Microsoft releases VMware-eater
All your VMDKs are belong to Windows Server thanks to free converter
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
One of the more interesting moments at this year's VMworld keynote saw outgoing CEO Paul Maritz proclaim, in an unusual-for-him strident tone, that one cannot beat Microsoft on price. One beats Microsoft on value, he concluded, before implying that VMware will do that blindfolded and with one arm tied behind its back.
The enthusiastic VMworld audience agreed, and made plenty of noise to show it.
Not everyone shares Maritz's opinion: our review of Windows Server 2012, for example, declared Hyper-V “greatly improved”. And let's not forget the graveyard filled with corpses of companies whose standalone products became mere features in Windows Server.
Microsoft doubtless hopes VMware will one day push up daisies in a nearby plot, and to hasten the day on which it does so has released the prosaically-named Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVNC).
Redmond bills the tool as capable of converting a VMware virtual machine or virtual disk into their Hyper-V equivalents with a Wizard and just five screens worth of clicks.
There's also a “MVMC Plug-in for VMware vSphere Client” which fiendishly “Extends the vSphere Client context menu to make it easier to convert the VMware-based virtual machine to a Hyper-V-based virtual machine.” Importantly, the new tool can run without the need for previous Hyper-V or System Centre installations. Even Windows 7 users can put it to work.
Importing virtual machines is not an arcane trick: even the free VirtualBox tool can suck in a VMware VMDK and spit it out as a Open Virtualization Format contraption. Yet if nothing else, Microsoft's new release (available here) shows just how serious Redmond is about making inroads into the virtualisation market.
And when Microsoft gets that serious about something, it very often gets what it wants. ®
COMMENTS
licensing costs.
Unless you are running Linux/BSD or something similar on your VMs, you're most likely going to have to license them with WIndows anyway.
(and looking at costs.. my last quote was almost 50% less for a Hyper-V solution compared to a VMware Enterprise cluster, with the same hardware, where the Hyper-V cluster also covered Windows license costs for all VM's)
I'm a happy VMWare user, but on costs they are not going to win this race.
Given the Windows server 2012 licensing scheme and costs Hyper-V neesd to be a hell of a lot better than vSphere to get people to switch; not just about as good.
No library problems
"If I link my own code against the Windows libraries using Microsoft headers I can distribute it under what ever license I wish. If I distribute code linked against fairly vital libraries for the Linux OS I am more restricted."
Absolutely false, and I have no idea where you got this idea from. I went around trying to find GPL'ed libraries. What did I find? GNU Readline (which, in fact was switched to GPL specifically to try to prevent commercial software from using it. Bleh.) That's it! The rest are LGPL (which SPECIFICALLY was designed to permit linking against the LGPL'ed software without affecting your license at all), or other licenses (MPL or the like) that are even more permissive than LGPL.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
