VMware remains the server virtualization leader, but competitors have emerged with attractive alternatives, especially for server consolidation and virtual infrastructure management. Focus first on business requirements so that current and future virtualization requirements can be met now and for years to come by the vendor that you choose. However, don’t automatically go with the vendor with the most market share, as many competitors have compelling offerings that may be good enough, especially if the internal cloud is not in your immediate plans. Use this research to: •Understand current capabilities of server virtualization vendors. •Evaluate offerings of VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat & Oracle for best fit. •Use scenario analysis and case studies to shortlist vendors. •Assess implementation recommendations and pitfalls. Make best-fit server virtualization decisions to balance the best server virtualization capabilities with lowest TCO.

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

2. 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.

4. VMware’s product focus is on advanced internal cloud enablement and public-private cloud integration. Citrix has also been developing solutions in this area.

7. 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 Evaluate Server Virtualization Vendors Arrive at an Implementation Strategy

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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.

13. Measure the impact on savings of various virtualization solutions and Windows licensing options.

14. 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.

16. 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.

17. Available physical space in the data center was sparse and the organization’s server footprint had been growing.

18. PSECU selected VMware based on its P2V capabilities that did not require downtime to their 60+ servers during transition.

19. Server virtualization was deployed to reduce physical server footprint and improve DR through high availability functionality (see next section).

20. IT avoided expansion of cooling & UPS power through footprint reduction, and were even able to add additional equipment.

21. 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.

22. 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% Small
Enterprise Medium
Enterprise Large
Enterprise % Virt 18
Months % Virt 3
Years % Virt
Now 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

23. 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.

25. 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.

26. Vinfen Corporation began virtualizing with the free version of XenServer & were able to create 3 VMs on each physical server.

27. They have since traded up their XenApp licenses to XenDesktop licenses & in the process received the advanced version of XenServer.

28. Vinfen Corporation has now optimized what they have on a minimal budget to triple the capacity for their virtual desktops.

29. They have also used XenServer to virtualize file servers & Exchange 2010.

31. 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

33. They recognized the opportunity to evaluate and change vendors with their hardware refresh.

34. 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.

35. A large IT services organization was 30% virtualized on Microsoft Hyper-V.

36. Impending hardware refresh of almost 60% of the server environment and a portion of the storage architecture.

37. 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.

39. Abstracted compute resources (processor cycles, memory, storage) are typically derived from aggregated and virtualized servers.

40. Compute resources are presented to the customer as a service. Both internal & external models are highly agile and responsive to changing business demands.

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. Evaluate Server Virtualization Vendors This section will help you to: 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: Understand Trends and Current Issues Evaluate Server Virtualization Vendors Arrive at an Implementation Strategy

45. 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.

47. 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.

48. 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.

49. 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.

51. 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.

52. Server Virtualization Vendor Landscape

53. Server Virtualization Vendor Scorecard = 0 = 1 = 2 = 4 = 3 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.

56. 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:

58. XenServer free edition offers XenMotion live migration, advanced management tools (XenCenter) as well as IntelliCache for support of XenDesktop virtualization projects.

60. 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:

62. 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.

64. 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: Info-Tech Recommends: 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.

66. 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.

68. 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:

70. Oracle VM offers zero-dollar licensing (with paid support) and some advanced management functionality, such as high availability and live migration.

71. Oracle focuses on selling the full stack and lacks support for other hypervisors. Potential vendor lock-in may scare off organizations.

72. 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). Info-Tech Recommends: 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:

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

75. Product Criteria Weightings

76. Consolidation

77. Advanced Management Capabilities

78. Utility Infrastructure (Internal Cloud) Enablement

79. Vendor Criteria Weightings

80. Market Maturity

81. Cost

82. Market PresenceInternal 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

84. Proposal Preparation Instructions

85. Scope of Work

86. Functional Requirements

87. Technical Specifications

88. Operations & Support

89. Sizing & Implementation

90. Vendor Qualifications & References

91. Budget & Estimated Pricing

94. Live Migration

95. Dynamic Resource Allocation & Power Management

97. Microsoft can also bring high performance for Microsoft apps like Exchange or SharePoint.

98. Citrix XenServer is often utilized to support Citrix’s XenDesktop.

99. When possible, ensure one of your solutions can manage the other for day-to-day management tasks like live migration & P2V.

100. Microsoft & Citrix can manage VMware and each other.

101. VMware is beginning to offer management of Microsoft VMs.Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N = 71

103. With VMware in their production environment they see higher availability, uptime, and centralized management & control for their critical applications.

104. 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).

105. For Exchange, they purchased an Enterprise license of Microsoft Server 2008 R2, which comes with 4 OS licenses for Hyper-V VMs.

106. 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.

107. They implemented a 3-node VMware cluster with vCenter Management console in their remaining production environment.

108. Horsley Bridge rolled out server virtualization to their production environment at the same time they went through an upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2010.

111. New opportunity & exciting technology engaged the employee, as it allowed him to move into a more proactive role.

112. 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…

113. He was the guy doing the “buy, build, deploy” and now he’s doing “right click deploy”…

114. 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.

119. 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.

120. They have since upgraded to XenServer Advanced for advanced features like memory optimization & high availability.

124. Take advantage of SAN array management features, such as High Availability, dynamic resource scheduling & power management, to enable VM failover & maximize resource use.

125. Standardize processors across all physical machines.

126. Aim to maintain similar processors across all machines to facilitate moving VMs when necessary.

127. Opt for the most advanced processors available, to avoid future incompatibilities.

128. Build redundancy into the virtualized architecture by deploying multiple physical servers to host virtual machines.

130. Measure and test current usage of these factors to find peak usage periods.

131. Avoid using only one physical server to house all VMs.

132. Multiple physical servers will boost availability & provide extra capacity for further application development on VMs.

133. Storage planning should precede virtualization planning.

134. Develop a comprehensive consolidated storage strategy before implementing server consolidation.

135. Ensure the processor chip set of each server has a defined future.

136. 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.

141. Ability to enter multiple server options allowing TCO comparisons such as:

142. Virtual servers vs. non-virtual servers

143. Virtualization vendors under comparable hardware configurations.

144. Server OS licensing versionsFor more information regarding server acquisition for internal cloud, see these Info-Tech Solution Sets.

146. Reduced capital and facility costs.

147. Reduced man-hours spent on management of infrastructure.

148. Increased uptime and business continuity.

150. Having developed service tiers in infrastructure was the strongest predictor of overall success in consolidation.

151. 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.

152. 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

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

154. Conclusion

155. Appendix 1: Methodology

156. 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.

157. Appendix 2: Survey Demographics

158. Industry

159. Country

160. Revenue

161. FTEs

162. IT Staff

163. Job Title