Keeping tabs on virtual assets
One of the major benefits of virtual machines is that can moved about, changed, and managed with much greater ease than physical machines. The two major small and medium business virtual management solutions are Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.
Hyper-V and VMware
Hyper-V is a cost-effective method for small businesses that already have Microsoft servers or limited virtualization needs. Hyper-V comes standard with any copy of Server 2008 R2. Server 2008 Standard R2 licenses come with a single virtual machine license, while Server 2008 Enterprise R2 comes with four virtual machine licenses. This is very cost effective; a single powerful virtual host with Server 2008 Enterprise R2 can run five server operating systems.
Though Hyper-V lacked certain features at first, Hyper-V virtual machines can now migrated while running, similiar to VMware VMotion. Hyper-V is also now capable of High Availability.
To run an extensive virtual environment with Hyper-V, use Microsoft System Center, which provides further management tools.
VMware is more useful for those organizations seeking to virtualize a range of operating systems. VMware, like Hyper-V, is capable of running redundant host hardware. This is done with High Availability and VMotion; hosts are run in pairs, if one virtual host goes down, the other steps in and carries the load. VMotion allows hosts to dynamically manage processing loads by moving virtual machines between hosts without interruption to service.
To manage VMWare products, we use VMware vShpere.
Need Help Deciding?
For information about either of these solutions, please contact us.