The Hoard Facts

Blog archive

Hyper-V, We've got a Problem (Actually Three)

In the course of my recent discussion with Tom Bittman, a VP and distinguished analyst with Gartner, I asked him to describe the current state of Hyper-V. He started out by lauding Microsoft for including the hypervisor in Windows Server 2008 R2 (better late than never, in my opinion), and noting that Microsoft will benefit from a certain amount of new business that will automatically default to them.

That was pretty much the end of the good news, as Bittman went on to discuss a couple of pretty significant problems obstructing the future of Hyper-V. The first one is faced not only by Microsoft, but also Citrix, Red Hat and all the other aspiring virtualization platform vendors: How do you make inroads into VMware's rock-solid user base?

When it comes to large enterprise customers, he said there is very little hope because the "vast majority" of them have very little interest in switching. "Even small businesses that we survey who have already started with VMware have little to no interest in switching," Bittman commented.

That is problem one, and the smaller of the two. Problem two is a bigger, architectural problem that he was told about by R2 beta users. As he explains it, in a Hyper-V environment, every physical host has a copy of Windows that is used as the parent OS. It manages the I/O drivers and is home to any management agents that are installed.

"If I want to use PowerShell, I'm also using the parent OS for that," he declares, "so what you end up with is one big, fat, single point of failure."

And that's not the end of it. Enter problem three: Every time it's necessary to patch the parent OS, it is also necessary to take down all the VMs.

"In a small environment, if I've got 100 virtual machines running on 10 or 20 servers, it's not a big deal. But in an environment with thousands of VMs -- and I've got clients who are pushing 10,000 virtual machines -- having to take down those hosts to patch the OS is not an option."

Which is sweet music to VMware's ears.

Question: Did Microsoft commit a major faux pas in the design of Hyper-V? Comment here or e-mail me.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/10/2009 at 12:08 PM


Reader Comments:

Wed, Jan 6, 2010 Not Good Enough MI

Most of these Microsoft supporting comments are missing the point. The parent OS in Microsoft Hyper-V is a much larger footprint than ESXi and presents more of a security issue. Microsoft Hyper-V R2 does have live migration now but it only supports one (1) migration at a time. It takes a much longer time to migrate 20-30 virtual machines off of a host to perform patching. Finally, you have a loosely integrated architecture with Windows Server failover managing high availability, Hyper-V role as the hypervisor, SCVMM as the management tool, SCOM for monitoring and PRO tips, then Authorization Manager for roles and permissions. Hyper-V is making great improvements but it is still a ways off from competing with VMware in the enterprise space. I guess Microsoft is banking once again on the good enough approach but it isn't good enough yet.

Tue, Nov 24, 2009 Nate

To the original article. You have to reboot VMware as well when you patch it. Both VMware AND Hyper-V use live migration and have maintenance mode options to evacuate all VM to a different host prior to patching. There is no difference in capabilities here. The author and the analyst both need to get their information together before spouting off. To Paul, you can run linux VMs on Hyper-V. Microsoft has agreements with Novell/SUSE and Redhat. Microsoft has also contributed bits for the Hyper-V IC drivers to the open source community.

Thu, Nov 19, 2009 Paul

Anyone who has been around for awhile (me personally over 50 years) knows that the best technology very rarely wins out and the first to market almost never stays on top.

I hearken back to the late 1980’s early 1990’s when a company by the name of Novell owned the PC networking market. It took several years and a few iterations of the OS, but does anyone ask if it’s “NetBIOS or NetBEUI” anymore? Does anyone care?

There are a few things I look at as this battle unfolds. 1) You can’t run Linux VM’s on Hyper-V. 2) You can’t manage anything but VMware VM’s with vCenter. 3) Around 90% of all VM’s running on VMware are Windows VM’s running windows apps. I think the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

Thu, Nov 19, 2009 PiroNet http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com

Windows is a general purpose OS. Adding the hypervizor role doesn't make it more stable, reliable or simply smarter. Microsoft has missed the opportunity to build up from the ground what is the next big thing after the IBM PC. Sure with thousand of developers and a couple of years MS will reach today's VMware product maturity, but still I thing MS took the wrong path here. My bet MS just did not see it coming up and in the hurry, refurbished its server OS with an hypervizor taken from Connectix, oops sorry, Virtual PC... Anyway, everybody can argue here, only time will tell! Bookmark this web page and come in 2 years :)

Wed, Nov 18, 2009 Clifton New Zealand

To Shawn E. You are correct in saying that Windows is a general purpose OS, so therefore there are some disadvantages with using it as the 'host OS' for virtualisation. However there are also advantages. Configured correctly (i.e., firewalling to prevent remote connections except from management stations, only install core components required for virtualisation), then the exposure is minimal. It's the same for VMWare ESX or ESXi, just that those have lower risk to start with. But back to the point of the post, this is not a 'significant problem' to Microsoft. It is a known scenario that has effective patching mechanisms in place (as VMWare now does with Update Manager) and Live Migration eliminates any VM downtime requirements. I have no plans to move from VMWare to Microsoft because I think VMWare is better (for other reasons than this post explains), but this post is pure re-hashed rubbish from an analyst, and should be treated as such.

Tue, Nov 17, 2009 Elmer FUDD Redmond

This article is complete FUD. I suggest the author check his facts before bashing any virtualization solution. We have been running both vmware and hyper-v in production and cease to see any of these problems. Get a clue Mr. Author.

Mon, Nov 16, 2009 Hans Vredevoort Netherlands

The probability that "Mr. Gartner" Bittman's forcast is correct is 0%

Fri, Nov 13, 2009

I thought there were three issues the guy was pushing. He is clealry wrong on two of them but arguably right on one of them. Seems to me he got it more wrong than right. If however you want to make this a religious debate then sure... It's better not to have windows..... I don't see anyone arguing with you.

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 Shawn E

Dude...That little nugget of patch size, how original! You do know that ESXi has to be completely replaced when it is 'patched' right? That would increase the total patch size. Curious, how many of the "only 800MB" of patches were for remote exploit vulnerabilities? How many of the 3.7GB were? Even with Server Core installed some updates which are supposed to be IE patches still applied. Thats what happens when you use a general purpose OS instead of a purpose built one. That is the crux of this article - the major flaw of Hyper-V is that it requires Windows! It is NOT a purpose built for virtualization prduct. Call that FUD if you want, but that is a fact.

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 Pete S Seatle

to use Hyper V does not require IE to be installed and patched - more FUD.

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 Bill Z San Diego

Have you guys ever tried to run Hyper-V in a real enterprise with 150 host physical servers and manage it? I have that many ESX hosts, and tried a Hyper-V POC to see if we could utilize it, and it was a mess...unreliable and MS Consultants (not resellers mind you, Microsoft badged guys!) could not get it stable in 3 weeks to support our app set! I cannot run my business on that at all, regardless of how "free" it is or how much they promise...Good enough for Mom & Pop maybe who could care less if they have downtime (Quick Migration), but not even close at this point for a multi-million dollar business SLA level...

Thu, Nov 12, 2009

uh dude did ya read the comment below: In the last 18 months the entire Windows Server product has had around 800MB of patches (including a Service Pack). In the same 18 months, VMware's (tiny, 32MB hypervisor) has had 3.7GB. Who has the issue with patching?

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 Shawn E

Dear Not a Dork, No I didn't miss the point, most of them are saying that ESX has an OS as well, and I stated ESXi doesn't. (ESXi is also Vmware's preferred future architecture) How is the article so wrong? First point is Vmware's customers are very entrenched and are unlikely to switch - hard to argue that. Second point was the general purpose parent OS based on Windows, and the issues with that. Based on past history, if you don't see that as a potential and real problem, you are in denial. Every OS needs patching and Vmware is no exception, but do I seriously need to worry about having to reboot a server due to patches to IE, .Net, etc? Should I need to worry about running Anti-Virus in my parent partition. (its Windows, you better, and many organizations mandate AV on EVERYTHING running Windows) I think a very valid argument can be made that Hyper-V is architecturely flawed because of its reliance on Windows as a parent partition, so my question again is, what is so wrong with the author's statements? The only issue I have is that he says everytime you patch, you take down the OS, and this results in downtime. R2 has Live migration so this isn't really an issue, but the fact that its Windows and that patching happens more often than one would like still is.

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 not a dork

Dear Shawn E, you miss the point of these peoples comments... no one is arguing for MSFT, we are just pissed at how inaccurate this article is. Personally I am a Zen fan....

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 Shawn E

Wow, lots of Microsoft kool aid being consumed... Any of you heard of ESXi? It has no OS partition. Hyper-V relies on a WINDOWS parent partition - do I really need to elaborate on what is wrong with that? To steal from the Mac ads (which I normally hate, but they have a point) the new version of Windows will have none of the problems of the old version...Why are people Microsoft apologists anyway? Do you really want to give the monopoly power back to them by entrusting every layer of your datacenter to them? They have the general purpose OS to run the majority of the LOB apps, that's enough.

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 grumpy from MN

"Tom Bittman, a VP and distinguished analyst with Gartner" I am cancelling my Gartner subscription. this is valueless drivel.

Wed, Nov 11, 2009 VanCleave Calif., USA

I don't think Microsoft will need to take customers away from VMware, at first. Market covereage in Virtualization is only about 24%. That leaves about 75% of the market. If Microsoft continues to be good enough, and maintains its price leadership, they will attract many new customers. Eventually taking the number one spot from VMware. When you factor in Microsoft's total solution to VMware's point solution it's even more attractive.

Wed, Nov 11, 2009

In the last 18 months the entire Windows Server product has had around 800MB of patches (including a Service Pack). In the same 18 months, VMware's (tiny, 32MB hypervisor) has had 3.7GB. Who has the issue with patching?

Tue, Nov 10, 2009 Aidan Finn Ireland

Awful pro-VMware tripe. (a) All machine virtualisation solutions have a parent or host OS of some kind where the management is done. (b) Patch for Windows? It's a few MB. Patch for ESX(i)? It's the entire OS. Get a grip and do some work before aimlessly meeting your writing quota. The editors should withdraw this uninformed "article" and the quoted expert was either misquoted or should be fired.

Tue, Nov 10, 2009

A poorly researched and missguided review if ever I saw one. Please do better research next time Mr Bittman

Tue, Nov 10, 2009 Alan M FL

As other readers have noted two of the three problems are exactly the same type as those faced by users of VMware just swap out Parent Partition for Service console and you could ALMOST be writing about VMware. The first problem is significant but its not like MS aren't familiar with this type of challenge. Just ask the folks at Novell or Lotus about what can happen to a loyal user base. This is typical analyst nonsense.

Tue, Nov 10, 2009 Butch

Actually, even before Live Migrate you had Quick Migrate in the first Hyper-V release - not as good but still gave you the ability to move VMs off the machine you wanted to patch. If you install Windows Server Core Windows is cut down quite a bit and your patch "surface" is significantly reduced. (Still thicker than Linux, but now I'm quibbling.)

Tue, Nov 10, 2009 Shawn U.S.A.

Microsoft had nothing on VMware without Live Migration due to the patching/maintenance issue. However, with Live Migration, patching ESX is about as painful as patching Windows and needs to be a planned activity. In my opinion, Microsoft's maturity in this space is still behind VMware but catching up rarpidly. Microsoft has a good price point but they need to build up trust with enterprise customers, even if that means one customer at a time. If MS can inform and impress enterprise techies, the business cases will surely follow.

Tue, Nov 10, 2009 Clifton New Zealand

Yeah, I thought the same thing. All VMWare patches I've applied have required a host restart, so VM's need to be moved off. If you have 10000 VM's, then you'd have a clustered file system and Live Migration, so patching a host (no matter what vendor) isn't really an issue. The 2nd issue is also irrelevant, because ESX has a copy of Linux that is essentially the equivalent of the Windows parent partition (and yes, I know that the ESX Linux partition is likely smaller than Windows and may require less resources). The 1st issue is the biggest issue for Microsoft ... how to get people to switch. As a VMWare user, we won't be switching to Hyper-V in the medium term. As Microsoft continue to improve the base hypervisor capabilities, they will slowly take market share from VMWare (unless VMWare drop prices). Big VMWare shops will unlikely switch anytime unless VMWare messes up big time.

Tue, Nov 10, 2009 NZRegs New Zealand

are you trying to say that VMware never, ever needs to be patched? Yeah, dream on. I've also never heard of a vmware host that could be patched and rebooted without taking down all the hosts. Sure you can have them failover to another node - guess what... hyper-v can do that too!

Add Your Comment:

Your Name:(optional)
Your Email:(optional)
Your Location:(optional)
Comment:
Please type the letters/numbers you see above

> More

> More

> More

Free White Papers

More Tech Library