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Dugie’s Pensieve » Blog Archive » Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 vs VMware Server v 1.0.4

20 Mar

Dugie’s Pensieve

Making the world a better place, one Virtual Machine at a time (and maybe with a bit of Media Centre too)

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 vs VMware Server v 1.0.4

Virtualization November 3rd, 2007

Ok Firstly, I sooo wish Microsoft had released “Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1″ as “Virtual Server 2007″.  It would have saved so much confusion — and personally I believe free products should never have service packs;  just newer versions.  But I digress!

Ok, now that I have that off my chest, I’ve got a whole bunch of stats and perf data from testing VMs.  Yes it’s a comparison on both VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual Server.  I’ve also been inspired to clean it up and publish it.

The data is nothing special, just scripted installs of the operating systems and applications; and a couple of tests with SQLIOSim and the Exchange 2003 Stress Test tools.  The theme here is Microsoft.  Microsoft OSes on the host, Microsoft OSes in the VMs, running Microsoft Server Apps, tested with [mostly] Microsoft test tools.

But before I do, I’m going to do two things:

  1. Re run the tests (which will take about 2 days), I haven’t done the tests since VMware Server 1.0.4  was released.
  2. shoot off a quick email to VMware to comply with the EULA:

3.3 Restrictions. You may not (i) sell, lease, license, sublicense, distribute or otherwise transfer in whole or in part the Software or the Software License Key to another party; (ii) provide, disclose, divulge or make available to, or permit use of the Software in whole or in part by, any third party (except Designated Administrative Access) without VMware’s prior written consent; or (iii) modify or create derivative works based upon the Software. Except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law, and to the extent that VMware is not permitted by that applicable law to exclude or limit the following rights, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Software, in whole or in part. You may use the Software to conduct internal performance testing and benchmarking studies, the results of which you (and not unauthorized third parties) may publish or publicly disseminate; provided that VMware has reviewed and approved of the methodology, assumptions and other parameters of the study. Please contact VMware at benchmark@vmware.com to request such review.

…and before anybody asks:  I’m not using Exchange 2007, because there is no 64bit VM support yet and I don’t want to taint the results with the “non-supported” or beta builds of software. 

Keep you posted.

4 Responses to “Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 vs VMware Server v 1.0.4”
  1. rburbridge Says:
    November 3rd, 2007 at 1:37 am

    Sounds like we will get some useful information from this. Can you also give the details of the hardware configuration the tests will be ran on?

  2. Ozzie Says:
    November 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am

    great! can’t wait to see the results…i sure will make use of them

  3. dugie Says:
    November 6th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

    At this stage I’ll probably use a Sun fire 4200.

  4. Mike Says:
    November 10th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    For what it’s worth, VMware Server has support for 64-bit guests. I know it won’t be apples to apples (since MSVS doesn’t do 64-bit, but it would be interesting to see the Exchange 2007 tests run since it does much better with I/O than 2003.

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