Some interesting info copied from VMware’s Competitive News Flash – August 19, 2008
“VMware Participation in SVVP – VMware has signed an agreement to be part of Microsoft SVVP and is actively working on technically validating VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 U2 as a supported hypervisor. VMware should soon be listed on Microsoft’s SVVP website as a participant. Currently, U2 is the only version of ESX/ESXi that VMware plans to validate as part of the SVVP. VMware customers running ESX versions prior to U2 would fall under previous, non-SVVP, support policies. We expect to announce validation of U2 prior to VMworld.”
To me this is great news. I hadn’t expected them to get validated so soon after signing the agreement. I was afraid it would be taking a couple of months.
“Other Supported Hypervisors – Other vendors listed by MSFT as participants in SVVP are the following: Cisco, Citrix, Novell, Sun, and Virtual Iron. Note that despite these vendors being listed as “participants†in the program, no hypervisors have yet been announced as “validated†platforms.”
Am I reading this correctly? All these vendors have been on the website for quite some time now and it now turns out they are not validated yet. They just signed the agreement and are willing to get validated. If VMware indeed gets validated before VMworld, they would be the first 3rd party hypervisor, even before Citrix. That’s great :-)
Application Support – 31 Microsoft applications are listed as covered under MS SVVP, including SQL Server 2008, Exchange 2007, and Sharepoint Server 2007. Notable exclusions include SQL Server 2005, Exchange 2003, IIS, and Active Directory. Microsoft seems to be using virtualization support as a lever to push customers to new versions of their applications.
Operating System Support – Microsoft will support all its Server Operating Systems in SVVP validatedvirtualization environments, subject to “Microsoft Support Lifecycle†policies – meaning, if the OS isn’t supported elsewhere, it won’t be supported in a virtual environment either.
“No more “VMotion Tax” for MS Server applications. Microsoft has updated its licensing policy for 41 server applications to more effectively accommodate their use in a virtual environment. The application licenses are still tied to a physical server; however, Microsoft has now removed the clause that had restricted reassignment of an application license between servers to once every 90 days. Note that this clause applies to APPLICATIONS ONLY. It does not apply to Microsoft server operating systems. The 90-day restriction on license reassignment still applies for operating system licenses. Customers still need to have sufficient operating system licenses for each physical server. Microsoft has retained this restriction to motivate its customers to upgrade their Windows Server licenses to the more expensive Datacenter Edition, which allows an unlimited number of VMs to run on a host.”
Great post – it’s great to see VMware getting through the SVVP process so quickly, after all, it’s both VMware’s and Microsoft’s customers that will benefit!
One thing to note – in a lot of instances, Datacenter edition can actually work out cheaper – if you have 2 CPU box, each with quad-core CPUs, with Enterprise edition, that’s going to set you back $3999 (retail), but that only gives you 4 free running VMs. Datacenter, however, would cost $2999 per CPU (retail), which would mean a total of $5998, so yes, more expensive, but it gives you, as you state, an unlimited number of free running VMs, so what if you want a consolidation ratio of more than 4:1? If you were indeed looking at getting 8:1 on that same box, using Enterprise licensing would cost you $3999 * 2, or $7998, whereas the price for Datacenter wouldn’t change, in which case, Datacenter works out cheaper.
In other words, it all depends on Physical CPUs and consolidation ratios :-)