Not much.

First Things First

Before you can use PRO to Live Migrate virtual machines between hosts (which is sort of the whole point), you need to first configure Hyper-V, failover clustering, and Cluster Shared Volumes — something eWeek found to be significantly more complicated than VMware ESX.

After Hyper-V and Live Migration are up and running, the next step is to install SCVMM 2008 R2 so you can integrate it with your System Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM) environment.

What’s that?  You don’t have SCOM deployed?  Go ahead and set it up.  Come back in a few days when you’re ready to go to the next step.

Integration Time

After your environment has both SCVMM and SCOM up and running, it’s integration time! If you have ever thought that the next-next-finish Microsoft wizards were boring, then this is the task for you.  You’ll get a chance to make configuration changes to various systems and possibly even Active Directory — haven’t you always wanted to learn about the SetSPN utility anyway?

But don’t let me spoil the excitement by giving away the ending — pick up your own copy of the 34-page integration guide and experience the thrill for yourself.

Second Opinion

Some of you are probably thinking that this is an exaggeration, it can’t be all that bad.  Let’s take a look from another perspective, presented in the Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guide for SCVMM 2008 R2:

As you can see from the above excerpt, integrating SCVMM with SCOM clearly increases the time, effort, and complexity of your virtualization deployment.  And don’t forget that SCOM is required for monitoring your Hyper-V infrastructure, too.

Unlike the Microsoft virtualization conglomeration, VMware DRS is an integral part of vCenter Server — purpose-built for virtualization.  Talk about additional layers…

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1. PRO Tips: pros only, please
2. Managing VI3 with SCVMM considered harmful
3. Say it ain’t so, PRO!
4. Save $14,970 on VMware ESX management

The case Microsoft is really trying to make here is that if you don’t have VMware virtualization, then you don’t have VMware.  True enough, I suppose.   But you still have the same number of layers.

I took the liberty of making some corrections to the Microsoft collateral and am pleased to present three more appropriate ways to depict these virtualization layers.

The Objective Comparison

Truth be told, both virtualization platforms have approximately the same high-level depiction of layers:

Nothing surprising there — that is how any truly technical content would describe the arrangement.  Notice that virtualization is actually not above the application layer.

The Proportional Correction

VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V both function as a hypervisor, but it turns out that since ESX has a much smaller footprint, one might envision the stack of colored boxes more like this:

Combining Layers — The Right Way

Is virtualization more like hardware or more like software?  If I had to choose, I would pick hardware.  Perhaps those are the two layers that should be combined, like this:

As long as the hypervisor is not tied to a general-purpose operating system, this makes good sense.  However, since Hyper-V is merely a role in Windows Server, it would be a real stretch to picture the same combination for Microsoft virtualization.  Now that I’ve reasoned it through, maybe three layers isn’t so bad after all.

How do you like them layers?

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4. What is VMware ESXi?

“That’s why I still maintain that at some point, you’ll be at 40 percent to 50 percent virtualized and you’re 50 percent physical, and that’s an important thing to recognize. If you recognize that, you can set the strategy. It’s not, ‘Oh God, we thought the world was going to be only virtual.’ That, fundamentally, is why I think VMware is in trouble,” he said.

In related news, Gartner recently predicted that 50% of all x86 server workloads will be virtualized by 2012.  Still no word on what happens in 2013, after global virtualization limits have been reached.  [Better start looking for some investors that can help me get VM cap-and-trade started.]

But seriously, many companies have already instituted “virtualization first” policies and deploying new apps on physical hardware requires sign-off from upper management.  If Bob Kelly is correct, half of all provisioning requests seek waivers from this policy?  Incomprehensible.

Bob Kelly also explained the true cause of server sprawl in that same article.  If you’re like me, you probably thought it was because of DLL Hell — complex product dependencies that made it extremely risky to manage multiple applications on a single Windows NT system — and SMP scalability problems.  Nope, it turns out that the real issue was the need for sufficient capacity to accommodate peak demand… wink, wink.

Which 50% will you virtualize?

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2. Single Pane of Glass — Hyper-V Edition

Jason Brooks, Executive Editor at eWeek, recently reviewed Windows Server 2008 R2 and had the following to say about Live Migration and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV):

Live Migration was very easy to use, but I found the process of configuring and using Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2 significantly more complicated than with VMware ESX server and VirtualCenter. In contrast to VMware’s product, where all tasks are gathered together in a purpose-built interface, the tasks required to configure Cluster Shared Volumes in Windows Server involve visits to various existing and new Windows utilities.

It’s true.  The Microsoft virtualization solution is a conglomeration, and configuring all of the various layers, roles, and features on top of the general-purpose Windows OS is complicated.

You may need Windows to run parts of your business, but that doesn’t mean you need Hyper-V.  Take control of Windows — by running it on rock-solid, purpose-built, enterprise-class VMware vSphere — before it takes control of you.

Simplify, don’t complexify.

Related posts:

1. Hyper-V Console Disconnects During Live Migration
2. SCVMM/PRO Complexity: High
3. How to see if Quick Migration is right for your workload
4. Hands off that CSV!

Please, take a moment to acknowledge this release.  No, really.  I mean, if Microsoft thinks there is a single person left in the free world that hasn’t heard about R2 and free Live Migration, they might be forced to produce another wave of announcements.

They may even resort to Tupperware-style home launch parties for the server next time.  Have the neighbors bring blade servers over for that one — you know, power and cooling issues in the living room.

If you count beta and RC releases, this thing seems like it has been announced a dozen times already this year.  And considering that they’ve been doing battle against VMware with those unreleased products all along, counting them would not be unfair — especially considering the fanfare that accompanied each pre-release.

We’ve got it.  It’s here, it has free Live Migration, and it’s super fun.  According to some reports, R2 has even been known to whiten teeth and freshen breath.

So, please, acknowledge the release of R2 today.  Do it for the children.

Related posts:

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2. Wild SCVMM 2008 R2 rumors and speculation
3. Hello, SCVMM 2008 R2
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Windows Server 2008 R2 will not be version 7 at all!

Actually, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be version 6.1. Will it still be binary compatible with Windows 7?

Sorry about that folks… don’t panic, Windows 7 is version 6.1, too.

Related posts:

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2. Wild SCVMM 2008 R2 rumors and speculation
3. Nice writeup on Windows Server licensing
4. VI Toolkit (for Windows) 1.5 released

Content

Based on feedback and subscriber/reader metrics, the current blend of technical and competitive articles seems to be about right, so I plan to generally keep doing things the way I have for the foreseeable future.

I welcome any comments on the type of content you would like to see on VCritical — feel free to leave your thoughts below.

Traffic

As the following chart illustrates, I have been fortunate to experience month-over-month growth since inception.

My current policy is to not publicly disclose traffic statistics, but for perspective, each y-axis tick represents multi-thousands of page views.  I use several methods to measure statistics and this WordPress Stats module is the most conservative — it only measures actual blog page views from real users.

Blog Infrastructure

I started out with self-hosted WordPress as the platform for VCritical and have not regretted that decision once.  I did, however, need to change hosting companies twice in the past year.  That was painful, but now I’ve settled on what seems to be a sufficiently robust provider — you get what you pay for.  Thankfully, the cost is more than covered by Google ads and sponsorship.

Thanks

The virtualization space is really starting to heat up — I look forward to the next round.  Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, subscribing, and following me on Twitter!

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Microsoft Hyper-V R2 derives HA clustering capabilities and Live Migration from the additional Windows Failover Clustering layer that can be added to the hypervisor.  With all that integration, you might think a remote console connection would seamlessly fail over along with the VM during a Live Migration.

Sorry, not in this release. Is it an omission, or just a bug?  Time will tell.

Now that System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2008 R2 (SCVMM) PRO tips can be used to automate Live Migration — if it is integrated with System Center Operations Manger 2007 (SCOM), that is — administrators connected to a remote VM console may find themselves suddenly cut off.

See it in action in this short video:

Oh, sure it’s not hard to go back into SCVMM, find the VM, and reconnect — but should you have to do that manually?  VM remote consoles may not be needed for day-to-day administrative tasks, but is that reasonable justification to ignore usability and integration?

Because the Microsoft Virtualization solution is a conglomeration of various components — Windows Server, hypervisor role, Failover Clustering, SCVMM, SCOM, etc. — it is much more difficult to provide a seamless experience.  This remote console issue is really just an indicator.

Related posts:

1. Live Migration “significantly more complicated”
2. SCVMM/PRO Complexity: High
3. vSphere Console Stays Connected During VMotion
4. Choose any two: Hyper-V, HA, Linux

You can think of the VM console like a remote KVM for virtual machines  — similar to HP iLO on a physical machine.  Most of the time there are more efficient network-based remote access techniques like RDP or SSH.  However, there are some circumstances — like network misconfiguration — that absolutely require the use of a remote console.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were connected to a VM console while it automatically migrated with VMotion to another physical host?  If you are a long-time VMware admin, you would probably expect things to keep on working.  And that is exactly right — the console connection is seamlessly transferred to the new VMware ESX host.  This behavior is especially important when VMware DRS is dynamically moving virtual machines to optimize cluster resources.

Need to check the network settings of a VM?  No problem — you may not even notice if that VM migrates to another host while you are connected.

Here is a quick video of the situation in action:

Does Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 handle this scenario the same way?  Not exactly.

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1. Hyper-V Console Disconnects During Live Migration
2. VMotion from physical ESX 4 to virtual ESX 4
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While in some contexts the difference is minimal, one obviously affected area is monitoring with System Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM), which exposes volume GUIDs in various user interfaces:

In related news, an interesting report recently published by a top medical journal found that those in a relatively new information technology position known as “Hyper-V Administrator” exhibited strongly enhanced memory recall capabilities. This correlation is thought to be a result of the rigorous, albeit unintentional, mental training these personnel undergo in the course of their daily responsibilities.

“It appears to be a classic case of the Von Restorff effect,” said Dr. Sedgwick McCaskey, primary contributor to the research and author of the best-seller Don’t Forget IT.

The report also went on to explain that some “Hyper-V Administrators” have found mnemonic devices to be a great help in their jobs. “Instead of trying to remember all of those random letters and numbers, I sometimes make up songs or funny stories,” said one anonymous participant in the study.

It’s great to see nimble professionals that are able to quickly adapt in the face of change. Especially considering the fact that every new Windows Server 2008 R2 system has a hidden 100 MB partition created automatically during installation by default.  And since that volume has no drive letter, it shows up in SCOM with – you guessed it – the volume GUID:

Ouch.  Pass the Ginkgo.

Just to be clear: three paragraphs of this article are satire; the rest is factual.  If you can’t figure out which is which, feel free to ask.

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