Weve just updated the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator to help customers see the true Total Cost of Ownership differences between VMware and Microsoft. Its easy to use just enter the basic parameters for your virtual infrastructure or private cloud environment, such as the number of VMs, type of servers and storage, and the product edition or features you need. The calculator will generate a complete TCO analysis that includes all the necessary elements of capital and operational expenses.

We created the TCO Comparison Calculator after hearing from existing and prospective VMware customers who were being told that alternative solutions based on Hyper-V would be much less expensive, or even free. The calculator totals cost elements that our competition leaves out of their oversimplified comparisons, such as: the system administrator labor costs to operate the environment (the largest component of TCO and one that independent testing shows to be much lower for VMware); effects of VM density (where VMware has an advantage according to analysts like Gartner); 247 phone support; and the need for third-party software to fill feature gaps.

When all those cost elements are combined, the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator shows that VMware solutions, ranging from a small business virtual infrastructure built with vSphere Essentials to a full-featured large enterprise private cloud based on vCloud Suite Enterprise, have the lowest TCO often by substantial margins.

When we updated the calculator, we saw that the VMware TCO advantage increased for some important reasons.

Another important enhancement weve made to the calculator is local currency support. Users can select USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, or JPY and the calculator will apply VMware and Microsoft list prices from those geographies.

This example from the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator shows that the 3-year TCO for a 500-VM environment built with vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus will be 33% less than a comparable solution based on Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.

Our customers in the trenches running enterprise virtual infrastructures often tell us they know VMware offers the best and most cost effective solution, but they need help making the case for selecting VMware with purchasing managers or CFOs that have heard from other vendors claiming to be less expensive. If you find yourself in a similar position, use the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator to arm yourself with solid proof that VMware provides the lowest total costs.

While the operating assumption is that the OpenStack framework works best on open source components such as KVM, a just completed study by Principled Technologies and commissioned by VMware showed otherwise. Tests showed remarkably higher performance and substantially reduced costs when using OpenStack with VMware technology including vSphere when compared to OpenStack with Red Hat components.

In the study, OpenStack services were used to provision and manage the test configurations. The study equipment was identical except when published recommendations mandated a change. The test results showed:

The study recognized two trends in enterprise computing:

VMware innovations are helping customers get enterprise-class performance when exploring the OpenStack framework as a platform for large-scale application deployment. Among these innovations, the study showed that VMware Virtual SAN played an important role in providing performance advantages. Among the most significant findings related to VMware Virtual SAN, the study noted:

For the following tables, please refer to the full study for the complete test methodology and equipment setup.

Figure 1: The amount of YCSB (Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark) OPS achieved by the two solutions. Higher numbers are better.

Figure 2: The amount of IOPS achieved by the two solutions. Higher numbers are better. The workload was 70/30 R/W mix, random, and 4K block size.

Cost Comparison

The study showed that running OpenStack on VMware components required less hardware. Using VMware vSphere with Virtual SAN also lowered software costs. In total the study showed the 3 year costs were 26 percent lower. Because each OpenStack deployment and environment is different and support engagements vary widely from installation to installation, the costs of implementing the OpenStack framework were not included for either the VMware or the Red Hat platform.

Figure 3: Projected three-year costs for the two solutions. Lower numbers are better.

The study concludes:

In our testing, the VMware vSphere with Virtual SAN solution performed better than the Red Hat Storage solution in both real world and raw performance testing by providing 53 percent more database OPS and 159 percent more IOPS. In addition, the vSphere with Virtual SAN solution can occupy less datacenter space, which can result in lower costs associated with density. A three-year cost projection for the two solutions showed that VMware vSphere with Virtual SAN could save your business up to 26 percent in hardware and software costs when compared to the Red Hat Storage solution we tested.

As an enterprise customer, you have choices when it comes to implementing an OpenStack framework. Your selections will impact the performance and overall cost of your scale out infrastructure. With this study, VMware has demonstrated significant performance gains and cost savings in an OpenStack environment.

Read the full study here.

Amazon recently launched a new version of their Total Cost of Ownerships (TCO) Calculator that compares VMware on-premises solutions to Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings. Our many customers choose us as their infrastructure platform and stay with us because we provide the best value. The Amazon calculator tries to create a different perception by using biased and inaccurate assumptions.

Stacking the DeckObviously

Amazon claims their calculator provides an apples-to-apples comparison, but in reality, it doesnt come close to doing so. Their calculator contains biased assumptions regarding VMwares TCO, which inflate the costs of an on-premises cloud and underestimate the true costs of using a public cloud solution.

For instance, Amazons calculator:

Another Take on VMware vs. AWS TCO:VMwares Own TCO Calculations

We decided to take a look at how costs might look using our math. The following is a VMware version of the TCO comparison against AWS. It compares costs associated with running conventional workloads on AWS and VMware infrastructure.

Conventional Workloads TCO Comparison

In a separate VMware TCO comparison calculation for a 100 VM environment, VMware TCO is $394K compared to AWSs $487K over a four-year period. This represents a 21% cost savings when choosing VMware.

This comparison uses the following 100 VMs for AWS:

Note that for this sample environment, the calculations assumed licenses for vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM) Standard, which offer more features and functionality than that of AWS and contain the features a customer truly needs for this scale environment. There are also additional AWS fees for things such as: data transfer, IP addresses, service monitoring, CloudWatch, etc. which are not captured in this TCO, but are a necessary part of running an application on AWS.

Conclusion

Clearly the AWS TCO Calculator does not represent a fair, apples-to-apples portrayal of the costs of an on-premises solution. Amazons calculator is underestimating AWS costs and overstating VMware costs. The costs of AWS instances are not the only factor to consider when choosing where to host workloads. Designing for AWS requires developer teams to significantly redesign their applications to account for the limitations and the quality of AWS infrastructure. With VMware, you have access to cost-effective, highly automated, secure infrastructure with a level of control and quality that provides superior value to IT and business units.

With the addition of vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS), VMware now offers customers a public cloud option with faster time to value and the ability to add or reduce capacity dynamically through the use of hybrid, off-premises data centers. The combination of on-premises vSphere or vCloud Suite infrastructure with cloud-based infrastructure hosted on vCloud Hybrid Services or a vCloud Powered partner clearly provides the best hybrid cloud experience. With infrastructure running on a common technology platform (vSphere) and integrations with existing tools like vCenter, vCenter Operations, and vCloud Automation Center, VMware customers get all the benefits of a true hybrid cloud.

Edit: An earlier version of this post claimed that the VMware TCO was over a three-year time period. The correct time horizon of the VMware TCO is four years. The post has been updated to reflect this change.

The release of VMwares vSphere Data Protection 5.5 (VDP) seems to have caused a stir in the virtual backup industry. It appears we have hit a soft spot with some of the other vendors offering backup solutions for vSphere and have seen some confusing messaging coming from our partners/competitors in this market. While were certainly proud of the technology partner ecosystem built around VMware solutions I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on vSphere Data Protection.

Well dive in to each of these a little bit to get to the truth about vSphere Data Protection.

Some vendors claim they require no agents to do vSphere backups, even for application aware backups of Exchange, MS SQL, and SharePoint, whereas VDP Advanced does require agents for these applications.

The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of VMs do not require agents because of the way our vSphere data protection APIs work. This is the case for VDP and every other vSphere certified backup solution. But, a proper application consistent backup of Exchange, MS SQL, SharePoint and other application does require an agent, even for vendors like Veeam. Need proof? Heres a quote from page 235 of the Veeam Backup & Replication Version 7.0 User Guide:

Call me crazy, but a runtime process injected on a VM via admin credentials to do indexing and other activities on behalf of another server is the very definition of an agent. The biggest difference between VDP and Veeams agent approach is that VDPs agents are a one-time install via wizard, whereas Veeams agents are installed and uninstalled each and every time a backup job runs.

And dont forget: our VDP Advanced agents also run on physical servers so you can backup your entire Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint environment with VDP Advanced.

First things first, it really doesnt matter which backup system you choose your backup files are useless without the backup servers. Further, if youve lost your backup infrastructure Id say the odds are good youve lost other critical parts of your infrastructure as well. In cases like this, perhaps backups arent the best option for getting up and running. You might want a disaster recovery solution like our Site Recovery Manager or vCloud Hybrid Service Disaster Recovery for this situation.

But what about smaller, localized issues? What if your backup server gets wiped out? First and foremost Id recommend you use a product that includes backup replication so you always have 2nd and 3rd copies of your backups, hopefully on-site and off-site. With VDP Advanced your backups could be replicated directly to another VDP Advanced virtual appliance so you could immediately restore from the 2nd appliance no additional configuration or setup needed. (Even if vCenter is down!)

So what happens if you have your backup files but your backup server is gone? Nothing! At least not until you re-install the backup server and database and maybe some proxies and repositories so that you can actually use those files, stealing precious minutes or hours from your recovery time objective.

Even if youre using our basic version of VDP, which is included with most versions of vSphere and which does not have built-in replication, keep in mind that everything you need to protect your backups the backup files, database, everything! is contained within a single VM. Simply copy the VM to secondary storage periodically to avoid a single point of failure.

VDP Advanced includes highly efficient, secure backup data replication across any link at no additional cost. How do we do it and why dont you see some special WAN accelerator configuration inside VDP Advanced? VDP Advanced is based on EMC Avamar and uses the same enterprise-class deduplication algorithm and replication engine as Avamar. What this means to you is VDP does all the required deduplication as soon as the backups are created, across all backups stored on the appliance. No additional steps are needed to further optimize the data for WAN transfers. Plus you get the added benefit of using less storage for the primary backups so you save money on your overall backup solution!

Instant Recovery is the hot marketing item in the backup world (its kind of a boring world). Strategies for restoring data quickly is a topic Id like to explore further in a more detailed article so we can look at how wed approach some common scenarios with VDP. For now I want to say this about instant recovery: the feature looks good in the brochure, but instant recovery techniques from nearly every vendor end up with VMs that are pinned to a single host, running from your backup storage, with IO shuttled through some sort of proxy VM. Add it all up and youre left with a significant performance and usability hit to the recovered VMs. If you later decide to move that VM from backup storage to production, it often requires multiple steps to move and rehydrate the VMDKs and then rebuild them from the delta disks that were written while the instant VM ran.

In contrast, VDP Advanced can utilize Changed Block Tracking to restore a VM directly on full production storage. This means only the blocks that have changed since the selected restore point will be restored. As a result, restore times can be dramatically reduced up to 6X versus traditional restore methods according to the VDP Advanced study performed by ESG Labs.

This myth is just plain wrong. VDP Advanced does include automated backup verification. And were not just talking about verifying a file checksum. A VDP backup verification job can be created to automatically restore and verify the full functionality of a VM on a scheduled basis, e.g., once per week. Results of the backup verification jobs are reported in the VDP Advanced user interface and email reports so that administrators have the utmost confidence that important VMs can definitely be restored when needed.

Weve designed VDP and VDP Advanced to offer a great value to our customers, who often struggle to setup a good backup system and cannot afford the high price of some of the enterprise backup solutions. We think VDP excels in many areas but especially with features like:

As I said at the start, were very proud of the ecosystem of partners weve built around vSphere, even those we compete with at times. While we at VMware focus on building products that are better together we realize that no single product will fit every customers needs and at the end of the day its you the customer who has to navigate the maze of features and jargon and figure out the solution thats best for you. I hope this article makes that task a little bit easier.

If youve had a chance to use the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator, you know that it factors in all the elements of a proper Total Cost of Ownership analysis to compare the true cost of building a virtual infrastructure on our vSphere and vSphere with Operations Management products to the cost of building a similar infrastructure on Microsofts Cloud OS their name for Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center. [VMware has an even more detailed ROI/TCO Calculator to show the financial savings of virtualization and private cloud vs. physical infrastructure.]

The results are eye-opening for many users who have seen the comparisons from our competitors that consider only the Windows operating system and virtualization software license costs. Including all the TCO elements shown above makes it very clear that the cost of virtualization software is just a small part of the overall TCO for a virtualized infrastructure.

Weve just updated the TCO Comparison Calculator with two important new features:

There are three key cost elements that work strongly in VMwares favor that show up in the calculator results:

A quick example from the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator shows just how much of an impact those VMware cost savings have. This example shows the two-year TCO for an infrastructure of 1,000 VMs on vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus (our highest edition) vs. Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center.

You can see that VMware delivers 30% lower TCO from its lower OpEx costs and features that preclude the need for third-party add-ons.

Heres an example showing that the two-year TCO for upgrading a 1000-VM vSphere Enterprise environment to our full-featured vCloud Suite Enterprise platform comes in 36% less than if that sameinfrastructure were migrated to Microsofts Cloud OS.

Whether youre new to virtualization and considering a greenfield server consolidation project or a long-time vSphere user weighing your options for a private cloud upgrade, give the VMware TCO Comparison Calculator a try youll see that you can get the best for less.

There is much rhetoric these days about cloud wars. Beyond the rhetoric, the hype is there for a reason: the value of hybrid cloud environments is becoming real, and the market opportunity even more real. We are proud to serve our customers as a leading provider of virtualization software and cloud infrastructure. And were equally proud of what our customers are achieving with VMware as a partner.

You can take a break from the hype cycle by checking out the rest of the blog post by Bogomil Balkansky,Sr. Vice President, CloudInfrastructure Platform here.

With the announcement of vSphere with Operation Management this week, it is truly exciting to not only see the advancements of management being tied so closely to the vSphere platform, but also bring our customers closer to the vision of the Software Defined Data Center. As we see both the vSphere platform mature along with our customers use of it, we also see an evolution of VMware operations management accelerating and leveraging the value of the platform in our customers environments.

This new offering signifies a number a key aspects in the evolution of virtualization and cloud management:

First, our customers have experienced and expressed the need for accurate and automated solutions to proactively manage performance and capacity and vCenter Operations Manager, as part of vSphere with Operations Management, has delivered. Leveraging a foundation of patented self-learning analytics, vCenter Operations Manager delivers the most comprehensive, scalable and automated management solution for vSphere. Utilizing the vSphere health model, vSphere with Operations Management further extrapolates and presents data for managing performance and capacity more effectively than any other current or promised solutions.

We invested in vCenter Operations to support our large infrastructure of 500 VMs and 40 hosts. It has enabled us to predict capacity needs and to easily locate any performance issues.

Eric Krejci , Systems Specialist, EPFL

Second, vSphere with Operations Management leverages true automated operations for vSphere environments. This VMware innovation reduces the administrative overhead and inaccuracies from tools using static thresholds (manual thresholds set for individual metrics) while analyzing all (not just a handful) of relevant vSphere performance metrics to ensure there are no performance or capacity blind spots. Furthermore, to automatically correlate and expose the bottlenecks (with associated metrics) along with best practice remediation, vSphere with Operations Management ensures accurate management alignment that supports and further leverages our customers investment in VMware.

Advanced analytics easily identifies and shows root-cause to problem areas

Finally, vSphere with Operations Management raises the bar by redefining what operations management needs to be in todays dynamic infrastructure. Cloud customers simply were not finding effective solutions from their traditional, legacy IT management frameworks, or even 3rd party tools that are built on the same premise. Even when considering other hypervisor / cloud products, the management ecosystem is at the heart of truly enabling the platform. VMware vSphere with Operations Management clearly demonstrates the next step in simplicity of both cost and value through reliable, proven and innovative technology.

Going to VMware Partner Exchange 2013? Be sure to check out these sessions on VMware management and the competition: MGMT1238, MGMT1369 & CI1523.

Twitter: @benscheerer

The idea of introducing multiple hypervisors into your data center and managing them seamlessly from a single tool might sound appealing, but in reality, products claiming that ability today cant deliver on that promise. You introduced virtual infrastructure to simplify operational tasks for your IT staff, so why would you want to handicap them with a management approach that adds costs and complexity? A study recently completed by the Edison Group and commissioned by VMware shows that is exactly what you will be doing if you introduce Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) with the hopes of using it to manage VMware vSphere hosts.

Microsoft touts SCVMM as a heterogeneous management tool with the ability to manage VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer hosts in addition to those running Hyper-V. IT managers might find Microsofts claims that they can, easily and efficiently manage applications and services across multiple hypervisors, enticing. The suggestion by Microsoft is clear: dont worry about complicating the jobs of your system administrators by introducing Hyper-V into a VMware environment because SCVMM provides a do-everything single-pane-of-glass control panel. Are their claims true? Can Microsoft SCVMM really let you operate a multi-hypervisor data center without the cost penalties that come with staffing, training for, and operating across the isolated islands of management that would otherwise exist?

To find the truth behind Microsofts promises, we asked Edison Group to test VMware vSphere in their labs using both vCenter and the vSphere Client and Microsoft SCVMM 2012 to complete a set of 11 typical management tasks. Edisons analysts used their Comparative Management Cost Study methodology to measure the labor costs and administrative complexity of each task. The tasks Edison Group studied were those that any vSphere administrator performs on a regular basis, such as provisioning new vSphere hosts, deploying VMs, monitoring system health and performance, configuring virtual networks, etc.

Higher costs and complexity when managing vSphere with SCVMM 2012

The results were clear and conclusive managing VMware vSphere is much more efficient using vCenter than when attempting to manage it with Microsoft SCVMM 2012. To complete the 11 typical management tasks Edison Group tested took 36% less time and required 41% fewer steps using vCenter and the vSphere client compared to SCVMM 2012.

Figure 1 Managing vSphere using vCenter takes 36% less administrator time than with SCVMM 2012

Figure 2 vCenter management of vSphere requires 41% fewer steps than SCVMM 2012

Jack of some trades, master of none

Its not hard to understand why vCenter and the vSphere Client make life so much easier for vSphere administrators. As my colleague Randy Curry wrote, Microsoft SCVMM 2012 just doesnt do a very good job of enabling vSphere management. SCVMMs incomplete or missing support for even basic tasks forces administrators to constantly jump over to the vSphere Client to get any real work done. Microsoft was apparently more interested in being able to check the box for multi-hypervisor management when they built SCVMM 2012 than they were in providing a truly usable vSphere management tool. As Edison Group said in their report (available here or here):

Managing hypervisors using tools that are not specifically optimized to control all aspects of their operations risks impairing reliability, elegance, and ease of management, with potential adverse impact on the bottom line. Creating a truly successful solution requires deep integration and expertise in development.

Adding different hypervisors? Proceed with caution.

Multi-hypervisor IT shops are a trend that may be growing, but dont expect a simple single-pane-of-glass management experience if you bring in a different hypervisor. The testing by Edison Group clearly shows that management costs and complexity will be substantially higher if you attempt to use a partially implemented heterogeneous management tool like Microsoft SCVMM 2012 to manage a vSphere infrastructure. We at VMware realize that operating a 100% vSphere environment is not always possible and weve recently introduced our own multi-hypervisor management features with vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager and vCloud Automation Center to accommodate those cases. Rather than positioning those solutions as enablers of permanent multi-hypervisor environments, were offering them to help our customers manage heterogeneous pools of infrastructure until they can migrate their workloads to a VMware platform where they can benefit from our exclusive software-defined datacenter capabilities.

If youre weighing possible benefits of introducing a second hypervisor, you may want to take the advice of Gartners Chris Wolf and stick to a single hypervisor unless you want maintain and pay for separate islands of management:

Multi-hypervisor has serious tradeoffs if its the end goal for the production server workloads in your data center. Additional hypervisors for one-off siloed initiatives is often practical, but becoming less standardized in your data centers is anything but efficient.

Chris Wolf repeated that message at a session on heterogeneous virtualization we attended at the recent Gartner Data Center Conference. In fact, he stated there that no Gartner clients have succeeded in adopting a single-pane-of-glass multi-hypervisor approach. Thats refreshingly frank advice that should be heeded by anyone lured by Microsofts promises of multiple hypervisor nirvana.

Microsoft has published a blog article claiming that VMwares Cost-Per-Application Calculator admits VMwares costs are higher.

VMwares Cost-Per-Application calculator is designed to rebut Microsoft claims that Hyper-V is five to ten times cheaper.It shows that the acquisition cost with even VMwares highest edition vSphere Enterprise Plus is at parity with Microsoft and actually beats Microsoft for most configurations. For example, the blog shows a comparison result from the VMware calculator using servers that have 64GB RAM. A comparison using servers with 128GB RAM, the more common configuration, shows that the total cost with VMware is at parity with Microsoft.

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