VMware has just announced the release of ESXi 5.5 and the contest with Hyper-V 2012 R2 couldn’t be any hotter. In this post, we will compare some of the configuration maximums for the two hypervisors. In addition to raising the limits within the hypervisor, each product has added a ton of new features to draw buyers and existing customers to purchase or upgrade to one of these products.
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Blog Admin
Scaling
| System | Resource | Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 | VMware vSphere 5.5 | |||
| Free Hypervisor | Essential Plus | Enterprise Plus | ||||
| Host | Logical Processors | 320 | 320 | 320 | 320 | |
| Physical Memory | 4 TB | 4 TB? | 4 TB | 4 TB | ||
| Virtual CPUs per Host | 2048 | 4096 | 4096 | 4096 | ||
| Nested Hypervisor | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| VM | Virtual CPUs per VM | 64 | 8 | 8 | 64? | |
| Memory per VM | 1 TB | 32 GB | 1 TB | 1 TB? | ||
| Maximum Virtual Disk | 64 TB | 64 TB – 1% | 64 TB – 1% | 64 TB – 1% | ||
| Hot-Add | Only disks* | Disks/vNIC/USB | Disks/vNIC/USB | All | ||
| Active VMs per Host | 1024 | 512 | 512 | 512? | ||
| Cluster | Maximum Nodes | 64 | N/A | 32 | 32? | |
| Maximum VMs | 8000 | N/A | 4000 | 4000? | ||
Storage
| Capability | Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 | VMware vSphere 5.5 | ||
| Free Hypervisor | Essential Plus | Enterprise Plus | ||
| Thin disks | Yes (dynamic disks) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Differential disks | Yes | No (only with API) | No (only with API) | No (only with API) |
| SAN | iSCSI/FC | iSCSI/FC | iSCSI/FC | iSCSI/FC |
| NAS | SMB 3.0 | NFS 3 over TCP | NFS 3 over TCP | NFS 3 over TCP |
| Virtual Fiber Channel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 3rd Party Multipathing (MPIO) | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Native 4-KB Disk Support | Yes | No | No | No? |
| Maximum Virtual Disk Size | 64TB (VHDX) | 64 TB – 1% | 64 TB – 1% | 64 TB – 1% |
| Hot Virtual Disk resize | Yes (VHDX) | Yes (only increase) | Yes (only increase) | Yes (only increase) |
| Virtual Disk sharing | Yes (VHDX) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Maximum Pass Through Disk Size | 265TB+ | 64TB | 64TB | 64TB |
| Storage Offload | Yes (ODX) | No | No | Yes (VAAI) |
| Storage Virtualization | Storage Spaces | No (only 3rd part) | VSA and VSAN | VSA and VSAN |
| Storage QoS | Yes | No | No | SIOC |
| Storage Encryption | Yes | No | No | No |
| Caching | Yes (CSV read-only cache) | No | No | Flash Read Cache |
Networking
| Capability | Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 | VMware vSphere 5.5 | ||
| Free Hypervisor | Essential Plus | Enterprise Plus | ||
| NIC Teaming | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Extensible Switch | Yes | No | No | Replaceable |
| PVLAN Support | Yes | No | No | Yes (DVS or 3rd part) |
| ARP/ND Spoofing Protection | Yes | No | No | vCNS/Partner |
| DHCP Snooping Protection | Yes | No | No | vCNS/Partner |
| Virtual Port ACLs | Yes | No | No | vCNS/Partner |
| Trunk Mode to Virtual Machines | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Port Monitoring | Yes | Per Port Group | Per Port Group | Yes |
| Port Mirroring | Yes | Per Port Group | Per Port Group | Yes |
| Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue | Yes | NetQueue | NetQueue | NetQueue |
| IPsec Task Offload | Yes | No | No | No |
| SR-IOV | Yes | Yes (No Live Migration support) | Yes (No Live Migration support) | Yes (No Live Migration support) |
| Network Virtualization | NVGRE | No | No | VXLAN / NSX |
| Network QoS | Yes | No | No | DVS or 3rd part |
| Quality of Service | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Data Center Bridging (DCB) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
High Availability & Resource control & Resiliency
| Capability | Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 | VMware vSphere 5.5 | ||
| Free Hypervisor | Essential Plus | Enterprise Plus | ||
| Nodes per Cluster | 64 | N/A | 32 | 32 |
| VMs per Cluster | 8000 | N/A | 4000 | 4000 |
| Virtual Machine Live Migration | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Shared-Nothing Live Migration | Yes | No | Yes (only from Web Client) | Yes (only from Web Client) |
| CPU Compatibility for Live Migration | Per VM (only one baseline) | No | Cluster EVC (several baselines) | Cluster EVC (several baselines) |
| Guest Clustering with Live Migration Support | Yes | N/A | No | No |
| Automated Live Migration | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes (DRS/DPM) |
| Simultaneous Live Migrations | Unlimited | N/A | 4 (1GigE) or 8 (10GigE) | 4 (1GigE) or 8 (10GigE) |
| Live Storage Migration | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Simultaneous Live Storage Migrations | Unlimited | N/A | N/A | 4 |
| Hot and Incremental Backups | Yes | No (some 3rd part tools) | Yes | Yes |
| VM Replication | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Integrated High Availability | Yes (Fail-Over Cluster) | No | Yes (VMware HA) | Yes (VMware HA) |
| VM Lockstep Protection | No (3rd part tools) | No | No | Yes (VMware FT) |
| Guest OS Application Monitoring | Yes | N/A | No | App HA |
| HA handle storage failure | Yes | N/A | No | No |
| Cluster-Aware Updating | Yes | N/A | Yes | Yes |
| Failover Prioritization | Yes | N/A | Yes | Yes |
| Resource Pool | Yes (host groups) | Yes | No | Yes (DRS is needed) |
| Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes |
Thanks
Regards
Blog Admin
