VMware, Microsoft virtualization pitches miss issues

One of the major drawbacks of Microsoft's virtualization pitch is the lack of good case histories -- examples of companies that have not only picked Hyper-V for their virtualization platform, but are able to talk about how they made it work.

I've written before about Kroll Factual Data and the advice from Chris Steffen, its lead virtualization dude, much to the displeasure of some VMware users who appear to believe Microsoft's virtualization technology doesn't exist, but is unutterably evil anyway.

I won't dispute either point. I've worked Microsoft products and covered the company for long enough to know a product can be evil, nonexistent and still able to drive the direction of the rest of the market. Such is the power of FUD and high market share.

I can't testify to the diabolical nature of Hyper-V (or hazard a guess at the meaning of the Evil Inside sticker on the box) but Microsoft's hypervisor and broad-spectrum VM management and migration utilities do actually exist, so looking at Kroll's experience with them is useful no matter how strongly you disagree with its choices.

One additional caveat about why Kroll is not normal: unlike almost anyone else other than Microsoft itself, Kroll built out its IT production-server farm using VMs on Virtual Server 2005, the precursor to the Hyper-V hypervisor that's part of Windows Server 2008.

According to Steffen (who blogs about his experience on the Microsoft Hyper-V team blog here and here) the migration from Virtual Server to Hyper-V has been so simple and trouble-free that it's not very interesting. The number of companies taking the same path is so small, however, that it's not very useful, either.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine