We currently have multiple ESX 2.5 machines for our production VMs, and are testing ESX 3.0 on our development box. We also have a couple of Virtual Server 2005 R2 boxes. Right now I can tell you that in an enterprise environment, ESX wins against VS 2005 hands down. Virtual Server 2005 is NOT an enterprise level virtualization environment.
However, there are some major changes coming with Longhorn's virtualization, which isn't so far in the future now. A lot of goodies are on the way, and a lot of it is baked right into the OS. Microsoft is making a MAJOR push into virtualization. Don't count them out, especially if you're a Microsoft shop.
If your just getting into virtualization, my recommendation is to set up a box for each of the freebies and try them out. If nothing else, knowing both will look good on your resume.
The latest version of VMWare (at least ESX 3.0 anyway) supports 64 bit virtualization, hardware virtualization, and also has over the 3.6gb ceiling for memory. I'm not sure what GSX offers.
And what's with them calling the Server "Longhorn"? Have they not already announced the product is called Vista? Is this a trick to separate how they 'work' with Xen now but release something different in Vista Server? Will it be used to manipulate the public/press perception? Or do they really not have a name for the product yet and still use "Longhorn" in press releases?
It's been Longhorn & Longhorn server from the beginning. Longhorn is now Vista, Longhorn Server doesn't have a product name yet.
Licensing policy changes now allow customers to run up to 4 virtual instances of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition on one licensed physical server or hardware partition.
It is not limited to Microsoft's virtualization products.
This box is going to make a screaming database server. 2GB/sec throughput to the internal disk beats anything out there, -and- the customer doesn't need to invest in SAN hardware to do it.
Yes, but if you want any sort of redundancy in your database, you're going to have to go to the SAN. Unless you choose replication, but that's not an optimal solution for availability.
the author gets to air out the PR spin that Microsoft's Not Evil in seven contrite paragraphs (the average number of paragraphs for each segment is closer to four).
Well, if we're going to count, he wrote 467 words on "Microsoft's Not Evil", while he wrote 754 words on his negative review of middle management.
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We currently have multiple ESX 2.5 machines for our production VMs, and are testing ESX 3.0 on our development box. We also have a couple of Virtual Server 2005 R2 boxes. Right now I can tell you that in an enterprise environment, ESX wins against VS 2005 hands down. Virtual Server 2005 is NOT an enterprise level virtualization environment. However, there are some major changes coming with Longhorn's virtualization, which isn't so far in the future now. A lot of goodies are on the way, and a lot of it is baked right into the OS. Microsoft is making a MAJOR push into virtualization. Don't count them out, especially if you're a Microsoft shop. If your just getting into virtualization, my recommendation is to set up a box for each of the freebies and try them out. If nothing else, knowing both will look good on your resume.
The latest version of VMWare (at least ESX 3.0 anyway) supports 64 bit virtualization, hardware virtualization, and also has over the 3.6gb ceiling for memory. I'm not sure what GSX offers.
Yes, but if you want any sort of redundancy in your database, you're going to have to go to the SAN. Unless you choose replication, but that's not an optimal solution for availability.