The use of virtualization lets a single piece of hardware be used by several virtual machines (VMs). Virtualization also brings significant cost savings, assists with resource and IT management, enhances business continuity, and expedites hardware and software provisioning. It is a hypervisor that can be installed directly onto the hardware and offers virtualization’s benefits. Two of the leading hypervisors are Hyper-V and VMware. In this article we will look at the differences between Hyper V vs VMWare and their pros and cons.
Types of Virtualization
Server Virtualization
Using server virtualization, a single physical server can be used to support numerous virtual server instances. This allows enterprises to operate several business applications on these servers, each in its virtual machine (VM). Businesses can save money on hardware expenditures since they require fewer servers when server utilization is enhanced.
Network Virtualization
It uses software-based tools to simulate and abstract resources like servers, switches, and routers. Applications can be accessed as though they were physically located on a network. Though actual hardware is still necessary, the configuration doesn’t need to be revised when adding or moving a virtual machine over the network. With network virtualization, networks may be cloned and reconstructed in seconds.
Desktop Virtualization
The creation of a virtual workstation and operating system that can be accessed remotely — is used to make working remotely more comfortable. Examples are VDI environments or an Azure RDS farm that uses remote desktop services allow you to remotely work using the cloud.
What Is Hyper-V?
A software virtual machine can be created and run on Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hardware virtualization product (VM). With Hyper-V, multiple virtual machines can be run on one computer, each with its operating system, enabling VMs to operate side-by-side. Since a single machine is not needed to run a specific OS, this makes for efficient operation.
In addition to being a Type-2 Hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V is also a Type-1 Hypervisor. There are parent and child partitions in Hyper-V. The parent partition runs the host OS. Each child partition is a VM with a guest OS and various programs installed on it. The VMs and the host all use the same hardware resources. It is possible to create many virtual machines on a single Hyper-V host. You can also checkout Azure Hyperv and understand how to setup hyperv on the azure cloud platform.
image source : Microsoft
Hyper V Architecture
A Hyper-V server (called the parent partition) provides its guests access to hardware and processing resources (virtualization stack). Hyper-V makes it possible to logically partition VMs into separate pieces, which includes Operating Systems and applications. The parent and child partitions are both parts of the partition. One parent partition can be run in each Hyper-V environment, and it should be a supported version of Windows Server. The parent partition can be used to run several child partitions that will host guest operating systems. Virtual devices can be used to emulate the hardware resources to which child partitions have no direct access. Parent-child partitions interaction happens via VMBus. It allows you to manage the requests delivered to virtual devices. In addition to the parent partition, the Virtualization Service Provider (VSP) is also included, enabling the connection to the VMBus to be made to manage requests from child partitions.
Hyper-V can support two kinds of Operating Systems, enlightened and unenlightened, in child partitions. Enlightened children have unique components and a VSC (Virtualization Service Client) that allows a direct connection with the virtualization layer, making them unique. At the same time, the partition for a child who is not enlightened has a more straightforward structure and emulates software.
Hyper V Storage
The VM data is kept in a virtual disc file, separated from the hardware and software, like with virtualization. In this instance, a virtual disc file serves as the hard drive of a VM and is viewed as a fully functioning virtual machine. Hyper-V utilises the VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) format.
ReFS (Resilient File System), a built-in feature of Windows Server 2012, utilizes VHD. ReFS was intended to address the shortcomings with NTFS, the older file system, and to address the new requirements of data storage. ReFS allows for users to connect to virtual machine files directly from a host server. ReFS can find and fix data corruptions in a timely manner. You may accomplish this online, so there is no downtime due to physical space constraints. In addition, the new functions of Block Cloning and Sparse VDL (Valid Data Length) are believed to increase the overall speed of the VM operations. Hyper-V offers little flexibility when it comes to clustering. Hyper-V has Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) support, the complexity of its utilization is far more than that of VMware VMFS (as we will see in ahead in the article). Check out AWS Hyperv to learn more about setting up hyperv on AWS cloud.
Pros and Cons of HyperV
Pros
Following are the pros of using Hyper-V:
- The least possible device driver management
- A great selection of devices that can work together
- Easy-to-install new server roles
- shorter setup time
- Fast updates and maintenance
Cons
Here are some cons of using Hyper-V
- Parent OS crash can crash all the VMs
- Overhead of frequent security and OS updates.
- Prior to using Hyper-V primary OS must be installed.
- Service templates don’t have much support
What is VMWare?
VMware additionally allows you to run multiple virtual machines on identical physical hardware by using hypervisor technology. VMs will host their operating systems and applications. VMware allows multiple copies of comparable or utterly different operating systems to control on similar x86 machines as a pacesetter in the virtualization software system.
VMWare Architecture
VMware vSphere is a virtualization platform that requires the installation and configuration of many components. The core product of vSphere is a set of virtualization components that, when joined, allow you to create a virtual computing environment. VMware ESXi, a type-1, native hypervisor, is the heart of VMware vSphere and manages the host servers and runs many guest VMs directly. ESXi allows direct access to the physical machine’s CPU resources, shared by the VMs running in the system.
One of the many tools used to operate the VMware virtualization technology is VMware vSphere Client or VMware vCenter Server. These utilities are used to run ESXi hosts.
image source : VMware
VMWare Storage
The VMDK file format is used to store data in the vSphere environment.
The clustered file system VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is used for data storage virtualization in a virtualized environment. A single VMFS drive can be accessed and used simultaneously by several VMs, helping to minimize management burdens and maximize resource usage. Since you can control VMware ESXi hosts throughout the cluster with VMFS, you can manage numerous hosts by adding, migrating, or removing them. To prevent data corruption, VMFS has on-disk locking, which allows only one user or process to access the data at a time.
Pros and Cons of VMWare
Pros
Pros of using Vmware:
- No Primary OS requirement for management control
- Excellent IT support
- Security Patches not necessarily required
- Available on all the cloud services
Cons
Cons of VMware:
- Incompatibility with hardware issue
- Frequent Device driver updates may slow down the VM box booting or initialization
- A corrupt script or external code can corrupt the VMs or stall the virtual servers.
Hyper V vs VMware - A Comparison
Hyper-V
VMWare
Offered By
Microsoft
VMWare Inc.
OS Supported
Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
Windows, Linux, Unix and MacOS
Cost
Number of cores decide the cost.
Number of Processors decide the cost.
Preferred By
Smaller organizations
Large organizations
File-System
ReFS (Resilient File System)
Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)
Memory Management Technique
Dynamic Memory
Memory compression and transparent page sharing
Memory Management complexity
simple
complex
Virtualization platforms like VMware and Hyper-V make building and operating virtual environments possible. Consider the differences in VMware versus Hyper-V management, architecture, licensing, scalability, and backup integration before determining which platform to use. Aim for seamless integration of your virtualization platform and data protection system.
