DISQUS

MikeM · 1 year ago

Actually vMotion has nothing to do with disaster recovery. vMotion is for keeping a VM online and functional with virtually no network packet loss when migrating from one host to another for planned maintenance on a host. This is exactly the same thing that Microsoft's Quick Migration attempts to do but fails at. Quick Migration suspends the VM causing network packet loss then resumes the VM on the second host. Its definitely an apples to apples comparison and a very valid comparison between the two for companies that rely on their machines being up 24/7.

elnel · 1 month ago

Surely vmotion is used in the background for the likes of DRS?

Alessandro · 1 year ago

Mike, I'm glad you stopped by and provided your feedback. I just totally disagree with you. Luckily, 10 years of experience in the IT security industry gave me enough experience to recognize a DR solution when I see one.

Simon · 1 year ago

It can be used for DR, but it gets a lot more use in most environments for planned maintenance and for balancing load across physical hosts in the VMware farm. No gap is critical for that - otherwise your stuck with doing change controls and doing work at weekends again.

Richard Garsthagen · 1 year ago

Sorry Alessandro, I have to agree with MikeM, VMotion is not a DR solution! When something fails, there is nothing to VMotion anymore! HA is a DR solution therefore. At most only if you have predictive hardware failure technologies and have those alarms tied into your VC environment to automate VMotion is might be a DR solution, but as Simon says, almost all customers have vmotion for higher uptime to prevent downtime for planned hardware maintenance and load balancing.

JohnG · 1 year ago

I have to say I agree with Richard and Mike here with regards to VMotion being unrelated to DR. My 23 years of experience obviously helps :-) As for the comment that Quick Migration atteempts to provide a zero downtime solution for planned maintenance and fails, I have to disagree. MS has always said that downtime is incurred in the VM with quick motion. And certainly in my org, planned downtime is exactly that.. planned, so we're gonna be just fine with using this technology. The added benefit for us is that the solution for planned and unplanned downtime using the same underlying technology, MSCS, and whilst in pevious versions this could be v tricky, in Win2008 our testing has shown considerable improvements in use.

TomB · 1 year ago

@JohnG: So you are perfectly happy to have to make a planned downtime just because one of your VMs needs a bit more power than the Host is able to deliver because of load from the other VMs?

Paul Geerlings · 1 year ago

I have to agree with Richard and Mike on this. We have 200+ ESX servers and use vmotion almost daily (DRS or by hand) and this is not for DR but for patches, reinstalls, updates, load balancing, i.o.w Maintenance. Our DR solution is needed to recover from disaster. When disaster stikes there is probably nothing left to vmotion. In such case we do a failover to the DR site storage and blades and startup all VMs. To add to the Apple-Peer, Apple-Apple discussion, Quick Migration is called Quick Migration because it is not Live, i.o.w it is not without downtime. Some companies have no problems with that and some do. So it think there is a market for both of them. So is it ok to compare the two? I think it is and I think decision makers should do a fair comparison. When Microsoft says Quick Migration is good enough, they probably mean it is good enough for a 28$ product (which by the way it is), and if you need Live Migration go to Citrix for the XenApp product. It is kinda like the Terminal Server vs Presentation Server discussion all over again. The only reason the product cost a couple of bucks is to please the European Commisioner for Competition.

Anonymous · 1 year ago

VMotion is a life saver. Using DRS to load balance your servers is fantastic. VMware and Microsoft have very similar DR solutions. I would call this a maintenence and resource feature, not a DR feature and that is the point that is totally evaded. Just wait until they finally get it working, they won't shut up about how awesome this feature is that they talked so much crap on before as if it was not a valid and much desired/needed technology that adds tons of value.

Anonymous · 1 year ago

Apart from the geeky technology passion, The Hyper-V is a more cost effective solution than VMWARE, Hyper-V comes with Quick Migration and HA at no extra-cost, With VMWARE you have to purchase Virtual Center which is at least 3 times more expensive than Hyper-V. I know, I know, "What about vmotion", well, That feature only works for planned downtimes, so it is supposed that when you plan a downtime it´s in non-business hours, so what is the difference between <1 sec downtime and 3-5secs downtime, in a non-business time?, I think that you´re just wasting money for that, not to mention that the Physical Host Machines have to be "Similar" or as VMWARE Says, From the same processor family. With Hyper-V you don´t need the machines to be similar in order to do Quick Migration. The HA in VMWARE and HYPER-V works exactly the same way, they both restart the virtual machine in case of an unplanned downtime. The difference: Hyper-V with no extra tools or cost, VMWARE Requires VMWARE HA. What about the Hot-add resources feature of VMWARE?, well if you´ll run a Guest OS that support Hot-ADD, go ahead, but if you want to run a Server Standard, then you´re again wasting money. Well, let’s imaging that we have a guest OS that support the hot-add, What about the services in that guest?, does an SQL Server support hot-add?, does the In-House application support the hot-add?. I think that VMWARE is trying to get all the money they can in this point because they know the end is closer. System Center Virtual Machine Manager, it´s not only a converter. It´s a provisioning tool, You can convert P2V, V2V, you can manage a VMWARE Virtual Center in the case that you need those things that hyper-v doesn´t provide, can create a self-service portal, can do Intelligent Placement of Virtual Machines. And the best of all, it´s cheaper than Virtual Center or Virtual Center Enterprise.

Not to mention the technical support of VMWARE (36 HOURS!!!): http://www.virtualization.info/2008/08/vmware-m... The long list Known Issues for a technology they claim to be "mature":http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_esx3i_i_35u1_vc25u1_rel_notes.html#knownissues

Plus: VMWARE is new to HA environments, for more than 10 Years, Microsoft has supported HA scenarios.

Plus: The next release of Hyper-V is going to have the same hot-add and Live Migration that VMWARE have today, the difference: No extra $$$$$

Emilio · 1 year ago

I truly believe that vmotion is a wonderful technology. In my three years as a VCI teaching VMWare I have learnt that most students (working in banking, insurance etc) have to admit that they have so much overcapacity that vmotion rarely kicks in for load balancing. Literally they say it is cheaper to buy more hardware than to study, plan and deploy DRS. Sorry for vmware, but this leaves planned maintenance as the main (if not the only) practical use of vmotion (HA has nothing to do with vmotion). So, the job quick migration does is sufficient....
I am afraid we have to conclude that virtualization has grown out of its infancy and is no more a niche. And lets be honest, all these new directions like VDI, VCB etc are too much on the territory of others.

Anonymous · 1 year ago

@MikeM: Clearly, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when referring to DR solutions.

Anonymous · 1 year ago

You may want to read all the post before you say MikeM has no idea what he is talking about. VMotion is not meant for DR, and if there is a hardware failure, VMotion does not do anything. HA kicks in, and starts the box up on another host.

Eric Novikoff · 8 months ago

Well, I have 125 years of experience in IT and I have you all beat! I think you all don't know what you're talking about!

Seriously, though, we support all three major hypervisors in our cloud infrastructure, and generally speaking VMWare offers the most advanced capabilities but a large margin. Hyper-V is a pretty good deal, but why you'd want to virtualize windows if you cared about cost is beyond me: with Window's piggish CPU usage and high memory requirements as well as higher system administration costs per VM, we see customers regularly spending nearly twice the amount per month compared to Linux in fielding equivalent functionality into the cloud.

Anonymous · 7 months ago

Some folks should remember that Bill Gates had very few years of IT experience when he started MS. Intelligence and gumption, NOT time, are the key to innovation and creativity.

Vin Disel of Computers · 6 months ago

I have over 200+ years in the IT world. Most of you know exactly what is needed for your enviornment. Some of you are just talking C.R.A.P.! Both products are simply just products! They all have good and bad. That's why we IT Guru's exist, so that we can decide what is best for the business/company we work for. Stop with the "which one is better". Both are good. Same thing with Linux... Eric Novikoff just looks like a dum055 for simply putting a product like Micorosoft down. You are obviously and old fart like me. MS is everywhere. If they really sucked or crap, it would not exist in every corner. That is that. It will always be around. If linux was the next best thing, it would have been by now!