Virtualization Pricing trends

[john_sm3853]

Hey Folks, I was wondering, in terms of pricing of various virtualization offering, have you seen any visible trends. I guess pricing may be coming down from every vendor including VMWare - any thoughts - Thanks for helping us

[jcarle]

Considering Microsoft gives Hyper-V for FREE, I'd say trends are going to change, yes.

[enuffsaid]

VMWare's ESXi is also free.

Edited September 25, 2008 by enuffsaid

[jcarle]

VMWare's ESXi is also free.

Yes but most of the tools to properly manage VMware ESXi aren't whilst you get a lot of control with Hyper-V free, plus the API is publicly documented and accessible, there are thousands of articles that have been written about it and as such, there are thousands of free utilities to augment the power and manageability of Hyper-V, unfortunately, the same can't be said about VMware.

[CoffeeFiend]

Considering Microsoft gives Hyper-V for FREE, I'd say trends are going to change, yes.

Free, along with a $1000+ OS. It's not like you can just have Hyper-V on any old box for free... That's like saying gas is free, because your new car comes with a full tank pretty much.

Anyways. That trend isn't anything new. Xen has always been free. So has KVM. VMware GSX server has been free for a few years, and now ESXi is too. And that's not counting other solutions like Bochs, QEMU, VirtualBox, VPC, Virtual Server, etc. All of those were already free. VMs & hypervisor solutions have long been becoming a commodity.

plus the API is publicly documented and accessible

Same for VMware. There's several different APIs you can use even, and even addons for PowerShell and what not. And there plenty of free "addons" & utils for it too. There's entire blogs dedicated to it, lots of code out there, and even several books written about it.

I still prefer VMware myself, in part because I don't have to buy Win 2008 to have it (also because I have lots of pre-written scripts & some utils for it). And it still has the edge when it comes to certain things.

[jcarle]

Free, along with a $1000+ OS. It's not like you can just have Hyper-V on any old box for free... That's like saying gas is free, because your new car comes with a full tank pretty much.

You wouldn't go and buy a car in the first dealer you walked into without checking for prices elsewhere would you? Windows Server 2008 Standard can be had for as little as $600, which is dirty cheap considering everything that includes. By the way, as a matter fact, you'll be able to install Hyper-V on any old box for free as of next month without purchasing Windows Server 2008.

Same for VMware. There's several different APIs you can use even, and even addons for PowerShell and what not. And there plenty of free "addons" & utils for it too. There's entire blogs dedicated to it, lots of code out there, and even several books written about it.

Personally, I find VMware APIs cumbersome to work with. A lot of VMware scripts and solutions that have been blogged seem like "hacks" more then natural evolutions of the product. If find it interesting to see that a first release product (Hyper-V) has already caught up on most fronts, which took VMware a decade to achieve. It didn't take long for the market to start shifting around Hyper-V, you shouldn't dismiss it as a bench player because it's a serious contender that's going to play hard ball.

And it still has the edge when it comes to certain things.

There are very few areas in which VMware has the edge, such as VMotion, and that will change over time. Hyper-V already has advantages, such as native disk access, over VMware and has already become a compelling choice that warrants being chosen over VMware despite the differences in available features. Edited September 26, 2008 by jcarle

[CoffeeFiend]

Windows Server 2008 Standard can be had for as little as $600, which is dirty cheap considering everything that includes.

Depends. When other solutions can be had for $0, it's not particularly cheap! $600 is for the low-end edition of Win2008 too (need a more expensive version for a beefier server e.g. more than 32GB), doesn't include extra CALs, etc. Win 2008 with Hyper-V is only cheap if you're going to virtualize win 2008 boxes, because then it comes with some free licenses for that.

But if they let us use it on Win2003, Win2k, and XP boxes too later on, then sure, why not.

I'm not dismissing Hyper-V, just saying it's not the only game in town. There's plenty of other solutions, including very capable ones that are completely free (no OS purchase necessary).

such as native disk access

Hyper-V certainly has some attractive features. I wouldn't be picking "disk access" as an example though, because even despite the fancy "enlightened I/O", MS had to cheat to look even near VMware's IOPS disk bench results (using SSDs instead of traditional "spindles") Edited September 26, 2008 by crahak

[cluberti]

Hyper-V does have one edge for Windows shops - if you purchase Datacenter (~$3800/license), you get unlimited VM licensing for hosts running on that host, which can be a huge cost savings for consolidation or buildout of Windows servers. With ESX(i), you still need a license per Windows install.

[enuffsaid]

In my original post I had typed a long story about the caper M$ pulled of at the VMware Conference in Las Vegas. Again they've started a "get the facts" campaign against VMWare claiming that MS' solution is cheaper than VMWares, almost like thier "get the facts" campaign against Linux which, incidently, was later toned down to a "compare campaign".

Biggest problem with M$ and their campaigns is that they make themselves look like total arses.

After having typed the whole story I decided not to post it as I didn't want to start an anti MS thread here.