| Product | Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 | VMware GSX Virtual Server 3 | ||
| Vendor | Microsoft | VMware | ||
| Phone | 13 20 58 | +1 650 475 5000 (e-mail apacsales@vmware.com) |
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| Web | www.microsoft.com | www.vmware.com | ||
| Supprt | Variety of support contracts available | Variety of support contracts available; support contract is mandatory with product purchase | ||
| Host System | ||||
| Operating system requirements (eg Windows 2003 Server) | Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter Edition; Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard or Premium Edition; Windows XP Professional (for non-production use only) | Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise, Web; Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server (SP3+); Red Hat Linux, Enterprise Linux; SuSE Linux, Linux Enterprise Server; Mandrake Linux; Turbolinux Server 7.0, 8.0, Workstation 8.0 | ||
| Minimum CPU requirements | N/A | 733MHz or faster compatible x86 processor | ||
| Maximum CPUs supported | Standard Edition 4, Enterprise Edition 32 | 32 | ||
| Minimum memory | 256MB (additional memory needed for each guest OS) | 512MB | ||
| Disk space required | 2GB available space | 130MB on Windows hosts and 20MB on Linux hosts | ||
| Virtual Machines | ||||
| Price | Pricing TBA in September | From US$2500 for 2-CPU hosts; per-CPU pricing model | ||
| Guest operating systems supported | Microsoft will support Windows Server 2003, Standard, Enterprise, Web, Small Business; Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server; Windows NT Server 4.0 SP6a; Virtual Server can alsi run DOS, Windows 3.1/95/98/Me/NT/XP/2000/2003, Linux, Unix, Novell NetWare, IBM OS/2, etc | Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Web, Standard, Enterprise, Small Business; Windows XP Professional, Home; Windows 2000 Professional, Server, Advanced Server; Windows NT 4.0 Server SP 6a; Windows 3.1/95/98/Me; MS-DOS; Mandrake Linux; Red Hat Linux and Enterprise Linux; SuSE Linux and Linux Enterprise Server 7/8; Turbolinux Server 7.0, 8.0, Workstation 8.0; Novell NetWare 4.2, 5.1, 6.0, 6.5; FreeBSD 4.0-4.6.2, 4.8, 4.9, 5.0, 5.2; Solaris 9, 10 x86 Platform Edition (experimental support); Windows Longhorn (experimental support) | ||
| Maximum VMs | 64 (running concurrently) | 64 (running concurrently) | ||
| Hardware environment | ||||
| Disk controllers emulated | Adaptec 7870 SCSI controller with 4 virtual SCSI buses | Mylex (BusLogic) BT-958 compatible host bus adaptor, LSI Logic Ultra160 LSI53C10xx SCSI controller | ||
| Graphics environment emulated | S3 Trio64, 4MB VRAM | VMware SVGA virtual display adaptor (drivers for all supported guest OSes included) | ||
| Pass-through support from host for I/O devices | Two 1.44-MB floppy drives as host drives or images, two serial ports, one printer port, keyboard, mouse, CMOS, PIC, DMA | Floppy and optical (CD-RW etc) host drives or ISO images, SCSI-attached tape, disk, scanner and other devices | ||
| Support for USB ports | USB input hardware such as keyboard and pointing devices | Two-port USB 1.1 UHCI controller for each VM that can pass through to any USB host port | ||
| How are resources allocated? | Weight- and constraint-based CPU resource allocation; dynamically expanding virtual hard disks; memory resizing with reboot | Static allocation of memory to each virtual machine; can be used with Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager, Aurema ARMtech, and HP RPM for control of CPU resource allocations | ||
| Standby or snapshot support | Save State -- saves the virtual hardware context to disk and stops virtual machine execution | Virtual machine suspend/resume -- saves the memory, processor,
and display state in a disk file and frees any resources consumed Snapshot -- saves a point-in-time image of a virtual machine whether powered on or stopped |
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| Management software | ||||
| Cost of mangement software | TBA | VirtualCenter Management Server US$5000, VirtualCenter Agents US$300 per managed CPU | ||
| VM cloning and templates | Yes | Yes | ||
| Customisation of templates | Yes | New IP addresses, UIDs, SIDs, hosthames and domain/workgroup membership | ||
| Performance monitoring | CPU, RAM, and heartbeat counters, which integrate with host management solutions | CPU usage, network I/O, disk I/O, memory usage; can monitor at farm, group, host, VM group and individual VM levels | ||
| Security features | SSL encryption; Active Directory and Kerberos authentication; remote access via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or Terminal Services (if enabled on guest OS) | Remote access via VMware Virtual Machine Console and VMware Management Interface is secured with SSL; access to VMs is controlled by user account privileges managed in the host OS | ||
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Your excellent web article refers to your test results which i can't find a link to anywhere in the article.
As the test results are referenced as being "on on page 86, I guess this is an oversight.
Could you provide the URL to the test results?
Many thanks,
Ravi cabral