Picking Up the Hyper-V Pieces

Looks like I hit a nerve with "Hyper-V: Taking it on the Chin?" Reader responses were split between supporting and condemning Hyper-V, with very little middle ground, so they made for interesting reading.

Christopher Whitfield started the brouhaha with an in-depth defense of Hyper-V, saying it is "solid...really solid, and once the security folks get into the fray, the battle may go further against VMware."

Rob Shaw took an impassioned shot at Hyper-V, saying Microsoft has "brainwashed" people into believing Hyper-V is a bare metal, type 1 hypervisor, and added that he is an enterprise admin that maintains thousands of servers, who knows the many shortcomings of Hyper-V and "It is not an enterprise-ready hypervisor yet."

Alex Bakman begs to differ with Rob, saying that Hyper-V is "a good enough" platform, and "easier to understand for a typical Windows admin."

Anonymous says he has about 95 percent of his servers virtualized on ESX 3.5 and is moving to vSphere 4, but he has been giving "serious thought" to Hyper-V: "When you also take desktop virtualization into account, Hyper-V with Remote Desktop Services and App-V looks very good. VMware View on the other hand hasn't impressed me."

Anonymous (no. 2) says working with the "inferior" Microsoft products costs more time and money, and that switching to Hyper-V carries a "big cost" that could mean VMware would cost less overall. In support of his claims, he cites a recent blog in InformationWeek, "9 Reasons Enterprises Shouldn't Switch to Hyper-V."

Finally, Vancleave Calif. USA argues that with only about 25 percent of servers virtualized today, Microsoft doesn't have to "convert" VMware users. "It only needs to get a majority of the untapped virtualization market, which is about 75 percent. Given Microsoft's price point and stable product, that shouldn't be hard."

So who's right, and who's wrong? E-mail your comments to me at [email protected].

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/07/2010 at 12:48 PM