Downloaded 38 times
Uploaded byPaulo Freitas
VMWARE Professionals - Availability and Resiliency
This document provides an overview and comparison of virtualization capabilities between Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. It outlines key hypervisor, management, networking, storage, availability, migration and disk formatting features. The document compares terminology and functionality between the two platforms across these areas to help identify similarities and differences.
More Related Content
Similar to VMWARE Professionals - Availability and Resiliency
VMWARE Professionals - Availability and Resiliency
- 1.
- 2. Microsoft Virtual Academy Part 1 |Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V &. VMware vSphere 5.1 Part 2 | System Center 2012 SP1 & VMware’s Private Cloud (01) Introduction & Scalability (05) Introduction & Overview of System Center 2012 (02) Storage & Resource Management (06) Application Management (03) Security, Multi-tenancy & Flexibility (07) Cross-Platform Management (04) High-Availability & Resiliency (08) Foundation, Hybrid Clouds & Costs ** MEAL BREAK **
- 3.
- 6. For virtual machines •Allows incremental backup of virtual hard disks • Is Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)-aware • Backs up the Hyper-V environment • Requires no backup agent inside virtual machines Benefits • Saves network bandwidth • Reduces backup sizes • Saves disk space • Lowers backup cost Sunday Monday First full backup after enabling incremental backup First incremental backup Beforebackup Duringbackup AfterbackupBeforebackup Duringbackup Afterbackup Beforebackup Duringbackup Afterbackup Beforerestore Duringrestore Afterrestore Differences1 Differences1 Differences1 Differences1 Differences2 Differences2 Differences2 Differences2 Differences3 Differences3 Differences3 Differences3 Differences2 Differences1 Merge Second incremental backup Incremental restore Files in blue are backed up Tuesday Friday: Restore to Tuesday’s Backup Merge
- 7. Registration • Sign up •Billing Third-party cloud • Sign up • BillingMicrosoft online backup service Microsoft online backup portal Third-party online backup service Third-party online backup portal Inbox engine Inbox UI Windows Server 2012 backup (extensible)Windows Server 2012 Agents • Microsoft online backup • Third-party agents IT Pro Registration Backup/ Restore CONTINUOUS APPLICATION AVAILABILITY • Ability to leverage Windows Azure cloud services to back up data • Reduced cost for backup storage and management • Options for third-party cloud services • Ideal for small businesses, branch offices, and departmental business needs
- 9. Benefits • Affordable in-boxbusiness continuity and disaster recovery • Failure recovery in minutes • More secure replication across network • No need for storage arrays • No need for other software replication technologies • Automatic handling of live migration • Simpler configuration and management New feature Replicate Hyper-V virtual machines from a primary site to a replica site VIRTUAL MACHINE MOBILITY Hyper-V role and tools Hyper-V cmdlets Hyper-V PS integrated UI Hyper-V Management Module tracks and replicates changes for each virtual machine Hyper-V role and tools Hyper-V cmdlets Hyper-V PS integrated UI Hyper-V Management Module receives and applies the changes to the replica virtual machine Primary site CRM virtual machine SQL virtual machine SharePoint virtual machine Exchange virtual machine IIS virtual machine Exchange replica virtual machine CRM replica virtual machine Replicate over WAN link SMB file share Send/receive replica traffic SAN R1 R2 R3 P1 P2 Replica site
- 14. Windows Server Cluster Current Workload Third-partyplug-in for updates U • Reduces server downtime and user disruption by orchestration of cluster node updates • Maintains service availability without impacting cluster quorum • Detects required updates and moves workloads off nodes for updates • Uses Windows Update Agent or extensible plug-in CONTINUOUS APPLICATION AVAILABILITY 1
- 16. Capability Hyper-V (2012) vSphere Hypervisor vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus IncrementalBackups Yes No Yes1 VM Replication Yes No Yes2 NIC Teaming Yes Yes Yes Integrated High Availability Yes No3 Yes4 Guest OS Application Monitoring Yes N/A No5 Failover Prioritization Yes N/A Yes6 Affinity Rules Yes N/A Yes6 Cluster-Aware Updating Yes N/A Yes6 1 VMware Data Protection is available in Essentials Plus and higher vSphere 5.1 editions 2 vSphere Replication is available in Essentials Plus and higher vSphere 5.1 editions 3 vSphere Hypervisor has no high availability features built in – vSphere 5.1 is required. 4 VMware HA is built in to Essentials Plus and higher vSphere 5.1 editions 5 VMware have made APIs publicly available, but actual application monitoring is not included 6 Features available in all editions that have High Availability enabled. vSphere Hypervisor / vSphere 5.x Ent+ Information: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html and http://www.yellow- bricks.com/2011/08/11/vsphere-5-0-ha-application-monitoring-intro/
- 17. Capability Hyper-V (2012) vSphere Hypervisor vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus Nodesper Cluster 64 N/A1 32 VMs per Cluster 8,000 N/A1 4,000 Max Size Guest Cluster (iSCSI) 64 Nodes 16 Nodes2 16 Nodes2 Max Size Guest Cluster (Fiber) 64 Nodes 5 Nodes 5 Nodes Max Size Guest Cluster (File Based) 64 Nodes 0 Nodes3 0 Nodes3 Guest Clustering with Live Migration Support Yes N/A1 No4 Guest Clustering with Dynamic Memory Support Yes No5 No5 1 High Availability/vMotion/Clustering is unavailable in the standalone vSphere Hypervisor 2 Guest Clusters can be created on vSphere 5.1 using the in-guest iSCSI initiator to connect to the SAN, the same as would be configured in a physical cluster. Support of guest operating systems up to Windows Server 2008 R2 means 16 node clusters are the maximum size on vSphere 5.1. WS2012 Guest Clusters not supported as per: http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-esx-vcenter-server-51-release-notes.html 3 VMware does not support VM Guest Clustering using File Based Storage i.e. NFS 4 VMware does not support vMotion and Storage vMotion of a VM that is part of a Guest Cluster 5 VMware does not support the use of Memory Overcommit with a VM that is part of a Guest Cluster vSphere Hypervisor / vSphere 5.x Ent+ Information: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r51/vsphere-51-configuration-maximums.pdf, http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere- 50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-mscs-guide.pdf, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1037959
- 20. Deep technical contentand free product evaluations Expert-led, no cost, hands- on technical training events Free, online, technical courses Download Microsoft software trials today. Find an IT Camp near you. Take a free online course. Technet.microsoft.com/evalcenter Technet.microsoft.com/globalitcamps microsoftvirtualacademy.com
- 21. ©2013 Microsoft Corporation.All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Office, Azure, System Center, Dynamics and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
- 22. Term/Item Microsoft VMware HypervisorHyper-V ESXi VM Management SCVMM vCenter Networking vSwitch vSwitch Networking Logical Switch (VMM) Distributed Switch File System NTFS/ReFS VMFS Patching Cluster Aware Updating/VMM Update Manager Migration Live Migration vMotion Storage Migration Storage Migration Storage vMotion Migration without Shared Storage Shared Nothing Live Migration vMotion Automated Migration Dynamic Optimization (VMM) Distributed Resource Scheduler Power Saving Migration Power Optimization (VMM) Distributed Power Management Virtual Disk VHD/VHDX VMDK Raw LUN to VM Pass Through Disk Raw Device Mapping Thin Provisioned Disk Dynamic VHD/X Thin Provisioned VMDK Fully Provisioned Disk Fixed VHD/X Fully Provisioned (Lazy/Eager) VMDK
- 23. Term/Item Microsoft VMware HighAvailability Failover Clustering VMware HA Cluster-Aware File System Cluster Shared Volumes 2.0 VMFS 5 Replication Hyper-V Replica VM Replication SAN Offload Offloaded Data Transfer vStorage API for Array Integration Storage Multipathing MPIO vStorage API for Multipathing I/O Control QoS Storage/Network I/O Control Granular Host Configuration Host Profiles Host Profiles
Editor's Notes
- #2 And so we come to our final part, where we compare and contrast some of the key features from a HA and resiliency perspective.
- #4 Virtualization can promote the high availability of mission-critical workloads in new and effective ways and in Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012, there are a number of new enhancements that ensure key workloads are resilient, and protected.Incremental Backups - True differential disk backups of virtual hard disks to help ensure that the data is backed up and restored when necessary. It also reduces storage costs because it backs up only what has changed, not the entire disk.Hyper‑V Replica - Asynchronous, application-consistent virtual machine replication is built in to Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012. It permits asynchronous replication of Hyper‑V virtual machines between two locations for business continuity and failure recovery. Hyper‑V Replica works with any server vendor, any network vendor, and any storage vendor.NIC Teaming - Provides increased reliability and performance for virtual machines.
- #5 Before Windows Server 2012, backing up your data required you to perform full file backups. This meant that you had to either (1) back up the virtual machine and snapshots as flat files when offline or (2) use Windows server or third party backup tools to back up the virtual machine itself with a normal backup of the operating system and data. Windows Server 2012 supports incremental backup of virtual hard disks while the virtual machine is running. Technical descriptionIncremental backup of virtual hard disks lets you perform backup operations more quickly and easily and saves network bandwidth and disk space. Because backups are VSS aware, hosting providers can run backups of the Hyper‑V environment, backing up tenant virtual machines efficiently and offering additional layers of service to their customers without the need for a backup agent inside the virtual machines.Incremental backup can be independently enabled on each virtual machine through the backup software. Windows Server 2012 uses “recovery snapshots” to track the differences between backups. These are similar to regular virtual machine snapshots, but they are managed directly by Hyper‑V software. During each incremental backup, only the differences are backed up (green highlights in the figures). These figures consider a virtual machine with one virtual hard disk and show 3 days of backups (Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday) followed by a restore (Friday). Notes on the figure:To enable change tracking, the virtual machine must be configured to use incremental backup and a full backup must be performed after incremental backup is enabled (see Sunday).During an incremental backup, the virtual machine will briefly be running off of two levels of recovery snapshots. They merge the earlier recovery snapshot into the base virtual hard disk at the end of the backup process.The virtual machine’s configuration XML files are very small and are backed up often. For simplicity, they’re not shown in the figures.BenefitsIncremental backup of virtual hard disks saves network bandwidth, reduces backup sizes and saves disk space, and lowers the cost of each backup. It also lets you increase backup frequency because it is now faster and smaller, so backups can be made more recent. Because backups are VSS aware, hosting providers can run backups of the entire Hyper‑V environment, backing up tenant virtual machines in an efficient way and offering additional layers of service to their customers without the need for a backup-agent inside the virtual machines.RequirementsTo use incremental backup of virtual hard disks, you need Windows Server 2012 and the Hyper‑V role.
- #8 Microsoft Online Backup Service Agent is a new feature for Windows Server 2012 that you can download and install to schedule file and folder backups from your server to Microsoft Online Backup Service which is a cloud-based storage service managed by Microsoft. To transfer data between servers running Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft Online Backup Service you can use either the Microsoft Online Backup Service Agent or the Online Backup cmdlets for Windows PowerShell.Key benefitsRecover data in case of disasters (server destroyed/stolen, disk crash)Recover data in case of data loss scenarios such as data accidentally deleted, volume deleted, virusesTarget Segments: Small Business: Low-cost backup & recovery solution for single server backups.Departmental Backups: Low-cost backup alternative for departments in mid to large sized organizationsRemote office backup and recovery consolidation: Consolidate backups of remote offices.The following tasks make up the major workflows when using Microsoft Online Backup Service. Sign up for the Microsoft Online Backup Service and install the Microsoft Online Backup Service Agent Register servers with the Microsoft Online Backup Service Schedule backups using the Microsoft Online Backup Service Agent Recover files and folders using the Microsoft Online Backup Service Agent Manage the Microsoft Online Backup Service Troubleshoot Microsoft Online Backup Service Administer the Microsoft Online Backup Service with Windows PowerShellIn other words; simply sign up, install, register, schedule backup and you are all done with addressing your backup requirements.The big thing to remember here is that, Online Backup reduces administrative overhead associated with backup and recovery procedures and eliminates the need to maintain a backup infrastructure so Online Backup doesn’t just save you time, it saves money too.
- #9 Virtualization can promote the high availability of mission-critical workloads in new and effective ways and in Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012, there are a number of new enhancements that ensure key workloads are resilient, and protected.Incremental Backups - True differential disk backups of virtual hard disks to help ensure that the data is backed up and restored when necessary. It also reduces storage costs because it backs up only what has changed, not the entire disk.Hyper‑V Replica - Asynchronous, application-consistent virtual machine replication is built in to Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012. It permits asynchronous replication of Hyper‑V virtual machines between two locations for business continuity and failure recovery. Hyper‑V Replica works with any server vendor, any network vendor, and any storage vendor.NIC Teaming - Provides increased reliability and performance for virtual machines.
- #10 Current situationBusiness continuity is the ability to quickly recover business functions from a downtime event with minimal or no data loss. There are number of reasons why businesses experience outage including power failure, IT hardware failure, network outage, human errors, IT software failures, and natural disasters. Depending on the type of outage, customers need a high availability solution that simply restores the service. However, some outages that impact the entire data center such as natural disaster or an extended power outage require a disaster recovery solution that restores data at a remote site in addition to bringing up the services and connectivity. Organizations need an affordable and reliable business continuity solution that helps them recover from a failure.Before Windows Server 2012Beginning with Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper‑V and Failover Clustering can be used together to make a virtual machine highly available and minimize disruptions. Administrators can seamlessly migrate their virtual machines to a different host in the cluster in the event of outage or to load balance their virtual machines without impacting virtualized applications. While this can protect virtualized workloads from a local host failure or scheduled maintenance of a host in a cluster, this does not protect businesses from outage of an entire data center. While Failover Clustering can be used with hardware-based SAN replication across data centers, these are typically expensive. Hyper‑V Replica fills an important gap in the Windows Server Hyper‑V offering by providing an affordable in-box disaster recovery solution. Windows Server 2012 Hyper‑V ReplicaWindows Server 2012 introduces Hyper‑V Replica, a built-in feature that provides asynchronous replication of virtual machines for the purposes of business continuity and disaster recovery. In the event of failures (such as power failure, fire, or natural disaster) at the primary site, the administrator can manually fail over the production virtual machines to the Hyper‑V server at the recovery site. During failover, the virtual machines are brought back to a consistent point in time, and within minutes they can be accessed by the rest of the network with minimal impact to the business. Once the primary site comes back, the administrators can manually revert the virtual machines to the Hyper‑V server at the primary site.Hyper‑V Replica is a new feature in Windows Server 2012. It lets you replicate your Hyper‑V virtual machines over a network link from one Hyper‑V host at a primary site to another Hyper‑V host at a Replica site without reliance on storage arrays or other software replication technologies. The figure shows secure replication of virtual machines from different systems and clusters to a remote site over a WAN.Benefits of Hyper‑V ReplicaHyper‑V Replica fills an important gap in the Windows Server Hyper‑V offering by providing an affordable in-box business continuity and disaster recovery solution. Failure recovery in minutes. In the event of an unplanned shutdown, Hyper‑V Replica can restore your system in just minutes.More secure replication across the network. Hyper‑V Replica tracks the write operations on the primary virtual machine and replicates these changes to the Replica server efficiently over a WAN. The network connection between the two servers uses the HTTP or HTTPS protocol and supports both integrated and certificate-based authentication. Connections configured to use integrated authentication are not encrypted; for an encrypted connection, you should choose certificate-based authentication. Hyper‑V Replica is closely integrated with Windows failover clustering and provides easier replication across different migration scenarios in the primary and Replica servers.Hyper‑V Replica doesn’t rely on storage arrays.Hyper‑V Replica doesn’t rely on other software replication technologies.Hyper‑V Replica automatically handles live migration.Configuration and management are simpler with Hyper‑V Replica:Integrated user interface (UI) with Hyper‑V Manager. Failover Cluster Manager snap-in for Microsoft Management Console (MMC).Extensible WMI interface.Windows PowerShell command-line interface scripting capability.RequirementsTo use Hyper‑V Replica, you need two physical computers configured with:Windows Server 2012.Hyper‑V server role.Hardware that supports the Hyper‑V role.Sufficient storage to host the files that virtualized workloads use. Additional storage on the Replica server based on the replication configuration settings may be necessary.Sufficient network bandwidth among the locations that host the primary and Replica servers and sites.Firewall rules to permit replication between the primary and Replica servers and sites.Failover Clustering feature, if you want to use Hyper‑V Replica on a clustered virtual machine.
- #11 Virtualization can promote the high availability of mission-critical workloads in new and effective ways and in Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012, there are a number of new enhancements that ensure key workloads are resilient, and protected.Incremental Backups - True differential disk backups of virtual hard disks to help ensure that the data is backed up and restored when necessary. It also reduces storage costs because it backs up only what has changed, not the entire disk.Hyper‑V Replica - Asynchronous, application-consistent virtual machine replication is built in to Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012. It permits asynchronous replication of Hyper‑V virtual machines between two locations for business continuity and failure recovery. Hyper‑V Replica works with any server vendor, any network vendor, and any storage vendor.NIC Teaming - Provides increased reliability and performance for virtual machines.
- #12 When it comes to clustering, Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 offers unmatched scale and flexibility for virtualized infrastructures:Unmatched Scale - Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 will now support up to 64 physical nodes and up to 8,000 virtual machines in a single cluster providing supreme scalability and flexibility for key virtualized workloads.Flexible Virtual Machine Guest Clustering - Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012 provides not only iSCSI guest clustering support, including MPIO, but also enables the use of Virtual Fibre Channel adapters within the virtual machine allowing workloads access to storage area networks using fiber channel fabric. In addition, a virtual fibre channel enables IT to cluster guest operating systems over Fibre Channel providing HA for workloads within VMs and utilize the built-in Windows multi-path I/O (MPIO) for high-availability and load balancing on the storage path. By employing MPIO and Failover Clustering together as complimentary technologies, users are able to mitigate the risk of a system outage at both the hardware and application levels.Highly Secure Clustered Storage - Hyper-V, Failover Clustering and BitLocker now work in concert to create the ideal and secure platform for private cloud infrastructure. Windows Server 2012 Cluster disks that are encrypted using BitLocker Drive Encryption enable better physical security for deployments outside secure data centers, providing a critical safeguard for the cloud and helping protect against inadvertent data leaksEnhanced Cluster Shared Volumes - Cluster Shared Volume 2.0 (CSV). CSV has been greatly enhanced in a number of ways. From a usability standpoint, CSV is now a core Failover Clustering feature, with simplified administration and management. To support up to 64 nodes in a cluster, CSV has been improved in aspects of both performance and scalability. In terms of integrating with our partners, CSV has specifically been enhanced to work out of the box with storage filter drivers such as those used by: anti-virus, data protection, backup and storage replication ensuring a more seamless integration with existing investments.
- #13 3 Levels of Availability - With this release, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering work together to bring higher availability to workloads that do not support clustering. It does this by providing a light-weight, simple solution to monitor applications running in the VMs and integrating with the host. By monitoring services and event logs inside the virtual machine, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering can detect whether the key services that a virtual machine provides are healthy and provide automatic corrective action such as restarting the virtual machine or restarting a service within the VM. This is in addition to the already existing virtual machine failover capabilities should a host fail, or the virtual machine itself become unresponsive.Cluster-Aware Updating – An in-box end-to-end solution for updating Hyper-V Failover Clusters, helping customers to preview, apply, and report on updates, all with zero downtime to the virtual machines.Virtual Machine Failover Prioritization - Virtual machine priorities can now be configured to control the order in which specific virtual machines failover or start. This ensures higher priority virtual machines are given the resources they need and lower priority virtual machines are given resources as they are available.Affinity Virtual Machine Rules - Administrators can establish preferred hosts for certain virtual machines, and in conjunction with System Center 2012 SP1, administrators can define powerful rules to ensure that certain VMs always stay apart.
- #15 [Note to speaker: This slide has 4 clicks]Cluster-Aware Updating (CAU) reduces server downtime and user disruption by allowing IT administrators to update clustered servers with little or no loss in availability during updates performed on cluster notes. <click>When an update is available,<click> CAU transparently takes one node of the cluster offline, installs the updates, performs a restart if necessary, brings the node back online, and<click> moves on to the next node. In the animation below, you see a four node cluster with varying loads. You have an application client, say SQL, that constantly accesses the cluster. The computer running the CAU process also called Orchestrator identifies the node with the least amount of load, transfers the workload from that node to another node in the cluster, installs the updates, restarts the node and then moves on to the next node. So without any manual intervention, the orchestrator automatically talks to WSUS server or other update servers and updates nodes in the cluster.<click>This feature is integrated into existing Windows update management infrastructure and can be further extended and automated with Windows PowerShell for integrating into larger IT automation initiatives. Can update GDRs, QFEs, update BIOS, any other application update.Can be launched from Server Manager UI.At the end of the update, workloads come back to the same configurationUpdating process itself is resilient to planned/unplanned failuresCan start updates from RSAT tool (update coordinator is outside the cluster)Supports hotfixes as wellNo IO failures, no downtimeUse PowerShell for entire processPlugin APIs, reference documentation available on MSDN
- #16 3 Levels of Availability - With this release, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering work together to bring higher availability to workloads that do not support clustering. It does this by providing a light-weight, simple solution to monitor applications running in the VMs and integrating with the host. By monitoring services and event logs inside the virtual machine, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering can detect whether the key services that a virtual machine provides are healthy and provide automatic corrective action such as restarting the virtual machine or restarting a service within the VM. This is in addition to the already existing virtual machine failover capabilities should a host fail, or the virtual machine itself become unresponsive.Cluster-Aware Updating – An in-box end-to-end solution for updating Hyper-V Failover Clusters, helping customers to preview, apply, and report on updates, all with zero downtime to the virtual machines.Virtual Machine Failover Prioritization - Virtual machine priorities can now be configured to control the order in which specific virtual machines failover or start. This ensures higher priority virtual machines are given the resources they need and lower priority virtual machines are given resources as they are available.Affinity Virtual Machine Rules - Administrators can establish preferred hosts for certain virtual machines, and in conjunction with System Center 2012 SP1, administrators can define powerful rules to ensure that certain VMs always stay apart.
- #17 The table shows that when it comes to comparing the clustering and high availability capabilities of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V andHyper-V Server 2012, with the vSphere Hypervisor, the restrictions placed on VMware’s free edition become quickly evident. Whilst the vSphere Hypervisor does support integrated NIC Teaming for network card resilience, it is lacking any other resiliency features, meaning if customers were to virtualize important workloads on the platform, they would have to upgrade to a more expensive edition in order to provide some form of resiliency and protection for the workloads in question.Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012 on the other hand, offers a number of resiliency and high availability features in the box. Integrated Failover Clustering provides the foundation for virtual machine resiliency upon host, and virtual machine failure, and in this release, extends the native protection into the guest operating system, ensuring that if application services start to exhibit problems, corrective action can be taken. VMware offer an API to deliver similar functionality, but it stops there. Customers can purchase 3rd party technologies to provide the specific resiliency capabilities, but these come at additional expense, and an added level of complexity.For customers looking for the highest levels of availability, not only within the datacenter, but between datacenters, Hyper-V Replica, an inbox feature of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012, provides a streamlined, efficient and flexible way to asynchronously replicate virtual machines between sites, and in the event of a disaster, start the replicated virtual machines on the alternative site in minutes. Hyper-V Replica also provides the ability for customers to not only perform planned and unplanned failovers, but also perform non-disruptive testing on the DR site – a feature that is lacking in vSphere Replication unless customers purchase vCenter Site Recovery Manager, at a considerable additional cost. On top of that, the vSphere Replication has no API, meaning 3rd Parties cannot extend or plug into this. The reason behind this, is to ensure customers wanting to automate and orchestrate the process of failover, purchase SRM. Contrast this with Hyper-V Replica, which provides a rich, comprehensive PowerShell interface for driving automated scenarios. For customers who already have investments in storage replication technologies through their SAN vendor, the improvements in Hyper-V and Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012, ensure streamlined integration to harness those investments
- #18 When it comes to cluster scalability, both from a physical cluster, and guest cluster perspective, Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012 lead the way in comparison with VMware.As shown in the table, Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012 offers double the number of nodes in an individual cluster, when compared with vSphere 5.1, and scales the number of virtual machines within an individual cluster to 8,000, again, double that of vSphere 5.1. This provides large enterprises, and service providers with unprecedented scale to run significant numbers of workloads.Customers who have embraced the standalone vSphere Hypervisor don’t have the ability to construct resilient clustered infrastructures, unless they upgrade to a costly edition of vSphere 5.1, however customers wishing to construct virtual machine guest clusters can use the standalone vSphere Hypervisor, or alternatively, vSphere 5.1. VMware’s support for guest clusters is severely lacking in comparison with Microsoft’s flexible offerings. Customers who have invested in iSCSI storage can create guest clusters on the vSphere Hypervisor or on vSphere 5.1, using the in-guest iSCSI initiator, the same way you would if you were constructing a physical cluster, however with vSphere 5.1, VMware support up to Windows Server 2008 R2, and are therefore restricted to 16 node guest clusters. For customers who have invested in file based storage (NFS) with VMware, this is unfortunately unsupported when it comes to creating guest clusters inside virtual machines, and with VMware’s virtual fiber channel implementation, presenting a fiber channel LUN directly to virtual machines, the size of the virtualized guest cluster is restricted to just 5 nodes. Compare this with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012, which, for a Windows Server 2012 guest cluster, support up to 64 nodes, over iSCSI, Virtual Fiber Channel, or SMB 3.0, for complete flexibility and unmatched scale.It’s important to note that whilst Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012 provide a significantly more comprehensive guest clustering capability than VMware in terms of storage integration and support, it also doesn’t require customers to sacrifice other features and functionality to work effectively. A virtualized guest cluster on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012 supports features such as virtual machine Live Migration, for flexibility and agility, and Dynamic Memory, to ensure the highest levels of density. Compare this with VMware, who, whilst restricting customers to a maximum of 16 nodes with iSCSI storage, and only 5 nodes with fiber channel storage, they also restrict customers from migrating the guest cluster nodes using vMotion, migrating disks with Storage vMotion, and additionally, direct customers to disable memory overcommit on those guest cluster nodes, sacrificing density. These are just 2 of the limitations with VMware vSphere guest clustering.
- #19 In this presentation, we have looked at a significant number of the new capabilities that are available within Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012, across 4 key investment areas:Scalability, Performance & DensitySecure MultitenancyFlexible InfrastructureHigh Availability & ResiliencyAcross each of these areas, we’ve detailed how Hyper-V offers more scale, a more comprehensive array of customer-driven features and capabilities, and a greater level of extensibility and flexibility than the vSphere Hypervisor or VMware vSphere 5.1. With features such as Hyper-V Replica, cluster sizes of up to 64 nodes and 8,000 virtual machines, Storage and Shared-Nothing Live Migration, the Hyper-V Extensible Switch, Network Virtualization, and powerful guest clustering capabilities, it’s clear to see that Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2012 offer the most comprehensive virtualization platform for the next generation of cloud-optimized infrastructures.