Server virtualization vendor landscape

Select the Right Vendor for Server Virtualization
Enable server efficiency & cost savings from consolidation to internal cloud

VMware continues to dominate, but selection isn’t just about who is the leader. Competitors are providing legitimate alternatives for consolidation and virtual infrastructure management.
Introduction
This Research is Designed For:
This Research will Help You:
IT Leaders planning to implement server virtualization to save costs on server hardware.
IT Leaders looking to advance their server virtualization strategy beyond simple consolidation to realize efficiency benefits of a fully managed virtual infrastructure.
IT Leaders planning to develop their virtual environment into a fully automated utility infrastructure (internal cloud).
Organizations considering adopting a hybrid server virtualization strategy (i.e. multiple solutions) to avoid future vendor lock-in and lower cost to serve.
Understand available functionality of current server virtualization software for consolidation, management and utility infrastructure as well as differentiating factors among vendors.
Align vendor strengths and limitations to your current and projected needs around virtualization.
Be able to prepare an RFP and score RFP responses.
Select the vendor that is the best fit for your organization.
Develop implementation plans that address common challenges.

Executive Summary
Understand Trends & Current Issues
Server virtualization enables immediate & continuing cost savings through consolidation, plus significant benefits for server availability, rapid provisioning & disaster recover. For many, it is these management benefits that make the case for virtualization.
Server virtualization is critical to building an automated utility infrastructure (internal cloud); however, less than one-third of virtualizing organizations are seeing benefits in this area.
VMware is the most feature rich, but the most costly solution. Use the Virtualization Consolidation Cost Savings Calculator to evaluate cost savings, and see if Microsoft, Citrix, or Red Hat are good-enough alternatives for your needs.
Evaluate Server Virtualization Vendors
VMware is the market leader with dominant market share, but Citrix, Microsoft, and Red Hat are catching up in core functionality, and offer relative cost savings.
VMware’s product focus is on advanced internal cloud enablement and public-private cloud integration. Citrix has also been developing solutions in this area.
In virtual infrastructure management – where most enterprises currently have needs – it is a tighter bracket between VMware, Citrix, and to a lesser extent, Microsoft and Red Hat, with Red Hat making up considerable ground in 2010.
Arrive at an Implementation Strategy
Tap vendor tools and expertise for virtual migration success; server vendors and virtualization product vendors typically come armed with tools and services for design, configuration, testing, and implementation.
Assess the resource utilization of current servers and plan for appropriate capacity across processors, network, and storage. Leverage server capacity growth for better virtualization.

VMware remains the server virtualization leader, but competitors have emerged with attractive alternatives
Focus on business requirements:
The first step in selecting a server virtualization vendor is to determine the functionality that your organization requires to meet business needs or justify an investment in server virtualization.
2) Consider future requirements:
VMware leads innovation around building a utility infrastructure (or internal cloud). However, Citrix also has a clear vision for future development, and Microsoft has been catching up in key functionality. If current or future needs involve internal cloud VMware and Citrix are safe choices.
3) Go for good enough:
Align current and future requirements with the capabilities and solution feature-sets of vendors. While VMware is the market leader, its higher cost makes it critical to assess whether an alternative vendor can meet your organization’s needs.
There are five primary competitors in the server virtualization (SV) market:
VMware has been, and still remains, the overall leader in market share and core capabilities.
Citrix XenServer is a close second in terms of leading features, with a much lower price point, but lags far behind in market share.
Microsoft is an emerging competitor – late to the party and competitively priced, it is a genuinely viable alternative with the release of Hyper-V R2, and increasing in market share.
Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualization is an emerging player that has quickly ramped up its feature set since standardizing on the KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) hypervisor .
Oracle offers capable virtualization through its Xen-based OVM (Oracle Virtual Machine) and management enhanced by acquisition of Sun Microsystems’ virtual products.
Info-Tech Insight

Understand Trends and Current Issues
This section will help you to:
Understand the benefits & costs of more heavily virtualizing your current environment.
Get a handle on the current market & recent differentiators.
Formulate a cost/benefit analysis to demonstrate the value & justify the cost of future virtualization plans.
Sections:
Understand Trends & Current Issues

Organizations implementing server virtualization often avoid costly hardware upgrades up front and improve ongoing management of their servers
Capital cost savings in server hardware is the most immediate benefit of server virtualization. Operations also benefit.
Info-Tech finds that servers are the primary source of cost savings associated with server virtualization & consolidation – averages above the dotted line indicate agreement that cost/hours have been reduced. As organizations become more virtualized these cost savings continue to become more prominent – organizations that are highly virtualized are more likely to see cost/time savings than those less virtualized.
N = 88. Source: Info-Tech Research Group.

Benefits can be grouped into three broad categories:
Beyond server consolidation, enterprises are realizing significant benefits from a managed virtual infrastructure
Consolidation:
For new server hardware, more can be done with less as multiple workloads (running on virtual machines) more effectively utilize shared physical servers. CAPEX savings can range from 40% to 75%.
Management:
Virtual machines can be created and configured much more rapidly than physical servers. High availability and rapid recovery can also be architected much more cheaply than physical servers. This has time and cost savings benefits for ongoing management and business continuity planning.
Automation (Internal Cloud):
Virtualization does not magically make a private cloud appear; however, in moving to internal infrastructure-as-a-service (or private cloud), a virtual infrastructure is more agile. Virtualization vendors are incorporating automation, self-service, and cost accounting (metering) features into their management stacks to enable the creation of cloud-like internal services.
Vendors such as VMware and Citrix are also working on standards and functionality for bridging between these internal clouds and public Infrastructure as a service clouds.
Lowered OPEX (fewer servers to manage)
Reduced CAPEX (fewer server purchases)
Energy Savings (smaller footprint)
Easier server maintenance
Faster application provisioning
Improved application performance
Higher availability
More reliable DR capabilities
Streamlined capacity management/planning
Automated virtual server management
User self service
Improved visibility for metering/charge-backs

Server virtualization solutions deliver features that enable consolidation, agile management, and internal cloud
Info-Tech sees virtualization as a journey that starts with CAPEX savings, but progresses through management to cloud as more servers are virtualized
Consolidation Phase:
The focus is on transitioning workloads to virtual machines and getting the most out of the hardware (most VMs per host). Capacity analysis and P2V (physical to virtual) migration tools and features that boost consolidation ratio are most important value add features in this phase.
Management Phase:
Virtual infrastructure has become a core technology hosting production servers. Rapid agile provisioning, resource scheduling and load balancing, and high availability are key features in this phase. Optimization of shared storage resources is also critical.
Internal Cloud Phase:
Focus shifts to end-to-end management of complete systems from application through virtual machines to hardware. Performance monitoring for service level maintenance as well as management automation and self-service are key to building infrastructure as a service. Automated cost accounting for chargeback or “showback” also brings cloud-like capability to the virtual infrastructure.
Smaller enterprises (i.e. 25 to 250 servers) rapidly progress to the management phase because they virtualize more servers faster (up to 65% in a single year). They have less to gain in capital savings (less to virtualize) but want the agility and availability benefits of a virtual infrastructure.

Phase One: Consolidateto reduce server capital expenses, lower operational costs and save energy
Consolidation ratios are important, but not the “be all” and “end all”, as competitors have largely caught up to VMware
Consolidation ratios are not a significant vendor differentiator:
Don’t get hung up on vendor claims of consolidation ratios as this only matters for very large enterprise seeking economies of scale through maximum workloads per physical host.
Much hype has been generated over technologies for improving the number of VMs that can run on a physical host, primarily because VMware promotes these as a means of lowering total cost per VM.
VMware achieves most of its memory optimization through a flavor of memory over-commitment called ballooning, which is the same technology used in Citrix & Microsoft’s dynamic memory capabilities. Red Hat accomplishes this with transparent page sharing & hypervisor paging, also used by VMware.
Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) involves transitioning of physical servers to VMs and candidate server identification. VMware & Citrix (except Windows Server 2003) allow machines to be migrated without downtime to the server; Microsoft does not.
Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) primarily differs among vendors in that Citrix and Microsoft allow migration of VMs from VMware ESX hosts, whereas VMware’s proprietary software does not support migration of VMs from XenServer or Hyper-V hosts.

Use Info-Tech’s Virtualization Consolidation Cost Savings Calculator to compare savings across solutions
The Virtualization Consolidation Cost Savings Calculator should be used to derive a rough estimate of potential cost savings for consolidating servers relative to a net new server purchase.
Use this calculator to:
Get a sense of the cost difference (savings) of consolidating servers in a virtual environment against the cost of buying individual physical servers for each application.
Measure the impact on savings of various virtualization solutions and Windows licensing options.
Weigh the impact on overall savings of increasing and decreasing the number of virtual instances per physical machine (the consolidation ratio).
Microsoft has improved their server licensing over the years by allowing unlimited Microsoft server virtual instances to share a single licensed physical server. This privilege, however, comes at the price of having to purchase the more expensive Windows 2008 Data Center Edition. Under this model, pricing is based on the number of host servers, and the number of processors on each.

Large not-for-profit avoids over a quarter million dollars in UPS & cooling upgrades through server consolidation
If we were to add two new data center UPSs,
it would have been a quarter of a million dollars.
- Peter Radell, IT Director
Financial
Large Enterprise
Peter Radell, IT Director, PSECU
VMware
Industry:
Segment:
Source:
Vendor:
Situation
Action
Result
PSECU piloted virtualization in their test & development environment over two years.
They began evaluating server virtualization vendors for their production environment when 25% of their servers’ hardware maintenance agreements expired or were no longer eligible for maintenance.
Available physical space in the data center was sparse and the organization’s server footprint had been growing.
PSECU selected VMware based on its P2V capabilities that did not require downtime to their 60+ servers during transition.
Server virtualization was deployed to reduce physical server footprint and improve DR through high availability functionality (see next section).
IT avoided expansion of cooling & UPS power through footprint reduction, and were even able to add additional equipment.
PSECU’s policy going forward is that all new servers are virtual servers, and they expect to virtualize another 25% in 2011
Since we’re a financial institution, we spend a lot of time on business continuity.
We put in the cost of a server outage, and that seemed to grab [stakeholder] attention.

Phase Two: Evaluate features that realize management benefits especially as virtual exceeds 50% of servers
Managing the virtual infrastructure is crucial, as virtual servers have rapidly become core infrastructure; enterprises are now more than 50% virtualized.
Current & Projected Virtualization
Server Virtualization by Company Size*
75%
60%
52%
50%
44%
42%
SmallEnterprise
MediumEnterprise
LargeEnterprise
% Virt 18Months
% Virt 3Years
% VirtNow
It is not unusual for small to mid-sized organizations, with primarily x86 Windows and Linux infrastructure, to report 95% virtualization. However, most organizations are between 40% and 60% virtualized where management features, and management benefits, are of primary concern.
The wide-ranging benefits of server virtualization for consolidation & management have led organizations of all sizes to deploy.
Because benefits increase with further virtualization, many organizations have a “virtualize unless otherwise” policy leading to increased virtualization ratios over time.
*As reported by respondents; Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N = 87
*As reported by respondents; Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N = 75

Most organizations reap considerable management benefits, where significant vendor differences begin
VMware was first to game and still leads in their migration capabilities with vMotion
Live Migration:
VMware was the innovator of this feature, but it is now offered by every major server virtualization vendor.
Live migration is a critical feature where a running virtual machine can be moved from one physical host to another with zero downtime.
This is accomplished by having the two physical hosts, each running the hypervisor, share the same storage (typically an iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN array). Thus, while the VM moves from one physical processor to another, the storage used by that VM does not move, enabling VM workloads to be non-disruptively moved off hardware for maintenance.
Dynamic Resource Allocation:
Leveraging live migration, VMs can also be moved to balance utilization across multiple hosts so that all VMs get the best resources (to meet service level commitments) by shifting resource-hungry VMs to hosts with more available resources.
VMs can also be migrated to fewer servers during non-peak periods to save power and cooling resources.

Non-profit healthcare organization invests in Citrix XenServer at low cost to optimize desktop virtualization performance
The value proposition was pretty compelling with free XenServer.
Now I’m down to 14 people sharing a virtual server [from 40] running XenApp… The full [advanced] version of XenServer that you can leverage for high availability is pretty expensive. It’s only because [Citrix] tied it to XenDesktop that we were able to considerate it. Now we can shift from optimization to look at high availability servers using virtualization.
- Gary Herchek, VP of IT
Healthcare/Non-profit
Small Enterprise
Citrix
Gary Herchek, VP of IT,
Vinfen Corporation
Industry:
Segment:
Vendor:
Source:
Situation
Action
Results
Vinfen Corporation had 20 servers running XenApp – with 40 users per server – to deliver desktops to 365 remote locations.
Primary business driver to deploying server virtualization was to optimize overall performance & user experience in remote desktops by increasing the total number of devoted servers, thereby reducing the number of users sharing a machine.
Vinfen Corporation began virtualizing with the free version of XenServer & were able to create 3 VMs on each physical server.
They have since traded up their XenApp licenses to XenDesktop licenses & in the process received the advanced version of XenServer.
Vinfen Corporation has now optimized what they have on a minimal budget to triple the capacity for their virtual desktops.
They have also used XenServer to virtualize file servers & Exchange 2010.
Using Advanced XenServer licenses, they now plan to move their virtualization strategy from optimization to high availability & DR by utilizing the licenses they acquired by trading up XenApp licenses to XenDesktop.

Add reduced downtime to the business case;server virtualization brings higher availability
High availability & storage management features mitigate costs of downtime
High Availability (HA):
HA is available through VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft (with Cluster Shared Storage), and partially through Red Hat – Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualization Manager servers are a single point of failure.
Using host clustering, if a host server fails, VMs are restarted on another host automatically according to priority and workload.
In most cases, this eliminates a single point of failure because, if a management server fails another server takes over.
Storage Migration:
VMware (Storage vMotion) is the only vendor that currently offers live migration of VM storage volumes from one storage host to another with zero downtime.
Microsoft’s Quick Storage Migration in System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 enables storage migration with the caveat of several minutes of down time.
Storage migration enables the storage used by VMs to be moved from one physical host to another with minimal or no downtime, making storage upgrades & optimization much easier. The time to migrate is the same as with conventional means, but reduces (or eliminates) down time during migration.
Info-Tech Insight
Many small to mid-sized organizations deploy server virtualization to realize the DR benefits even if the consolidation benefits do not make a compelling business case. Most organizations that deploy server virtualization see better availability, and the elimination of downtime makes the case instead.

Consolidation cost savings continue as organizations reap benefits of a managed virtual infrastructure
As organizations move beyond consolidation into a managed virtual server infrastructure consolidation continues to deliver value
Server virtualization brings additive benefits:
Cost savings through consolidation are most often associated with initial stages of virtualization because these benefits are used to make the business case.
However, capital and operational savings continue as a greater proportion of the infrastructure is virtualized because further hardware refreshes are avoided.
Management capabilities may be a primary business driver:
High availability for disaster recovery & improved application delivery may be sufficient to justify investment in server virtualization.
Organizations with a small server footprint (or without an impending server refresh) may not be in a position to achieve significant immediate cost savings through consolidation.
However, the potential cost of down time may make a compelling business case without consolidation savings.
Internal Cloud Benefits
Management Benefits
Consolidation Benefits
27%
26%
44%
22%
100%
100%
31%
89%
Percent of Organizations Achieving Set of Benefits
67%
69%
100%
100%
100%
78%
62%
Percent Virtualized
0%
100%
Source: Info-Tech Research Group
N = 70

IT services company cuts total refresh costs in half while improving management & preparing for internal cloud
I was able to eliminate the need for a cluster design, which was a very expensive venture…
... If I had gone down the clustering route, I would have had to pay more than double.
- CIO, IT Services Firm
IT Services
Large Enterprise
CIO
VMware
Industry:
Segment:
Source:
Vendor:
Situation
Action
Results (Arial, 12pt, Bold)
The organization recognized the need to improve manageability & performance, and reduce their server footprint.
They recognized the opportunity to evaluate and change vendors with their hardware refresh.
Being proactive, the IT group wanted to select a vendor that could prepare and enable their virtual infrastructure for the possibility of internal cloud, should they wish to move in this direction down the road.
A large IT services organization was 30% virtualized on Microsoft Hyper-V.
Impending hardware refresh of almost 60% of the server environment and a portion of the storage architecture.
Having moved past pure consolidation, the organization already had a ‘virtualize when possible’ policy in place and planned to become 90% virtualized in the next year.
We could reduce our footprint by a substantial amount in our next upgrade of hardware…
…I had a [storage] cluster that was not able to be purchased new at a reasonable level.
I was able to eliminate the need for a cluster design, which was a very expensive venture.
I was able to go to a virtual environment and still have some level of confidence that I could restore & replicate at a better price point than buying a cluster.

Phase Three: Leverage virtual server infrastructure to build an automated self-service internal cloud
With mounting hype about “cloud,” enterprises are focusing on internal infrastructure first, but a cloud isn’t just virtual servers.
Internal and external clouds are both abstracted environments where applications are provisioned with available and scalable compute capacity.
Abstracted compute resources (processor cycles, memory, storage) are typically derived from aggregated and virtualized servers.
Compute resources are presented to the customer as a service. Both internal & external models are highly agile and responsive to changing business demands.
Internal cloud is the new frontier for virtual servers and advanced virtual management. Enabling features include automation, metering, self-service & public cloud integration.
76 %focusing on internal cloud
You have the physical environment; then you’ve got virtualization. Then you’re going to go to automation – probably private cloud – and then the pure cloud...
From virtualization, we’re going to what I’ll call automation.
- Peter Valters, Infrastructure Manager, Empowered Networks
Enabling the internal cloud is the logical next place to go for server virtualization and server virtualization vendors. However this is a logical rather than necessary progression. For many organizations, effective management of an agile virtual infrastructure will be good enough. Their infrastructure will have neither the high growth potential or capacity variability to need to be run like a fully automated self service cloud.

VMware leads in internal cloud developments, but Citrix also has an internal/external cloud strategy
Automation, performance monitoring, and metering allow organizations to deliver control and visibility to end users, but internal cloud is not a fit for all
Self Service Functionality:
With vCloud Director, VMware continues to innovate around internal /external cloud.
With VMware Lab Manger, self service is provided for end users to develop & test (stage) applications – as well as to promote them to a production environment - in a 100% virtual environment.
Administrators can control user quotas, roles and rights.
Process automation:
VMware (vCenter Orchestrator), Citrix (Workflow Studio), and Microsoft (System Center Operations Manager) all offer capabilities to automate infrastructure processes.
Routine tasks such as server and application provisioning, DR automation in addition to more complex workflows and operations are typically candidates for automation.
Metering & Chargeback/Showback:
Ultimately enables IT to account, monitor, and report costs associated with the virtual infrastructure.
This makes users/groups accountable for infrastructure utilization through fixed allocation- and utilization-based costing, with automated billing, reports and e-mail.

Evaluate five different server virtualization vendors for best fit using Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape.
Use Info-Tech’s scenario analysis to shortlist vendors according to your current situation with the Server Virtualization Vendor Shortlist Tool
Use Info-Tech’s Server Virtualization RFP Template, RFP Scoring Tool, and Demonstration Script to solicit feedback on a set of consistent criteria.
Sections:

Server Virtualization Vendor Landscape inclusion criteria:market share, mind share, and solution diversity
VMware, for many years, was the only server virtualization game in town, which allowed it to develop a healthy lead in features & functionality. However, over the last two years, Citrix and Microsoft have largely closed this gap in consolidation & management capabilities and are now moving development to the utility infrastructure.
Prominent server virtualization players, Sun Microsystems and Virtual Iron, were acquired by Oracle in 2009 making way for Microsoft to snatch up some market share and Red Hat to make an entrance with its Enterprise Virtualization offering.
For this Vendor Landscape, Info-Tech focused on those vendors that have a strong market presence and/or reputational presence among small to mid-sized enterprises.
Included in the Vendor Landscape:
VMware. The early leader in the space, VMware commands approximately 80% of market share, and continues to innovate from consolidation to management to internal cloud capabilities and determines the direction of the space.
Microsoft. Second in market share, Microsoft has made recent strides in consolidation ratios through dynamic memory and provides strong application integration with Microsoft software like Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint.
Citrix. Rounding out the top three, Citrix provides the most comprehensive all around solution for the price, but struggles to overcome VMware’s mind & market share in the space. Citrix’s strong market share in desktop virtualization is also seen as a plus for potential clients.
Red Hat. A relatively new offering in the space, Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualization has made up considerable ground in consolidation and virtual management capabilities in the past 8 months with its KVM hypervisor that it acquired from Qumranet in late 2008.
Oracle. Through acquisition of Sun Microsystems & Virtual Iron in 2009, Oracle has the pieces in place for a strong virtualization offering, but has yet to release an offering that fully capitalizes on said acquisitions.

Server virtualization evaluation criteria & weighting factors
Consolidation ratios, physical to virtual (P2V) transitioning, basic server partitioning, and provisioning of VMs.
Consolidation
Product vision, portfolio breadth, and years in the market.
Vendor
Maturity
Management
Capabilities
Product Evaluation
Consolidation
Live migration, high availability, dynamic resource allocation, business continuity, and storage management.
Management
Capabilities
Total Cost of Ownership of virtualization over 5 years.
Cost
Internal
Cloud
Product
Process automation, automatic scaling, metering & chargeback/showback, and user self service capabilities.
Internal
Cloud
Market share & mind share.
Market
Presence
Vendor Evaluation
Vendor
Vendor
Maturity
Cost
Market
Presence

Server Virtualization Vendor Landscape Category Definitions
For a complete description of Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape methodology, and a comprehensive list of the evaluation criteria used, see the Appendix.

Server Virtualization Vendor Landscape

Server Virtualization Vendor Scorecard
= 0
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= 4
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Legend:
Note: “Harvey Ball” scores are produced by normalizing weighted scores for each category, resulting in rankings for each category. For example, an empty circle does not indicate a zero score; it indicates the lowest score in that category relative to the other products.

VMware’s constant innovation & comprehensive feature set make it a clear leader, but at the highest cost
Info-Tech Rating:
Champion
Strengths:
Overview:
Info-Tech Recommends:
Founded in 1998, and acquired by EMC in 2004, VMware holds dominant mind and market share in the space. A mature technology company, it has driven innovation in consolidation & management in the past, and is now pushing the envelope in internal cloud.
Challenges:
Strong & early-to-game on numerous management capabilities via vCenter management software, such as live migration (vMotion), storage live migration (storage vMotion), and high availability.
VMware has set the bar in internal cloud capabilities enabling chargeback (vCenter Chargeback) that can be further automated with VMware’s vCloud Director, which also enables self service.
If your virtualization roadmap dictates requirements for advanced management capabilities or utility infrastructure, VMware is the best bet hands down. VMware holds dominant market share, continues to develop advanced capabilities and improves usability for organizations at all stages of server virtualization. VMware also has a strong desktop virtualization product.
Cost is a considerable drawback. Licensing fees are the highest among server virtualization vendors and with dominant market share, VMware shows no indication of bringing these down.
Singular focus on VMware virtualization has made supporting multiple hypervisors a challenge; however, Hyper-V management & V2V conversion is being Beta test through a vCenter plugin called XVP Manager & Converter.
8200+
Palo Alto, Californiavmware.com
vSphere
1998
NYSE: VMW
FY09 Revenue: $2B
Employees:
Headquarters:
Website:
Pricing:
Founded:
Presence:

Citrix’ comprehensive management toolset & broad hypervisor support make it a viable, cost effective option
Info-Tech Rating:
Champion
Strengths:
Overview:
Following its purchase of XenSource in 2007, Citrix has developed a comprehensive product line from server to desktop virtualization, where Info-Tech sees Citrix as a leader. Citrix offers mature functionality for managing XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.
Challenges:
Citrix’s manageable licensing costs for XenServer are a huge plus.
XenServer free edition offers XenMotion live migration, advanced management tools (XenCenter) as well as IntelliCache for support of XenDesktop virtualization projects.
Microsoft partnership enables storage & VM lifecycle management for Microsoft Hyper-V using Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V.
Look closely at Citrix as an alternative to VMware. While Citrix’s market share is low, it offers many of the same features as VMware with more flexibility and a lower price.
Citrix’s primary challenge since entering the market has been increasing its market share.
Citrix’s virtual cloud offering contains important features, such as automation, self service, and provisioning service; however, advanced functionality in this area is where Info-Tech sees the biggest difference with VMware.
4600+
Santa Clara, Californiacitrix.com
XenServer/XenCenter
1989
NASDAQ: CTXS
FY09 Revenue: $1.6B
Employees:
Headquarters:
Website:
Pricing:
Founded:
Presence:

Microsoft continues to improve, delivering on key management capabilities, but without real market innovation
Info-Tech Rating:
Market Pillar
Overview:
Strengths:
Microsoft entered the virtualization game with its purchase of Virtual PC from Connectix in 2003. With its release of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V R2 in 2009, Microsoft introduced a viable alternative to VMware and Citrix for consolidation & virtual management.
Microsoft is number two in market/mind share and has been proactively addressing gaps in its virtualization offering over the past 3 years.
R2 release offers live migration for free & R2 SP1 offers support for dynamic memory, which dynamically distributes memory resources to VMs as needed, leading to better performance & density.
Future roadmap includes management of internal & public cloud resources through System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (in Beta) and Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud offering currently in Beta) and Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud offering.
Challenges:
Microsoft’s advanced features for internal cloud still lag behind VMware. However, Info-Tech expects Microsoft to begin addressing this limitation with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.
Microsoft’s reliance on Citrix for advanced functionality through Essentials for Hyper-V is viewed by some to be a negative.
89,000+
Redmond, Washingtonmicrosoft.com
Virtual Machine Manager
1975
NASDAQ: MSFT
FY10 Revenue: $62.5B
Employees:
Headquarters:
Website:
Pricing:
Founded:
Presence:
Organizations with significant investment in Microsoft, especially in Server 2008, may find that Hyper-V covers all of their requirements without requiring additional spend to upgrade. Recent additions of live migration, Cluster Shared Volume support, and dynamic memory may make Hyper-V management capabilities good enough.

Red Hat’s virtualization offering has made up considerable ground in short order; it’s the market entrant to watch
Info-Tech Rating:
Emerging Player
Strengths:
Overview:
Red Hat acquired the KVM hypervisor with its acquisition of Qumranet in 2008 & began support with Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5.4. In 2010, Red Hat announced exclusive support for KVM, abandoning the Xen Hypervisor. Red Hat has made extensive progress in short time.
Licensing costs of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) are considerably lower than competitors, with claims of up to 70% savings relative to VMware.
Red Hat has made up considerable ground on competitors in a short time with capabilities, such as live migration, high availability, memory over-commit, and power management already available.
RHEV offers unique search functionality to allow administrators to quickly zero in on a set of VMs or hosts in a large data center.
Challenges:
If looking for a cost effective alternative to VMware then consider KVM, especially where the team has experience with Linux. Large organizations with significant VMware deployment might consider KVM as a way of avoiding vendor lock-in.
Red Hat’s biggest challenge will be convincing users of the stability of the relatively new product, as well as gaining market share – it’s expected that uptake will increase following release of RHEV 3.0.
RHEV currently does not provide cloud functionality or storage management capabilities (e.g. storage live migration).
3500+
Raleigh, NCredhat.com
RHEV support
1993
NYSE: RHT
FY11 Revenue: $909.3M
Employees:
Headquarters:
Website:
Pricing:
Founded:
Presence:

Oracle offers a complete but uninspiring solution that doesn’t play nice with others
Info-Tech Rating:
Emerging Player
Strengths:
Challenges:
Overview:
Oracle is one of the largest technology companies in the world and has the strength of its broad range of hardware & software offerings behind it.
Oracle VM offers zero-dollar licensing (with paid support) and some advanced management functionality, such as high availability and live migration.
Oracle focuses on selling the full stack and lacks support for other hypervisors. Potential vendor lock-in may scare off organizations.
Oracle’s management capabilities show some notable gaps, such as power management, storage migration/management & memory over-commitment; however, these may be addressed in version 3.0.
Oracle introduced its Xen-based virtualization solution, OVM, in 2007. With its acquisitions of Sun Microsystems (completed Jan. 2010) and Virtual Iron (2009), Oracle removed two competitors from the server virtualization vendor landscape while adding new pieces to its own virtualization arsenal (particularly from Sun’s virtualization suite).
Oracle is likely best suited to IT environments that already leverage a number of Oracle apps.
100,000+
Redwood Shores, CAOracle VM (OVM) support
Oracle.com
1977
NASDAQ: ORCL
FY10 Revenue: $26.8B
Employees:
Headquarters:
Pricing:
Website:
Founded:
Presence:

It’s not all or none. Many server virtualization vendors may meet the needs of your organization

The Info-Tech Server Virtualization Vendor Shortlist Toolis designed to generate a customized shortlist of vendors based on key priorities.
Identify leading solution candidates with the Server Virtualization Vendor Shortlist Tool
This tool offers the ability to modify:
Overall Vendor vs. Product Weightings
Product Criteria Weightings
Consolidation
Advanced Management Capabilities
Utility Infrastructure (Internal Cloud) Enablement
Vendor Criteria Weightings
Market Maturity
Cost
Market Presence
Internal cloud not in the plans?
Change the weightings!
Info-Tech’s shortlist for your organization will change if internal cloud is not a future consideration.
Tool Tip

Issue an RFP to ensure that the vendor fits your needs, and not the other way around
Use Info-Tech’s Server Virtualization RFP Templateto conduct this critical step in your vendor selection process.
Info-Tech’s Server Virtualization RFP Template is populated with critical elements including:
The Statement of Work
Proposal Preparation Instructions
Scope of Work
Functional Requirements
Technical Specifications
Operations & Support
Sizing & Implementation
Vendor Qualifications & References
Budget & Estimated Pricing
Vendor Certification

Evaluate RFP Responses
The Server Virtualization RFP Scoring Toolis pre-built with essential criteria complementing the Server Virtualization RFP Template(slide 33).
Use the tool to drive the procurement meeting with your procurement department
A standard and transparent process for scoring individual vendor RFP responses will help ensure that internal team biases are minimized.
To get the most value out of the RFP process, use the RFP Scoring Tool
Use Info-Tech’sServer Virtualization Scoring Tool to:

Take charge of vendor finalist demonstrations with a Vendor Demonstration Script
An on-site product demonstration will help enterprise decision-makers better understand the capabilities and constraints of various solutions.
This tool is designed to provide vendors with a consistent set of instructions for key scenarios from consolidation to management.
The Server Virtualization Vendor Demo Script covers:
P2V Migration & Virtual Server Provisioning
Live Migration
Dynamic Resource Allocation & Power Management
High Availability & Fault Tolerance

Don’t just find a vendor, find a solution; many organizations use multiple hypervisors to maximize features & minimize cost
The Challenge
The Benefits
Many organizations leverage a combination of VMware, for advanced management of critical workloads and apps, and Citrix or Microsoft for cost savings in non-critical systems.
Microsoft can also bring high performance for Microsoft apps like Exchange or SharePoint.
Citrix XenServer is often utilized to support Citrix’s XenDesktop.
When possible, ensure one of your solutions can manage the other for day-to-day management tasks like live migration & P2V.
Microsoft & Citrix can manage VMware and each other.
VMware is beginning to offer management of Microsoft VMs.
Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N = 71

Investment firm leverages Hyper-V for Microsoft Exchange while maintaining VMware for production servers
The way [Hyper-V] clusters is really nice because you can upgrade Exchange 2010 to the latest Service Pack without it impacting users at all.
The Microsoft Hyper-V solution, for that, is really smooth.
- Vikram Prashar, Director, IT
Financial
Mid-Sized
VMware/Hyper-V Combination
Vikram Prashar, Director, IT, Horsley Bridge
Industry:
Segment:
Vendor:
Source:
Situation
Action
Result
Horsley Bridge saw significant cost savings by using Hyper-V and VMware virtual servers environment.
With VMware in their production environment they see higher availability, uptime, and centralized management & control for their critical applications.
They realized huge consolidation benefits – reducing 39 physical servers down to 3, which led to power & cooling savings, and consolidated workloads down to 17 VMs (only 1 physical server remains unvirtualized).
For Exchange, they purchased an Enterprise license of Microsoft Server 2008 R2, which comes with 4 OS licenses for Hyper-V VMs.
Leveraged solid integration between Hyper-V & Exchange, as well as built in redundancy of Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager 2010, which are certified and well tested on Hyper-V.
They implemented a 3-node VMware cluster with vCenter Management console in their remaining production environment.
Horsley Bridge rolled out server virtualization to their production environment at the same time they went through an upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2010.
They were happy with their existing VMware investment, and were satisfied with performance for P2V migration, live migration, and management capabilities, especially for their remote locations oversees where they dealt with high latency issues.

Prepare your IT staff for the challenges & opportunities they will face with virtualization and/or increased management complexity.
Leverage vendor tools & expertise to drive success.
Assess your current infrastructure to identify areas that need addressing before server virtualization deployment.
Plan for capacity requirements over the next 3 years to maintain optimum performance in the virtual infrastructure.
Sections:

Understand the training costs & engagement benefits that server virtualization brings
Knowledge comes at a premium, but benefits extend beyond skill development
Training isn’t all bad;
VMware shop drives client engagement with new role.
Situation
As do many organizations, Dillon Consulting Limited began piloting virtualization with IT staff that had yet to be trained or certified in virtualization.
Virtualization is an additional layer of complexity & software knowledge that adds to the necessary skill set of IT.
Done wrong, virtualization can negatively affect application performance, business continuity, security and many other critical facets of the business.
Invest in proper training at the consolidation stage so that staff can ramp up their skill sets as the needs of the business evolve to get the most out of the solution.
Consulting
Medium-Sized
VMware
Aaron Finkenzeller, Dillon Consulting Limited
Industry:
Segment:
Vendor:
Source:
Action & Result
As IT planned to move virtualization into production environments, an IT Pro previously responsible for physical server provisioning was handed the reigns to become the new “server virtualization champion” at the company.
New opportunity & exciting technology engaged the employee, as it allowed him to move into a more proactive role.
Our VMware guy’s really coming to work engaged, he’s interested, he’s even doing stuff at home to prep for his VMware training course. He’s figuring out neat things he can do with it…
He was the guy doing the “buy, build, deploy” and now he’s doing “right click deploy”…
He just grins from ear to ear when he’s doing it. To me, that’s the biggest, most important part. His job satisfaction is there. He’s spending time on things that aren’t repetitive tasks anymore.
- Aaron Finkenzeller

In any acquisition deal that involves virtualization, make sure that the following services are included in the RFP requirements:
30 Day Utilization Analysis:
The vendor will provide capacity analysis of current server workloads through the use of a capacity analysis and planning tool (such as VMware Capacity Planner).
The analysis will include monitoring current resource utilization of virtualization candidate machines over a period of not less than 30 days.
Model VM Requirements:
The vendor will model the requirements for candidate workloads to function in a virtualized environment.
This will include modeling functionality on new server hardware that the vendor may or may not also be providing.
P2V Services:
Vendor will assist in the physical to virtual (P2V) migration of initially targeted workloads, provide for roll back V2P migration as a contingency for unexpected failure of the workload to perform in a virtual machine environment, and document a repeatable process for future P2V migration of workloads.
Tap vendor tools & expertise for virtual migration success
Server vendors and virtualization product vendors typically come armed with tools and services for design, configuration, testing and implementation.
Example: VMware Capacity Planner, an effective tool for sizing VMware environments, is not publicly available. It is provided to resellers of VMware products, such as hardware vendors and virtualization consultancies.

Mid-sized healthcare organization leveraged partner tools & capabilities to select the best solution for their environment
We tried VMware first… but when we benchmarked VMware vs. Citrix, the XenServer actually performed significantly better than the VMware solution, and we ended up, from that, going the direction of choosing Citrix as our virtualization platform for our servers…
We had some outside help with this, and they had benchmark tests that we went through, to assess things like disc I/O & network tests to observe NIC performance.
Healthcare
Mid-sized
Citrix
Fernando Bayuga Jr.,
IT Manager, WEC Health Unit
Industry:
Segment:
Solution:
Source:
- Fernando Bayuga Jr., IT Manager
Situation
Action
Results
WEC Health Unit leveraged partner assessment tools & benchmark tests to determine which solution performed best in their current environment.
Based on the assessment, they started with the free version of Citrix XenServer to consolidate their environment down to 10 virtual servers & leverage live migration as well as VM templating capabilities.
They have since upgraded to XenServer Advanced for advanced features like memory optimization & high availability.
WEC Health Unit is achieving exceptional performance with their virtual environment, where they house critical servers & workloads like Exchange & BES, as well as secondary servers like terminal servers & file servers.
We’ll do a live migration of our Exchange box and we’ll ping it and honestly it’s insane, it will only drop one ping. Nobody knows that the exchange server was moved to another physical box.
WEC Health Unit began virtualization with non-critical servers using VMware.
Before making a more considerable investment in virtualization & moving it into their production environment, they wanted to conduct a formal side-by-side comparison of VMware & Citrix virtualization solutions.

Beware virtual server sprawl; server management may be easier, but management discipline is still necessary
Server virtualization requires reallocation of resources from hardware asset management to virtual machine management
Delivering a new server used to be a multi-week process involving purchase, delivery, provisioning, OS/software installation, & configuration.
With server virtualization, virtual machines can be provisioned easily and in minutes with a couple clicks.
What has been your biggest challenge to successful server virtualization?
This ease of provisioning poses
three primary challenges:
Capacity Planning: Only 50% of organizations using server virtualization regularly evaluate future capacity requirements despite capacity management/planning being the biggest challenge.
Virtual Server Sprawl: 58% of organizations stated that server virtualization has led physical server sprawl to be replaced by virtual server sprawl.
Increased Management Complexity: 85% of organizations leverage advanced management tools - such as VMware vCenter, Citrix XenCenter or Microsoft System Center – to effectively monitor performance of both physical & virtual machines.
Source: Info-Tech Research Group
N = 80

Assess the resource utilization of current servers & plan for appropriate capacity across processors, network, storage
2
2
2
1
4
3
Physical Servers
Storage
Processor
Provide physical servers with access to shared storage such as an iSCSI or SAN array.
Take advantage of SAN array management features, such as High Availability, dynamic resource scheduling & power management, to enable VM failover & maximize resource use.
Standardize processors across all physical machines.
Aim to maintain similar processors across all machines to facilitate moving VMs when necessary.
Opt for the most advanced processors available, to avoid future incompatibilities.
Build redundancy into the virtualized architecture by deploying multiple physical servers to host virtual machines.
Aim to host 10 VMs per powerful multi-processor server.
Assess All Server Workloads
Plan Hardware Redundancy
Develop a Storage Strategy
Select Scalable Hardware
Include current memory, processing, and I/O needs of each application.
Measure and test current usage of these factors to find peak usage periods.
Avoid using only one physical server to house all VMs.
Multiple physical servers will boost availability & provide extra capacity for further application development on VMs.
Storage planning should precede virtualization planning.
Develop a comprehensive consolidated storage strategy before implementing server consolidation.
Ensure the processor chip set of each server has a defined future.
Look to chip sets that have built in virtualization optimization features.
Poor virtual machine performance is often a result of having too many virtual machines sharing not enough virtualized hardware resources.

Leverage server capacity growth for better virtualization
Server capacity has grown significantly over the past two years.
What wasn’t a good candidate two years ago, may well be acceptable now.
Virtual Machine Consolidation: Then & Now
14 VMs per core
(each core has 2 threads, & so acts as two cores)
x 4 cores
x 2 processors
= 112 VMs
(x 2 = 224 GB of memory needed)
The capacity of server CPUs is a function of the number of parallel processors, cores & threads that are operating, plus the amount of addressable memory available to the processors.
7 VMs per core
x 2 cores
x 2 processors
= 28 VMs
(x 2 = 56 GB of memory needed)
Speed:
Over the span of two decades in distributed processing development, server processor speeds (Megahertz to Gigahertz) and bandwidth (16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit) have grown exponentially.
Deciding between two server options became about speed comparison.
Processor Count:
Recent processor generations have boosted performance through parallel processing.
Adding more concurrent processors (2, 4, 8, 16) to the mother board as well as adding more processor cores to each processor.
Threads:
In multithreading, more than one instruction thread can be processed at the same time. This means that a single physical core can act as 2 logical processors.
64-bit:
The use of 64-bit operating systems (including 64-bit hypervisors for virtualization) has also significantly increased the amount of memory that can be addressed by an application.
A baseline of 7 VMs per core, each with 2 GB of RAM & sharing a single core server processor. However, these parameters may vary by hypervisor & thin provisioning capabilities.

The Info-Tech Server Virtualization TCO Comparison Toolcompares total cost factors, including energy consumption, maintenance, virtual & OS software licensing & other relevant costs.
Use Info-Tech’s Server Virtualization TCO Comparison Tool to minimize the total costs of acquiring virtual servers
Use this tool to get a realistic sense of costs beyond the initial capital purchase. This tool provides:
Data entry fields for a range of total costs per server including capital cost & ongoing maintenance.
Ability to enter multiple server options allowing TCO comparisons such as:
Virtual servers vs. non-virtual servers
Virtualization vendors under comparable hardware configurations.
Server OS licensing versions
For more information regarding server acquisition for internal cloud, see these Info-Tech Solution Sets.

Think outside the “box”; move beyond existing servers toplan & manage capacity for future requirements
Correlation with Success in Consolidation/Virtualization Projects
Success was defined as:
Reduced “virtual server sprawl.
Reduced capital and facility costs.
Reduced man-hours spent on management of infrastructure.
Increased uptime and business continuity.
Reduced security concerns.
.36 *
.21 *
Service Tiers
Capacity Management
.15
For more capacity management insight, see Info-Tech’s Solution Set:
Maximize success as the virtual infrastructure grows with capacity planning
Cost Accounting
Capacity management practices lead to greater success in infrastructure consolidation/virtualization projects.
Having developed service tiers in infrastructure was the strongest predictor of overall success in consolidation.
A capacity management process, such as inventorying resources annually, was also a predictor of success, especially in managing virtual server sprawl, security assurance, and business continuity.
Cost accounting and capacity planning were not predictors of current success. However, efficient capacity planning and cost accounting are not direct inputs, but outcomes of capacity management.
.09
Capacity Planning
Note: * = correlation is significant. N = 88.Source: Info-Tech Research Group

What next? Check out these Info-Tech Solution Sets to learn more about server virtualization & the internal cloud

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Methodology

Methodology – Vendor Landscape & Harvey Balls
Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape market evaluations are a part of a larger product selection solution set, referred to as a ‘Select Set.’
From the domain experience of our analysts, a vendor/product shortlist is established. Product briefings are requested from each of these vendors, asking for information on the company, products, technology, customers, partners, sales models and pricing.
Our analysts then score each vendor and product across a variety of categories. These scores are then weighted according to weighting factors that our analysts believe represent the weight that an average client should apply to each criteria. The weighted scores are then averaged for each of two high level categories: vendor score and product score. A plot of these two resulting scores is generated to place vendors in one of four categories: Champion, Competitor, Market Pillar, and Emerging Player.
Analysts take the individual scores for each vendor/product in each evaluation category and normalize them to a scale of zero to four. This produces a relative scoring, where a low score value indicates low performance in that category relative to the performance of the other products in that category and vice versa for a high score. These normalized scores are represented with Harvey Balls, ranging from an open circle for a score of zero and a filled-in circle for a score of four. Harvey Ball scores do not represent absolute scores, only relative scores.
Individual scorecards are then sent to the vendors for factual review, and to ensure no information is under embargo. We will make corrections where factual errors exist (e.g. pricing, features, technical specifications). We will consider suggestions concerning benefits, functional quality, value, etc; however, these suggestions must be validated by feedback from our customers. We do not accept changes that are not corroborated by actual client experience or wording changes that are purely part of a vendor’s market messaging or positioning. Any resulting changes to final scores are then made as needed, before publishing the results to Info-Tech clients.
Vendor Landscapes are refreshed every 12 to 24 months, depending upon the dynamics of each individual market.

Appendix 2: Survey Demographics

Industry

Country

Revenue

IT Staff

Job Title

Server virtualization vendor landscape

by Info-Tech Research Group on May 26, 2011

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Server virtualization vendor landscape — Presentation Transcript