Server Virtualization Software Report from IT Central Station
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SERVER VIRTUALIZATION SOFTWARE A PEEK INTO WHAT REAL USERS REALLY THINK 2014 IT Central Station helps IT professionals by providing A comprehensive list of all Several real user reviews Specific information to help enterprise level server from IT professionals and IT professionals select the virtualization software vendor information. product that is right for their solutions. specific needs. DISCLAIMER IT Central Station Ltd. does not endorse or recommend any products or services. The views and opinions of reviewers quoted in this document, IT Central Station websites, and IT Central Station materials (i.e. Content) do not reflect the opinions of IT Central Station. We make no guarantees about the accuracy, currency, suitability, or quality of the content, and we assume no responsibility for unintended, objectionable, inaccurate, misleading, or unlawful content made available by Content authors or other third parties © 2014 ITCentralStation.com Reproduction Prohibited To read more real user reviews about Server Virtualization Software, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/server-virtualization-software ABOUT IT CENTRAL STATION User reviews, candid discussions, and more for enterprise technology professionals. The Internet has completely changed the way we make buying decisions. We now use ratings and review sites to see what other real users think before we buy electronics, book a hotel, visit a Use IT Central Station to: doctor or choose a restaurant. But in the world of enterprise technology, most of the information • Read and post reviews online and in your inbox comes from vendors but of vendors and products what you really want is objective information from • Request or share other users. We created IT Central Station to information about provide technology professionals like you with functionality, quality, a community platform to share information and pricing about enterprise software, applications, Contact real users with hardware and services. • relevant product We commit to offering user-contributed experience information that is valuable, objective and • Get immediate answers relevant. We protect your privacy by providing an to questions environment where you can post anonymously • Validate vendor claims and freely express your views. As a result, the • Exchange tips for community becomes a valuable resource, getting the best deals ensuring you get access to the right information with vendors and connect to the right people, whenever you need it. 244 5th Avenue, Suite R-230 ITCentralStation.com New York, NY 10001 [email protected] USA +1 (646) 328-1944 ABOUT THIS REPORT This report is comprised of a comprehensive list of all enterprise level server virtualization software solutions. We have also included several real user reviews posted on ITCentralStation.com. The reviewers of these products have been validated as real users based on their LinkedIn profiles to ensure that they provide reliable opinions and not those of product vendors. © 2014 ITCentralStation.com Reproduction Prohibited To read more real user reviews about Server Virtualization Software, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/server-virtualization-software IMPORTANT NOTICE Did you find this whitepaper helpful? At IT Central Station, our philosophy is “Give to Get”. Our active community and unbiased reviews are made possible by your participation and as such, we ask that you share your expertise with us as well. Please expect to be contacted shortly by an IT Central Station Community Manager. We will ask you for 10 minutes of your time to review a product that you use either via a 10 minute phone interview or questionnaire. You can choose to review anonymously or not and your company name will not be included in the review. If you found this report and/or the reviews on IT Central Station useful, we would greatly appreciate your participation in giving back to our community. © 2014 ITCentralStation.com Reproduction Prohibited To read more real user reviews about Server Virtualization Software, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/server-virtualization-software VENDOR & PRODUCT LIST VENDOR PRODUCT Proxmox Proxmox VE VMware VMware Workstation VMware ESXi VMware vSphere Microsoft Hyper-V Oracle Oracle VM Virtualbox VMware VMware Server Citrix XenServer Oracle Oracle VM Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization IBM PowerVM KVM KVM OpenVZ OpenVZ Parallels Virtuozzo Containers © 2014 ITCentralStation.com Reproduction Prohibited To read more real user reviews about Server Virtualization Software, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/server-virtualization-software Hyper-V Vendor: Microsoft www.microsoft.com REVIEW BY A REAL USER WHAT REAL USERS ARE SAYING… RonSNunes Verified by IT Central Station Infrastructure Expert, Tech Services Company with 1-500 Employees “Microsoft has a winner with PROS Hyper-V!” • Hyper-V definitely has its pro's, some of which are painfully apparent. “Hyper-V is a solution for virtual machines with better scalability, • The first one is that it is a Microsoft product, better dynamic memory which is baked into its Server 2008 and 2008 management, and excellent R2 platforms. You also have the option of a virtual storage management.” Hyper-V server core, which is only the Hypervisor (this allows for more resources to be dedicated to the individual VM's). “An easy and scalable solution for your enterprise virtualization • It has Powershell scripting support built in and needs.” also excellent Virtual Networking technology. • The VM's are portable. That means that each VM is stored in a single VHD file, which can be “Reduce the DataCenter transferred to another server and configured overhead cost with Hyper-V.” and ready to run in less than a minute. • It fully integrates into the Windows environment, allowing access via MMC consoles to change settings and create/administer virtual machines remotely. CONS • The only cons I can really think of are as follows: • Individual licensing costs for each server. • If you aren't using Hyper-V Core and are running Hyper-V on top of the full Server 2008 R2 platform, then you have less resources to allocate to your Virtual Machines. • Except through RDP, there is no way to access the VM's on alternative platforms (like Mac or Linux). OTHER • I use Hyper-V almost exclusively for all my virtualization needs. From a Network Administrators viewpoint, specifically one catering to a Windows client base, there is no better choice than Hyper-V. Like I said before, © 2014 ITCentralStation.com Reproduction Prohibited To read more real user reviews about Server Virtualization Software, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/server-virtualization-software it fully integrates into the Windows environment, allowing access via MMC consoles to change settings and create/administer virtual machines remotely. • All in all, Microsoft Hyper-V is an excellent platform and a great competitor for VMWare. REVIEW BY A REAL USER jerifortune Verified by IT Central Station Data Center Mgr, Financial Services Firm with 1- 500 Employees PROS • The ROI on Hyper-V is enormous. It is cheaper than any other enterprises visualization tool. • Hyper-V Replica can replace SAN, especially where SAN might be overloaded. • It is dynamic and scalable. CONS • It lacks a built-in cloning function, you have to use the traditional export/import. OTHER • Visualization technology brought succor to IT enterprises users. The cost of acquiring multiple servers and its general maintenance has been drastically reduced. One physical or hardware machine can host multiple visual servers • Windows Server Hyper-V is one of the best visualization servers in the market today. The new Hyper-V’s dynamic memory feature is a big plus. It can automatically expand the memory allocation to accommodate more workload from different virtual machines. Other attractive features, that the new Hyper-V includes are, Live storage migration, utilization of up to 4TB memory per host RAM, Virtual Machine converter, replica services, RemoteFX, etc. • I added the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 without any issue. Installation of the guest server was also smooth. Guest VM backup in Hyper-V is quite simple with great features such as, multiple destinations selection and Backup drive mirroring. © 2014 ITCentralStation.com Reproduction Prohibited To read more real user reviews about Server Virtualization Software, please visit: http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/server-virtualization-software VMware ESXi Vendor: VMware www.vmware.com REVIEW BY A REAL USER WHAT REAL USERS ARE SAYING… lasso Verified by IT Central Station IT Admin, Construction Company with 1-500 Employees “Vmware ESXi - innovation, PROS changing the old traditional ways.” • Most usable hypervisor in the industry. It's well documented, really simple and quick to setup. CONS • You can not manage it from Linux. REVIEW BY A REAL USER Sys_admin Verified by IT Central Station Data Center Expert, Financial Services Firm with 500-5000 Employees PROS • 1) Easier way of segmenting the resources. • 2) Host profiles - Template to build hosts in minutes. • 3) Performance and Graphs - Easy to monitor the hosts • 4) Vmotion - In essence, this technique helps you to move a live server between hosts without any downtime. • 5) Robust Management Tools • 6) Cost saving • 7) Advanced memory management - The memory unused in the hosts can be reclaimed and used effectively. • 8) High availability CONS • The major disadvantage