2Sep/080
Initial Findings with VMware ESXi and Hyper-V Comparison
I have been working with both for the last couple of weeks, these are some of my initial impressions and findings:
- ESXi is bare metal (running with no real underlining OS, well something that looks like about a 32meg Linux Kernel). Hyper-V requires 64bit Windows 2008. Apparently there is supposed to be a bare metal version available, but I have not been able to find it.
- ESXi seems to perform better with data copying and memory management. I have copied multiple .iso images (around 2 gigs worth) and VMware seemed to like it better.
- Server OS loaded so far: Windows 2003 Standard R2 32bit , Windows 2003 x64 Enterprise, Ubuntu Linux v8.04, SUSE Linux, and OpenBSD. So far, all have worked well, no major problems.
- Dell's PowerEdge 2950 from the factory need the Virtualization turned on in the BIOS in order to use ESXi or Hyper-V. They will install, but not function properly.
- Hyper-V's console seems snappier and more responsive. VMware Infastructure Client seems like running a Java client, sometimes very slow and unresponsive.
- Hyper-V is pretty simple to create a sysprep image for mass distribution of servers. ESXi, I had to find some articles on the web on how to hack the console so I could do this, not a supported feature. If we went with the full ESX suite, this would not be needed as you can use templates (which if they are available for ESXi, I can not find it). The hacking the console is a pain as I have to edit XML files as well, but doable. Something else I am going to try is just create a sysprep image and make it into an .iso, would be very close to the same thing I am trying to accomplish now.
