Hyper-V will kill VMWare.
That's a bold statement, especially in a market where VMWare rules with greater than 85% share. However, as Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols from PCWorld put it, "there was a company that had 85% of the buggy-whip market... just before Henry Ford decided that Americans wanted a cheap, dependable car in any color they wanted so long as it was black." Microsoft is in the Henry Ford seat currently. Sure VMWare has a more mature product and a huge headstart. So did Netscape in the browser market and IBM Lotus in the enterprise mail/collaboation market. Where are they now? Rusting junk heaps in a land Microsoft long since conquered.
As Steven mentions, VMWare makes all of its revenue from selling its Virtual Infrastructure suite and a small portion from professional services. The other vendors are giving it away. Microsoft's even been known to include some level of professional services with a large product licensing purchase. Yes, that's free as in beer.
Microsoft's Hyper-V (still in public beta/RC1) has some issues. The NetworkWorld Microsoft Subnet folks posted their thoughts yesterday. The most glaring is the inability to move VMs while active between hosts. Depending on your needs that may or may not be a deal breaker for you. Regardless I'm confident it's something that will be addressed in a future release. Microsoft knows they need to equal/exceed VMWare's offering to dominate the market. That said, Hyper-V is a LOT more friendly for Windows admins and it doesn't require any of the core Linux skills that installing and tuning an ESX server does. The combination of easy to use and free has been Google's trademark strategy. Microsoft may have taken a page from their book on this one and I think it's very likely to succeed.
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It won't be so easy
Alex,
It won't be so easy. VMWare has a firm foothold and a loyal following. It's going to be a religious war around virtualization in IT departments for the next few years. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out.
I posted up some additional thoughts over at BroadDev
nice post Alex
Market leader is a bit of an understatement at 85%. Everyone I know uses VMWare in some capacity. What makes Hyper-V a giant killer? It’s free. That carries a lot of weight in perceived uncertain economic times. It’s also a familiar interface and experience for for IT departments looking like any other Microsoft MMC or console.
Expect Microsoft to release decent code but they will innovate fast on next rev (that’s their playbook). Classic embrace and extend and in today’s market free software is the model. Nice move.
http://broaddev.com/2008/06/25/can-hyper-v-topple-vmware/
I get it...
It's a furrier explosion over here!
I expect this code to be pretty robust. Remember MSFT has had Virtual Server since at least 2005. One could argue this is finally an enterprise offering of that product.
There are a few gaps between it an VMWare's VI3, but look at the cost difference. I see Hyper-V getting a lot of penetration on launch. Most of my clients are looking to at least put it in a lab before the end of the year in not replace/supplement their current VMWare solutions.
Better analogies needed
You mentioned Netscape and Lotus as examples for products blown out by Microsoft. This is correct, but those were desktop products. VMware is not a desktop product. A better analogy to invoke would be Windows Server or SQL Server crowding out or crusing competitors over time.
Having said that, Hyper-V is further behind VMware than it was in the other areas and has no track record. Changing browsers is significantly easier than changing virtualization platforms. Have you ever had to change control?
As someone who used Virtual Server and ran into problems with it, Microsoft has to prove it to me that Hyper-V is not just another crappy Microsoft virtual server product. Hyper-V has just been released but their management tool is still in beta, right?
To say that VMware's share of the market will go down is easy to say, since it's pretty darn high. However, after dealing with Microsoft tech support on the VS 2005 problems, Microsoft has not earned my trust in this area.
Re: Better analogies needed
The System Center Virtual Machine Manager tool is still not public RTM as far as I know, however most feedback from the field is very positive. As I mentioned it does not currently support live migration but that's not a requirement for many companies.
I'll agree that I had a lot of problems with Virtual Server 2005 as well. However I've been amazed at the performance and stability of Hyper-V. If you haven't checked it out it's worth a look.
Repeat after me - Hyper-V is not unconditionally free
Hyper-V is not free. You get *one* "for free" when you $pend thou$and$ of dollar$ to buy one copy of Window$ $erver 2008.
I can get VMware Foundation for running on up to three dual-processor servers for under $2600.
Of course, in the coming years we'll eventually buy Server 2008 and get it for free, but let's wait for SP2, shall we? SP2 is what it is because Microsoft considers the released Server 2008 to be at SP1 already, in order to sync it with Vista SP1.
Unless you are running linux
Unless you are running linux it is free. If you buy any VMWare Product unless you are running linux you still need to buy a windows server license and that comes with Hyper-V. Btw Server is MSRP $995 so where is that Thousands of dollars for one copy?
I stand corrected
Anon,
You're correct about the $999 price. I was thinking of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition pricing (list of $2500 but available for under $2000) which was needed if you wanted Virtual Server 2005 to be able use more than 4GB RAM.
Stand- alone price for Hyper-V
Standalone price for Hyper-v for bare metal install is $28.00
It is estimated that less than 10% of all servers today are virtualized. So having an 85% share of 10% is not that really a big deal. Lot's of room left to play in.
But you're missing something
But you're missing something quite important there. If you're virtualising Windows workloads on VMware, you're going to be paying the Windows license anyway. So it is effectively free (well, $28), unless you're using VMware to virtualise only non-Windows workloads.