Dennis Chung - Windows MVP: Virtualization

Costs of running a VM (Hyper-V vs VMWare)

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:46:16 GMT

I was recently in a debate with an IT Pro about Hyper-V and VMWare. I can't name him as i have not asked for his permission to be named here. He's been using VMWare for quite a while and he was seriously pissed when Microsoft released Hyper-V. I take it in a good way.

We were trying to argue who will be cheaper and he brought up a formula on how he calculates if Hyper-V or VMWare is cheaper. In a similar fashion, i stumbled on a blog entry by a MSFTie which discusses this with all the algebras.

He is James O'Niel. Here's his blog. http://blogs.technet.com/jamesone/archive/2008/03/15/vmware-running-hot-enough-to-cook-the-figures.aspx

Please read his blog and you'll find it very interesting to know that Hyper-V is indeed cheaper, even though Hyper-V doesn't allow us to overcommit the memory for a VM.

/Dennis

Hyper-V RTM is now on Windows Update

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:33:59 GMT

If you are running Hyper-V RC and you don't know where to get the RTM, fred not.

The bits is being distributed over Windows Update as of this morning.
On your Hyper-V Server, just turn on Windows Update and the update will change your RC bits to RTM bits.

You'll just need to do a reboot after which. ;-)

http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb/archive/2008/07/08/hyper-v-rtm-on-windows-update.aspx

/Dennis

Microsoft.Com goes virtual... the Hyper-V way

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:02:01 GMT

Source: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/server/microsoftcom_goes_virtual.html

I love this set of figures.. Don't you just love numbers?
Microsoft.com "handles 15,000 requests per second, 1.2 billion page views per month, and 280M worldwide unique users per month as well as supporting ~5000 content contributors from within the company," Rob blogged. "This site has close to 300GB of content consisting of some seven million individual files on each server.

Today, Rob Emanuel, a Microsoft technology architect, blogged about Microsoft using Hyper-V technology for Microsoft.com. He earlier blogged—and much more briefly—about using Hyper-V Release Candidate 0 for the MSDN and TechNet sites.

Presumably, Rob's post supports today's Hyper-V release to manufacturing. I didn't see the blog post until this morning (it wasn't there at midnight Pacific time), even though it has a time stamp of 4:38 p.m. PDT yesterday. I assume that Rob simply forgot to update. Too many pesky blogging systems label time when a post is created, forcing the blogger to manually update time and date later on.

I love it when Microsoft employee bloggers describe how the company's dog food is caviar—and that's meant as a compliment, by the way. Microsoft is quick to use its own technology, but it's not as fast telling other people about it. That's changing, and Rob's post is indicative of the trend. The best Microsoft case study is Microsoft.

Rob has put together a nice, concise primer, including Microsoft.com site stats and deployed hardware. Companies like Microsoft don't easily disclose this kind of information. There are competitive and even security considerations, which make the post's existence that much more impressive.

As of today, Microsoft has "25 percent of production traffic" running on Hyper-V, Rob blogged. "Based on these results we are ready to fully host www.microsoft.com web servers on Hyper-V and we're targeting end of June for 50 percent of the load. As soon as we complete deployment of our new hardware infrastructure in diverse data centers, we'll complete the full virtualization."

I don't want to excerpt too much from the post, but these statistics are worth calling out: Microsoft.com "handles 15,000 requests per second, 1.2 billion page views per month, and 280M worldwide unique users per month as well as supporting ~5000 content contributors from within the company," Rob blogged. "This site has close to 300GB of content consisting of some seven million individual files on each server."

Microsoft transparency is best when the company opens up the soul of its own IT operations. No case study is better than Microsoft.

Posted by Joe Wilcox on June 26, 2008 1:36 PM

/Dennis

Need HA for your Hyper-V Virtual Machines??

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:27:13 GMT

Going Green in IT

We can all do our part for Earth by going Green. But what exactly does going green in IT means? Watch this space as i start working on efforts on going Green in IT. But this section this morning, I came across a very important step-by-step guide which i wanted to share with you.
Now, we can all go green by reducing the amount of power needed for a server room / data center. Using energy efficient servers and server consolidation are some of the steps that can help save us power and go Green. With the release of Windows Server 2008, and the upcoming Hyper-v release, we can go Green in a big way.
By consolidating machines that are not highly utilizing its processing power with virtualization. Hyper-V allows us to consolidate numerous machines into one physical server. In Singapore' s Microsoft Innovation Centre, i was able to consolidate about 6 servers into 1 physical machine using Hyper-V. Having done this, i have on power required to power these reduced number of servers.

The problem on consolidation

Now comes the real problem. Since all my virtual machines are on 1 server now. If this server encounters hardware problem, all my virtual machines will go down. This step-by-step guide will show how you could quickly setup a cluster node and have High Availability for your virtual machines.
Yes. Its HA for virtual machines. No, your virtual machines are not clusters, its the Hyper-V host.
Have fun, try it out... Here's the guide.

/Dennis

Virtual PC 2007 SP1 is released

Fri, 16 May 2008 01:29:04 GMT

Hi Virtual PC 2007 users,

Virtual PC 2007 SP1 is now available for download from the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=28c97d22-6eb8-4a09-a7f7-f6c7a1f000b5&displaylang=en

After installing VPC 2007 SP1,

the Product Version: 6.0.192.0
Additions version for this build: 13.820

What is available in this release?

This release provides support for the following additional Host and Guest OS’es

Virtual PC 2007 SP1

Host

Guest (only 32 bit)

Windows Vista SP1 (32 and 64 bit)

(Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)

Windows 2008 (Standard), Windows Vista SP1

(Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)

XP SP3

For more information, see the Release Notes at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f3d3eb5-5e03-4712-999c-e96f91bdf128&displaylang=en

The Virtual PC website will be updated shortly with this release information at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

/Dennis

Update to Virtual Server 2005R2 SP1: KB948515

Fri, 16 May 2008 01:24:09 GMT

If you are a Virtual Server 2005 user, KB948515.msp update to Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is now available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a79bcf9b-59f7-480b-a4b8-fb56f42e3348&displaylang=en

This update provides support for the following additional Host and Guest OS’es

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 with KB948515.msp

Host Guest
Windows 2008 (Core, Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise, SBS) Windows 2008 (Core, Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise, SBS)
XP Professional SP3 (non-production only) XP SP3

Windows Vista SP1 (non-production only)
(Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)

Windows Vista SP1
(Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)

After installing the update:

Product Version: 1.1.629.0
Additions Version: 13.820

For more information about the software update and the fixes made in this release, see the KB article at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948515

The Virtual Server site includes this update:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/

/Dennis

Host	Guest
Windows 2008 (Core, Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise, SBS)	Windows 2008 (Core, Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise, SBS)
XP Professional SP3 (non-production only)	XP SP3
Windows Vista SP1 (non-production only) (Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)	Windows Vista SP1 (Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)