Since its initial product launch in 2000, VMware has been the company to beat in server virtualization
technology when it comes to features, stability, security, and market
share. Microsoft's initial attempts with Virtual Server and Virtual PC
got the company into the race, but it was a major stretch to compare
these products to what VMware was offering at the time. With an inferior
product, Microsoft had to grab hold of whatever it could in order to
lay claim or take away market share from VMware. In this case, the
Redmond giant's best offensive weapon was and has been to offer its
solution at a cheaper price.
With the introduction of Microsoft
Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V 3.0, Microsoft is finally on its way to
becoming a more feature-rich and stable hypervisor platform, and the
company can hold its own in a more apples-to-apples feature comparison
with VMware ESX. But even with an improved platform, Microsoft seems
intent on hammering away at VMware's costs. This time, Microsoft is going after VMware by using the virtualization giant's own online cost calculator for server virtualization against VMware.
In a recent TechNet blog post, Microsoft claimed that VMware's cost-per-application calculator,
an online tool that compares the cost of virtualizing applications on
VMware vSphere 5.1 versus other commodity virtualization offerings such
as Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer, confirms what Microsoft has been saying for years: VMware is more expensive than Microsoft.
Using VMware's own calculator, Microsoft urges would-be customers to plug the following values in for themselves:
- Number of VMs: 100
- Virtualization host type: Server B
- Network storage type: iSCSI SAN
- Compare to vendor: Microsoft
- VMware vSphere 5.1 edition: Enterprise Plus
- Management deployed on physical or virtual: virtual
- Electricity: low
- Real estate: low
According
to Amy Barzdukas, general manager of server & tools marketing for
Microsoft, the above values weren't randomly chosen, but instead
represent a common data center virtualization scenario.
...MORE
Read the entire InfoWorld Virtualization Report article.