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Hyper-V Server 2012 Takes On ESXi 5.0
Microsoft appears to be pitting Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 against VMware ESXi 5.0 for hypervisor superiority, with a bevy of new features that include Hyper-V being capable of to scaling up to higher physical and virtual memory limits. Microsoft Principal Program Manager Jeff Woolsey provided details during his afternoon presentations at the Microsoft TechEd conference taking place in Orlando, Fla. this week.
In one of the slides shown during Woolsey's presentation was the quote "Hyper-V will give VMware a run for their money," then a comparison of features between the upcoming Hyper-V to the current VMware ESXi 5.0.
First off, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 will be able to take advantage of 4TB of memory per host RAM (the free version of ESXi scales up to 32GB), and 1 TB of VM memory. It will also be able to scale up to 64 virtual processors per VM (ESXi, four virtual CPUs per VM).
Hyper-V 2012 will also include a number of features that have been known for the past several months but confirmed during the presentation: Live Storage Migration, Shared-Nothing Live Migration, and Storage Spaces.
Another feature, Hyper-V Replica, was announced a few weeks ago but has been in the works for nearly a year. Hyper-V Replica is an asynchronous replication service can be used where a SAN might be overkill and a budget buster, mainly in a branch office scenario or SMBs.
Microsoft also announced general beta availability of its Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter. MVMC allows wholesale conversion of VMware VMs -- virtual disks and memory and virtual processor configurations -- directly to Hyper-V.
Availability of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 is expected around the same time as Windows Server 2012.
About the Author
Michael Domingo has held several positions at 1105 Media, and is currently the editor in chief of Visual Studio Magazine.