UPDATE May 20, 2009 – Oracle again revised its support policy for virtualization of its software on a non-Oracle hypervisor.  Please refer to Chris Wolf’s follow up post on the topic for the complete details, but in sum Oracle slightly altered the text in its Metalink Note 794016.1 to remove mention of specific hypervisors that are “not explicitly certified, but supported” as a platform for Oracle products. 

The bottom line however is that VMware ESX is still a supported Oracle platform.  Oracle Metalink document 294212.1 still reigns supreme – it is still in effect, it has not been modified, and it still explicitly defines Oracle’s support policies for VMware virtualized environments.  It is on the basis of this document that VMware customers continue to deploy Oracle on VMware with confidence.

May 8, 2009

I had to post a short pointer to a blog post by esteemed Burton Group analyst, Chris Wolf ,because it might contain information that could make life a lot easier for our the thousands of VMware customers that run Oracle applications in a VMware virtual environment. 

Chris recently wrote on his on his personal blog, that with Oracle Metalink Note 794016.1, (which can be viewed with an Oracle Support account), “Oracle now offers best effort support for all of its E-Business Suite applications on any x86 hypervisor.”

…and of course VMware ESX is included in that group “any x86 hypervisor”

Chris then provides some quotes from the Metalink note, which I have pilfered recreated below:

This Metalink Note appears to say that 1) Hypervisors from VMware are officially  supported platforms for Oracle E-Business Applications and 2) Organizations running Oracle applications in those environments are entitled to best effort support from Oracle.

So VMware customers, this sounds like great news!  Oracle really DOES offer “best effort support” for VMware solutions!  Virtualize On!

Read the news straight from Oracle on its E-Business Suite Technology Blog.

Just a quick note to everyone to let you know that along with the launch of vSphere last week, we were also able to update the VMware Cost Per Application Calculator to fully reflect vSphere pricing and packaging.  You will all now be able to model a vSphere environment and estimate the additional cost savings that vSphere can enable over Hyper-V – or to put it another way, how much more expensive Microsoft’s “free” Hyper-V offering really is.

And those vSphere cost savings apply to large enterprises and smaller environments alike.

Smaller IT Environment Using vSphere Standard

Just going through a quick calculation myself, I see that if I wanted to virtualize 50 applications using the vSphere Standard edition, I could expect a 21% savings over Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V plus Systems Center.

And, I would actually break even with Microsoft offering – at the same consolidation ratio!

Large Enterprise Deploying vSphere Enterprise Plus

But even our top of the line vSphere Enterprise Plus solution is less expensive than Hyper-V. When creating 1,000 virtual machines on vSphere Enterprise Plus, an organization can expect to save 8% over Microsoft’s so-called cheaper offering – and the VMware offering is a production proven Cloud OS that can aggregate all aspects of your datacenter into a seamless pool of resources, whereas Hyper-V is just a hypervisor. vSphere: It’s the best solution, but you have to be willing to pay less for it!

And again the VMware customer would break even with Hyper-V at only an additional three VMs per ESX host – even with Enterprise Plus…

But Wait, There’s More!

The current version of the calculator assumes that vSphere will enable the same level of application consolidation as VI3. That is not really accurate. What we’re finding in our initial testing is that when 1) factoring only software improvements and 2) running on the same hardware on which we tested VI3, vSphere can enable 30% greater density than VI3. We’ll be validating this testing with a third party and will update the model soon. What this means of course is that vSphere can enable even greater savings over Hyper-V than what is represented here. (Especially when even Microsoft is seeing a whole 6:1 VM density on its Hyper-V servers)

And, when we account for the advances in hardware and utilize servers that incorporate the new Intel Nehalem microarchitecture, it just gets even better! Again, we’ll incorporate all that into the model soon.

Also Thanks for All Your Continued Feedback

We are working on some additions to the calculator – yes we’ll get a .pdf version of the report ready, so you can email the results to your boss. We might even add a Citrix comparison to the calculator as well – the results are very similar.

After catching Microsoft in the act of removing a layer of the Hyper-V architecture to back up their claims that VMware vSphere somehow “taxes” users with extra layers, it now appears that their partners are making unfounded derogatory statements about VMware while posing as VMware partners. If you haven’t seen it, ChannelWeb published an article this week titled, “Microsoft Continues To Rain On VMware's Parade”. In the article, after a repetition of “the additional layer theory” by David “substrate” Greschler, director of Microsoft virtualization and management, you will find a quote by Rand Morimoto, president of Convergent Computing, who is quoted as saying:

“More and more of our customers are switching over from VMware to Hyper-V because Hyper-V uses a familiar interface, works out of the box and is included in the organization's existing licensing agreement."

The original version of the article identified Convergent Computing as a, “solution provider that partners with both Microsoft and VMware.” (CMP has since revised their article. It now says the company is a, “solution provider that has a staff of consultants with expertise in Hyper-V and VMware.”) Our partner team at VMware saw the article and immediately told us that Convergent Computing is NOT a VMware partner at all. That set off some alarms, so we followed Rand Morimoto on Twitter to see what else he had to say that might clear up the mystery. When we found him, we discovered he is essentially a Microsoft spokesperson who has even a Microsoft badge…check it out:

If Rand is close enough to Microsoft to be issued a badge, we don’t think his comments about VMware users should be accepted as truth, especially when he provides no examples of customers who have supposedly made the switch to Hyper-V. The subterfuge didn’t fool us and it also didn’t fool the CMP readers, one of whom left this comment to the article:

“I have had the pleasure of knowing Rand Morimoto, president of Convergent Computing who is quoted in this article, for around 18 years (we both served on the Microsoft Partner Advisory Council and were Microsoft MVPs, and ran neighboring Novell Platinum shops before that).  While Rand is a brilliant and accomplished technologist as well as concert pianist, former gymnast, really nice guy and all around Renaissance man, one thing his organization is not is VMware certified.  This article makes it seem as if CCO is an unbiased partner of both Microsoft and VMware, but CCO credentials are 100% on the Microsoft side.“

Now that we’ve seen that the reference partners Microsoft trots out for the press can’t be trusted, let’s go back to talking about real technology instead.

Did you catch the latest video from Microsoft’s virtualization team?  In this one, the Microsoft guys are making the argument that VMware somehow imposes a “virtualization tax” by inserting an additional layer in your datacenter architecture that Microsoft doesn’t need.  I’m familiar with Microsoft’s Hyper-V architecture and knew that as far as the count of layers, it’s no different than VMware.  So what has changed?  Did Microsoft achieve the impossible and remove a complete layer from their virtualization architecture without so much as a service pack?

Here’s how the VMware architecture looks:

From bottom to top, I count four layers: 1) the x86/x64 hardware; 2) the hypervisor (VMware ESXi); 3) the guest OS in the VM; and 4) the application in the VM.  It’s nothing surprising and the same diagram we’ve used for years to explain how our products work.

Now, let’s take a look at the latest Microsoft architecture using a diagram from their video:

Wow, maybe they’re right!  I only count three layers.  How did they do it?  They got rid of an entire layer.  Is virtualization now part of the guest OS?  Maybe they figured out how to make their apps run directly on Hyper-V with no guest OS at all?  It’s especially amazing when all the Hyper-V product presentations I’ve ever seen and even Microsoft’s own virtualization white paper on their web site use a diagram like this:

This picture clearly shows the same four layers as the VMware architecture with Hyper-V operating as a type 1 or “bare-metal” hypervisor running directly on the hardware.  In fact, compared to the OS-free ESXi architecture, Hyper-V even adds in that extra copy of Windows Server 2008 you see on the left side.  Should we count that as a fifth layer?

So, has Microsoft achieved a software miracle by fully eliminating one or two layers from the Hyper-V architecture?  Are VMware users really stuck paying a “tax” due to an excess layer in our design?  Or could it be that Microsoft has simply redrawn their pictures and changed their story on how Hyper-V really works?  I’ll leave it to sharper minds than mine to uncover the answer to this mystery.

As to the Microsoft claims of costing one-third as much as VMware repeated yet again in their video, we ask that you not be fooled.  Microsoft may give away Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008, but they are charging big bucks for System Center management and all the servers, databases and agents you need to compare with our combination of VMware ESX and vCenter.  It’s not easy to figure out all the Hyper-V and System Center pieces required to run a given number of VMs, but we’ve done the hard work for you in our Cost-per-Application Calculator.  Give it a try and you’ll see that, even without the VM density advantage you get with our exclusive memory overcommit capability, VMware costs about the same as Microsoft.  You’ll also see that running just a few extra VMs per host with ESX operating at a very conservative level of memory overcommit quickly yields a 20-30% cost advantage for VMware.

Anyway, nice try with the sequel guys – do you have plans to make it a trilogy?

VMware started the Why Choose VMware portion of our website in 2^nd half 2008 as more and more vendors were coming on the scene, all claiming to offer products that do what VMware’s solutions do. We felt it was necessary to tell our story, and to back up our claims with complete, academic evaluations of competing products. As such, The Why Choose VMware site shares six key reasons why we see VMware as offering a better solution compared to what others market. There’s quite a lot of content there, but we tried to keep it as factually oriented as possible. For instance, the product comparison tables are lab-validated, based on our technical evaluations and comparisons of the products; they are not derived from just a cursory glance at vendor marketing literature.

Then this past week, we started getting inquiries about a Microsoft video that purports to bust the top ten “myths” on Why Choose VMware. Others in the blogosphere have already responded.

• Gabe’s Virtual World: When myth busting goes wrong and becomes a myth to bust it self
• vinternals: Microsoft Hyper-V 2.0 - NO Memory Overcommit!
• vCritical: Would you buy a hypervisor from these guys?

Ideally, we wouldn’t have to pay much attention to this Microsoft video, but because we stand behind what we post on Why Choose VMware, we felt it was important for our customers and other companies looking to deploy VMware to hear directly from us. Again, we don’t claim to be perfect and cannot say that we’ll never have any errors on the site, but we will attempt to base everything we claim on a technical evaluation of a currently available product. Microsoft’s answers to what it sees as “myths” don’t really even address factual errors - it’s just more marketing rhetoric. Feel free to take a look at the video for yourself (click on the screen shot) and form your own opinion. Then below, we’ll provide our response to each so-called “myth.”

When reviewing Microsoft’s video, please also make sure to also check out the user comments – they are pretty informative in regards to the ‘value’ the video provided to customers (and Microsoft partners). Two examples:

• “My VAR business is fully baked in MSFT success.  So, I'm looking forward to a day when MSFT can compete with XEN and VMWare.  That said, this video is hogwash!  It's embarrassing.  Quit producing this kind of stuff. you're slowing my sales cycle!”
• “Wow, if this is the Microsoft Virtualization Strategy team, the Microsoft Partners should be worried because Microsoft just doesn't get it. As a long time Gold Partner, I find the embarassing. Come on guys, if you are going to release something like this, at least wait until you have a real released solution.”

And if you’ve never done so, read Why Choose VMware for yourself. If you do happen to find something that you feel is a factual error, leave us a comment here and we will recheck the facts and address it.

Responses for Each "Myth" in the Microsoft Video

Myth 1: Live Migration

Microsoft video (paraphrase): We’ll soon have live migration so VMware’s website is misleading.

The facts:

VMware’s website very clearly compares to Microsoft’s current shipping product – Windows Server 2008 – which does not have live migration. Microsoft likes to play the “futures” card and promote features that are not yet GA. Beta products (Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta and Hyper-V Server R2 Beta) don’t count because no one buys or deploys a beta product in production. Hyper-V Server R2 is rumored to ship (GA) in 2H’09 but most companies really won’t consider that product seriously – they’ll wait and evaluate Windows Server 2008 R2 instead, which Microsoft’s own website says is slated for 2010.

Even once Microsoft ships its implementation of live migration, it will be an unproven, version 1.0 Microsoft technology that lacks real-world reliability testing. In contrast, VMware VMotion is already in use by 70% of VMware VI3 customers in production environments. VMotion is well tested in production and customers trust it on their mission critical applications.

p.s. This is an example of typical Microsoft marketing. When it lacks a feature, it downplays it and says that no one needs it (see live migration example here). Once Microsoft is somewhat close to having that feature, then Microsoft starts talking about why that feature is a core requirement and claims that they’ve now caught up to VMware - even though Microsoft hasn’t yet shipped the feature. (We’ll see the same thing happen with Memory Overcommit – wait and see!)

Myth 2: Clustered File Systems

Microsoft video (paraphrase): Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) is coming and it will address any deficiencies with Hyper-V’s lack of a clustered file system. VMware’s website is misleading in that it claims Microsoft lacks a true clustered file system.

The facts:

Again, the Microsoft video is promoting a future technology that has yet to GA – Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). The Microsoft video also side-steps the issue that Cluster Shared Volumes is not a true clustered file system and therefore does not deliver all the benefits of a technology like VMware VMFS. CSV is just a layer built on top of NTFS that can only be used for Hyper-V.

Microsoft built CSV to do only one thing: to address a major limitation in Hyper-V 1.0, namely the requirement to have 1 VM per LUN in order to do VM-independent HA and quick migrations. But from Microsoft’s architectural descriptions of CSV, it appears that they’ve made trade-offs in performance by requiring multiple ‘coordination nodes’ that significant amounts of meta-data must route through.

Again, the VMware website clearly compares shipping VMware products to shipping Microsoft products. Microsoft needs to ship/GA CSV first before it earns the right to claim that they’ve got a capability.

Myth 3: Hyper-V is Version 1.0

Microsoft video (paraphrase): Hyper-V is a good version 1.0 Microsoft product

The facts:

No much to say here… Customers will decide for themselves how much of their business they will bet on a version 1.0 product from Microsoft.

Myth 4: Low Performance

Microsoft video (paraphrase): Hyper-V 1.0 performs well

The facts:

Microsoft likes to point to tests that usually run a low number of VMs per host. This type of test fails to address the fact that consolidation ratios are increasing in line with the increases in x86 hardware computing power (ex. Intel’s Nehalem generation of server processors have 8 cores per socket). Recent tests by the Taneja Group (commissioned by VMware) clearly show how Hyper-V can’t keep up with ESX as the number of concurrently running workloads increase – see report here. Hyper-V lack of scalability directly impacts a customer’s bottom line – see Myth 9 below.

Myth 5: Disk Footprint

Microsoft video (paraphrase): The code size of the hypervisor is not important

The facts:

The Microsoft video says that VMware should compare in-memory usage instead of disk footprint. The problem is that in-memory usage is very dependent on what’s running on the host at any given time, is not deterministic, and does not show the size of the trusted computing base.

Therefore, disk footprint is the better comparison. First, it’s an apples-to-apples comparison because it does not try to measure things while operations are running and memory usage is continually changing. Second, it more accurately shows the size of the trusted computing base. The premise is simple: the larger the trusted computing base, the more code there is to protect and maintain. VMware designed ESXi to reduce the amount of code that needs to be protected and maintained. Leading analysts have highlighted how Microsoft’s use of Windows in the parent partition is concerning because it represents a large potential attack point.

Myth 6: Broad Hardware Support

Microsoft video (paraphrase): Hyper-V supports a broad set of hardware.

The facts:

Yes, Microsoft’s Hyper-V architectural allows it to run the same devices as Windows Server 2008 because it uses the same generic, third-party device drivers. But that may not be a good thing. Microsoft has publicly stated (ex. at TechEd 2006) that third party devices drivers are the biggest culprit when it comes to Windows instability. So those are the same drivers that would be running a company’s virtualization deployment where reliability, stability, and uptime are paramount??

Myth 7: End-to-end System Center Management

Microsoft video (paraphrase): VMware’s website should compare to the entire Microsoft System Center suite

The facts:

The entire Microsoft System Center Suite (VMM, OM, CM) still does not come anywhere close to the virtualization management solutions found in VMware’s vCenter Suite. The full System Center does not have:

• an automated workflow and failover solution for Disaster Recovery (like VMware SRM),
• a self-service, multi-tier, lab automation solution (like VMware Lab Manager),
• an integrated solution to patch off-line VMs (like VMware Update Manager),
• a non-disruptive maintenance mode for host updates (built into vCenter Server),
• a VM lifecycle management solution (like VMware Lifecycle Manager),
• and the gap will grow larger once VMware releases its upcoming management offerings later on in 2009.

Myth 8: Memory Oversubscription

Microsoft video (paraphrase): Memory oversubscription is not as important as VMware makes it out to be. It can also have an impact on performance.

The facts:

The Microsoft video does not deny that memory oversubscription is useful. Instead, they question the 2:1 ratio that is seen in some of VMware’s prior material. 2:1 was used because VMware clearly saw customers who were able to achieve this ratio in their environment. VMware summarizes the findings from a customer survey on memory overcommit in a blog for those who are interested in how much memory oversubscription is used by VMware customers.

The video also claims that performance can be impacted when using memory oversubscription when applications need all the memory. First, that’s like saying “CPU oversubscription can impact performance if applications require all the CPU.” Remember, physical resource oversubscription is the whole point of server consolidation. Server applications have been found to NOT require all of their physical resources at the same time. So, why virtualize and then lock up resources (such as RAM memory) like was previously done on non-virtualized physical servers? That’s the type of behavior that led to physical server sprawl in the first place. Second, a recent Taneja report (commissioned by VMware) showed an example of how VMware ESX can achieve near-linear scaling even when oversubscribing memory up to a 2:1 ratio (see DBHammer/SQL graph on page 6 of the report).

However, let’s step back for a moment. What a customer cares about is not memory oversubscription in and of itself - they care about the final cost to run the X number of applications that keeps their business going. In a virtual environment, one must understand VM density in order to figure out that cost. Earlier VMware material focused only on memory oversubscription because it was a straight forward way to explain one technology that allowed VMware to achieve higher VM densities.

Since then, VMware has received customer feedback that many other VMware technologies contribute to the higher VM densities and asked why VMware does not talk about those. So here are the top 5 VMware technologies that contribute to higher VM densities (including memory oversubscription):

• Memory Oversubscription - More efficient use of physical RAM by reclaiming unused physical memory and consolidating identical memory pages among VMs on a host.
• Direct Driver Model - VMware ESX can achieve very high I/O throughput and can handle the I/O requirements for more VMs simultaneously requesting hardware resources.
• Support for Large Memory Pages and Nested Page Tables - Optimize memory access and can provide substantial performance benefits for mission critical, memory-intensive applications, can reduce CPU resource consumption by up to 15%.
• DRS with Resource Pools - Dynamically load balance VMs across a cluster so applications get required resources when they need them -a “safety net” that lets administrators run individual servers at higher utilization levels while meeting service level agreements.
• High Performance “Gang” Scheduler - Can account for CPU and I/O needs of virtual machines by dynamically allocating more resources and larger processor timeslices to VMs.

Myth 9: Lower Cost Virtualization Solutions

Microsoft video (paraphrase): Cost-per-application is a theoretical argument.

The facts:

The Microsoft video claims that cost per application is too “theoretical.” That’s like saying “miles per gallon” on a car is not a relevant metric. As explained on Why Choose VMware, a virtual server represents a many-VMs-to-one-host relationship. So it is imperative to understand how many VMs can run per host as that directly impacts how much software, hardware, and infrastructure are required to virtualize the entire datacenter. It’s quite straightforward: the more VMs one can run on a host, the lower cost it is to the customer. This is one reason why VMware made available its Cost-per-Application Calculator for customers to run different scenarios. The output report includes all of the assumptions and formulas so people can see exactly how the results were calculated.

The Microsoft video also says that people should not compare to VI3 Foundation or other VMware SKUs because they do not match up to Microsoft’s “enterprise” offering. They say that people should only compare to VMware VI3 Enterprise Edition. That’s just not credible since Microsoft’s comparisons always leave out the fact that VI3 Enterprise Edition delivers capabilities that Microsoft Hyper-V lacks. A few examples: VMotion, DRS, Storage VMotion, logical resource pools, DPM, ultra-thin hypervisor offering, off-host backup proxy, …

Myth 10: Need VMware Virtualization?

Microsoft video (paraphrase): VMware wants you to believe that only VMware has the right solution. In reality, Microsoft offers everything you need, and it simplifies the solution stack to 3-layers instead of 4-layers (if you went with VMware).

The facts:

VMware does believe that it has the better solution – what successful company doesn’t? To support this belief, the assertions and comparisons on the VMware website are based on lab-validated evaluations of the different products. This approach lets the customer decide which offering is best for their requirements.

It is rather ironic that right after criticizing VMware for claiming to have a better solution, the Microsoft spokespeople come right back and say that the Microsoft offering is all that’s needed when it comes to virtualization. The spokespeople essentially say: why bother looking at VMware (or any other third-party software, for that matter) to help you run your business better? Windows is all you need – anything else just adds complexity and cost. In fact, Microsoft’s solution eliminates an extraneous layer from the stack…

VMware prefers to let the market decide on who delivers more value to the customer by having products available today that can meet their requirements.

p.s. In actuality VMware ESXi simplifies that stack. It removes the need for an instance of a general purpose operating systems (ex. Windows in the parent partition) to be running as part of the virtualization layer.

As you might have already heard from our press release earlier today (see today's announcement), we have announced the availability of the VMware Cost Per Application Calculator  - an easy-to-use web tool that aims at helping companies accurately estimate and compare the acquisition cost of virtualization. Understanding the true acquisition cost of a virtualization solution can be quite confusing these days, so in an effort to shed some light on this subject and get to reliable conclusions we have built a simple tool (the Cost Per Application Calculator) with the support of customers and industry analysts . The Calculator compares the acquisition costs of VMware Infrastructure 3 with the one of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V plus System Center, using the standard metric of “Cost per Application”.    .   

Calculating acquisition costs by only looking at software licenses may be an easy thing to do, but it provides a simplistic and incomplete picture of reality because:

• It does not account for VM density (i.e. number of applications that can be run on a virtualization host) - higher VM density means less servers, storage, networking, guest operating system licenses, etc. 
• It does not account for virtualization management cost (both software and hardware) - hypervisors are free (or almost), but management solutions are not.

Cost Per Application (see definition below) addresses both shortcomings while still keeping things simple. Refer to the Calculator itself for more detailed information about Cost Per Application.

Although this first version of the Calculator can be used only to compare VMware and Microsoft, Cost Per Application as a methodology can be applied to determine the acquisition cost of any virtualization offering.

It is important to point out that while VM density is critical to realizing increased savings from virtualization (see Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More?, Forrester Research), not all solutions provide the same level of VM density. Third-party validated tests demonstrate that:

• VMware Infrastructure 3 can scale to twice as many VMs per server than Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V (see The True Cost of Virtual Server Solutions , Taneja Group).

• VMware Infrastructure 3 outperforms Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V in CPU performance and efficiency by more 24% in CPU intensive tests (see The True Cost of Virtual Server Solutions , Taneja Group).

Based on these results, Taneja Group concludes that on average VMware Infrastructure 3 can safely run 50% more VMs per host than Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, while providing the same level of application performance. But, as the Cost per Application shows, you don’t need to run 50% more VMs on an ESX host to realize a lower cost per application with VMware VI3 Enterprise Edition. With only 1-2 more VMs per ESX host, when compared to a Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V host, VI3 Enterprise Edition is the lower cost solution – for a whole lot more functionality.

Example - Virtualizing 100 applications at different consolidation ratios

Results may vary depending on the scenarios, however there are some general lessons to be learned: 

1) Even when choosing the VI 3 Enterprise Edition and assuming equal VM density, VMware's solution is never three times more expensive than Microsoft's offering. At equal consolidation ratios, VI 3 Enterprise is only marginally more expensive than Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V - and it offers significantly more capabilities. Any of these capabilities in its first year alone would generate enough operating expenses savings to more than compensate for such a small premium in acquisition costs

2) On average with only 2 additional VMs per VMware host, the fully featured VMware's and Microsoft's solutions are at cost parity. In most cases, lower priced editions of VI 3 Standard and VI 3 Foundation are at cost parity (or lower cost) even at equal VM density

3) At a reasonable 50% higher consolidation ratio, even VI 3 Enterprise Edition is significantly less expensive than Microsoft’s offering - and of course it is more feature rich. Note that examples of real life deployments show how VI 3 servers can scale even to 2x the VM density of Hyper-V hosts

Final note - the VMware Cost-Per-Application Calculator is not meant to be the end-all be-all cost analysis or to show cost estimates exact to the last digit. Our goal is to help people start in the right direction and provide a more solid baseline to look at acquisition cost for server virtualization. Clearly, it is impossible to keep things simple and, at the same time, account for everyone’s very specific situation (existing infrastructure, software ELAs, special OEM contracts, etc.). Out of the box, the VMware Cost-Per-App Calculator provides a good level of flexibility by allowing users to specify six input:

1. Number of applications to virtualize (between 10 – 1000 VMs)
2. Virtualization server types (low-end option $5,000 , mid-range option $8,000)
3. VMware Infrastructure 3 Edition (Foundation, Standard, Enterprise)
4. Virtualization management deployment (in VMs or on physical servers)
5. Cost of electricity
6. Cost of DC space

In addition, we also provide full disclosure of our assumptions and methodology so that people can adapt calculations to their specific case.

To learn more about the VMware Cost Per Application Calculator and how to use it check out this video.

Feel free to leave your feedback on how to improve our tool as a comment to this blog.

Background
At last month’s VMworld Europe conference, one of the sessions in the desktop track was focused on the topic of TCO for VMware View. (Click here to view the content: http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-2782). Brian Madden, a blogger, attended the Partner Day version of this training session and subsequently issued a blog entry claiming that VMware was misleading customers by positioning VMware View (VDI) against traditional desktops, not against TS (Terminal Services).  (URL for full blog entry: http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2009/02/23/how-vmware-is-misleading-everyone-about-the-cost-savings-of-vdi.aspx).  The following is VMware’s response to the claims made in Brian Madden’s blog entry.

Summary

1. VMware does not message TCO for VMware View (VDI) compared to TS because customers select View solutions specifically to address use cases they have not been able to fully meet with traditional desktops and/or TS, e.g. delivering a full desktop replacement to users, not just access to point applications like email.
   
2. TS can often provide greater user density on a server, but those applications must be validated to work well in a multi-user environment.  Without the benefits of isolation, HA, DRS, etc. that VDI brings with the VI3 platform, all users in a TS environment on a given server will be affected when a single user experiences an application issue, resulting in a higher TCO over time.
   
3. When applications are not compatible with ThinApp, they can still be used in a VMware View Composer environment by being installed into the Master Image, making minor impact to the total storage consumed and in the TCO calculations.

After criticizing VMware for comparing View with traditional desktops, but not including TS in the discussion, Brian Madden proceeded to post another blog entry, taking an about-face on his stance, by saying “So positioning VDI against Terminal Server is somewhat of a losing battle that trivializes its larger potential. Why not let Terminal Server “win” against VDI today, because when VDI is ready, it will not be about “VDI versus Terminal Server”—it will be about ‘VDI versus traditional desktops

What was claimed in Brian Madden’s blog and what is VMware’s response?
Excerpted from Brian Madden’s blog:
Misleading Tactic #1 - VMware compares VDI to traditional computing, yet ignores TS
The whole session was basically a cost savings analysis of VDI over traditional fat-client computing. Fundamentally I don't have a problem with that. I even agree with all the savings numbers that were presented. The BIG PROBLEM I have is that for EVERY POINT made in the "pro" VDI category, the exact same point could have been made in a "pro" Terminal Server category. So while I agree 100% that yes, VDI could have saved the amount of money the presenter was suggesting, I think that a Terminal Server-based solution could have saved EVEN MORE money.

The bottom line: VDI was a lower cost option than the traditional computing. But the presenter never mentioned the lowest cost option which was TS. And sure, there are certain cases where VDI is needed and where TS won't work, but the case studies presented in the session were not those kind of cases. TS would have worked fine for them and would have been much cheaper than VDI.

VMware Response:
True, the OPEX savings presented at VMworld Europe, and that are used in VMware’s online TCO/ROI calculator are based on 3rd party analyst (Gartner and Forrester) reports on comparisons between traditional desktops and server-based computing.

The real bottom line is that customers don’t consider a VDI solution because they think it will be cheaper than TS, but rather, they consider VDI when TS does not meet their needs.  The footprint of TS is wide across enterprise organizations (though rarely deep), and even the customer who presented at VMworld Europe during the “Understanding TCO for View” session acknowledged he had hundreds of TS servers that he would keep around, and was considering VDI because TS didn’t enable him to replace the thick desktop he still needed to provide to users.  As he details in his slide from VMworld, similar to many customers, TS is used in his organization to provide access to a bare set of applications, coexisting with thick clients to meet the full use case.

In considering a VDI architecture, a true desktop replacement is possible, potentially at a higher cost than TS, but with the ability to deliver a full desktop to a user without compromise on applications compatibility, user environment and stability due to lack of workload isolation. 
Another point to add is, if Citrix felt TS was sufficient to meet all their customers’ requirements, they wouldn’t have bought a virtualization platform and launched their own VDI solution.

Excerpted from Brian Madden’s blog:
The biggest savings would be on the capital expenditure of the server hardware. The VMware VDI session listed $150-200 per user for server hardware. This was assuming a fairly standard Dell server with 6 to 8 users per core. Again, I agree 100%. HOWEVER, the exact same architecture based on Terminal Server could have what, 20 or 30 users per core? Even if we assume only 20 users per core, we'll still looking at a 3x difference in hardware costs per user.

VMware Response:
Yes, TS is a great way to get high density on a small number of key applications – when those applications work well in a multi-user environment.    Customers move to VDI because because Citrix/TS doesn’t work for all situations, and when it doesn’t, you still need a solution like VDI for the exceptions.  Many VDI customers fall into this category.

Excerpted from Brian Madden’s blog:
In fact one of the case studies used a customer was going with Vista, so the presenter said that customer got even less than 6 users per core since they needed the performance. And that's a good point. If you have very intense apps, you can also dial-down the number of users on a Terminal Server too. (I'll take a Terminal Server with 6 users per core over a VDI solution with 6 users per core any day...)

VMware Response:
Really? You want to share one copy of Windows Server 2003 with a bunch of other folks running a crash-prone application, even if the consolidation ratio is the same?  TS does not have the workload isolation benefits of virtualization, so sharing resources for intense applications can result in instability and availability issues that result in more support calls and a higher TCO.  In contrast, virtual desktops are completely isolated as well as disaster recovery-enabled through the HA and DRS capabilities on the VI platform.

Excerpted from Brian Madden’s blog:
Misleading Tactic #2 - VMware assumes all apps will work with ThinApp
But here's the problem with ThinApp (and all other application virualization products too, like App-V, InstallFree, etc.). THINAPP CANNOT VIRTUALIZE 100% OF YOUR APPS. Sure, it can do most of them. But it can't do 100%. So what happens when you decide to implement a VMware VDI solution and you build your whole cost analysis model around getting rid of supporting your desktop and app issues and everything, but then you learn that you can't put all of your apps into ThinApp?
1. Install the apps in the traditional way (manually or via SMS) into the VMs. This would work, but now you break your linked-clone disk savings (since the apps would either (a) be installed for all users in the Parent Image, (b) be installed for each user into the diff clones, or (c) you'd need to have multiple Parent Images. Either way you destroy your cost savings model.
2. Install the apps onto the local fat desktops. But now you have a MAJOR user experience problem since VMware View only runs in remote desktop mode (i.e. no published apps), so now your users have to switch back and forth between two desktops, and you'd have profile sync issues and all sorts of problems, ON TOP OF THE FACT that you're still supporting local desktops, again completely destroying your cost savings model.

VMware Response:
To reap the storage savings benefits and one-to-many image management architecture of View Composer, you do need to think about your applications a different way.  If the application is not compatible with ThinApp, then there are several options that can be utilized to yield the end result of working with View Composer and enabling a single point of management. 

• Category A:  A single Parent Image with View Composer and Thinapp.  To minimize storage utilization, applications should be validated for ThinApp, keeping applications installed directly on the Parent Image to a minimum. We typically see that about 80% of applications can be ThinApped without issue.  These ThinApp’ed applications are installed on a server and streamed to users on demand, making application management faster and simpler.
  
• Category B:  Multiple Parent Images for different User Groups – For applications that are not compatible with ThinApp, you will need to install the application directly onto a separate Parent Image.  While you are now managing more than one linked clone Parent for different user populations, you are still gaining considerable storage and management benefits with the one-to-many View Composer architecture.  Even with multiple Parents, the storage reduction numbers are compelling.  Since only 20% of applications are not compatible with ThinApp, typically those with specialized hardware requirements, the total number of Parent Images required in a View environment should be minimal.  The ability to have centralized distribution of these virtual applications coupled with a few Parent Images can easily yield storage reductions by greater than 75% compared to traditional VDI or desktop requirements.  Using small pools with each of these Parent Images delivers cost savings through reduction of overall storage and management overhead.
  
• Category C: If all else fails, for the particularly troublesome applications, a full independent VM may be needed, but the application management used would still leverage traditional tools like SMS/Altiris.  The impact to the cost model would be additional storage for this population of full desktop VMs, but it should constitute the smallest population of desktops in the overall deployment.

Why There's Still a Benchmarking Clause in Our EULA

We have a regularly repeating discussion here at VMware regarding benchmarking that goes along these lines:

Executive A: It seems like most of the people writing about virtualization have figured out that performance benchmarks need some special treatment when used with hypervisors.  It appears that our performance and benchmarking best practices guidelines are making an impact.  They've been available for a while and we're not seeing as many articles with badly flawed tests as we used to.  You know, the tests with bizarre results that come from errors like trying to measure network performance when the CPUs are saturated, or timing benchmark runs using the VM's system clock, or measuring a VM's disk I/O when everything is cached in host memory.  Perhaps it's finally time to drop the clause in our EULA that requires VMware review of performance tests before publication.

Executive B: That would be great!  We respond to every request for a benchmark review and we work with the submitters to improve their test processes, but VMware still gets criticized by competitors who claim we use that clause in our EULA to unfairly block publication of any ESX benchmarks that might not be favorable to VMware.  Even vendors whose benchmarks have been approved by us complain that it's an unreasonable restriction.  If we drop the clause, then maybe everyone will stop complaining and, since it seems people now understand how to benchmark a virtualization solution, we won't see as many botched tests and misleading results.

Executive A: OK, then it's agreed -- we'll drop the EULA benchmark clause in our next release.

And then something like this gets published causing us to lose faith once again with the benchmarking wisdom of certain members of the virtualization community and we're back to keeping the clause in our EULA.

Bad Benchmarking in Action

To summarize, the bad news was in a hypervisor benchmark published by Virtualization Review that showed ESX trailing the other guys in some tests and leading in others.  It was a benchmark unlike any we'd seen before and it left us scratching our heads because there were so few details and the results made no sense whatsoever. Of course, Microsoft didn't let the benchmark's flaws stop them from linking to the article claiming it as proof that Hyper-V performs better than other hypervisors.  As near as we can tell, the Virtualization Review test consisted of a bunch of VMs each running a PC burn-in test program along with a database VM running a SQL Server script.  To be fair to Virtualization Review, they had given us a heads up some time ago that they would be running a test and we gave them some initial cautions that weren't heeded, but we certainly never approved publication of the ESX test results.  If we had an opportunity to review the test plan and results, our performance experts would have some long discussions with the author on a range of issues.

Take for instance the results of the third test in the series, as published in the article:

A cursory glance would suggest that one hypervisor demonstrated a performance win in this test. In fact, it is actually very difficult to draw any conclusions from these results.  We at VMware noticed that the ESX numbers reported for CPU Operations seemed to be 40% greater than for Hyper-V and 88% better than for XenServer.  Is ESX really that good, and XenServer and Hyper-V really that bad?  We'd like to take credit for a win, but not with this flawed test.

What’s happening here is that there are a wide variety of problems with this configuration – we found many of them during our inspection of the tests:

• The fact that ESX is completing so many more CPU, memory, and disk operations than Hyper-V obviously means that cycles were being used on those components as opposed to SQL Server.  Which is the right place for the hypervisor to schedule resources?  It’s not possible to tell from the scarce details in the results.
• All resource-intensive SQL Servers in virtual and native environments have large pages enabled.  ESX supports this behavior but no other hypervisor does.  This test didn’t use that key application and OS feature.
• The effects of data placement with respect to partition alignment were not planned for.  VMware has documented the impact of this oversight to be very significant in some cases.
• The disk tests are based on Passmark’s load generation, which uses a test file in the guest operating system.  But the placement of that file, and its alignment with respect to the disk system, was not controlled in this test.
• The SQL Server workload was custom built and has not been investigated, characterized, or understood by anyone in the industry. As a result, its sensitivity to memory, CPU, network and storage changes is totally unknown, and not documented by the author.  There are plenty of industry standard benchmarks to use with hypervisors and the days of ad hoc benchmark tests have passed.  Virtual machines are fully capable of running the common benchmarks that users know and understand like TPC, SPECweb and SPECjbb.  An even better test is VMmark, a well-rounded test of hypervisor performance that has been adopted by all major server vendors as the standard measurement of virtualization platforms or the related SPECvirt benchmark under development by SPEC.
• With ESX’s highest recorded storage throughput already measured at over 100,000 IOPS on hundreds of disks, this experiment’s use of an undocumented, but presumably very small, number of spindles would obviously result in a storage system bottleneck. Yet storage performance results vary by tremendous amounts. Clearly there's an inconsistency in the configuration.

We're Not Against Benchmarking – We’re Only Against Bad Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a difficult process fraught with error and complexity at every turn. It’s important for those attempting to analyze performance of systems to understand what they’re doing to avoid drawing the wrong conclusions or allowing their readers to do so. For those that would like help from VMware, we invite you to obtain engineering assistance from benchmark@vmware.com. And everyone can benefit from the recommendations in the Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines paper.  Certainly the writers at Virtualization Review can.

Postscript: Chris Wolf of Burton Group commented on virtualization benchmarks in his blog. He points out the need for vendor independent virtualization benchmarks as promised by programs like SPECvirt.  I couldn't agree more.  VMware got the ball rolling with VMmark, which is a public industry standard, and we're fully supporting development of SPECvirt.

The CALs Licensing Saga from Last Month

About a month ago, we blogged about a burdensome expense Microsoft imposed on its customers running a non Windows Server 2008 VM on Hyper-V. Excerpt from our blog:

Here’s the scenario: Say someone’s got existing Windows Server 2003 licenses (non-OEM versions) and CALs. He wants to use these licenses and CALs to run a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine. Seems pretty straight forward – as a 2003 CAL is being used to access a Windows Server 2003 environment - and a good way to save money since he’s already paid for the Windows Server 2003 licenses and CALs – right?

…

[Microsoft licensing doc] seems to say is that, if I want this Windows Server 2003 virtual machine to run on the Hyper-V version that comes with one of the Windows Server 2008 editions, then I must upgrade all of my Windows Server 2003 CALs to Windows Server 2008 CALs. List price for a Windows Server 2008 Client CAL works out to be about $40 a CAL.

Note: An astute reader pointed out that this issue applied not just to Windows Server 2003 VMs, but also to Linux VMs running on Hyper-V – basically to any non Windows Server 2008 VM.

Well Done Microsoft on Making a Customer-friendly Change

Well, last week, less than a month after our post, Microsoft changed this customer-unfriendly CALs policy. IDC also reported on this change - click here to read IDC's summary (requires a free IDC account registration).

Here's the key update straight from Microsoft's documentation: Microsoft Volume Licensing Brief “Licensing Windows Server 2008 to Run with Virtualization Technologies, January 2009” - Page 7 (highlights added):

This is good news for Microsoft customers (and proof that customers can influence Microsoft policies)! Why should they have to pay for Windows Server 2008 CALs when their application is running in a Windows Server 2003 VM and the customer already paid for Windows Server 2003 CALs? Or why should they buy Windows Server 2008 CALs for a Linux web server running on Hyper-V? From this regard, we applaud this move by Microsoft because it does the right thing for the customer.

But There’s Much More to Be Done

But we do continue to see another disturbing trend… (you knew this was coming), namely that Microsoft is quick to make changes when the change benefits Microsoft, but it seems to delay addressing its licensing and support policies that obstruct a organization’s full use of virtualization solutions when a change to that policy doesn’t help Microsoft’s own cause.

IDC sums this up nicely in its own brief - click here to read (requires a free IDC account registration)

Of course, [Microsoft] is more motivated to flex its policies when it benefits Microsoft products as much as, or more than, competitive products, which is increasingly the case as Microsoft's presence in the virtualization software space continues to ramp up.

You see, Microsoft had to make the change to its CALs policy to remove a Hyper-V disadvantage compared to other virtualization vendors like VMware, Citrix, Novell, etc. On all of these other platforms, a customer could take an existing (paid for) Windows Server 2003 license and CAL and run it on VMware / Citrix / Novell / others without having to pay for a new Windows Server 2008 CAL. If Microsoft had not made this change, Hyper-V would have been left at a distinct cost disadvantage to every other virtualization platform.

But on other customer unfriendly licensing issues, like linking all operating system licenses to the physical server, Microsoft has been slow to act even though customers continue to ask for it – see Chris Wolf’s recent blog on how his clients (especially service providers) continue to ask for this. Based on feedback from VMware customers running Windows applications, here are three Microsoft licensing and support changes that would greatly help customers get the full benefits of virtualization:

• Provide customers an option for all Microsoft OS and application licenses to be assigned to the virtual instance (instead of physical hosts) so customers can take full advantage of VM mobility.
• Allow third parties (ex. ISVs) to have an ability to distribute demo and production VMDK-based Windows virtual appliances so customers can deploy them in their virtual datacenters.
• Lift restrictions in VECD where customers must pay a significant premium for virtualized desktops in exchange for “expanded license grants” that they do not necessarily need (or want). Currently, VECD works for a limited number of sophisticated customers, but makes the use of Microsoft products in virtual desktops very expensive for customers seeking simple, uniform deployment of consistent desktop environments.

We’ll continue to work with Microsoft on these issues, but it also helps when Microsoft hears directly from you. Microsoft’s change in application licensing to allow greater benefit in a virtual environment was a direct result of customers providing direct feedback to Microsoft – it does work! Please write in and comment on licensing and/or support issue that you’d like to see Microsoft improve – at least within the context of virtualization. Let’s continue this dialog with Microsoft – tell them what you’d like to see happen.

A partner brought something to my attention recently that seemed odd regarding Microsoft licensing – and potentially expensive.

Here’s the scenario: Say someone’s got existing Windows Server 2003 licenses (non-OEM versions) and CALs. He wants to use these licenses and CALs to run a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine. Seems pretty straight forward – as a 2003 CAL is being used to access a Windows Server 2003 environment - and a good way to save money since he’s already paid for the Windows Server 2003 licenses and CALs – right?

But here’s where it gets weird. On page 11 of the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Licensing Guide (download Microsoft doc here) is the following paragraph:

To Virtualize Win2003 on Hyper-V, I Need to Buy Win2008 CALS…a Hidden Expense

What the paragraph seems to say is that, if I want this Windows Server 2003 virtual machine to run on the Hyper-V version that comes with one of the Windows Server 2008 editions, then I must upgrade all of my Windows Server 2003 CALs to Windows Server 2008 CALs. List price for a Windows Server 2008 Client CAL works out to be about $40 a CAL.

Wow, if I’m reading this correctly, that’s a lot of extra cost to deploy Windows Server 2003 virtual machines on Hyper-V!

It Was Validated By a Third Party

To try to verify this, I did some searching on the Internet and turned up this report update from Directions on Microsoft, an independent 3^rd party analyst firm covering all things Microsoft. The update is specifically about Microsoft’s free, standalone product Hyper-V Server 2008, but one section provided good clarification on this CALs issue.

“Unlike the regular Windows Server 2008 editions that include Hyper-V, Hyper-V Server does not automatically trigger the need for clients who access VMs to have Windows Server 2008 Client Access Licenses (CALs).”

Interesting… so Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 doesn’t require you to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 CALs to run Windows Server 2003 VMs, but the Hyper-V that comes with Windows Server 2008 editions does. This seems to confirm that there is significant additional cost to deploy Windows Server 2003 licenses on Hyper-V.

I Don’t Need the Win2008 CALs If I Use the “Standalone” Hyper-V Server, But Then I Don’t Get Any Functionality Either

This licensing policy seems to encourage people who want to use their existing legacy Windows licenses to run it on Hyper-V Server 2008. But even Microsoft’s own website says that “Hyper-V Server 2008 only offers the most basic of virtualization features,” and it has significant limitations that prevent anyone serious about deploying virtualization from using it.

• No high availability support (i.e., no Microsoft Cluster Services support)
• No host memory/RAM support over 32 GB
• No host CPU support over 4 processors
• No local graphical user interface

To get any of the above, one would need to use the full instance of Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 – it would require a full re-install of Windows Server 2008 on the host (after paying for a Windows Server 2008 license), a time-consuming process that results in virtual machine downtime.

Of Course, VMware Solutions Are a Better Option

There’s a much better choice: run your Windows Server 2003 / 2000 VMs on VMware ESX. You could use your existing Windows Server 2003 / 2000 CALs (which you’ve already paid for – no need to upgrade to 2008 CALs), and you don’t face any of the functionality limitations of Hyper-V Server 2008. You could even deploy on VMware’s free ESXi product and do a license key upgrade (no re-install required) when you decide to take advantage of the advanced functionality in one of VMware’s pay products. Of course, these licensing advantages are in addition to all the other reasons why VMware is a better choice – see the “Why Choose VMware” website.

Am I reading this Windows Server 2008 CALs requirement right? Have you run into this CALs requirement in your deployments?