Comparing the Best Virtualization Software (HyperV Vs. VMWare)

best virtualization software

Best Virtualization Software: Comparison between HyperV and VMWare

There’s a multitude of virtualization software on the market ranging from mediocre spin-offs from once stable open source offerings, through to tried and tested market leaders. For most people though, the battle between Microsoft and VMWare is the one that rages most frequently. Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMWare’s V-Sphere are two of the best virtualization setups on the market, but they do have subtle differences that rarely make any difference to the end user, but are worth comparing nevertheless.

We use virtualization software with Dell solutions, but the hardware is not important for this comparison because it’s the software architecture rather than the hardware that we are concerned with here. The three areas of where the products differ most are the driver locations, control layers and hypervisor components. We need to disregard other types of virtual machine software architecture for the time being in order to provide you with a simple comparison of what could be a complex topic so from this point on just assume we are using a Type 1 VMM setup.

The Basic Difference Between V-Sphere and Hyper-V

Microsoft have gone for Microkernelized Hypervisor Design, which means drivers do not need to exist on the same hypervisor layer. This means there is less resource consumption and that updates are very easy to perform on multiple virtual machines in a very short space of time, but that can bring its own problems too.

One reason some people have opted for the Microsoft version is that the lack of APIs makes penetration from hackers more difficult as there is little on the market to present a problem. The lack of API distribution could also be a negative and that will depend very much on where you stand in terms of security and what you would like to manually achieve with your software. One major disadvantage is that a crash in the control layer would mean every virtual machine installed and reliant on that layer would also go down.

VMWare Pros and Cons

V-Sphere uses the Monolithic Hypervisor Design, which differs slightly because each hypervisor layer needs its own set of drivers, which means that it may not support some hardware. Despite the fact that some hardware may not have support, the chances of that happening are considerably rare and it should not be a major headache. You can check here to see if VMWare supports your hardware. The great advantage over Microsoft that most admins will appreciate is the lack of any operating system on the control layer and that means less patching for security as everything should be handled on each virtual machine by the provider of your chosen operating systems.

Being part of the Dell team, I know we have a great range of virtualization solutions available, which can be found on the Dell site. Visit the site and browse the solutions on offer.

About: kira.browdy

This article was provided by Kira who is a freelance writer interested in the novelties of the world of modern technology.


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.