VMware VMs cost how much?
Let's punch the VMware calculator
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VMware reckons its virtual machines (VMs) cost less than rivals because you can stuff more of them in a physical server. It cites a Taneja Group study, just released, to support this claim.
Jeff Boles, a Tanaja analyst, says: "We’ve validated in a number of tests that VMware virtualised servers can run twice as many applications than other hypervisors at equal or even greater performance levels."
In other words, VMware's server density is higher. Boles suggests this means that customers should be "assessing virtualisation on a ‘cost per application’ basis. VM density has a significant impact on cost per application because it is tied to server equipment, software licensing, and management infrastructure complexity. When looking at all of the factors that contribute to total upfront solution cost, VMware’s advanced technology actually makes it less expensive".
Although VMware might cost more on its own than virtualization products such as Microsoft's Hyper-V, you save money because you can consolidate applications onto a smaller number of physical servers.
To capitalise on this study, VMware has unveiled the Cost-Per-Application Calculator to enable an organisation to estimate cost savings from VMware, compared to the competition. This calculator details the costs to virtualize a set number of applications. A user is able to see the savings made by virtualising more applications per physical server.
According to VMware, case studies of VMware’s customer deployments show VMware Infrastructure 3 users typically achieve a 50-70 per cent higher consolidation ratio per server than commodity hypervisors can achieve, resulting in a 20-30 per cent lower cost per-application.
Read the Taneja Group report, entitled "The True Cost of Virtual Server Solutions", here (pdf). ®
COMMENTS
VMWare on x86 not as efficient as LDOM's
How would VMWare perform in these scenarios?
I would love to see 64 OS's running on a 1U high single socket server.
SUN's LDOM's make VMWare look pretty terrible.
http://blogs.sun.com/ash/entry/ultrasparc_t2_launched_today
Or 256 OS's running on a 4U high quad socket Server.
customers should be "assessing virtualisation on a ‘cost per application’ basis.
exactly...
people should be weighting the cost of virtual servers against the cost of physical boxes...
on a cost per application basis.
there is no point in having the latest greatest machine as an intranet server in a company of 20.
and even if you don't have the latest greatest, you still have to power the older machines
that is to say if you have a small company
and you have a
file server,
a domain controller,
an email server
a web server (for external clients to see your business site)
a sharepoint server (for intranet)
a database server (for the sharepoint site)
a proxy server
a terminal services server
a central AV server
a backup server
and they are all separate machines, that are very underused, then you should be considering putting those onto one box.
you won't save anything on licensing. but you will save on disk costs, (as your VMware disks can be better spread around your storage). you will save on machine costs, (because you nly need buy one machine rather than nine) you will save on power and cooling costs -because again 1 machine takes less power than nine.
you'll also make a saving on space costs as well...
I mean, if you assume that you;re working in an office where those are your internal corporate servers, then you have development servers, test servers etc that are still needed, that could be the difference between needing one rack, or two rack in your server room.
No love for Containers?
I have a feeling Zones on Solaris would win any virtual machine density competition.
Just don't try to patch the damn things.
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