Apples, Oranges, and Hypervisor Price Comparisons

Fruit: Apples, Oranges

Fruitful: Current discussions on hypervisor price differences 

Fruitless: Getting hypervisor vendors to agree on a fair pricing comparison

The Task 

There's been some interesting hypervisor pricing comparisons circulating the Internet over the past two weeks that have caught my interest:

• VMware's Mike Dipetrillo: ESX 3.5i for Free and the Impact on Hyper-V and the SMB
   
• Virtualization.info - Alessandro Perilli: VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper-V: which one is better for SMBs?
   
• EvolveTechnologies - Dave Sobel: Is VMware Cheaper than Microsoft? 

After reading with interest, I set out to conduct my own pricing evaluation, thinking that it couldn't be too hard to get vendors to agree on a fair pricing comparison (insert joke here). To keep it simple, I decided to use a small branch office consisting of six Windows Server 2003 servers in the evaluation. I consider high availability a requirement in all production virtualization deployments and added virtual infrastructure management to the mix as well. To summarize, the solution requirements consisted of:

• Virtualizing six Windows Server 2003 servers on two 2-way physical hosts
   
• High availability failover support
   
• Centralized management of the virtual infrastructure 

With the criteria set, I moved to evaluating vendor solutions with each vendor's bottom line list price.

The Proposed Solutions 

Table 1 below compares what I see as comparable solutions from VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, and Citrix.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Vendor	Hypervisor Package	High Availability	Management	Total Price
Citrix (Stratus OEM)	XenServer 4.1 (included in Stratus Avance)	Stratus Avance (includes XenServer hypervisor) $2,495 per node x 2 nodes = $4,990	Included with Stratus Avance software	$4,990
Microsoft	Hyper-V (included with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise license) $3,999 per node x 2 nodes = $7,998	Included with the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition license	Essential management is provided by the Hyper-V Manager MMC (included with the OS). Advanced management included in System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2008. VMM 2007 Workgroup edition is priced at $499.	$7,998           or           $8,497 (assumed price once VMM 2008 is available)
Virtual Iron	Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition - $799 per socket x 4 sockets - $3,196	Included in Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition	Included in Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition	$3,196
VMware	VI Standard High Availability  Acceleration Kit for 4 processors $7,254	Included in VMware Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit	Virtual Center Foundation Server license included in acceleration kit	$7,524

Table 1: Hypervisor price comparison (assumes Windows guest OS licensing is not required) 

Citrix XenServer 4.1 does not include high availability, so the Status Avance OEM was used instead. Note that the pricing in Table 1 assumes that the branch office already has existing Windows Server 2003 licenses. If licensing is required, or if plans to upgrade branch office systems to Windows Server 2008 are in place, then the pricing comparison changes substantially. The Microsoft solution already includes licensing for 8 VMs, since Hyper-V is a part of the Windows Server 2008 OS. For the three other solutions, the cheapest way to go would be to purchase six Windows Server 2008 standard edition licenses for $995 each (total cost = $5,970 for six VMs). Downgrade rights would allow you to run Windows Server 2003 under the Windows Server 2008 license, and you would already be covered when it comes time to upgrade. Note that there's no price difference with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition licenses. 

Table 2 shows vendor solution pricing with the Windows Server 2008 license included (added cost of $5,970).

   
                                                                                                                               

Vendor	Total Price
Citrix (Stratus OEM)	$4,990 + $5,970 = $10,960
Microsoft	$7,998           or           $8,497 (with VMM 2008 once it's available)
Virtual Iron	$3,196 + $5,970 = $9,166
VMware	$7,524 + $5,970 = $13,494

Table 2: Hypervisor price comparison (assumes Windows guest OS licensing is required) 

As you can see, OS licensing cost is a significant factor. With the cost of OS licensing, the Microsoft Hyper-V solution changes from the most expensive to the least expensive. Also, it should be noted that both Table 1 and Table 2 reflect vendor list pricing. Since vendor discounts vary, the resulting paid price for any of the above solutions could be thousands less. Still, the list pricing comparison should give you a good idea of where each vendor stands.   

The Fruit of My Labor 

I had to use a minimal configuration in order to make the vendor comparisons as close as possible. VMware eloquently stated that for an apples-to-apples comparison with Hyper-V, I should include Systems Center Operations Manger and System Center Configuration Manager in the Microsoft price. However, while Virtual Center does a few things that Virtual Machine Manager doesn't do, System Center Configuration Manger and Operations Manager can do much more than Virtual Center. So to balance the comparison, I would have to add System Center Configuration Manger and Operations Manager to the price of each solution, making the addition a wash. The same happened when backup was added to the equation. Citrix and Stratus would also argue that their solution includes local storage mirroring support, so purchasing shared network storage is not required and could represent considerable savings. VMware also noted that their price includes a year of Gold Support, and that similar support on competitive offerings could raise the price as much as 20%. Since I cannot buy a VMware product without support, I'm keeping the support cost in my comparison because it does represent the minimum price. In addition, Virtual Iron's competitors have been quick to note that Virtual Iron does not have a similar supporting vendor ecosystem, which is a decision making factor you won't find on a product data sheet.

So I'm sure vendors will still argue along the lines of apples-to-apples, but I counter that I am comparing apples-to-apples while agreeing that some may be tastier than others. You may see some of the solutions as granny smith apples and others as red delicious apples. On the outside, they're all apples, but on the inside the experience is unique to each one.

Fruitless? Fruitful? I welcome your feedback. 

Posted by: Chris Wolf

Comments

[Alex A.]

Chris, a nice post.
Let me correct some licensing points, to be 100% accurate.

1) If you had WS2003 licenses before consolidation, - they were assigned to appropriate physical servers. In virtualization you still need to do same - assign license to host, not to VM. That means, that if you assigned 6 WS2003 Standard licenses to one host, and then power failure happens, VMs are moved to second host and remain unlicensed there! Product Use Rights (PUR) require you to license the maximal possible ammount of running OSEs (VMs) per each host. In case of WS Standard licenses and 6 VMs you need to buy 6 WS Standard to each host. For Hyper-V you have to buy 2 WS Standard licenses for each host, so it may run four VMs in case of second host failure. (12 WS STD for non-Microsoft solutions, or 4 WS Std for Hyper-V). Alternatively we usually recommend to buy WS2008 Datacenter for hosts, that allows unlimited virtualization rights (licensed per physical CPU on server, allows unlimited number of WS Dtc/Ent/Std VMs). In Microsoft case it will cost almost same (4000 for 2-CPU WS datacenter) and will allow any number of VMs. In non-Microsoft case - a bit more expensive, but still unlimited number of VMs .

2) PUR allows you to use 1* 4 OSEs per Windows Enterprise licensem that means that if you use 4 free instances of WS in VMs, you may use host OS only to service and manage physical and virtual OSEs. I have an official point of worldwide product group, that System Center server products, that manage host and it VMs are “service and manage”, so no need to add additional license for VMM (SCCM, SCDPM, SCOM) - it can be run on host OS itself.

3) Have you forgotten that you need a Windows Server for VMware Virtual Center to use HA? Same for Citrix? Where are that costs?

4) VMM 2007 doesn’t support Hyper-V, so no need in it here. VMM 2008 does, it is included in System Center Enterprise Suite and costs 900$ per host. Allows SCCM/SCOM/SCDPM/SCVMM all VMs on host (monitoting, patch management, provisionong, software installation, inventory, backup - for all 6 VMs on that host are included).

Happy to hear any response,

Alex A. Kibkalo
MCS Infrastructure Architect

[Chris Wolf]

Hi Alex,

I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful comment. Let me try and respond to your points one at a time:

1) I'm still hopeful that Microsoft will follow other vendors and allow standard edition licenses to be applied directly to VMs. This makes tracking compliance significantly easier. Also, to your point on the number of licenses needed, I've been under the impression that you can work with the minimum number of standard edition licenses when you deploy VMs in a HA cluster. Page 12 of the "Licensing Microsoft Server Products with Virtual Machine Technologies" white paper states that "...you may reassign software licenses for products in the Microsoft Servers licensing models, but not on a short-term basis. 'Short-term basis' means more frequently than within 90 days of the last assignment (or reassignment). You may reassign software licenses sooner if you retire the server sooner due to permanent hardware failure." Reassignment of licenses on Node 1, for example, can go to node 2 following a hardware failure. So at that point, Node 2 would be properly licensed. If I replace Node 1 due to permanent hardware failure, I can transfer adequate licenses back. Or if I setup the cluster as a true active-passive cluster, I would always be in compliance. I'd assign six licenses to node 1, and if node 1 fails, the licenses could be reassigned to node 2.

3) I may need that license to run SCVMM too. Sure I could run it on the Hyper-V physical host, but I may choose not to. Alternatively, I may run it in one of the existing VMs. You're right. I should have been more clear. To quote Einstein, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." I tried to be as simple as possible, but that's not always easy either.

4) VMM 2008 isn't shipping yet, so I went with the product that was shipping as an example. I wanted to price out the workgroup edition because it is cheaper and thought that it compared better to Virtual Center Foundation Server.

It's funny. I started out trying to do a linear comparison. After receiving strong feedback (before I posted this in the first place), I decided to try and capture my experience of trying to collect the pricing data for this post. It seems that the experience continues... :)