Microsoft's entry into the virtualisation supplier market will
drive better products through increased competition, attendees at
VMworld in Los
Vegas said this week.
"Competition usually breeds better products, but let us hope
Microsoft does not come into the market and quash VMware by
giving products away for free," said one end-user.
Some attendees said they expect Microsoft to adopt "Guerilla
tactics" by integrating its technology tightly into its server
operating system in the guise of a value-added service.
"Giving away razor blades and selling razors is a common tactic
with Microsoft," said one end-user.
"I would have expected Microsoft to have started doing
virtualisation maybe a bit sooner, but everyone is doing it now,"
said one attendee.
Very few, however, consider Microsoft as a viable alternative to
the products they are using from VMware. They say Microsoft has a
lot of catching up to do.
An IT systems director of a business information company in the
US said although 85% of his company's datacentre is using Microsoft
servers, the firm switched from
Microsoft virtualisation to standardise on VMware.
"Microsoft just cannot match the functionality and flexibility
of VMware's enterprise product," he said.
"Microsoft just does not have the breadth of product offerings
we need," said another.
Delegates to the conference said that Microsoft's virtualisation
products lack the high availabilty, live migration and disaster
recover functionality of the VMware product.
An end-user with a mixed server enviroment said although his
company was using Microsoft virtualisation "just to try it out" it
was only on servers running Windows.
"All other servers are running Linux and we are using VMware for
those because the Microsoft product does not support that operating
system," he said.
Others said Microsoft's virtualisation products are not ready
yet for production environments, particularly as Microsoft is
unable to compete with the fast speed of servers using VMware.
A delegate from an IT benchmarking company expressed
disappointment that
Microsoft's Hyper-V requires users to install Windows Server
2008.
"It is not a very thin hypervisor and has a lot more overhead
than I would expect," he said.
But many felt that it was perhaps a bit too early to make any
judgement calls on what Microsoft's entry of the market may
ultimately mean.
"Microsoft may well end up becoming a dominant player, but its
virtualisation products may also go nowhere," said one.
Another said, "We will wait until the second and third
generation of products to see whether Microsoft will add some of
the key components that are missing from the first generation."