VM software besides VirtualBox and VMware?

[DigitalFruitcake]

I'm doing a course based on IT Networking and need to compare and contrast the most popular and relevant VM software. I only know about/have experience with VMware and VirtualBox, and was wondering if anyone experienced in this area could chime in and offer some insight.

What is the best software other than these two offerings? Where can I find the hardware/software requirements listings for these programs and what are the pros and cons?

Thanks in advance for any help guys. (:

[TetraSky]

A quick search on google gave me all the info you could possibly need on this... You're better off actually looking up this stuff yourself instead of asking for help, especially if it's for a course.

[MacAlister L.]

Yeah my Mom's friend was on the phone talking about it.. It seems interesting.. He used to work at SIS now he is at EMC.

[Eniqmatic]

Hyper-V is another well known one, weather it's good or not, I will leave that decision up to you  :lol:

[dalekphalm]

I'm doing a course based on IT Networking and need to compare and contrast the most popular and relevant VM software. I only know about/have experience with VMware and VirtualBox, and was wondering if anyone experienced in this area could chime in and offer some insight.

What is the best software other than these two offerings? Where can I find the hardware/software requirements listings for these programs and what are the pros and cons?

Thanks in advance for any help guys. (:

Aside from VMWare and VirtualBox, Hyper-V is really the only other super big/popular one that I can think of.

 

90% of VM's are either going to be using VMWare ESXi or Hyper-V. VirtualBox is not used very much in the Enterprise/commercial space for regular rack servers - Though VirtualBox might be more popular for cluster servers? I've no idea. Basically, most people use ESXi for Linux/Unix based VM boxes, and Hyper-V for Windows based VM boxes. Hyper-V is also built-in to pretty much any version of Windows Server these days.

 

See this link for a list of many of the virtual machine hosts (Hypervisors), and some of the features they support:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_platform_virtualization_software

 

But really, you should be researching a lot of this yourself, so you actually learn about it.

[DigitalFruitcake]

A quick search on google gave me all the info you could possibly need on this... You're better off actually looking up this stuff yourself instead of asking for help, especially if it's for a course.

I want people's actual opinions on the software, not your typical generic search results on review sites or whatnot. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

[DigitalFruitcake]

Yeah my Mom's friend was on the phone talking about it.. It seems interesting.. He used to work at SIS now he is at EMC.

wot

[DigitalFruitcake]

Aside from VMWare and VirtualBox, Hyper-V is really the only other super big/popular one that I can think of.

 

90% of VM's are either going to be using VMWare ESXi or Hyper-V. VirtualBox is not used very much in the Enterprise/commercial space for regular rack servers - Though VirtualBox might be more popular for cluster servers? I've no idea. Basically, most people use ESXi for Linux/Unix based VM boxes, and Hyper-V for Windows based VM boxes. Hyper-V is also built-in to pretty much any version of Windows Server these days.

 

See this link for a list of many of the virtual machine hosts (Hypervisors), and some of the features they support:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_platform_virtualization_software

 

But really, you should be researching a lot of this yourself, so you actually learn about it.

I have done google searches that returned some basic reviews for some software including VMware, Hyper-V, and Parallels. However, I wanted the opinion of some people who have a little experience in the area and maybe have a different viewpoint, that's all.

Thanks a lot for the info! Would you say Hyper-V performs better or worse than VirtualBox in terms of raw speed? I know VMware destroys them both in this area.

[dalekphalm]

I have done google searches that returned some basic reviews for some software including VMware, Hyper-V, and Parallels. However, I wanted the opinion of some people who have a little experience in the area and maybe have a different viewpoint, that's all.

Thanks a lot for the info! Would you say Hyper-V performs better or worse than VirtualBox in terms of raw speed? I know VMware destroys them both in this area.

Personally I doubt there's much of a performance difference between VirtualBox and Hyper-V. Hyper-V supports native CPU virtualization. I imagine that VirtualBox does too, but I have little experience with it.

 

Hyper-V has "near native" operating performance, but as you say, ESXi runs on bare-metal as it's own "OS", so it has better access to hardware resources. Not all VMWare solutions run as fast though, VMWare Player and VMWare Workstation run on-top of a host OS, like Windows, so their performance would be slower. Parallels operates similar to VMWare Workstation in terms of speed.

[DigitalFruitcake]

Personally I doubt there's much of a performance difference between VirtualBox and Hyper-V. Hyper-V supports native CPU virtualization. I imagine that VirtualBox does too, but I have little experience with it.

 

Hyper-V has "near native" operating performance, but as you say, ESXi runs on bare-metal as it's own "OS", so it has better access to hardware resources. Not all VMWare solutions run as fast though, VMWare Player and VMWare Workstation run on-top of a host OS, like Windows, so their performance would be slower. Parallels operates similar to VMWare Workstation in terms of speed.

I thought VMware Workstation/Player supported native CPU virtualization too? So VirtualBox and Hyper-V perform.. Better than VMware Workstation? Or did I misread your post?

[dalekphalm]

I thought VMware Workstation/Player supported native CPU virtualization too? So VirtualBox and Hyper-V perform.. Better than VMware Workstation? Or did I misread your post?

Yes, they do. Buuuut they're still running on a separate Host OS, such as Linux or Windows. Even the most efficient CPU virtualization will suffer in that scenario. Some cycles will inevitably be eaten up by the Host OS.

 

Whereas with ESXi, the "player" is the Host OS. With Hyper-V, it's kind of a hybrid system-ish. You can run Hyper-V base by itself, in the form of Hyper-V Server, which is similar to the capabilities of ESXi (though unless you absolutely need it, ESXi is the more mature solution). Hyper-V is also a built-in or optional component ("Role") of Windows Server, which allows more deeply embedded VM hosting.

 

In either case, Hyper-V Server or ESXi will be faster/more powerful solutions compared to regular Hyper-V or VMWare Player/Workstation, despite the fact that all of the above support VT-d, etc.

 

EDIT: I have no idea if VirtualBox can run as a stand-alone VM Host OS. I would not be terribly surprised if there was a version that did though, considering Oracle is the developer of it.

[twosome]

Hyper-V is starting to get mature. We are migrating about 1000 servers from VMware to Hyper-V now and are really happy with it.

[dalekphalm]

Hyper-V is starting to get mature. We are migrating about 1000 servers from VMware to Hyper-V now and are really happy with it.

Well it's been a major component since what, Server 2008? Not surprised that it's becoming mature now. I'd like to see it get on-par with ESXi, simply because more competition is only better for IT admins.

 

We're replacing our servers this year, and our plan right now is looking at load balancing ESXi servers (two physical boxes) with all of our server needs compartmentalized into individual VM's.

[twosome]

Well it's been a major component since what, Server 2008? Not surprised that it's becoming mature now. I'd like to see it get on-par with ESXi, simply because more competition is only better for IT admins.

 

Microsoft has really pushed towards getting Hyper-V on the map by including it in standard licencing. ESXi in example is very costly once you have hosts with over 32(?) GB memory. Our biggest hosts which we use for terminal servers got 56 logical processors and 768 GB of memory.

 

Virtual Machine Manager is as good as any to manage all the virtual machines like vSphere for ESXi. When you got a Hyper-V backbone it is much easier to build an on-premises Azure cloud too, endless opportunities.