My "VM" is Bigger Than Yours! Who really cares?

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Maybe I just need to stop attending these technical engagements as much or Microsoft and VMware need to stop talking about how big “it” is since both are packing enough, in the way of VM size, to please most customers. And the promise of 1 million IOPS per VM don’t mean much to me and probably 1 million or more of the current running VMs on this planet that will never generate that many IOPS or have the hardware capable of driving that many IOPS.

For me the product has to have more substance in order to win me over. It has to be easy to work with and maintain, plus come with more of those “everyday features” that matters in order for me to make a commitment. Let’s not forget how much it’s going to cost in the long term because once your committed, that initial software purchase is just the beginning. And if you based your decision on the superficial things that don’t really matter, you could be in for some additional unexpected work and expenses on your hands. VMware has shown that it has more value over all with it’s vSphere editions than just being able to create a monster VM with 64 vCPU and 1TB of vRAM but that doesn’t mean it’s the right tool for every job. Microsoft Hyper-V is just starting to catch up, in some ways, with VMware in the area of features and functionality but it still has a lot prove to current VMware vSphere customers and enthusiast.

Current vSphere customers who virtualize mostly Microsoft Windows Server guest operating systems and license their hosts with MS Datacenter may start to see something more alluring in the latest version of Hyper-V. But it will not be due to the fact that they’ll be able to create a big VM or push 1 million IOPS. With the release of Hyper-V 3.x, if you’re paying for vSphere and MS Datacenter licenses for each ESX host because Hyper-V was too limited in the past, you may want to look at this strategy again. Hyper-V has come a long way so you may not need to do this double licensing of VMware and Microsoft when Hyper-V could give you all the features and functionality you need. This is what Microsoft should make customers more aware of or brag about.