the overtime would for monthly patching on the weekend, and the ease of management and high-availability features are just bonus. Say that the Test/Dev servers then won't cost any extra server hardware, and people can more readily try new things. But it's not free.

And yes, Hyper-V can handle a lot more VMs than that. Oversubscribing CPU is one of the justifications for virtualization in the first place. Given proper back-end high-performance storage to keep them fed, and a decent amount of RAM, modern server processors are brutally overpowered for the tasks we give most of them.

There are a lot of talking points for Hyper-V, but please be honest with people: "free" is not one of them. People know it's not free. Saying it's free in some way shape or form is just attacking your own credibility. People don't need for it to be free. They need for it to be a good fit for their needs, and in many cases it is. Business people are realistic, and they don't have a lot of time. You may as well come right out and say that if you want to play the Hyper-V HA game then it costs $18K for the software licensing, plus more for the hardware and networking, just to sit at the table. Add a few thousand for 24/7 support and a few more thousand for a server geek to come get it running smoothly for you using best practice because you're just not going to wade in and get it right the first time.

CentOS? Red Hat? Whatever.

[kriston]

Supporting CentOS is the same as supporting Red Hat. Why is this significant in any way?

Re:It's not free. Let's not pretend.

[Reservoir Penguin]

Best reply in the whole thread, thank you.

Re:CentOS? Red Hat? Whatever.

[Rennt]

It's the same from the point of view of a support engineer. But CentOS was previously unsupported, which is corporate for "yeah it might work, but you get to keep the pieces". Significant? If you care about things like vendor support from the likes of MS, I'm sure it is.

Wine-hating third-party devs

[tepples]

It's not strictly Microsoft's fault as much as the fault of third-party proprietary software publishers who refused to adapt their products to work with Wine.

Re:Wine-hating third-party devs

[vegiVamp]

Wine? This was about Microsoft putting maximum specs on ULPCs. If you're gonna be an apologist, at least apoligize for the topic at hand :-)

Re:Wine-hating third-party devs

[tepples]

If application developers would play ball with the Wine team, we wouldn't need Windows, and therefore we wouldn't need hardware that stays within the allowed specs.

fear

[Ofloo]

Are they really supporting or are they just so afraid that mixed networks running windows and linux will turn into linux networks instead, it all depends on how you look at it.

who this is for

[Sprouticus]

Microsoft server licensing 101

MS Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter allows unlimited Windows guests up to and including the windows datacenter version.

This means that any office that has more than about 10 windows servers in the datacenter is going to purchase a DC license for their virtualization hosts.

This means that you already has the license for Hyper-V (and thus dont have to pay for VMware).

For datacenter late to the virtualization game, Hyper-V might then become a viable option. Especially if they can support linux on the hosts as well.

Personally I still prefer VMWare, but Hyper-V (and Zen) are catching up quite quickly in features. Given another year or two it will be a nominal difference. Which means that either VMware will have to lower costs or MS will gain marketshare. It is hard to justify paying for something when you can get equal for free.

My thought is that VMWare is miling the market as much as it can until everyone catches up to it. Then it will lower costs to maintain market share. Which is not good for them, but great for all of us.

What about RHEL?

[rawler]

Do they also support commercial RHEL (not in the TFA)? Otherwise, it also happens to be a nice way to endorse "the Linux that doesn't pay the large RedHat developer team that wrote CentOS".

I don't mind CentOS, I use it lots myself, and I have a weak business case at work motivating paying for a RHEL license.

However, frankly, CentOS would not exist without RHEL, and I don't think Microsoft is feeling sorry to endorse the side of the (RedHat) ecosystem that don't pay the RedHat staff.