Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings

So here's my latest dilemma. I live in SharePoint therefore I live in a virtual environment. I've been using Microsoft's virtualization products (VirtualPC & Virtual Server) for a few years now, but over time I've seen people swear over VMWare's products compared to Microsoft's.

Recently VMWare released Workstation 6 and plenty of folks are raving about its features including things like USB 2 support, multi monitors, advanced networking support, snapshots and support for 64 bit systems. People say the performance blows Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 away, but they just SAY it, they don't prove it. The downside, it's $189 for those of us on Windows based systems. Then you've got their free Server product.

So, I'm tempted to give VMWare a shot. Hey, Workstation has a 30-day trial. I liked what I saw from Todd's personal tests in his blog post last year when MOSS was still in beta. While talking to my bud Sahil tonight on IM, he made a great point I fully agree with: I bet most MSFT developers haven't even tried anything except Microsoft's virtualization products. True... then again, they are free... why would you want to pay $189 for something when you've got a free equivalent?

There's one thing that I just can't get answered... will it work under my situation?

I work on two different machines. When working in my home office, I work off my server. Today, that means I work from virtual machines running Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2. This runs on top of Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 SP2 with a dual code AMD x64 chip (each core @ 2Ghz), 4GB RAM, and a dedicated HDD just for my VM's... one of those beautiful Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptor drives. When I go remote, teach, or present, I copy my VM hard drives over to my x32 laptop running Microsoft VirtualPC 2007 on Vista Ultimate which has one of those 2Ghz Centrino Core Duos, a separate 7200RPM drive for virtual machines, and 4GB of RAM (only 3.25GB available to the OS... typical hardware limitations). This setup runs just fine. Why change? Because if I can squeeze out more performance, I'm all for it (and some of the features Workstation has are quite appealing)!

So... can you do the same with VMWare? Can you run VMWare Server (not ESX) on one box and copy the VM's over to run off VMWare Workstation? OK, assuming you can...

What do you think? Let's try some open feedback here which I'll aggregate it as a follow up post. What do you like more... VMWare or Microsoft's virtual products? What about performance? Anyone seen some good 3rd party comparisons? It's too bad neither company (EMC which owns VMWare & Microsoft) does a poor job of selling their product when comparing it to their competition. Same for third party sites like CNET or eWeek... not a single comparison! Arg.

So... what do you like more and WHY? Please, don't post some meaningless "Virtual Server doesn't work on Vista" or "Virtual PC sucks"... they won't get approved. Let's have a REAL discussion!

Technorati tags: microsoft, vmware, virtual pc, virtual server, workstation 6

posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 9:01 PM

Feedback

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/22/2007 9:58 PM Jigar Mehta

I have tried both Virtual PC and VMWare; as far as performance goes, i have not found any difference there. And regarding GUI also, I would say, I love Virtual PC GUI, its totally simple and cool.

Though, I liked VMWare also, but if somebody says, VMWare is better than Virtual PC and made insane appeals like the one here,
http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-5-Hey_MSFT_Developer,_have_you_tried_VMWare_yet.aspx

I would say, there is nothing more in VMWare than Virtual PC. I would never pay something when I get similar thing for free.. Its the fact guys, we all have to accept it.

And one should not compare this with that of IE-Netscape war!! That says, something is burning.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/22/2007 11:50 PM Gavin Adams

Hi Andrew,
I'm on a project to proof of concept MOSS2007 for our organisation. Related to this project is upgrading to exchange2007.

For me I started off with MS Virtual Server 2005 R2, but I could not create 64bit guest O/S's.
And that is the big clincher. So I use VMware server.
The other feature that I like in VMware server is that I can assign upto 2 processors for each guest.

FYI, The server I run this on is a dell 2950, dual Quad core cpu's, 16GB ram, 6 x 146GB 15K rpm drives, (2 x 146 raid1 for o/s, 4 x 146 raid5 for the virtual drives). runs windows server 2003 standard 64bit. (BTW we call this server "the beast", even shows that on the dell LCD front panel!)

With this server I'm running about 10 vm's, 8 server & 2 workstations and it still has room to fit others in.

So until microsoft release a VM product that will support 64bit guests I'm sticking with vmware.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 2:03 AM Jaap steinvoorte

I've also tried both VPC 2007, VS 2005 R2 VMWare WS and VMWare server. One of the things I found out is that with VPC, yu've got to run 2 or more VM's to get control over the hardware virtualization for the processor. I couldn't select 1 processor when running 1 VM on VPC 2007. On Win 2003 I use VS 2005 R2, on Windows Vista Ultimate I use VMWare WS 6, both machines are X64, but I had a lot of problems with VPC 2007 and VS 2005 R2 on Windows Vista ultimate. Which one do I prefer? Neither of them, VMWare or Microsoft, I don't care, as long as it works, and fast.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 2:51 AM Miha Markic

VMWare workstation 6.0 (and even earlier versions) is magnitudes better compared to Virtual PC. Just take for example snapshot management, USB 2.0 support and debugging support.
Virtual PC was a competitor to Workstation at the time MS bought it. After that Virtual PC hasn't seen any development (MS basically killed the development, but hey, they replaced the logo) while Workstation evolved rapidly.
I wouldn't swap Workstation for Virtual PC even if they pay me.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 5:11 AM Spence

The killer feature in VMWare WS 6 is snapshotting - *NOT* performance. Also the networking is very good and a breeze to use.

Now don't get me wrong, it is a bit quicker, but not significantly, than VPC. It's a lot better than Virtual Server, but that is a totally different kettle of fish anyways (background tasking and so forth).

All the rubbish out there about not getting VPC working on Vista/wireless etc is just problems between keyboards and chairs.

So performance wise there are small improvements - this also changes how you tweak the VMs themselves. If you have multiple VMs running again there is a noticeable improvement.

But the real reason to move is snapshotting - this is extremely flexible and very useful for saving boxes etc.

Networking is very easy to use - and doesn't require a ton of Loopbacks (VMW installs it's own equivs) - very useful for simulating farm environments.

You lose some features in VPC - like drag and drop copy - but gain a few!

Now as to your question - yes you can slap the VMs on a portable drive and use them between different computers.

However, if you have an investment in MS - you will need to convert your VHDs - VMW has a utility built in to do this. But this is something to consider before moving wholesale to VMW bearing in mind that MS may indeed surprise us with a killer virtulaisation product next year.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 6:22 AM Bil Simser

You get what you pay for. If all you're concerned about is cost, then VPC is for you. If you want the additional features (better snapshotting, better parent/child relationships) then put out the $200 bucks for a copy. It's cheap and a rounding error for anyone. There was a performance comparision which resulted in about an hour and a half savings over the course of a month, but I don't consider that to be worthy of making a decision point. THe real cost is the context switching between work which you'll get with any product. Bottom line, buy it and keep it around and use whatever you prefer. You'll probably be more productive with VMWare with it's better features, but it's a losing battle. VPC will come out with something better then VMW the VPC etc. You'll always be playing catchup so my advice, get both and you can't go wrong.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 8:30 AM jjardine

I actually just switched over to working with VMWare and like it alot. The only thing I have found more complicated is the Networking because it seems like there are more options. As far as performance, I have had much better performance running Vista under vmWare than under VPC2007. A co-worker uses VPC2007 with vista and it took him like 2 hours to install Office 2007. My VMware took 9 minutes. I found that VPC2007 doesn't handle background processing that well. If the focus is not on the window it doesn't get much processor. Maybe they have fixed this and if so, let me know.
I also wanted to be able to run Ubuntu and VPC doesn't support it. I personally have just seen better performance with the vmware and that is why I was willing to purchase after my trial. I guess one's decision is really based on their own experiences with the two products.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 9:42 AM Becky I.

I have used MS VPC for the past two years. Over time I have noticed that it degrades in performance when working with Sharepoint. I have never used VMWare and never really had the option. My clients and the consulting firm that I work for only use VPC. I am noticing there is a free trial of a conversion tool and the vmplayer is free has anyone actually experimented with the conversion tool on a VPC? I just created a MOSS 2007 environment on VPC 2007 and I would be willing to attempt a conversion to test the difference.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 9:52 AM Spence

correction: VMW6 does have drag and drop copy.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/23/2007 8:52 PM Sahil Malik

Andrew - let me guess, you are just as you were at the beginning of this post.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/24/2007 3:31 AM Nenad Banovic

As U know, Todd Baginski have wrote some interesting article "MOSS 2007 B2TR Virtual Development Environments. To MS or VM: That is the question".
Here is the link:
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tbaginski/archive/2006/09/20/12461.aspx

He came to interesting benchmark times for WM & MS technology.
And his conclusion was: "It’s easy to see that VMWare wins the battle in the MOSS 2007 virtual development image benchmark battle. "

What have U meant with your comment "Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings", ?

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/24/2007 7:16 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Sahil-
Yup... no compelling reason to switch unfortunately.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/24/2007 5:00 PM Sahil Malik

Okay if VMWare workstation 6.0 was free - would you switch then?

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/24/2007 5:08 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Sahil-
Sure would make it more paletable... as long as I can move VM's between their server & Workstation product, that would give me (1) slightly better performance and (2) more features than what I have today!

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/24/2007 6:13 PM Config

First of all, you are comparing apples to oranges here. If money is your concern, then VMware Workstation should be left out of this discussion if you want to compare similar *free* product solutions.

That being said, VMware's free products have 64-bit guest OS support, USB support, audio support, snapshot support (although a limited number of snapshots), and many more features that VPC just doesn't have. As far as I can tell, the current release of VMware Server is similar to Workstation 5.5 release, but with limited and/or less feature support, obviously because it's *free*. Of course it doesn't have any of the new upgrades/features 6.0 has... yet, but I'm guessing it will eventually.

And to answer your main question; yes, you can move your virtual machines around from computer to computer or from product to product. VMware does a great job of making their virtual machines portable and transferable in this manner, and you can even import from other non-VMware products as others have stated.

One example of cool stuff I've done with VMware products is: Keep a virtual machine stored on a USB key and use it FROM the USB key anywhere I go (meaning I don't need to copy the VM to and from the USB key everytime I want to use it). Here's the scenario: I run Workstation at home, and keep a copy of the *free* VMware Player on the USB key along with my VM and install/use Player on the host computer that I want to work from. Seriously, HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!

Oh, and one thing I don't see mentioned here is that VPC is 2D only (limited because of the video device they are simulating: S3 Trio32/64, which is a product from ~1995!). On the other hand, VMware has experimental support for 3D and most DX8 and older games run without much issue at all. Yeah, DX8 is still old, but it's better then the nothing that VPC has to offer.

And as a last comment, you should really invistigate VMware Workstation further, it's rife with all sorts of features and cool stuff that's not listed here, which is why it actually costs money. One sweet new feature to Workstation 6.0 that's not mentioned here is the "Record" and "Playback" feature. It's great for demos/presentations, and even debugging/troubleshooting. Record it, then play it back at your presentation/meeting/whatever and it will run/perform/fail/crash exactly like you wanted it to, every single time.

I hope that was some useful info for ya.
-cfg

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/24/2007 9:49 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Config-
Now this is the best feedback I've had yet (no offense to the other commenters). So, I could easily copy a machine from my VMWare Server to VMWare Workstation 6.0 (understanding I'd have to likely shut it down and not have a "saved state" or anything like that)... THAT was a deal breaker for me. I do like the idea of the record and playback. I plan to test VMW Server & Workstation v6 once I wrap up two big milestones (TechEd... not doing ~anything~ to screw up my machines anytime before that... esp with big demos coming & something else in early July). I do greatly appreciate the feedback, and will give it a try!

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/25/2007 12:59 PM Becky I

I actually ended up converting my VPC 2007 VMC to VMWare Workstation 5.5 and I am noticing less problems. The Sharepoint Sites Load slightly faster and my computer is less bogged down, so I can switch to the main computer. Personally it feels more stable running MOSS 2007 with SQL in the same machine. I am not sure what the performance would be like if I was running a separate VPC for SQL. I am going to go out and a limb and assume it's a lot nicer. If you really want to do a test I would download VMWare Server and VMWare Converter. Convert a VPC with MOSS 2007 and see if you like the way the VMWare version runs vs. the VPC 2007 version. The only thing you really have to lose is time. When you are converting you could work on other stuff. It took maybe 15 minutes at most to convert the VPC. Good luck.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/25/2007 10:18 PM John Way

Has anyone run into the problem with VPC where you run out of disk space and need to create a new virtual disk and transfer the data from the old disk to the new disk?? Does VMWARE offer any better solution? (or does VPC have a better solution that I missed?)

Thanks,
John

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/26/2007 12:54 AM Sahil Malik

John - haven't tried exactly that, but one thing I have done is to add a new HDD dynamically without bringing the virtual machine down. That sorta helped :)

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/28/2007 2:23 PM Estyn

We've used a 3rd party VHD resizing utility from xtralogic. It allows us to increase the size of a fixed size vhd. Not sure if that will help in your situation, but it's helped me out a few times.

As for performance i've found VMWare to be slightly faster, although with proper tuning (use SCSI on your VMs) virtual server can be nearly as fast.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/29/2007 9:17 AM Becky I

John - you can also run the pre-compactor and compact the VPC, then create a differential disk. It helps a lot if you create the VPC and hard disk, then make the hard disk read only and create a differential disk. I ran into the same problem a while back.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/1/2008 11:02 AM MOSS-Jedi

If you really know how to use VMware it is better than VPC. The ability to diable memory page trimming, really bumps performance. The 64 bit thing, and the 2x processor thing.

I run openSuse with the FREE Vmware gsx server on top of it.... So the only cost is the hardware. And if you know how to install Suse, you can basicly mimick the ESX product by building a "no frills" suse server with just VMware GSX installed. You get almost the same thing....

HP ML370 2x quad core 3.0ghz, 16gb ram, 8x 146GB 10k RPM SAS drives.

Also, I can take my VMware virtual machines and P2V (or V2V) them from my POC server up to development ESX enviroment(if need dictates) Cant do that with VPC!!

And there is NOTHING that MS has that even compares to the ESX product, so what not use something that will leave your VMs compatible with the highed product(if you are using ESX)

Just my 2 cents.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/1/2008 11:10 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

MOSS-Jedi-
You're preaching to the choir man... I'm completely sold on VMWare over all Microsoft offerings... including the stuff in Windows 2008.

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/28/2008 5:37 AM Kenny Kennington

No-one has mentioned Sun's virtualbox. This is free, as well as Virtual PC. Has snapshot and support for USB 2.0 devices, something I am speaking to Microsoft about in the next couple of days. Much more flexible that VPC, which I have been using for a good few years now. I was using VMware, as our infrastructure is virtualized on ESX server, but am more impressed with Virtual Box. Installing Ubuntu 8.04 was a breeze compared to VPC. Just thought I would add to the mix!

# Any virtualization update 11/3/2008 2:13 PM David Frette

Hey Andrew -

Any chance you will be updating us on what you're running and how well it's working for you?

David

# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 11/19/2008 9:29 PM Jim

I have used Virtual Server R2, Virtual PC 2004, 2007 and VMWare Server and they all were okay.
But recently, I tried VirtualbBox on Vista 64 host (Q9300 Quad core, 6GB RAM, 750 GB Sata II drive, 256M ATI graphics card) Dell Inspiron 530 (paid $539 + tax + shipping from Dell outlet site) and I love it. Virtual box works great for me, it has USB support, snapshot option, and other usual stuff. It also has a seamless mode in addition to fullscreen mode that I like a lot. And it is lightweight compared to VMWare server 2 bloat. I tried 3 Windows 2003 VMs (love the MSDN subscription!) and one Ubuntu VM running simultaneously and they work great. I just need a 10,000 rpm drive now.
To make a copy of a VM in Virtualbox requres a simple commandline command like
"VBoxManage clonevdi "C:\SourceVM.vdi" "D:\DestinationVM.vdi" that you could probably put in a .bat file

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# re: Microsoft's virtualization products vs. VMWare's offerings 5/14/2009 10:52 AM Matt Milner

To the comment about disk management. VMWare 6.5 (and possibly earlier versions) comes with a command line tool. You can simply tell it how big you want your hard drive to get and it will grow it for you. Then you go into the Windows guest OS and add that to your partition. LOVE this feature.

I'd agree with most of the commentors on this list. If you want free, sure VPC is fine. But if you want a product where the team is actually innovating (I mean these guys have a plug-in for Visual Studio that lets you automatically debug an app that is running in a VM - where is the MS equivalent?) and providing features that you can use to REALLY test out and build multiple systems, VM Ware is hands down better.
Hyper-V is getting there on the server side, but I always prefer VMWare on the desktop for my development VMs.

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