Why we have selected Hyper-V again (against VMware)

2015/11/19 10:23
Hyper-V vs VMware
Just finished some quick but rather indicative tests of VMware vSphere with View 5 and MS Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V

We are long time looking for virtualization platform that would allow decent quality of 3D graphics and modeling applications. It includes but is not limited to AutoCAD, Tribon M3, Vanatage Marine and Smart Marine 3D modeling applications. These programs use 3D shade models that we have to move, rotate, change geometry , etc.

Due to different reasons Citrix XenDesktop and HDX-3D Pro is not an option for us.

So the main objective was to check does the new product VMware View 5 really support 3D and OpenG L 2.1 and does it provide better end user experience compareing to Microsoft Hyper-V and RemoreFX.

RemoteFX requires and make use of additional GPU, while VMware has no such requirements in order to handle 3D and OpenGL.

We tested using HP ProLiant DL370 G6 server equiped with 72 GB RAM, 8 x SAS HDD in RAID 1+0 and two GPU cards NVidia Quadro 2000.

Remote 3D performance was slightly better on VMware View 5, but not so good to justify the additional licenses cost of EURO 1,600 approximately for 10 virtual machines.

No matter the remote 3D performance was far from the required level and incomparable with the performance of any average PC equiped with any video card with dedicated memory, we thought it would be good to give it a chance and put VMware View 5 in use on several working places to collect end users expirience and monitor it for some time longer. And just a moment later ... what a surprise ... we need more disk space ...

To handle the disk space requirement we needed to create an additional LUN on the VMware servers disk array. It appear that there is no software tool available that can do this for us while VMware is working. It was necessary to reboot the server and using HP SmartStart DVD to create the new LUNs required. Then again rebooting the server to get VMware running ...

Consider now that there is 20 virtual machines and we have to stop all of them just to increase the storage space...

For comparison - using Hyper-V on Windows server creating a new LUNs on the servers internal disk array is as simple as 1, 2, 3. It takes less than 5 minutes to create the new LUN and to put it in use. No need to reboot the server. Even more, if the guest VM that needs more storage is Windows 2008 or Windows 7 we do not need to stop even that particular virtual machine.

P.S. After some time having discussion with our primary hardware supplier we finaly understand ... ( confidential information follows ) 

They, as many other companies that practice hardware delivery and software consultancy still prefer to recommend to their end users VMware based solutions because of the following major reason - they can't get the customer to pay $$$$ for installation, implementation and consultancy services if they sell Windows Hyper-V solutions. It is so just because for Hyper-V system that is included in the OS which cost $900 the consultant can't convince the customer to pay $5,000 for consultancy services. Selling VMware however, that would easy become more than $10,000 license cost only. Then the customer is ready to pay the additional $5,000 for consultancy services :)

Hyper-V cost < $ consultancy services < VMware cost

Obviously, no body would pay for consultancy more than the cost of of the software itself.

It is of course different story why some IT companies do not educate their staff in the new software trends and solutions available.