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custom |
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Unique Feature 1
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General
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- Fully Supported
- Limitation
- Not Supported
- Information Only
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Pros
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- + - XenServer it is OpenSource based
- + - It is highly optimized for XenApp and XenDesktop workloads
- + - Leader in virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics
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- + mature and feature-rich offering
- + great ecosystem & support
- + skills prevelant
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Cons
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- - - Less features in free edition. See http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
- - - Niche product
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- - needs clear strategy for public cloud future
- - comprehensive capability but can become expensive
- - NSX leading SDN solution but skills scarce
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Content |
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The VIRTUALIST (Gica Livada) and Enzo Raso (Citrix)
Content created by Gica Livada from THE VIRTUALIST: http://www.thevirtualist.org/ with help from Enzo Rasso (Citrix)
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WhatMatrix
Content created by WhatMatrix and modified by Romain Serre
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THE VIRTUALIST
Content created by THE VIRTUALIST
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Assessment |
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XenServer 7.5 Enterprise Edition includes features that are not available in the Standard Edition, focused on enterprise customers needs, as well as Citrix support:
- Live patching and automated updates
- Conversion manager for vSphere
- Dynamic Workload Balancing & Audit Reporting (WLB)
- Accelerate Citrix Provisioning Services performance
For Standard vs Enterprise edition, please check: http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
NEW
Citrix released XenServer version 7.5 on June 1st 2018, this release added new features:
- quadrupling the XenServer pool size, from 16 to 64 hosts!
- increased the maximum size of virtual disks from 2TB to 16TB!
- new option for GFS2 Storage Repositories as an experimental feature
Citrix entered the Hypervisor market with the acquisition of XenSource - the main supporter of the open source Xen project - in Oct 2007. The Xen project continues to exist, see https://www.xenproject.org/
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WS 2019 - Click Here For Overview
General Overview: Windows Server 2019 was released in Oct 2018 with several (less obvious but important) updates to its virtualization and cloud capabilities. Windows Server 2019 provides major improvements for Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct and Network Controller. These features are the fundation of Azure Stack, the Microsoft private cloud offer. Windows Server 2016 comes in 3 editions, Datacenter, Standard, Essential but only Datacenter and Standard enable virtualization capabilities (we will therefore not list the other editions). There is also the free Hyper-V Server edition. Datacenter and Standard provide the equivalent set of capabilities and differ only in their virtualization rights i.e. how many Operating System Environments (OSEs = licensed guests) are included. Datacenter is aimed at: Highly virtualized private and hybrid cloud environments.As in Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 offers Full Server and Server Core installation options. The minimal nature of Server Core creates limitations: There is no Windows shell and very limited GUI functionality. The Server Core interface is a command prompt with PowerShell support. The matrix will focus on the capabilities of the Full Server installation, pointing out limitations where appropriate.
Windows Server 2019 provides a minimalist deployment model called Nano Server. Nano Server doesnt provide Shell, or 32bit legacy support. Moreover Nano Server supports only Cloud Native Application such as Kubernetes or Docker. For further details, please visit this topic: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/get-started/getting-started-with-nano-server
Just before the release of Windows Server 2019, Microsoft delivered Windows Admin Center which is a web-based tool to manage your Windows Server infrastructure. It provides tools to manage hyperconverged infrastructure, Windows Server (event log, firewall etc.) and it supports third party extension to add features. It can be a replacement of MMC.
Microsoft created a new offer called Azure Stack HCI which basically Windows Server 2019 hyperconverged infrastructure managed by Windows Admin Center.
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vSphere 6.5 with Operations Management Enterprise Plus - Click Here For Overview
vSphere is the collective term for VMwares virtualization platform, it includes the ESX hypervisor as well as the vCenter Management suite and associate components. vSphere is considered by many the industrys most mature and feature rich virtualization platform and had its origins in the initial ESX releases around 2001/2002.
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XenServer 7.5 Release date May 2018
Xens first public release was in 2003, becoming part of Novell SUSE 10 OS in 2005 (later also Red hat). In Oct 2007 Citrix acquired XenSource (the main maintainer of the Xen code) and released XenServer under the Citrix brand.
For more info check http://bit.ly/2BT5apc
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Release Dates - W2016 October 2019 (initial Hyper-V: Jun 08)
NEW
Windows Server 2019 and System Center 2019 were released in Oct 2018. Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 were released in October 2016. Windows Server 2012 R2 in concunction with System Center 2012 R2 were released in Oct 2013.Windows Server 2012 released in Sep 2012, System Center 2012: April 2012 but SP1 was required to manage Server 2012 environments (release Jan 2013); The initial Hyper-V code was released as beta version with the GA version of Windows Server 2008 in early 2008, it GA-ed (through Windows Updates) in June followed by the release the management app System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) in Sept and the standalone Hyper-V Server version in October 2008. The R2 release of Hyper-V became available in August 2009. SP1 was finalised in Feb 2011 (after a public beta in H2/2010)
In addition to System Center, now Windows Server is followed by Windows Admin Center which is a new web-based management tool for Windows Server.
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Release Dates:
vSphere 6.5 : November 15th 2016
vSphere 6.5 is VMwares 6th generation of bare-metal enterprise virtualization software, from ESX1.x (2001/2), 2.x (2003) to Virtual Infrastructure 3 (2006), in May 2009 to vSphere 4.x. The ESXi architecture (small-footprint) became available in Dec 2007. vSphere 5 was announced July 2011 with GA August 2011 and was the first vSphere release converged on ESXi only, vSphere 5.1 was released 10th Sep 2012, vSphere 5.5 on Sep 22nd 2013, vSphere 6 on Feb 2nd 2015, vSphere 6.5 on November 15th 2016
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Pricing |
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Open Source (free) or two commercial editions, pricing for Standard Edition is: Annual: $763 / socket, Perpetual: $1525/ socket - both including 1 year of software maintenance.
For commercial editions (Standard or Enterprise)XenServer is licensed on a per-CPU socket basis. For a pool to be considered licensed, all XenServer hosts in the pool must be licensed. XenServer only counts populated CPU sockets.
All customers who have purchased any edition of XenApp or XenDesktop have an entitlement to use all XenServer 7.3 features
In XenServer 7.x, customers should allocate product licenses using a Citrix License Server, as with other Citrix components. From version 6.2.0 onwards, XenServer (other than via the XenDesktop licenses) is licensed on a per-socket basis. Allocation of licenses is managed centrally and enforced by a standalone Citrix License Server, physical or virtual, in the environment. After applying a per-socket license, XenServer will display as Citrix XenServer Per-Socket Edition.
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Standard: $750 for 16 physical cores.
License are per core basis. The license covers up to 16 physical cores (8 packs of two cores). If you have more than 16 physical cores, you need to buy additional license packs. A license pack covers up to two physical cores. If you plan to deploy Nano Server, you need Software Assurance.
Licensing details: http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/2/F/A2F54CF2-FD52-4722-8C9A-728617C2AF17/Hybrid_Cloud_Windows_Server_2016_Licensing_Datasheet_EN-GB.pdf
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OM Ent+ :
$4,395/socket + S&S 1Y: $923 (B) or $1,099 (Prod)
vSphere is licensed per physical CPU (socket, not core), without restrictions on the amount of physical cores or virtual RAM configured. There are also no license restrictions on the number of virtual machines that a (licensed) host can run.
S&S basic or production (1Year example) - Production (P): 24 Hours/Day 7 Days/Week 365 Days/Year; Basic (B):12 Hours/Day Monday-Friday. Subscription and Support is mandatory. Details and other packages (Acceleration Kits Essential Kits are available). Details here: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf and here http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/pricing
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Free (XenCenter)
Citrix XenCenter is the Windows-native graphical user interface for managing Citrix XenServer. It is included for no additional cost (open source as well as commercial version).
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System Center 2019 Datacenter: $3,607 or Standard $1,323 per managed endpoint (up to 16 physical cores). Windows Admin Center - NEW (Free), Microsoft Azure
NEW
The System Center 2016 Datacenter license model is like Windows Server 2019. A single licence covers 16 physical cores on a server. If the server has more CPU, you need to buy extra licences packs. The System Center 2019 standard is based on managed endpoint.
For virtualize environment, you just have to buy licenses for the Hyper-V hosts.
Windows Admin Center is a new web-based management tool for Windows Server. It can genuinely replace some MMC console such as firewall, explorer, device manager and so on. Windows Admin Center is built on extensions that add some new capability to the product. Third party vendors can develop extensions for Windows Admin Center.
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$5,995(Std) + $1,259(B) or $1,499 (P)
vCenter Server
Centralized visibility, proactive management and extensibility for VMware vSphere from a single console
VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized platform for managing your VMware vSphere environments, so you can automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure with confidence.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server.html
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Bundle/Kit Pricing
Details
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Yes
XenServer is included for free with all XenApp and XenDesktop editions media kit
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Windows Server 2019 standard
Windows Server 2019 Datacenter contains all features you need in a single box. Windows Server 2019 Datacenter allows you to run unlimited VMs, the software-defined storage and network layer. Windows Admin Center is free. With this single license, you can run a full Software-Defined Datacenter solution
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yes
Kits:
- VMware vSphere Remote Office Branch Office Editions
- VMware vSphere Essentials Kits
- VMware vSphere and vSphere with Operations Management Acceleration Kits
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Guest OS Licensing
Details
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No
There are no guest OS licensing included with the XenServer license. Guest OSs need to be therefore licensed separately.
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yes - up to two virtual OSEs with Standard (Windows Server vms)
This Standard license allows for 2VMs on this host. In place of the licensed version (i.e. Server 2019) , you can run prior (older) versions or lower editions in any of the OSEs of the licensed server. If you have Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition you will have the right to run the bits of any prior version or lower edition (Datacenter, Standard or Essentials). If you have Windows Server 2019 Standard edition, you will have the right to run the bits of any prior version of Standard or Essentials edition.
The WS2019 standard edition enables to run two OSEs. If you need more OSEs, you have to buy additional licenses.
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No
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VM Mobility and HA
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VM Mobility |
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Live Migration of VMs
Details
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Yes XenMotion
XenMotion is available in all versions of XenServer and allows you to move a running VM from one host to another host, when the VMs disks are located on storage shared by both hosts. This allows for pool maintenance features such as Workload Balancing (WLB), High Availability (HA), and Rolling Pool Upgrade (RPU) to automatically move VMs. These features allow for workload leveling, infrastructure resilience, and the upgrade of server software, without any VM downtime. Storage can only be shared between hosts in the same pool, as a result, VMs can only be moved within the same pool.
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Yes (Unlimited Concurrent, Shared Nothing; new compression & SMB3 options)
(No major change in WS2019) WS 2012R2 made the following enhancements to live migration:1) Improved performance (in addition to the TCP/IP option):- Compression: This is now the default setting since Server 2012 R2 (content of the virtual machine that is being migrated is compressed and then copied to the destination server over TCP/IP)- Live Migration over SMB 3.0 (memory content of the vm is copied to the destination server over a SMB 3.0 connection): SMB Direct is used when the network adapters on the source and destination servers have Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capabilities enabled; SMB Multichannel automatically detects and uses multiple connections when a proper SMB Multichannel configuration is identified.2) Cross-version migrations: You can live migrate virtual machines from Hyper-V Windows Server 2012 R2 to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016. With WS 2012 the following enhancements had been made to the live migration capabilities: 1) Faster and concurrent migrations: Unlimited concurrent limitations using up to 10Gbit bandwidth. Comment: Unlimited refers to no hard coded limitation but in reality the amount of transferred data (amount of virtual memory / rate of changes ) as well as the available bandwidth limit the optimal number of concurrent transfers. The allowable number of concurrent live migrations can be configured manually. Attempted concurrent live migrations in excess of the limit will be queued.2) Live Migration outwidth a cluster: Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) are required to migrate virtual machines within a Hyper-V cluster. In Server 2012 virtual machines can now be stored on SMB3 (CIFS) shares. This allows you to perform a live migration between non-clustered servers running Hyper-V (or between different clusters), while the virtual machines storage remains on the central SMB share.3) Shared Nothing Migrations: You can also perform a live migration of a virtual machine between two non-clustered servers running Hyper-V when you are only using local storage for the virtual machine. In this case, the virtual machines storage is mirrored to the destination server over the network, and then the virtual machine is migrated, while it continues to run and provide network services.
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Yes (vMotion)
vMotion
- Cross vSwitch vMotion (all versions)
- Cross vCenter vMotion (n/a for Standard)
- Long Distance vMotion (n/a for Standard)
- Cross Cloud vMotion (n/a for Standard)
- Encryption vMotion (n/a for Standard)
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Migration Compatibility
Details
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Yes (Heterogeneous Pools)
XenServer 7.0 introduced improved support for Heterogeneous Pools which enables live migration across different CPU types of the same vendor (requires AMD Extended Migration or Intel Flex Migration), details here: http://bit.ly/1ADu7Py.
This capability is maintained in XenServer 7.5
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Yes (Processor Compatibility)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V introduced a new capability called “processor compatibility mode for live migration, which enabled live migrations across hosts with differing CPU architectures. This capability is maintained in Server 2019.
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Yes (EVC)
Enhanced vMotion Compatibility - enabled on vCenter cluster-level, utilizes Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration functionality available with most newer CPUs (but cannot migrate between Intel and AMD), Details here: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1005764
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Yes
Enabled through XenCenter
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Yes
Maintenance mode for a virtual machine allows you to halt a host anytime you need to perform maintenance tasks on the physical host, such as applying security updates or replacing hardware on the physical host computer. If you have not Virtual Machine Manager, you can put the node in pause to trigger the draining mode which move all resources associated to the host. You can trigger the maintenance mode from Failover Cluster MMC, VMM and Windows Admin Center.
The advantage of using VMM is that the maintenance mode is also set in Operations Manager to avoid to raise alerts.
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Yes
NEW
Maintenance mode is a core feature to prepare a host to be shut down safely.
vSphere 6.5: Faster Maintenance Mode and Evacuation Updates.
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Automated Live Migration
Details
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Yes Workload Balancing
Workload Balancing (WLB) which was reintroduced in 6.5 is now enhanced with XenServer 7.x
Workload Balancing 7.3 is supported on XenServer 7.x and has an enhanced WLB audit log session reuse starting with XenServer 7.3.
Details here: http://bit.ly/2sK6siq
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Yes - Dynamic Optimization (CPU, mem, disk I/O, Net I/O) and VM Load Balancing
If you don’t have System Center, a Windows Server 2016 feature called VM Load Balancing enables to balance workloads accross cluster node. You can configure the frequency and the aggressiveness. If the node is in pause or not reachable, the VM Load Balancing doesnt try to live-migrate virtual machines on this node.
A great improvement in SC 2012 is the departure from the cumbersome automated live migration capability in Server 2008R2 and VMM 2008R2 that relied on the Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) function. With System Center 2012, Dynamic Optimization replaces this host load balancing and is performed independently of PRO or SCOM. This is also supported for vSphere and XenServer environments that support live migration.During Dynamic Optimization, VMM migrates virtual machines within a host cluster to improve load balancing among hosts. Dynamic Optimization is typically configured on a host group level, to migrate vims with a specified frequency and aggressiveness. By default, virtual machines are migrated every 10 minutes with medium aggressiveness. If a host group contains stand-alone hosts, host clusters that do not support live migration, or host in maintenance mode, Dynamic Optimization is not performed on those hosts. If a host cluster contains virtual machines that are not highly available, those virtual machines are not migrated during Dynamic Optimization.On demand Dynamic Optimization also is available by using the Optimize Hosts action in the VMs and Services workspace. After Dynamic Optimization is requested for a host cluster, VMM lists the virtual machines that will be migrated for the administrators approval.You can specify Dynamic Optimization settings for the following resources: CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network I/O.
If Dynamic Optimization is enabled, the VM Load-Balancing is automatically disabled in the cluster
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Yes (DRS) - CPU, Mem
NEW
vSphere 6.5
VM Distribution: Enforce an even distribution of VMs.
Memory Metric for Load Balancing: DRS uses Active memory + 25% as its primary metric.
CPU over-commitment: This is an option to enforce a maximum vCPU:pCPU ratios in the cluster.
Network Aware DRS - system look at the network bandwidth on the host when considering making migration recommendations.
Storage IO Control configuration is now performed using Storage Policies and IO limits enforced using vSphere APIs for IO Filtering (VAIO).
Storage Based Policy Management (SPBM) framework, administrators can define different policies with different IO limits, and then assign VMs to those policies.
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Yes Workload Balancing
Power management is part of XenServer Workload Balancing (WLB). More info: http://bit.ly/2sK6siq
Background: Power Management introduced with 5.6 was able to automatically consolidate workloads on the lowest possible number of physical servers and power off unused hosts when their capacity is not needed. Hosts would be automatically powered back on when needed.
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Yes - Power Optimization
(No major change in WS2019)Another new feature in VMM 2012 - Power Optimization. Power Optimization is an (optional) sub-feature of Dynamic Optimization (only available when a host group is configured for Dynamic Optimization). Through Power Optimization, VMM helps to save energy by turning off hosts that are not needed to meet resource requirements within a host cluster and turns the hosts back on when they are needed again. Please note: Power Optimization ensures that the cluster maintains a quorum if an active node fails and therefore requires a certain numbers of hosts to remain running in a cluster. See details here: http://bit.ly/TbDCmZ
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Yes (DPM)
Distributed Power Management - enables to consolidate virtual machines onto fewer hosts and power down unused capacity - reducing power and cooling. This can be fully automated where servers are powered off when not needed and powered back on when workload increases.
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Storage Migration
Details
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Yes (Storage XenMotion)
Storage XenMotion in XenServer 7.x now works with the VM in any power state (stopped, paused or running)
XenServer 6.1 introduced the long awaited (live) Storage XenMotion capability
Storage XenMotion allows storage allocation changes while VMs are running or moved from one host to another including scenarios where a) VMs are NOT located on storage shared between the hosts (shared nothing live migration) and (b) hosts are not even in the same resource pool. This enables system administrators to:
- Live migration of a VM disk across shared storage targets within a resource pool (e.g. move between LUNs when one is at capacity);
- Live migration of a VM disk from one storage type to another storage type within a resource pool (e.g. perform storage array upgrades)
- Live migration of a VM disk to or from local storage on a XenServer host within a resource pool (reduce deployment costs by using local storage)
- Rebalance or move VMs between XenServer pools (for example moving a VM from a development environment to a production environment);
Starting with XenServer 6.1, administrators initiating XenMotion and Storage XenMotion operations can specify which management interface
transfers should occur over. Through the use of multiple management interfaces, the virtual disk transfer can occur with less impact on both core XenServer operations and VM network utilization.
Citrix supports up to 3 concurrent Storage XenMotion operations. The maximum number for (non-CDROM) VDIs per VM = six. Allowed Snapshots per VM undergoing Storage XenMotion = 1.
Technical details here: http://bit.ly/2lNgACU
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Yes (Live and Shared Nothing)
(No major change in WS2019)Server 2012 overcomes the Quick Storage Migration limitation seen with 2008 R2 (where you can initiate a Storage Migration while the vm remains running for the majority of the transfer but the virtual machine must be powered off at the end of the migration). Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 introduces support for moving virtual machine storage while the virtual machine remains running. You can perform this task by using a new wizard in Hyper-V Manager or by using new Hyper-V cmdlets for Windows PowerShell. You can add storage to either a stand-alone computer or to a Hyper-V cluster, and then move virtual machines to the new storage while the virtual machine(s) continue to run.You can also perform a live migration of a virtual machine between two non-clustered servers running Hyper-V when you are only using local storage for the virtual machine. In this case, the virtual machines storage is mirrored to the destination server over the network, and then the virtual machine is migrated, while it continues to run and provide network services (shared nothing migration).
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Yes (Live Storage vMotion)
Storage vMotion allows to perform live migration of virtual machine disk files (e.g. across heterogeneous storage arrays) without vm downtime. Storage DRS handles initial vmdk placement and gives migration recommendations to avoid I/O and space utilization bottlenecks on the datastores in the cluster. The migration is performed using storage vMotion.
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HA/DR |
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64 hosts / resource pool
NEW
64 Hosts per Resource Pool.
Please see XenServer 7.5 Configuration Limits document http://bit.ly/2rcrjZx
Note: the maximum pool size, for Free edition is now restricted to 3 Hosts.
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64 nodes / 8000 vims
(No major change in WS2019)Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 significantly improves the scale of cluster sizes. It now supports running up to 8,000 virtual machines on a 64-node failover cluster (2008 R2 supported a maximum of 16 cluster nodes and 1,000 virtual machines per cluster).In Windows 2012 Server Core you can configure clustering with the SCONFIG cmd utility.In Server 2012 when using the iSCSI Software Target only up to 5 cluster hosts were supported on GA of the product. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg509003(v=ws.10).aspx
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max 64 nodes / 8000 vm per cluster
Up to 64 nodes can be in a DRS/HA cluster, with a maximum of 8000 vm/cluster
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Integrated HA (Restart vm)
Details
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Yes
XenServer High Availability protects the resource pool against host failures by restarting virtual machine. HA allows for configuration of restart priority and failover capacity. Configuration of HA is simple (effort similar to enabling VMware HA).
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Yes (NIC and unmanaged Storage failure detection - Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency)
(No major change in WS2019))Virtual machine availability requires Microsoft Failover Clustering to be configured - while this can still be considered added complexity (compared to e.g. VMwares integrated HA) the clustering in Server 2012/R2 has been greatly enhanced, simplified and integrated with VMM:- You can not only add Hyper-V clusters to VMM but also CREATE and MODIFY Hyper-V clusters from within VMM- Availability options for virtual machines on Hyper-V clusters can now be configured using the VMM console, without having to open Failover Cluster Manager (SP1). This includes the ability to configure virtual machine failover prioritization and affinity / anti-affinity rules.- Ability to deploy the VMM server itself as highly available virtual machine- Support for guest clustering (cluster Windows instances in virtual machines) via Fibre Channel (new virtual fibre channel adapter function)There is no restart priority setting for virtual machines or capacity check (if failover capacity is available)New in WS2012 R2 is the ability to detect physical storage failures on storage devices that are not managed by Windows Failover Clustering (SMB 3.0 file shares). Storage failure detection can detect the failure of a virtual machine boot disk or any additional data disks associated with the virtual machine (ensuring that the virtual machine is relocated and restarted on another node - eliminating situations where unmanaged storage failures would not be detected).Also Hyper-V and Windows Failover Clustering are enhanced to detect network connectivity issues for virtual machines. If the physical network assigned to the virtual machine suffers a failure (such as a faulty switch port or network adapter, or a disconnected network cable), the Windows Failover Cluster will move the virtual machine to another node in the cluster to restore network connectivity.
In Windows Server 2016, VM can be protected against network and storage transient issues. If a node has network transient issues, the VM state changes to unmonitored. If the node has for 5mn this kind of issues, the node is placed in quarantine and the VM is moved.
If the cluster has storage issue, the VM state changes to Critial - Paused state. When the storage is recovered, the VM start again from the state before the storage issue.
For more information you can read the following topic: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2015/06/03/virtual-machine-compute-resiliency-in-windows-server-2016/
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Yes (VMware HA)
NEW
vSphere 6.5 Proactive HA detect hw condition evacuate host before failure (plugin provided OEM vendors)
Quarantine mode - host is placed in quarantine mode if it is considered in degraded state
Simplified vSphere HA Admission Control - 'Percentage of Cluster Resources' admission control policy
vSphere 6.0
- Support for Virtual Volumes – With Virtual Volumes a new type of storage entity is introduced in vSphere 6.0.
- VM Component Protection – This allows HA to respond to a scenario where the connection to the virtual machine’s datastore is impacted temporarily or permanently.
“Response for Datastore with All Paths Down”
“Response for Datastore with Permanent Device Loss”
- Increased scale – Cluster limit has grown from 32 to 64 hosts and to a max of 8000 VMs per cluster
- Registration of “HA Disabled” VMs on hosts after failure.
VMware HA restarts virtual machines according to defined restart priorities and monitors capacity needs required for defined level of failover.
vSphere HA in vSphere 5.5 has been enhanced to conform with virtual machine-virtual machine anti-affinity rules. Application availability is maintained by controlling the placement of virtual machines recovered by vSphere HA without migration. This capability is configured as an advanced option in vSphere 5.5.
vSphere 5.5 also improved the support for virtual Microsoft Failover Clustering (cluster nodes in virtual machines) - note that this functionality is independent of VMware HA and requires the appropriate Microsoft OS license and configuration of a Microsoft Failover Cluster. Microsoft clusters running on vSphere 5.5 now support Microsoft Windows Server 2012, round-robin path policy for shared storage, and iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) for shared storage.
While not obvious to the user - with vSphere 5, HA has been re-written from ground-up, greatly reducing configuration and failover time. It now uses a one master - all other slaves concept. HA now also uses storage path monitoring to determine host health and state (e.g. useful for stretched cluster configurations).
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Automatic VM Reset
Details
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No
There is no automated restart/reset of individual virtual machines e.g. to protect against OS failure
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Yes (Heartbeat)
(No major updates with 2019)Cluster Failover Manager in Server 2012 has an option to enable heartbeat monitoring for individual vms (Enable heartbeat monitoring for the virtual machine under vm properties). If the heartbeats stop, indicating that virtual machine has become unresponsive, the cluster is notified, and can attempt to restart the clustered virtual machine or fail it over. In Server 2012 R2 this function has been enhanced to also monitor specific services and applications within virtual machines.
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Yes (VMware HA)
NEW
vSphere 6.5 - Orchestrated Restart - VMware has enforced the VM to VM dependency chain, for a multi-tier application installed across multiple VMs.
Uses heartbeat monitoring to reset unresponsive virtual machines.
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VM Lockstep Protection
Details
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No
While XenServer can perform vm restarts in case of a host failure there is no integrated mechanism to provide zero downtime failover functionality.
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No
(No major change in WS2019)While MS failover clustering can provide virtual machine restart there is no integrated mechanism to provide seamless stateful (no downtime) failover in case of host failure.
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Yes (Fault Tolerance) 4 vCPUs.
NEW
vSphere 6.5 FT has more integration with DRS and enhanced Network (lower the network latency)
Fault Tolerance brings continuous availability protection for VMs with up to 4 vCPUs in Enterprise Plus and Standard is 2 vCPUs.
Uses a shadow secondary virtual machine to run in lock-step with primary virtual machine to provide zero downtime protection in case of host failure.
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Application/Service HA
Details
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No
There is no application monitoring/restart capability provided with XenServer
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Yes (VM Compute Resiliency)
(No major update in Windows Server 2019)Windows Server 2016 brought a new feature called VM Compute Resiliency. When an host in the cluster has some network disconnection, it is first isolated. When the host is isolated, the node continues to host the VM role in unmonitored state. If the network issues are still presents after 5mn, the VM is moved to another host. If there is a storage issue, the VM state is Pause-Critical until the storage is again available. For further information, you can read this topic: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/clustering/2015/06/03/virtual-machine-compute-resiliency-in-windows-server-2016/
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App HA
vSphere 6.5 Proactive HA detect hw condition evacuate host before failure (plugin provided OEM vendors)
Quarantine mode - host is placed in quarantine mode if it is considered in degraded state
Simplified vSphere HA Admission Control - 'Percentage of Cluster Resources' admission control policy
VMware HA restarts virtual machines according to defined restart priorities and monitors capacity needs required for defined level of failover.
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Replication / Site Failover
Details
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Integrated Disaster Recovery (no storage array control)
XenServer 6 introduced the new Integrated Site Recovery (maintained in 7.3), replacing the StorageLink Gateway Site Recovery used in previous versions. It utilizes the native remote data replication between physical storage arrays and automates the recovery and failback capabilities. The new approach removes the Windows VM requirement for the StorageLink Gateway components and it works now with any iSCSI or Hardware HBA storage repository (rather only the restricted storage options with StorageLink support). You can perform failover, failback and test failover. You can configure and operate it using the Disaster Recovery option in XenCenter. Please note however that Site Recovery does NOT interact with the Storage array, so you will have to e.g. manually break mirror relationships before failing over. You will need to ensure that the virtual disks as well as the pool meta data (containing all the configuration data required to recreate your vims and vApps) are correctly replicated to your secondary site.
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Hyper-V Replica - Storage Replica
(No major change in WS2019)Disaster recovery capability has been enhanced through the introduction of Hyper-V Replica - an asynchronous replication of virtual machines over a network link from one Hyper-V host at a primary site to another Hyper-V host at a replica site. In the event of failure at the primary site, administrators can manually fail over production virtual machines to the Hyper-V server at the recovery site.
During failover, virtual machines are brought back to a consistent point in time, and they can be accessed by the rest of the network. Minimum interval of replication is 5 minutes (so there is the usual data loss associated with asynchronous replication) .
With WS 2012R2 you can also configure extended replication where the Replica server forwards information about changes that occur on the primary virtual machines to a third server for additional protection. In addition the frequency of replication, which previously was a fixed value, is now configurable. You can also access recovery points for 24 hours. Previous versions had access to recovery points for only 15 hours.
Hyper-V Replica Pros:
- Affordable DR solution (included in Server 2012, no extra licenses required)
- Does not require expensive SAN based replication
- Test Failover without impact on production vims
Cons:
- Manual failover and recovery actions
- Aimed at smaller scale deployments
- no integration with SAN array replication (like vSphere SRM), no synchronous replication
You can of course use (independent of Hyper-V replica) manual array based replication mechanisms to replicate virtual machines on LUN level between sides. This would either be a pretty manual process or requires (fee-based) third party solution with varying levels of integration and complexity.
With Windows Server 2016, you can now replicate at the level block your CSV volume from one cluster to another, from one server to another or between volumes. Thanks to Storage Replica, you can replicate your volumes from one room to another to ensure the Disaster Recovery. When a disaster occurs, you just have to remove the replication link and the volume in the second room is available in read/write. You just have to start your VM
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Yes (vSphere Replication)
DR Orchestration (Vendor Add-On: VMware SRM)
NEW
vSphere Replication is VMware’s proprietary hypervisor-based replication engine designed to protect running virtual machines from partial or complete site failures by replicating their VMDK disk files.
This version extends support for the 5 minute RPO setting to the following new data stores: VMFS 5, VMFS 6, NFS 4.1, NFS 3, VVOL and VSAN 6.5.
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Management
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General |
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Central Management
Details
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Yes (XenCenter)
XenCenter is the central Windows-based multi-server management application (client) for XenServer hosts (including the open source version).
It is different to other management apps (e.g. SCVMM or vCenter) which typically have a management server/management client architecture where the management server holds centralized configuration information (typically in a 3rd party DB). Unlike these management consoles, XenCenter distributes management data across XenServer servers (hosts) in a resource pool to ensure there is no single point of management failure. If a management server (host) should fail, any other server in the pool can take over the management role. XenCenter is essentially only the client.
License administration is done using a separate web interface.
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Yes (System Center 2019 / VMM and Windows Admin Center)
NEW
System Center 2019 is the new and improved management suite that provides central management of (heterogeneous) Datacenter resources, including private and public cloud, physical and virtual server and client devices. The suite includes a wide range of components that are now covered by a single license: Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Service Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Endpoint Protection and Orchestrator. Virtual Machine Manager still provides the core function of virtualization management but System Center provides now better integration with the other components that allow for wider (public) cloud management, process automation and self service alongside application management and provisioning. Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) enables you to configure and manage your virtualization host, networking, and storage resources in order to create and deploy virtual machines and services to private clouds that you have created.
For two years, Microsoft works on a new free product called Windows Admin Center. It can replace MMC. It provides features to manage Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct and cluster. Its a light tool that doesnt require a database and can be installed on a laptop or a console server.
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Yes (vCenter Server Standard)
NEW
vCenter Server Standard
Centralized visibility, proactive management and extensibility for VMware vSphere from a single console
VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized platform for managing your VMware vSphere environments, so you can automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure with confidence.
Available as Windows or Apliance VCSA with embeded or separate PSC.
- Simplified architecture (integrated vCenter Server Appliance, Update Manager included all-in-one), no Windows/SQL licensing
- Native High Availability (HA) of vCenter for the appliance is built-in – Automatic failover (Web Client may require re-login)
- Native Backup and Restore of vCenter appliance – Simplified backup and restore with a new native file-based solution. Restore the vCenter Server configuration to a fresh appliance and stream backups to external storage using HTTP, FTP, or SCP protocols.
- New HTML5-based vSphere Client that is both responsive and easy to use (Based on our new Clarity UI)
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Virtual and Physical
Details
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Limited (plug-ins)
XenCenter focusses on managing the virtual infrastructure (XenServer host and the associated virtual machines).
XenServer 7.0 sees the introduction of an updated System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) integration pack. This enabling the management and monitoring of XenServer hosts and VMs and is available for no additional charge for XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition users (see http://bit.ly/2cXr14v for details)
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Yes (Complete SC mgmt, Fabric Updates, Storage Management)
Basically all components of the System Center 2019 management suite provide comprehensive management of virtual and physical environments from the same interface(es). The simplified licensing (that includes all System Center components) allows to easily expand from physical device management into virtual and private, as well as public cloud management without having to purchase additional components. A few of the many examples are updates/patches through Configuration Manager as well as the new ability to perform Fabric Updates and Storage Array Management through VMM (SMI-S/SMP based)
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Limited (plug-ins)
vCenter and associated components focus on management of virtual infrastructure - physical (non-virtualized) infrastructure will typically require separate management.
However, one can argue that there are increasingly aspects of physical management (bare metal host deploy, vCenter Operations capabilities, vCenter monitoring of physical hosts etc. but the core focusses on the virtual aspects).
Additionally, VMware encourages 3rd party vendors to provide management plug-ins for the vCenter Client (classic or web) that can manage peripheral components of the environment (3rd party storage, servers etc.).
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RBAC / AD-Integration
Details
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Yes (hosts/XenCenter)
XenServer 5.6 introduced Role Based Access Control by allowing the mapping of a user (or a group of users) to defined roles (a named set of permissions), which in turn have the ability to perform certain operations. RBAC depends on Active Directory for authentication services. Specifically, XenServer keeps a list of authorized users based on Active Directory user and group accounts. As a result, you must join the pool to the domain and add Active Directory accounts before you can assign roles.
There are 6 default roles: Pool Admin, Pool Operator, VM Power Admin, VM Admin, VM Operator and Read Only - which can be listed and modified using the xe CLI.
Details here: http://bit.ly/2rHyEE6
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Yes (SCVMM, Windows Admin Center)
NEW
With System Center 2019 you can now grant permissions to users on a per cloud basis. This eliminates the need to create a new user role for every combination of action/user/cloud. With System Center 2019 you can create Run As accounts to provide the necessary credentials for performing operations in VMM and use the new capabilities available to the Delegated Administrator and Self-Service User roles to give users the ability to perform tasks.
Windows Admin Center provides the ability to authenticate against the Active Directory domain or from Azure Active Directory. However the RBAC are currently not implemented (July 2019).
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Yes (vCenter and ESXi hosts)
Platform Services Controller (PSC) deals with identity management for administrators and applications that interact with the vSphere platform.
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Cross-Vendor Mgmt
Details
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No (native)
Yes (Vendor Add-On: CloudPlatform)
XenCenter only manages Citrix XenServer hosts.
Comments:
- Citrixs Desktop Virtualization product (XenDesktop, fee based add-on) supports multiple hypervisors (ESX, XenServer, Hyper-V)
- The Citrix XenServer Conversion Manager in 7.1 now enables batch import of Windows and Linux VMs created with VMware products into a XenServer pool to reduce costs of converting to a XenServer environment).
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Improved (VMware) & removed (Citrix)
System Center 2019 includes management capabilities for heterogeneous environments. Components like Operations Manager will continue to provide integration with Sun Solaris and various Linux and Unix distributions. SC Orchestrator now integrates toolsets from e.g. VMware, IBM and HP etc. into automated workflows. But also the virtualization and cloud management has been enhanced to manage different hypervisors with support for (alongside Hyper-V) VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer. With VMM 2016, the support of XenServer has been removed and only ESXi 5.5 and further are supported. Comment: Multi-hypervisor management is still a point of contention in the industry. SC2019 has greatly improved the management scope but there still is (and arguably always will be) the inability to replicate 100% of the native vendor features and keep up with constantly changing product releases resulting in the need for the native vendor tool. This primarily applies to virtualization management while support for heterogeneous hypervisor environments under unified cloud management is a generally accepted scenario.
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vRealize Automation (Vendor Add-On)
VMware vRealize Automation automates the delivery of personalized infrastructure, applications and custom IT services.
This cloud automation software lets you deploy across a multi-vendor hybrid cloud infrastructure, giving you both flexibility and investment protection for current and future technology choices.
http://www.vmware.com/mena/products/vrealize-automation.html
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Browser Based Mgmt
Details
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Not directly with XenCenter but possible with XenOrchestra (Open Source)
More info: https://bit.ly/1gcmTYN
Web Self Service (retired with the launch of XenServer 6.2) was a lightweight portal which allowed individuals to operate their own virtual machines without having administrator credentials to the XenServer host. For large infrastructures, OpenStack is a full orchestration product with far greater capability; for a lightweight alternative, xvpsource.org offers a free open source product.
Related Citrix products have browser based access, for example Storefront (next generation of Web Interface)
XenOrchestra is a web interface to visualize and administrate your XenServer (or XAPI enabled) hosts. No agent is requiered to make it work. It aims to be easy to use on any device supporting modern web technologies (HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript) such as your desktop computer or your smartphone. More info: https://bit.ly/1gcmTYN
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Windows Admin Center
NEW
Windows Admin Center is a web-based management tool that enables to handle your Hyper-V hosts and VM, Windows Server and hyperconverged infrastructure based on Storage Spaces Direct. Windows Admin Center is browseable from Edge or Google Chrome. This tool is completely free and you can download it to try it
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Yes (vSphere Web Client, HTML5 Web Client)
NEW
vSphere Client - new version of the HTML5-based vSphere Client that will run alongside the vSphere Web Client. The vSphere Client is built right into vCenter Server 6.5 (both Windows and Appliance) and is enabled by default.
vSphere Web Client - improvements will help with the overall user experience. (Home screen reorganized, Performance improvements, Live refresh for power states, tasks.)
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Adv. Operation Management
Details
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No
There is no advanced operations management tool included with XenServer.
Additional Info:
XenServers Integration Suite Supplemental Pack allows inter-operation with Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM). SCOM enables monitoring of host performance when installed on a XenServer host.
Both of these tools can be integrated with your XenServer pool by installing the Integration Suite Supplemental Pack on each of your XenServer hosts.
For virtual desktop environments Citrix EdgeSight is a performance and availability management solution for XenDesktop, XenApp and endpoint systems. EdgeSight monitors applications, devices, sessions, license usage, and the network in real time, allowing users to quickly analyze, resolve, and proactively prevent problems.
EdgeSight is actually discontinued and replaced by Citrix Director http://bit.ly/2lKLpaE
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Yes (SC Operations Manager, Microsoft Azure)
SC 2019 Operations Manager enables you to monitor services, devices, and operations from a single console. Numerous views show the state, health, and performance information, as well as alerts generated for availability, performance, configuration and security situations. Specifically for virtualization and cloud aspects you can connect System Center 2019 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) with Operations Manager to monitor the health and availability of the virtual machines and virtual machine hosts that VMM manages. You can also monitor health and availability of the VMM management server, the VMM database server, library servers and see diagram views of the virtualized environment through the Operations console in Operations Manager.A close integration between System Center 2019 Virtual Machine Manager and System Center 2019 Operations Manager introduces System Center cloud monitoring of virtual layers for private cloud environments. To get this new functionality, use the System Center 2019 Management Pack for System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager Dashboard, which is imported automatically when you integrate Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager.With System Center 2019 management packs are also updated with new metrics for chargeback purposes that are based both on allocation and utilization. This provides better integration with chargeback and reporting, and enables monitoring of tenant-based utilization of resources that allows chargeback and billing.
If you dont have System Center Suite, you can leverage Azure to provide some hybrid features such as Azure Update Management, Azure Automation or Azure Monitor. Azure Update Management provides the ability to handle updates for your Windows Infrastructure. It provides also an inventory and a change tracking systyem. Azure Automation can help you to automate some tasks through PowerShell script and finally Azure Monitor can monitor, aggregates log and notify you.
Windows Admin Center is the bridge between the On-Prem and Azure world.
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Yes (VMware vRealize Operations)
VMware vRealize Operations. Optimize resource usage through reclamation and right sizing, cross-cluster workload placement and improved planning and forecasting. Enforce IT and configuration standards for an optimal infrastructure.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-operations.html
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Updates and Backup |
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Hypervisor Upgrades
Details
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The XenCenter released with XenServer 7.0 allows updates to be applied to all versions of XenServer (commercial and free)
XenServer 7.1 introduced Live patching
With XenServer 7.0 patching and updating via the XenCenter management console (enabling automated GUI driven patch application and upgrades) is supported with the comercial and free XenServer versions.
XenServer 6 introduced the Rolling Pool Upgrade Wizard. The Wizard simplifies upgrades to XenServer 6.x by performing pre-checks with a step-by-step process that blocks unsupported upgrades. You can choose between automated or semi-automated, where automated can use a network based XenServer update repository (which you have to create) while semi-automated requires local install media. There are still manual steps required for both approaches and no scheduling functionality or online repository is integrated.
Indroduced in Xenserver 7.1, live patching enables customers to install some Linux kernel and Xen hypervisor hotfixes without having to reboot the hosts. Such hotfixes will consist of both a live patch, which will be applied to the memory of the host, as well as a hotfix that updates the files on disk. This reduces maintenance costs and downtime. When applying an update using XenCenter, the Install Update wizard checks whether the hosts need to be rebooted after the update is applied and displays the result on the Prechecks page. This enables customers to know the post-update tasks well in advance and schedule the application of hotfixes accordingly.
XenServer Live Patching is available for XenServer Enterprise Edition customers, or those who have access to XenServer through their XenApp/XenDesktop entitlement.
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Yes (Cluster Aware Updates, Fabric Updates; Azure Update Management - NEW)
NEW
VMM 2012 (maintained and expanded with R2 and 2016) finally introduced integration between update services and virtualization hosts (even additional Fabric Servers like library servers, PXE servers, the WSUS server itself and the VMM management server).
VMM supports on demand (marketing speak for manual) compliance scanning and remediation of the fabric servers using compiled Baselines (group of patches/updates).
The scope for VMM update management has been expanded with VMM 2012 R2. You can add servers such as Active Directory, DNS, DHCP and other management servers that are not VMM host servers, as managed computers. You can then use a Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server to manage updates for these infrastructure servers in the same way that you do for other computers in the VMM environment.
VMM 2012 also supports Cluster Aware Updates (CAU) orchestrated updates - when remediations are performed on a host cluster, VMM places one cluster node at a time in maintenance mode and then installs updates. If the cluster supports live migration, intelligent placement is used to migrate virtual machines off the cluster node. If the cluster does not support live migration, VMM saves state for the virtual machines.
This feature requires a Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) server to be associated with VMM. After you add a WSUS server to VMM, you should not manage the WSUS using the WSUS console.
This feature is a big improvements but during my testing I found the manual nature of updating the baseline still a little cumbersome.
A new feature in Microsoft Azure called Update Management enables to centralize the patch management for On-Prem and Azure machines (VM and physical server). It’s a free feature until 500mn of automation in a month. Update Management is just an orchestrator and provides order to Windows Update service. So the 500mn are almost never reached only with Update Management.
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Yes (Update Manager)
NEW
VMware Update Manager (VUM) is now part of the vCenter Server Appliance.
VUM is using own postgress db, can benefit from VCSA native HA and Backup.
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Yes
XenServer 7.x Enterprise edition allows the automation of the delivery of Windows drivers via the Windows Update mechanism. The management agent is also automatically updated without user intervention. Both of these features should drastically reduce the administration effort in creation and ongoing maintenance of Windows VMs.
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Yes (WSUS, SCCM, VMST, Azure Update Management - NEW)
NEW
(no major updates with WS 2019) A new feature in Microsoft Azure called Update Management enables to centralize the patch management for On-Prem and Azure machines (VM and physical server). It’s a free feature until 500mn of automation in a month. Update Management is just an orchestrator and provides order to Windows Update service. So the 500mn are almost never reached only with Update Management.
Virtual machine patching is typically done using the existing Windows update methods like Windows Server Update Services/System Center Configuration Manager.
To keep your offline virtual machines, templates and VHDs up-to-date with the latest OS and application updates you can use the Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2012 (VMST).
- Install the tool (a configuration wizard guides you through the process of connecting the tool to VMM and WSUS).
- Configure virtual machines, templates, and virtual hard disks groups.
- Create and schedule servicing jobs (specifies which virtual machines, templates, and virtual hard disks to update, what resources to use for the update process, and when to start the servicing job).
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Limited (Update Manager)
With vSphere 5 update manager discontinued patching of guest operating systems. It does however provide upgrades of VMware Tools, upgrades of the virtual machine hardware for virtual machines and upgrades of virtual appliances.
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Yes
You can take regular snapshots, application consistent point-in-time snapshots (requires Microsoft VSS) and snapshots with memory of a running or suspended VM. All snapshot activities (take/delete/revert) can be done while VM is online.
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Yes (Checkpoint, Production Checkpoint)
(No major change in WS2019)Snapshots - with WS2012 R2 also referred to as Checkpoints- can be taken, deleted and reverted to with or without SCVMM while the vm is online. The Hyper-V Live Merge feature allows to merge checkpoint back into the virtual machine while it continues to run (checkpoints include vRAM when taken online).
New in R2 is the ability to export a virtual machine checkpoint while the vm is running.
Before Windows Server 2016, checkpoints were based on the save state and not all applications support this state (ex: AD or SQL). In Windows Server 2016, a new checkpoint process called production checkpoint exists. They are based on backup technology: VSS. Regardless the hosted application, the production checkpoint can be run on the VM. Its work also on Linux VM.
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Yes
VMware snapshots can be taken and committed online (including a snapshot of the virtual machine memory).
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Backup Integration API
Details
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Yes
Changed Block Tracking APIs for XenServer enables backup vendors to develop more efficient backup solutions, so that only changed blocks are backed up after the initial VM backup.
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Yes (VSS API)
The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a set of COM interfaces that implements a framework to allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes. The Windows SDK can be used to develop VSS applications.
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Yes (vStorage API Data Protection)
vStorage API for Data Protection: Enables integration of 3rd party backup products for centralized backup.
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Integrated Backup
Details
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No (Retired)
Citrix retired the Virtual Machine Protection and Recovery (VMPR) in XenServer 6.2. VMPR was the method of backing up snapshots as Virtual Appliances.
Alternative backup products are available from Quadric Software, SEP, and PHD Virtual
Background:
With XenServer 6, VM Protection and Recovery (VMPR) became available for Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum Edition customers.
XenServer 5.6 SP1 introduced a basic XenCenter-based backup and restore facility, the VM Protection and Recovery (VMPR) which provides a simple backup and restore utility for your
critical vims. Regular scheduled snapshots are taken automatically and can be used to restore VMs in case of disaster. Scheduled snapshots can also be automatically archived to a remote CIFS or NFS share, providing an additional level of security.
Additionally the XenServer API allows for scripting of snapshots. You can also (manually or script) export and import virtual machines for backup purposes.
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Yes (WSB & DPM incl. Linux VMs), Azure Backup (New Fee Based Offering)
(No major change in WS2019)There are various approaches to back up virtual machines under Hyper-V, whether you use your existing backup applications as if the vm was a physical server (agent in vm) or one of the many host level tools (MS or 3rd party) that back up to local devices or cloud repositories.
In Oct 2013 Microsoft announced the availability of the Windows Azure Backup Service for backup of private cloud files to MSs public cloud.
Here are the MS options:
1) Free Windows Server Backup (in conjunction with Volume Shadow Copy Service VSS) can be used to backup and restore vms (including running virtual machines on a standalone host - without the registry edit that was required to register the VSS Hyper-V writer. WSB in 2012/2012 R2 can also backup running virtual machines on a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) - not possible prior to 2012 - but can not backup vms on SMB3 shares.
2) Data Protection Manager (DPM) as part of System Center 2012 SP1 (!) supports: standalone or clustered Hyper-V hosts (both CSV and failover cluster are supported), protecting virtual machine that uses SMB storage, protecting Hyper-V with VM Mobility. Online backups for guests running Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003 are supported
DPM 2012 R2 also added the capability to perform online backups of Linux virtual machines.
3) Windows Azure Backup Service - Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials to the cloud.
Improvements in Server 2012 enable incremental backup to be independently enabled on each virtual machine through backup software of your choice. Windows Server 2012 uses “recovery snapshots to track the differences between backups. These are similar to regular virtual machine snapshots, but they are managed directly by Hyper-V software. During each incremental backup, only the differences are backed up.
4) Windows Server 2016 has a new system backup based on Change Block Tracking. To backup Windows Server 2016, it is necessary to implement DPM 2016.
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Yes (vSphere Data Protection) - Replication of backup data, granular backup and scheduling
vSphere® Data Protection is a backup and recovery solution designed for vSphere environments. Powered by EMC Avamar, it provides agent-less, image-level virtual machine backups to disk. It also provides application-aware protection for business-critical Microsoft applications (Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint) along with WAN-efficient, encrypted backup data replication. vSphere Data Protection is fully integrated with vCenter Server and vSphere Web Client.
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Deployment |
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Automated Host Deployments
Details
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No
There is no integrated host deployment mechanism in XenServer - manual local or network repository based deployments are required.
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Yes (bare metal through VMM), incl. Storage Spaces Direct
(No major change in WS2019)Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 introduced a feature that allows you to discover physical computers on the network, automatically install a supported operating systems (Windows Server 2008 R2, R2 + SP1 or Windows Server 2012) using PXE boot, and then automatically convert the computers into managed Hyper-V hosts. The physical computer can be without OS (bare-metal) or a computer where you want to overwrite an existing operating system.
With Virtual Machine Manager in System Center 2012 R2 you can also provision physical computers as file servers, then create a Scale-Out File Server cluster that consists of these computers. You can then manage and monitor these clusters in VMM. To create a Scale-Out File Server cluster, you need to use a physical computer profile (new term with R2 - replacing host profile) that is configured with the Windows File Server role.
In VMM 2016, you can provision hyperconverged cluster (based on Storage Spaces Direct)
The deployment requires the following:
- PXE server (Windows Deployment Services) available on your network
- The physical host must have a baseboard management controller (BMC) installed that enables out-of-band management (enables remote power management), needs to be enabled for PXE boot and DNS entries prepared
- A generalized (sysprepped) OS image and any required driver files added to the VMM library
- A Physical Computer Profile (library) - the Phyical Computer Profile includes the location of the operating system image and other hardware and operating system configuration settings
When deploying a host the physical computers will boot from the Windows PE image on the PXE server(configuring the hardware where required, downloads the OS image (.vhdx file) together with the specified driver files, applies the drivers to the operating system image, enables the Hyper-V server role, and then restarts the computer.
Note: To create a Scale-Out File Server cluster (As of System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager only) run the Create Clustered File Server Wizard to discover the physical computers, to configure settings such as the cluster name, provisioning type, and discovery scope, and to start the Scale-Out File Server cluster deployment.
For detail on deploying physical computers with VMM 2012 R2 see here: http://bit.ly/17RYzVQ
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Yes (Auto Deploy)
NEW
Auto Deploy is now part of the vCenter Server Appliance.
Integration with VCSA 6.5 can benefit from navive HA or Backup
Configurable trough GUI interface of web client.
Can manage 300+ hosts
Post boot scripts allow for aditional automation.
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Yes
Templates in XenServer are either the included pre-configured empty virtual machines which require an OS install (a shell with appropriate settings for the guest OS) or you can convert an installed (and e.g. sysprep-ed) vm into a custom template.
There is no integrated customization of the guest available, i.e. you need to sysprep manually.
You can NOT convert a template back into a vm for easy updates. You deploy a vm from template using a full copy or a fast clone using copy on write.
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Yes (now incl. Gen 2 templates)
(no major updates with WS 2019) VMM enables automated creation of virtual machines from templates (master images that are customized on deployment). Basically a VM templates consist of three main components: a virtual disks (or multiple), a hardware profile (hardware attributes of the virtual machine) and a guest OS profile (custom Windows OS settings for the virtual machine).
VMM 2012 R2 enabled the creation of virtual machine templates that are based on Generation 2 (http://bit.ly/17S06v2) virtual machines and the ability to create Windows and Linux-based virtual machines and multi-VM Services from a gallery of templates.
While you can create a template from an existing VM template or a virtual hard disk stored in the library , typically the vm template creation involves:
- Create a vm and deploy an OS into it
- Customize OS (Hyper-V Integration Components, Windows Updates etc. ...)
- Generalize the image - run Sysprep (select the Generalize option)
- Create the template from the existing vm
During the deployment you will need to specify OS and virtual hardware settings (by creating these profiles or selecting from existing profiles).
Comment: As the image is syspreped BEFORE the template is created the update process of templates is still cumbersome. You can not quickly convert a templates to a vm, update it and convert it back to a template (as you might be used to from VMware vCenter). You have to deploy a vm from the template, update, generalize and convert it back to a template. However the VM can be updated directly from the VHDX file without run the VM template thanks to DISM. A VHDX file can also be mounted in the system to add files.
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Yes (Content Library)
Content Library – Provides simple and effective management for VM templates, vApps, ISO images and scripts for vSphere Admins – collectively called “content” – that can be synchronized across sites and vCenter Servers.
vSphere 6.5 - possibility to Mount ISO, Customize VM from within the content library, Update an existing template with a new version.
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Tiered VM Templates
Details
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vApp
XenServer 6 introduced vApps - maintained with v 7.x.
A vApp is logical group of one or more related Virtual Machines (VMs) which can be started up as a single entity in the event of a disaster.
The primary functionality of a XenServer vApp is to start the VMs contained within the vApp in a user predefined order, to allow VMs which depend upon one another to be automatically sequenced. This means that an administrator no longer has to manually sequence the startup of dependent VMs should a whole service require restarting (for instance in the case of a software update). The VMs within the vApp do not have to reside on one host and will be distributed within a pool using the normal rules.
This also means that the XenServer vApp has a more basic capability than e.g. VMwares vApp or MSs Service Templates which contain more advanced functions.
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Yes (Service Templates), guest cluster support
(no major updates with WS 2019) While vm templates are useful for deploying individual virtual machines they have limitations (single vm only, limited guest customization etc.) when deploying more complex application structures.
In VMM 2012 a service is a set of virtual machines that are configured and deployed together and are managed as a single entity. You can use the Service Template Designer in VMM to create a service templates that define the configuration of the service. The service template includes information about the virtual machines that are deployed as part of the service, which applications to install on the virtual machines, and the networking configuration needed for the service (including the use of a load balancer).
A Service template allows for rich In-Guest customization (e.g. Windows 2008 R2 Role & Feature installation, application deployment and script execution.
After the service template is created, you can then deploy the service to a private cloud or to virtual machine hosts.
VMM 2012 R2 introduced support for scripts that create a guest cluster, allowing the script that runs on the first deployed virtual machine to be different than the script that runs on the other virtual machines in the tier.
Service Templates in 20012/2012R2 details here: http://bit.ly/107oLMh
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Yes (vApp/OVF)
Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
vApp is a collection of virtual machines (VMs) and sometimes other vApps that host a multi-tier application, its policies and service levels.
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No
There is no integrated capability to create host templates, apply or check hosts for compliance with certain setting.
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Yes (physical computer profiles)
(No major change in SC2019)In VMM 2012 R2 host profiles are replaced by physical computer profiles. You can use physical computer profiles in the same manner that you used host profiles to provision a bare-metal computer to a Hyper-V host. In addition, you can use physical computer profiles to provision a bare-metal computer as a Windows Scale-Out File Server cluster
The physical computer profile is used to specify host settings during a bare-metal deployment. It contains configuration settings such as the location of the operating system image to use during host deployment, together with hardware and operating system configuration settings (management NIC, IP configuration, boot disk settings, drivers, domain, admin password, product key, time zone and scripts).
The physical computer profile can however not be used to check and update compliance of hosts after the initial deployment so has less functionality than e.g. VMwares Host Profiles.
In VMM 2016, we are able to deploy Storage Spaces Direct cluster from VMM. You can deploy disaggregated and hyperconverged solution on physical host from VMM 2016
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Yes (Host Profiles)
NEW
Host profiles eliminates per-host, manual, or UI-based host configuration and maintain configuration consistency using a reference configuration which can be applied or used to check compliance status.
vSphere 6.5 new features: Filters, Bookmarks
Host customizations (answer files) for offline customization
Copy settings between profiles
New pre-check, Compliance view enhancements
Remediation (DRS integrated), Parallel remediation
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No
There are is no ability to associate storage profiles to tiers of storage resources in XenServer (e.g. to facilitate automated compliance storage tiering)
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Yes (Storage Classifications - incl. file shares)
(No major update in VMM 2019) VMM 2012 introduced the concept of Storage Classification. It is a simple mechanism to classify the capabilities of the storage managed by VMM (requires compliant SMI-S storage). Classifying storage entails assigning a meaningful classification to storage pools. For example, you may assign a classification of GOLD to a storage pool that resides on the fastest, most redundant storage array.
In VMM System Center 2012 you could create classifications for classic block storage which was managed by VMM. In VMM 2012 R2 you can also create classifications for file shares.
There is currently no automated discovery of the storage capabilities (like with VMware VASA), it is rather equivalent the user defined storage profile used with vSphere.
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Yes (Storage Based Policy Management)
Using the Storage Based Policy Management (SPBM) framework, administrators can define different policies with different IO limits, and then assign VMs to those policies. This simplifies the ability to offer varying tiers of storage services and provides the ability to validate policy compliance.
The policy-driven control plane is the management layer of the VMware software-defined storage model, which automates storage operations through a standardized approach that spans across the heterogeneous tiers of storage in the virtual data plane.
Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM) is VMware’s implementation of the policy-driven control plane which provides common management over:
- vSphere Virtual Volumes - external storage (SAN/NAS)
- Virtual SAN – x86 server storage
- Hypervisor-based data services – vSphere Replication or third-party solutions enabled by the vSphere APIs for IO Filtering.
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Other |
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No
A resource pool in XenServer is hierarchically the equivalent of a vSphere or Hyper-V cluster. There is no functionality to sub-divide resources within a pool.
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Yes (Host Groups)
(no major updates with VMM 2019)
VMM 2012 introduces the concept of Host Groups, a hierarchical structure that allows to group hosts by its properties. Several settings and resources are assigned at the host group level, such as custom placement rules, host reserve settings for placement, dynamic optimization and power optimization settings, network resource inheritance, host group storage allocation, and custom properties. By default, child host groups inherit the settings from the parent host group.
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Yes
vSphere supports hierarchical resource pools (parent and child pools) for CPU and memory resources on individual hosts and across hosts in a cluster. They allow for resource isolation and sharing between pools and for access delegation of resources in a cluster. Please note that DRS must be enabled for resource pool functionality if hosts are in a cluster. If DRS is not enabled the hosts must be moved out of the cluster for (local) resource pools to work.
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No (XenConvert: retired), V2V: yes
XenConvert was retired in XenServer 6.2
XenConvert allowed conversion of a single physical machine to a virtual machine. The ability to do this conversion is included in the Provisioning Services (PVS) product shipped as part of XenDesktop. Alternative products support the transition of large environments and are available from PlateSpin.
Note: The XenServer Conversion Manager, for converting virtual machines (V2V), remains fully supported and available for Enterprise edition only.
Background:
XenConvert supported the following sources: physical (online) Windows systems OVF, VHD, VMDK or XVA onto these targets: XenServer directly, vhd, OVF or PVS vdisk
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No (use down-level VMM versions)
The Virtual Machine Manager feature that allowed you to convert existing physical computers into virtual machines through the physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion process is no longer supported in System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager and further
Microsoft states that it is aware of the need for P2V capabilities and essentially recommends to use a down-level version of VMM if this functionality is needed, for details see: http://bit.ly/17S2C4n
The V2V is also deprecated in VMM. The long term solution recommended by Microsoft is the use of Azure Site Recovery
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Yes (vCenter Converter)
VMware vCenter Converter transforms your Windows- and Linux-based physical machines and third-party image formats to VMware virtual machines.
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html
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Self Service Portal
Details
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No (Web Self Service: retired)
Web Self Service was a lightweight portal which allowed individuals to operate their own virtual machines without having administrator credentials to the XenServer host.
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Yes (VMM console, Service Manager, Azure Pack, Azure Stack)
(No major change in WS2019)VMM 2012 introduced comprehensive private cloud capabilities (maintained and expanded with R2). Through VMM, an organization can create private clouds, manage access to the private cloud and the underlying physical resources. App Contoller has taken on the role of the Self-Service portal (for Virtual Machine Manager) in a private cloud scenario (that can also expand your view in to any public e.g. Azure Cloud resources if needed). App Controller is a lightweight web based interface with a web front-end and a backend database component.
AppController is removed of the System Center suite since System Center 2016
Please note: The VMM Self-Service Portal is no longer supported in System Center 2012 SP1. Instead MS recommend that you use the App Controller (included in System Center) as the self-service portal solution.
Self-service users can also use the VMM console instead of the VMM Self-Service Portal to perform tasks, such as deploying virtual machines and services (but beware of users using admin portals), for details on the usage see http://bit.ly/17S4BWv
If you are using Service Manager then your organization can create Service Catalogues and offer those to self-service users (allowing you to surface pre-defined offerigs/services including approval and other processes). While Service Manager based offerings can be any service it can also include e.g. requests for private cloud infrastructure (like creating a new vm or a subscription to a cloud resource). Please note that Service Manager would typically not allow you to manage the actual cloud infrastructure itself. For an example of Service Manager integration see this video: http://bit.ly/1gT26fY
There is also a specific System Center Cloud Services Process Pack - updated to support System Center 2012 SP1. Its a service solution for automating the deployment of IaaS components. The CSPP once implemented offers a self-service experience using the Service Manager self-service portal to facilitate private cloud capacity requests, including the flexibility to request additional capacity as demands increase. See details/download here: http://bit.ly/102Du6w
If you are a Service Provider offering WS 2012 based cloud resources to tenants (running Enterprise workloads) then you could also consider the Azure Pack released in October 2013 (free to MS customers). The Windows Azure Pack is a collection of Windows Azure technologies that integrate with System Center and Windows Server to help provide a self-service portal for managing services such as websites, Virtual Machines, and Service Bus; a portal for administrators to manage resource clouds, scalable web hosting and more.
Essentially the Windows Azure Pack delivers the capabilities of Windows Azure into your datacenter, enabling you to offer a self-service, multi-tenant cloud with Windows Azure-consistent experiences and services. http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/1/C/01C728DF-B1DD-4A9E-AC5A-2C565AA37730/Windows_Azure_Pack_White_Paper.pdf
You can see from above that one of the challenges Microsoft faces is the integration of multiple tool and interfaces to provide a consistent, simplified admin and user experience.
In the next year, Microsoft will release Azure Stack which is a Microsoft Azure in your datacenter. This solution will be sold in CPS format (from 4 servers at least)
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No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vCloud Suite, vRealize Automation)
Self-Service Portal functionality is primarily provided by components in VMwares vCloud Suite or vRealize Automation - a comprehensive cloud portfolio with a single purchase enabled with a per-processor licensing metric.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-suite.html
http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-automation.html
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Orchestration / Workflows
Details
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Yes (Workflow Studio)
Workflow Studio provides a graphical interface for workflow composition in order to reduce scripting. Workflow Studio allows administrators to tie technology components together via workflows. Workflow Studio is built on top of Windows PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation. It natively supports Citrix products including XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer and NetScaler.
Available as component of XenDesktop suite, Workflow Studio was retired in XenDesktop 7.x
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Yes (SC Orchestrator, SC Service Mgr, Azure Automation)
(No major update in 2019)System Center 2012 / R2 includes the Orchestrator product (Opalis acquisition). Orchestrator provides a workflow management solution that lets you automate the creation, monitoring, and deployment of resources in your environment.
Essentially Orchestrator provides the glue between the various System Center and other infrastructure components and allows automated interaction between the components through workflow automation (runbooks). This enables you to automate any process in your environment through a drag-and-drop interface by linking activities into runbooks.
Orchestrator includes many built-in standard activities and you can expand Orchestrators functionality and ability to integrate with other Microsoft and third-party products by installing integration packs.
Integration packs for Orchestrator contain additional activities that extend the functionality of Orchestrator. Details here: http://bit.ly/Un9Quf
Updated in Orchestrator in SC 2012 R2 are the Windows Azure Integration Pack for Orchestrator in System Center 2012 SP1 and System Center 2012 R2 and the System Center Integration Pack for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.
Orchestrator also provides extensible integration to any system through the Orchestrator Integration Toolkit. You can create custom integrations that allow Orchestrator to connect to any environment.
System Center 2012 / R2 Service Manager provides an integrated platform for automating your organizations IT service management best practices, such as those found in the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It provides built-in processes for incident and problem resolution, change control, and asset lifecycle management.
You will often find a direct integration between e.g. Service Manager and Orchestrator where e.g. a service request is handled / approved by a Service Manager workflow and subsequently triggers an Orchestrator runbook e.g. a user could request a virtual machine or service (service template) from the self service portal in Service Manager integrated with an Orchestrator runbook that triggers the virtual machine deployment through Virtual Machine Manager.
With Windows Sever 2016, Microsoft introduced PowerShell 5 which provides a wide range of Cmdlets to manage almost all possible configuration and management tasks in the operating system. Essentially all Windows roles and features can be managed using PowerShell.
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Yes (vRealize Orchestrator)
vRealize Orchestrator is included with vCenter Server Standard and allows admins to capture often executed tasks/best practices and turn them into automated workflows (drag and drop) or use out of the box workflows. An increasing number of plug-ins is available to enable automation of tasks related to related products.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-orchestrator.html
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Direct Inspect APIs and Basic (NetScaler - Fee-Based Add-On)
XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition supports Direct Inspect APIs, enabling a supported security solution to use xen to provide security software isolation. This enables the introspection of what is going on inside a VM, from a privileged service VM on the same host. This represents a radical departure from the current generation malware detection based on in-guest agents. The Direct Inspect APIs are fully supported, and enable 3rd party security products such as Bitdefender’s GravityZone to monitor and protect virtual infrastructures against malicious activity:
Guest memory can be watched in real time, detecting advanced threats as they attempt to execute inside the VM
By virtue of the isolation the hypervisor provides, the security solution can no longer be attacked by the threat
XenServer uses netfilter/iptables firewalling.
The fee-based NetScaler provides various (network) security related capabilities through e.g.
- NetScaler Gateway: secure application and data access for Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenMobile)
- NetScaler AppFirewall: secures web applications, prevents inadvertent or intentional disclosure of confidential information and aids in compliance with information security regulations such as PCI-DSS. AppFirewall is available as a standalone security appliance or as a fully integrated module of the NetScaler application delivery solution and is included with Citrix NetScaler, Platinum Edition.
Details here: http://bit.ly/17ttmKk
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Windows Security, Hyper-V Extensible Switch (DNSSEC, PVLANs, port ACLs, BitLocker etc., Shield VM)
(No major change in WS2019)Server 2012 (maintained and enhanced in R2 - see http://bit.ly/19L1mmW) introduced a vast number of general security improvements that will therefore secure your virtual or cloud environment including Secure Boot (prevents boot code updates without appropriate digital certificates and signatures), early Anti-Malware launch, enhanced DNS security (DNSSEC), AppLocker and encrypted cluster volumes (BitLocker) etc.
The biggest virtualization / cloud related improvement has been provided through the new security and isolation capabilities through the Hyper-V Extensible Switch.
Windows Server 2012 / R2 provides the isolation and security capabilities for multi-tenancy by offering the following new features:
- Multitenant virtual machine isolation through private virtual LANs (PVLANs).
- Protection from Address Resolution Protocol/Neighbour Discovery (ARP/ND) poisoning (also called spoofing).
- Protection against DHCP snooping and DHCP guard (DHCP Guard: drops DHCP server messages from unauthorized virtual machines pretending to be DHCP servers, Router Guard: drops Router Advertisement and Redirection messages from unauthorized virtual machines pretending to be routers)
- Isolation and metering using virtual port access control lists (ACLs).
- The ability to trunk traditional VLANs to virtual machines.
In addition to the above WS2012 and WS2012 R2s enhancements in the area of network virtualization can arguably improve network security related aspects (see Network Virtualization)
For a list of most Security and Protection related enhancements in W2 2012 and WS 2012R2 see: http://bit.ly/19L1mmW
In Windows Server 2016, Microsoft brings the Shield VM which are VM protected by a Host Guardian. THe protected VM have their virtual disk encrypted. This system can leverage TPM 2.0 chip or certificate. (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2016/05/10/a-closer-look-at-shielded-vms-in-windows-server-2016/)
In Windows Server 2016, we are able to add virtual TPM to VM.
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Yes (ESXi Firewall, vShield Endpoint, VM Encryption)
new in vSphere 6.5:
- VM Encryption (n/a for Standard)
- vMotion Encryption (n/a for Standard)
- ESXi Secure Boot,
- Virtual Machine Secure Boot,
- Enhanced Logging
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Systems Management
Details
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Yes (API / SDKs, CIM)
XenServer includes a XML-RPC based API, providing programmatic access to the extensive set of XenServer management features and tools. The XenServer API can be called from a remote system as well as local to the XenServer host. Remote calls are generally made securely over HTTPS, using port 443.
XenServer SDK: There are five SDKs available, one for each of C, C#, Java, PowerShell, and Python. For XenServer 6.0.2 and earlier, these were provided under an open-source license (LGPL or GPL with the common linking exception). This allows use (unmodified) in both closed-and open-source applications. From XenServer 6.1 onwards the bindings are in the majority provided under a BSD license that allows modifications.
Citrix Project Kensho provided a Common Information Model (CIM) interface to the XenServer API and introduces a Web Services Management (WSMAN) interface to XenServer. Management agents can be installed and run in the Dom0 guest.
Details here: http://bit.ly/2rHMhTI
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Yes (WMI + PowerShell)
(No major change in WS2019)Hyper-V/Hyper-V server environments can utilize the comprehensive native Windows Server OS hardware instrumentation - based on WMI, Microsofts implementation of the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and Common Information Model (CIM) standards from the DMTF. PowerShell is typically used as the automation framework to implement the instrumentation.
Windows Server 2012 and WS 2012 R2 include Windows PowerShell cmdlets for Network Virtualization that let you build command-line tools or automated scripts for configuring, monitoring, and troubleshooting network isolation policies.
Windows Server 2016 brings PowerShell v5 with new cmdlets for everything
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vSphere’s REST API, PowerCLI, vSphere CLI, ESXCLI, Datacenter CLI
vSphere’s REST APIs have been extended to include VCSA and VM based management and configuration tasks. There’s also a new way to explore the available vSphere REST APIs with the API Explorer. The API Explorer is available locally on the vCenter server.
PowerCLI is now 100% module based, the Core module now supports cross vCenter vMotion by way of the Move-VM cmdlet.
The VSAN module has been bolstered to feature 13 different cmdlets which focus on trying to automate the entire lifecycle of VSAN.
ESXCLI, now features several new storage based commands for handling VSAN core dump procedures, utilizing VSAN’s iSCSI functionality, managing NVMe devices, and other core storage commands. NIC based commands such as queuing, coalescing, and basic FCOE tasks.
Datacenter CLI (DCLI), which is also installed as part of vCLI, can make use of all the new vSphere REST APIs!
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Network and Storage
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Storage |
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Supported Storage
Details
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DAS, SAS, iSCSI, NAS, SMB, FC, FCoE, openFCoE
XenServer data stores are called Storage Repositories (SRs), they support IDE, SATA, SCSI (physical HBA as well as SW initiator) and SAS drives locally connected, and iSCSI, NFS, SMB, SAS and Fibre Channel remotely connected.
Background: The SR and VDI abstractions allow advanced storage features such as Thin Provisioning, VDI snapshots, and fast cloning to be exposed on storage targets that support them. For storage subsystems that do not inherently support advanced operations directly, a software stack is provided based on Microsofts Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)
specification which implements these features.
SRs are storage targets containing virtual disk images (VDIs). SR commands provide operations for creating, destroying, resizing, cloning, connecting and discovering the individual VDIs that they contain.
Reference XenServer 7.5 Administrators Guide: http://bit.ly/2rHyEE6
Also refer to the XenServer Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for more details.
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SMB3, virtual FC, SAS, SATA, iSCSI, FC, FCoE; shared vhdx, S2D
(No major change in WS2019)The R2 release of Server 2012 added several storage related features:
- Support for shared virtual hard disks, enabling clustering of virtual machines by using shared virtual hard disk (VHDX) files (can be hosted on CSVs or SMB-based Scale-Out File Server file shares).
- Hyper-V Live Migration over SMB - enables you to perform a live migration of virtual machines by using SMB 3.0 as a transport (SMB Direct and SMB Multichannel for high speed migration with low CPU utilization)
- Improved SMB bandwidth management (configure SMB bandwidth limits to control different SMB traffic types: default, live migration, and virtual machines
Server 2012 introduced a large number of storage related enhancements.
Server 2012 / R2 virtualization hosts support (almost) all commonly available storage types as attachments for virtual machines. The biggest improvement has been the addition of network attached storage allowing you to configure (cheaper/simpler) network-based storage for virtual machines using the SMB3 protocol. New file server features include transparent failover, networking improvements for better bandwidth and resiliency, support for network adapters with RDMA capability, specific performance optimizations, Volume Shadow Copy Service support and support for Windows PowerShell commands.
Another enhancement with WS 2012 was the addition of virtual fibre channel for the virtual machines. Virtual Fibre Channel lets virtual machines connect directly to Fibre Channel-based storage and presents virtual HBA ports in the guest operating system. This provides: Unmediated access to a SAN, Hardware-based I/O path to the Windows software virtual hard disk stack, Live migration, N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), Single Hyper-V host connected to different SANs with multiple Fibre Channel ports, Up to four virtual Fibre Channel adapters on a virtual machine, Multipath I/O (MPIO)
Details on Storage for Hyper-V here: http://bit.ly/TDeOEC
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 also introduced an update to the VHD format, called VHDX, that has much larger capacity and built-in resiliency.
Windows Server 2016 brings Storage Spaces Direct that enable to implement Hyperconverged or disaggregated solution. Storage Spaces Direct enables the use of direct attach storage devices inside servers to create a highly available storage solution. For more information, you can read this whitepaper: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Understand-Hyper-Converged-bae286dd
Sotrage Spaces Direct requires Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition. This feature is not availablr in Windows Server 2016 Standard
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DAS, NFS, FC, iSCSI, FCoE (HW&SW), vFRC, SDDC
vSphere 6.5 adds:
- Virtual SAN 6.5
- Virtual Volumes 2.0 (VVOL)
- VMFS 6
Support for 4K Native Drives in 512e mode
SE Sparse Default
Automatic Space Reclamation
Support for 512 devices and 2000 paths (versus 256 and 1024 in the previous versions)
CBRC aka View Storage Accelerator
vSphere 6.0 adds:
- Virtual SAN 6.0
- Virtual Volumes (VVOL)
- NFS 4.1 client
- NFS and iSCSI IPV6 support
- Storage Based Policy Management (SPBM) now available in all vSphere editions
- SIOC IOPS Reservations
- vSphere Replication
- Support for 2000 virtual machines per vCenter Server
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Yes (limited for SAS)
Dynamic multipathing support is available for Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage arrays (round robin is default balancing mode). XenServer also supports the LSI Multi-Path Proxy Driver (MPP) for the Redundant Disk Array Controller (RDAC) - by default this driver is disabled. Multipathing to SAS based SANs is not enabled, changes must typically be made to XenServer as SAS drives do not readily appear as emulated SCSI LUNs.
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Yes (MPIO and SMB Multichannel)
NEW
(No major change in WS2019)Block based MPIO can be used with Fibre Channel, iSCSI and SAS interfaces in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012/WS2012R2.
An MPIO solution can be deployed:
- By using a DSM (Device Specific Module aka plugin) provided by a 3rd party storage array manufacturer in a Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or SAS shared storage configuration.
- By using the Microsoft DSM, which is a generic DSM provided for Windows Server 2012 in a Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or SAS shared storage configuration.
Details on MPIO here: http://bit.ly/TDa7ut
For SMB based storage Server 2012 has introduces the SMB Multichannel functionality that provides scalable and resilient connections to SMB shares that dynamically create multiple connections for single sessions or multiple sessions on single connections depending on connection capabilities and demand (primarily for resiliency and load balancing).
In WIndows Server 2016, Microsoft has improved the SMB Multichannel configuration. Now each (v)NICs can be added to the same network and left without configuration. The cluster will manage the configuration automatically. This is the SImplified SMB Multichannel (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-server-docs/failover-clustering/smb-multichannel)
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Yes (enhanced APD and PDL) PDL AutoRemove
vSphere uses natively integrated multi-path capability or can take advantage of vendor specific capabilities using vStorage APIs for Multipathing.
By default, ESXi provides an extensible multipathing module called the Native Multipathing Plug-In (NMP). Generally, the VMware NMP supports all storage arrays listed on the VMware storage HCL and provides a default path selection algorithm based on the array type. The NMP associates a set of physical paths with a specific storage device, or LUN. The specific details of handling path failover for a given storage array are delegated to a Storage Array Type Plug-In (SATP). The specific details for determining which physical path is used to issue an I/O request to a storage device are handled by a Path Selection Plug-In (PSP). SATPs and PSPs are sub plug-ins within the NMP module. With ESXi, the appropriate SATP for an array you use will be installed automatically. You do not need to obtain or download any SATPs.
PDL AutoRemove: Permanent device loss (PDL) is a situation that can occur when a disk device either fails or is removed from the vSphere host in an uncontrolled fashion. PDL detects if a disk device has been permanently removed. When the device enters this PDL state, the vSphere host can take action to prevent directing any further, unnecessary I/O to this device. With vSphere 5.5, a new feature called PDL AutoRemove is introduced. This feature automatically removes a device from a host when it enters a PDL state.
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Shared File System
Details
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Yes (SR)
XenServer uses the concept of Storage Repositories (disk containers/data stores). These SRs can be shared between hosts or dedicated to particular hosts. Shared storage is pooled between multiple hosts within a defined resource pool. All hosts in a single resource pool must have at least one shared SR in common. NAS, iSCSI (Software initiator and HBA are both supported), SAS, or FC are supported for shared storage.
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Yes (CSV); enhanced compatibility and resilience
(No major update in W2019) Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) provide a general-purpose, clustered file system in Windows Server 2012 / R2, which is layered above NTFS - allowing multiple hosts access to the same data. They are not restricted to specific clustered workloads (in Windows Server 2008 R2, CSVs only supported the Hyper-V workload).
New CSV related features with WS 2012 R2 are:
- CSV ownership is now balanced across the cluster nodes, to avoid one node owning a disproportionate number of CSVs
- Increased resiliency - multiple Server service instances per failover cluster node (a default instance that handles incoming traffic from SMB clients that access regular file shares, and a second CSV instance that handles only inter-node CSV traffic)
- CSV Cache allocation: In Windows Server 2012 you could allocate only 20% of the total physical RAM to the CSV cache - you can now allocate up to 80%.
- New support for: Resilient File System (ReFS), Deduplication (e.g. for VDI), Parity storage spaces, Tiered storage spaces and Storage Spaces write-back caching
Server 2012 introduced CSV version 2 that features significantly better integration with Hyper-V and had the following enhancements:
- CSV is now a core Failover Clustering feature (no longer a separate component that needs to be enabled)
- Has been enhanced in scalability and performance to support 64 nodes
- Single Name Space (files have the same name and path when viewed from any node in the cluster)
- Extends its benefits beyond Hyper-V to support other application workloads - application storage can be served from the same share as data
- Supports Storage spaces, SMB Direct and SMB Multipathing, and create more efficient storage with thin provisioning
- Enabling CSV on a disk is now a single right click with the mouse
- CSV disks are now included in the Failover Cluster Manager Storage view easing management.
- CSV supports BitLocker encryption
- Support for the full feature set of VSS and support for both Hardware and Software Backup of CSV volumes.
Note: You cannot use a disk for a CSV that is formatted with FAT, FAT32
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Yes (VMFS v6)
NEW
VMwares clustered file system, allowing for concurrent access of multiple hosts for live migration, file based locking (to ensure data consistency), dynamic volume resizing etc.
new in VMFS 6
Support for 4K Native Drives in 512e mode
SE Sparse Default
Automatic Space Reclamation
Support for 512 devices and 2000 paths (versus 256 and 1024 in the previous versions)
CBRC aka View Storage Accelerator
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Yes (iSCSI, FC, FCoE)
XenServer 7.x adds Software-boot-from-iSCSI for Cisco UCS
Yes for XenServer 6.1 and later (XenServer 5.6 SP1 added support for boot from SAN with multi-pathing support for Fibre Channel and iSCSI HBAs)
Note: Rolling Pool Upgrade should not be used with Boot from SAN environments. For more information on upgrading boot from SAN environments see Appendix B of the XenServer 7.5 Installation Guide: http://bit.ly/2sK4wGn
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Yes (iSCSI, diskless, FC)
(no major updates with WS2019)
Booting from SAN is supported for iSCSI and FC
In Server 2012 the iSCSI Software Target capabilities were enhanced to support diskless network boot capabilities (you can use a single operating system image to start many diskless computers).
Comment: The new virtual Fibre Channel function is not intended to be a host boot option, rather than a means to provide FC attachment directly to virtual machines.
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Yes (FC, iSCSI, FCoE and SW FCoE)
Boot from iSCSI, FCoE, and Fibre Channel boot are supported
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No
While there are several (unofficial) approaches documented, officially no flash drives are supported as boot media for XenServer 7.x
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No
(no major updates with WS2019)
Only Hyper-V Server (free version) is documented to supported boot from USB/Flash storage. Microsoft stated already with 2008R2: Although Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is built with components of Windows Server 2008 R2, some changes have been made specifically to Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 in order to support boot from USB.
The documentation for setting up Hyper-V Server 2012 for boot from USB are here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj733589.aspx
Nano Server doesnt support the USB boot. Only SD Card boot is supported.
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Yes
Boot from USB is supported
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Virtual Disk Format
Details
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vhd, raw disk (LUN)
XenServer supports file based vhd (NAS, local), block device-based vhd (FC, SAS, iSCSI) using a Logical Volume Manager on the Storage Repository or a full LUN (raw disk)
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.vhdx (incl. sharing and online resizing, vhd, pass-through (raw)
(No major change in WS2019)Block based MPIO can be used with Fibre Channel, iSCSI and SAS interfaces in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012/WS2012R2.
An MPIO solution can be deployed:
- By using a DSM (Device Specific Module aka plugin) provided by a 3rd party storage array manufacturer in a Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or SAS shared storage configuration.
- By using the Microsoft DSM, which is a generic DSM provided for Windows Server 2012 in a Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or SAS shared storage configuration.
Details on MPIO here: http://bit.ly/TDa7ut
For SMB based storage Server 2012 has introduces the SMB Multichannel functionality that provides scalable and resilient connections to SMB shares that dynamically create multiple connections for single sessions or multiple sessions on single connections depending on connection capabilities and demand (primarily for resiliency and load balancing).
In WIndows Server 2016, Microsoft has improved the SMB Multichannel configuration. Now each (v)NICs can be added to the same network and left without configuration. The cluster will manage the configuration automatically. This is the SImplified SMB Multichannel (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-server-docs/failover-clustering/smb-multichannel)
Hyper-V in Server 2012 introduced an updated virtual disk format: VHDX. Pass-through (raw) disks and .VHD disks are also supported. You can convert a .vhd file to .vhd using Hyper-V Manager or VMM.
Server 2012 R2 added support for virtual hard disk resizing while the vm is running (only available for VHDX files that are attached to a SCSI controller). Additionally it enables clustering virtual machines by using shared virtual hard disk (VHDX) files.
In WIndows Server 2016, Microsoft has improved the shared VHDX (VHD Set). You can now online resize the disk, move it and backup it from the host level. The improvment is called VHD Set.
Use vhdx whenever possible - the only likely reason why not to use vhd is in case you expect to move the vm to an (older) host with a Hyper-V version not supporting vhdx.
The main VHDX features are:
- Support for virtual storage of up to 64 TB
- Protection against data corruption (logging updates to VHDX metadata)
- Improved alignment of the virtual hard disk format to work well on large sector physical disks.
Other:
- Larger block sizes for dynamic and differential disks (allowing these disks to attune to the needs of the workload)
- 4-KB logical sector virtual disk that allows for increased performance when used by applications and workloads that are designed for 4-KB sectors.
- Ability to store custom metadata about the file (e.g. OS version, or updates that have been applied)
- trim - resulting in smaller files size and allowing the underlying physical storage device to reclaim unused space. (Trim requires direct-attached storage or SCSI disks and trim-compatible hardware.)
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vmdk, raw disk (RDM)
VMware Virtual Machine Disk Format (vmdk) and RAW Disk Mapping (RDM) - essentially a raw disk mapped to a proxy (making it appear like a VMFS file system)
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2TB (16TB with GFS2)
NEW
For XenServer 7.5 the maximum virtual disk sizes are:
- NFS: 2TB minus 4GB
- LVM (block): 2TB minus 4 GB
Reference: http://bit.ly/2rcrjZx
Experimental support for GFS2 Storage Repositories in XenServer 7.5, effectevely increased the maximum size of virtual disks from 2TB to 16TB
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64TB (vhdx), 2TB (vhd), 256TB+ (raw)
(no major updates with WS2019)
With Hyper-V / free Hyper-V Server 2012 / R2 the new .vhdx virtual disk format supports disk sizes up to 64 TB. Pass-through disks can be of over 256TB in size. The .vhd format is still limited to 2TB.
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64TB
vSphere is increasing the maximum size of a virtual machine disk file (VMDK) from 2TB - 512 bytes to the new limit of 64TB. The maximum size of a virtual Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is also increasing, from 2TB - 512 bytes to 64TB in physical compatibility and 62TB in virtual compatibility. Virtual machine snapshots also support this new size for delta disks that are created when a snapshot is taken of the virtual machine.
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Thin Disk Provisioning
Details
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Yes (Limitations on block)
XenServer supports 3 different types of storage repositories (SR)
1) File based vhd, which is a local ext3, remote NFS or SMB filesystems, which supports thin provisioning for vhd
2) Block device-based vhd format (SAN based on FC, iSCSI, SAS) , which has no support for thin provisioning of the virtual disk but supports thin provisioning for snapshots
3) LUN based raw format - a full LUN is mapped as virtual disk image (VDI) so to is only applicable if the storage array HW supports that functionality
SMB storage (CIFS) is supported for XenServer 7.x Enterprise Edition
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Yes (Dynamic Disks, Trim)
(no major updates with WS2019)
Server 2012 has been enhanced to use better just-in-time allocations of storage known as thin provisioning, and the ability to reclaim storage that is no longer needed, known as trim. Hyper-V has been using thinly provisioned disks (Dynamic Disks) for some time, MS typically recommends now to use fixed disks when using the .vhd format (best performance, resiliency) and dynamic disks when using the .vhd format.
Windows Server 2012 identifies and monitors thinly provisioned disks and also provides a new Trim API that allows the underlying physical storage device to reclaim unused space (supported with the new .vhd format). NTFS issues trim notifications when appropriate in real time. In addition, trim notifications are issued as a part of storage consolidation and optimization, which is performed regularly on a scheduled basis. (Trim requires direct-attached storage or SCSI disks and trim-compatible hardware.)
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Yes
Thin provisioning allowing for disk space saving through allocation of space based on usage (not pre-allocation).
VMFS6 - Automatic Space Reclamation
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No
There is no NPIV support for XenServer
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Yes (Virtual Fibre Channel)
(no major updates with WS2019)
Server 2012 has improved support for NPIV and enables you to connect Hyper-V / free Hyper-V Server virtual machines directly to your Fibre Channel Storage arrays by providing virtual Fibre Channel ports within the guest OS (instead of accessing it as virtualized storage through the host). NPIV lets multiple N_Port IDs share a single physical N_Port. This lets multiple Fibre Channel initiators use a single physical port, easing hardware requirements in SAN design, especially where virtual SANs (i.e. segregation) is needed . Virtual Fibre Channel for Hyper-V guests uses NPIV to create multiple NPIV ports on top of the hosts physical Fibre Channel ports. A new NPIV port is created on the host each time a virtual HBA is created inside a virtual machine. When the virtual machine stops running on the host, the NPIV port is removed.
Features/Benefit:
- Direct (native) access to Fibre Channel Storage from within the virtual machines - allowing native FC management (QoS, performance etc.)
- Cluster guest OSs over native Fibre Channel
- Virtual SAN (if a host is attached to multiple physical SANs using different physical HBAs you can define virtual SANs by grouping physical FC ports on the host that are attached to the same SAN)
- Up to 4 virtual FC ports per vm
- Supports live migration and MPIO (DSM within the vm)
Note: VMM no longer supports management of virtual machines deployed directly on LUNs exposed to Hyper-V through N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV). Workaround: Use virtual fibre channels that are configured for virtual machines in Hyper-V.
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Yes (RDM only)
NPIV requires RDM (Raw Disk Mapping), it is not supported with VMFS volumes. NPIV requires supported switches (not direct storage attach).
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Yes - Clone on boot, clone, PVS, MCS
XenServer 6.2 introduced Clone on Boot
This feature supports Machine Creation Services (MCS) which is shipped as part of XenDesktop. Clone on boot allows rapid deployment of hundreds of transient desktop images from a single source, with the images being automatically destroyed and their disk space freed on exit.
General cloning capabilities: When cloning VMs based off a single VHD template, each child VM forms a chain where new changes are written to the new VM, and old blocks are directly read from the parent template. When this is done with a file based vhd (NFS) then the clone is thin provisioned. Chains up to a depth of 30 are supported but beware performance implications.
Comment: Citrixs desktop virtualization solution (XenDesktop) provides two additional technologies that use image sharing approaches:
- Provisioning Services (PVS) provides a (network) streaming technology that allows images to be provisioned from a single shared-disk image. Details: http://bit.ly/2d0FrQp
- With Machine Creation Services (MCS) all desktops in a catalog will be created off a Master Image. When creating the catalog you select the Master and choose if you want to deploy a pooled or dedicated desktop catalog from this image.
Note that neither PVS (for virtual machines) or MCS are included in the base XenServer license.
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Yes (Differencing Disk)
(no major updates with WS2019)
Hyper-V/Hyper-V Server supports Differencing Disks with Server 2012 / R2 and 2008 R2. Differencing disks allow for the quick and space-saving creation of virtual machines by pointing to a shared parent disk and storing unique changes (writes) to the individual machines in a difference file that remains linked to the parent image. Reads will be served from the parent (unless the block has already been changed and writes accumulate in the difference file - increasing storage requirements over time).
With Server 2008 R2 Microsoft recommends though to avoid using differencing disks on virtual machines that run server workloads in a production environment (as running out of disk space when using diff disks can cause virtual machines to pause unexpectedly), see http://bit.ly/UxL3DK
Also with Server 2012 / R2, difference disks are typically used for virtual machines with shorter life cycle (i.e. lab environments or pooled VDI environments) due to the linked nature of the images (i.e. updating the parent breaks the link). For Server 2012 MS has not (yet?) updated the above article and only makes general performance recommendation in this document: http://bit.ly/UxHfT9
Quote: Difference disk Having only a few snapshots can elevate the CPU usage of storage I/So, but might not noticeably affect performance except in highly I/O-intensive server workloads. However, having a large chain of snapshots can noticeably affect performance because reading from the VHD can require checking for the requested blocks in many differencing VHDs. Keeping snapshot chains short is important for maintaining good disk I/O performance.
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No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vCloud Suite, vRealize Automation)
VMwares virtual image sharing technology (vComposer or linked clones) is supported with VMwares virtual desktop solution (Horizon View).
This functionality had been extended to vCloud Director, vRealize Automation, but is not a functionality included in the vSphere editions without vCD.
Both Horizon View and vCD (as part of the vCloud Suites) are fee-based Add-Ons.
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SW Storage Replication
Details
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No
There is no integrated (software-based) storage replication capability available within XenServer
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Yes (Hyper-V Replica - Storage Replica)
Server 2012 introduced a new software-based replication called Hyper-V Replica for Hyper-V and free Hyper-V Server environments - an asynchronous replication of virtual machines over a network link from one Hyper-V host at a primary site to another Hyper-V host at a replica site without the need of a hardware based replication mechanism.
In the event of failure at the primary site, administrators can manually fail over production virtual machines to the Hyper-V server at the recovery site.
During failover, virtual machines are brought back to a consistent point in time, and they can be accessed by the rest of the network. Minimum interval of replication is 5 minutes (so there is the usual data loss associated with asynchronous replication) .
New in WS 2012 R2:
- You can also configure extended replication where the Replica server forwards information about changes that occur on the primary virtual machines to a third server for additional protection.
- The frequency of replication, which previously was a fixed value, is now configurable. You can also access recovery points for 24 hours. Previous versions had access to recovery points for only 15 hours.
Pros:
- Affordable DR solution (included in Server 2012, no extra licenses required)
- Does not require expensive SAN based replication
- designed to work with lower bandwidth / high latency connections - ideal for small and medium Enterprises
- Test Failover without impact on production vims
Cons:
- Manual failover and recovery actions
- Aimed at smaller scale deployments, typically not a suitable solution for replication of massive environments, added network traffic
- no integration with SAN array replication (like vSphere SRM), no synchronous replication
Windows Server 2016 brings Storage Replica as storage replication solution. This solution enables to replicate at the block-level a volume to another. This volume can be located in a cluster or a standalone server. You can also replicate two volumes located in the same server. This feature requires Windows Server 2016 Datacenter. For further information you can read this topic: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-replica/storage-replica-overview
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Yes (vSphere Replication)
vSphere Replication is VMware’s proprietary hypervisor-based replication engine designed to protect running virtual machines from partial or complete site failures by replicating their VMDK disk files.
This version extends support for the 5 minute RPO setting to the following new data stores: VMFS 5, VMFS 6, NFS 4.1, NFS 3, VVOL and VSAN 6.5.
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IntelliCache and in-memory read cache
XenServer 6.5 introduced a read caching feature that uses host memory in the new 64-bit Dom0 to reduce IOPS on storage networks, improve LoginVSI scores with VMs booting up to 3x Faster. The read cache feature is available for XenDesktop & XenApp Platinum users who have an entitlement to this feature.
Within XenServer 7.0 LoginVSI scores of 585 have been attained (Knowledge Worker workload on Login VS 4.1)
IntelliCache is a XenServer feature that can (only!) be used in a XenDesktop deployment to cache temporary and non-persistent operating-system data on the local XenServer host. It is of particular benefit when many Virtual Machines (VMs) all share a common OS image. The load on the storage array is reduced and performance is enhanced. In addition, network traffic to and from shared storage is reduced as the local storage caches the master image from shared storage.
IntelliCache works by caching data from a VMs parent VDI in local storage on the VM host. This local cache is then populated as data is read from the parent VDI. When many VMs share a common parent VDI (for example by all being based on a particular master image), the data pulled into the cache by a read from one VM can be used by another VM. This means that further access to the master image on shared storage is not required.
Reference: http://bit.ly/2d8Bxpm
With in-read memory cache the reads can be cached in dom0 RAM, providing fast, scalable access and dramatically reducing off-host IOPS, thereby reducing the need for high-end arrays to support large scale infrastructures.
Reference: http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
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CSV Cache; Write-Back Cache - Storage Spaces Direct Cache
In WS 2012 R2 there are two main features to provide perfromance improvements through caching
1. CSV Cache:
Windows Server 2012 introduced the CSV cache to provide (READ) caching on the block level by allocating system memory (RAM) as cache. This can significantly improve Hyper-V read performance (e.g. VDI boot storms).
New in WS 20012 R2:
- In Windows Server 2012, you could allocate only 20% of the total physical RAM to the CSV cache. You can now allocate up to 80%.
- In Windows Server 2012, the CSV cache was disabled by default. In Windows Server 2012 R2, it is enabled by default.
2. Storage Spaces Write- Back Caching:
Storage Spaces can use existing SSDs in the storage pool to create a write-back cache that buffers small random writes to SSDs before later writing them to HDDs.
- write-back cache is transparent to administrators and users and is created on all new virtual disks as long as there is a sufficient number of SSDs in the storage pool (Simple spaces: one SSD, Two-way mirror spaces and single-parity spaces: two SSDs, three-way mirror spaces and dual parity spaces: three SSDs)
- write-back cache works with all types of storage spaces, including storage spaces with storage tiers
- newly created storage spaces automatically use a 1 GB write-back cache (as long as the storage pool contains enough disks with MediaType set to SSD or Usage set to Journal)
3 - The Storage Spaces Direct provides a highly available cache system based on the fastest storage devices. In production it is recommended to deploy two storage devices. Storage Spaces Direct requires Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition.
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Yes (vSphere Flash Read Cache)
vSphere 5.5 introduced the vSphere Flash Read Cache that enables the pooling of multiple Flash-based devices into a single consumable vSphere construct called vSphere Flash Resource.
vSphere hosts can use the vSphere Flash Resource as vSphere Flash Swap Cache, which replaces the Swap to SSD feature previously introduced with vSphere 5.0. It provides a write-through cache mode that enhances virtual machines performance without the modification of applications and OSs.
At its core Flash Cache enables the offload of READ I/O from the shared storage to local SSDs, reducing the overall I/O requirements on your shared storage.
Documented maxima with vSphere 6.5:
- Virtual flash resource per host: 1
- Maximum cache for each virtual disk: 400GB
- Cumulative cache configured per host (for all virtual disks): 2TB
- Virtual disk size: 16TB
- Virtual host swap cache size: 4TB
- Flash devices (disks) per virtual flash resource: 8
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No
There is no specific Storage Virtualization appliance capability other than the abstraction of storage resources through the hypervisor.
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(no major updates with WS2019)Improved (Storage Spaces); Tiered Storage, Write-Back Cache - Storage Spaces Direct
Windows Server 2012 introduced the concept of Storage Spaces (supported for Hyper-V and free Hyper-V Server environments). In simplified terms Storage Spaces allows you to use inexpensive SAS/SATA drives (JBODS) to provide more advanced pooled and redundant storage through a Storage Virtualization layer. First you create a storage pool specifying the physical disk drives to be used and subsequently you create virtual disks (not to be confused with vhd for virtual machines) within the pool. These disks are appearing then to the host like new physical disks with changed attributes (resilience, capacity etc.) by adding mirroring or parity to the disk and pools can be dynamically expanded. These can now be used for local storage, failover clustering and SMB Direct (RDMA).
WS 2012 R2 introduced significant enhancements to Storage Spaces:
1. Tiered Storage
Ability to to provide tiered storage (that automatically moves frequently accessed data to faster (SSD) storage and infrequently accessed data to slower (HDD) storage).
- To create a storage space with storage tiers, the storage pool must have a sufficient number of hard disks and SSDs to support the selected storage layout, and the disks must contain enough free space.
- When creating a storage space using the New Virtual Disk Wizard or the New-VirtualDisk cmdlet you can now specify to create the virtual disk with storage tiers.
- The virtual disk must use fixed provisioning, and the number of columns will be identical on both tiers (a four-column, two-way mirror with storage tiers would require eight SSDs and eight HDDs).
- Volumes created on virtual disks that use storage tiers should be the same size as the virtual disk.
- Administrators can pin (assign) files to the standard (HDD) or faster (SSD) tier by using the Set-FileStorageTier cmdlet, ensuring that the files are always accessed from the appropriate tier.
2. Storage Spaces Write- Back Caching:
Storage Spaces can use existing SSDs in the storage pool to create a write-back cache that buffers small random writes to SSDs before later writing them to HDDs.
- write-back cache is transparent to administrators and users and is created on all new virtual disks as long as there is a sufficient number of SSDs in the storage pool (Simple spaces: one SSD, Two-way mirror spaces and single-parity spaces: two SSDs, three-way mirror spaces and dual parity spaces: three SSDs)
- write-back cache works with all types of storage spaces, including storage spaces with storage tiers
- newly created storage spaces automatically use a 1 GB write-back cache (as long as the storage pool contains enough disks with MediaType set to SSD or Usage set to Journal)
3. Parity space support for failover clusters, dual parity and automatic rebuild from storage pool free space (rather than hot spares)
- You can now use parity spaces to maximize capacity and resiliency while still offering the ability to fail over to another cluster node
- Dual parity enables you to keep a high level of resiliency when using a parity space with a large number of disks or any time when you need to help protect against two simultaneous disk failures
- When a disk fails, instead of writing a copy of the data that was on the failed disk to a single hot spare, the data is copied to multiple drives in the pool such that the previous level of resiliency is achieved
Please note: Storage spaces can be provided from a single file server node using (non-raided!) SAS or SATA JBODs. For clustered nodes you will need SAS JBODs (not SATA) in a SHARED JBOD enclosure (Storage Spaces does NOT present virtualized local storage as shared storage like e.g. VMware VSA). MS will list certified JBOD enclosures.
Advantages:
- Provide reliable and scalable storage with reduced cost (cheap JBODs)
- Aggregate individual drives into storage pools
- Expand storage pools on demand
- Deploy specific drives as hot spares
Limitations:
- Fibre-channel and iSCSI are not supported
- SAS or SATA JBODs only, no HW Raid, for clustering SAS only and a shared SAS (no SATA) JBOD enclosure
- A mirrored pool must have at least 2 drives, three drive minimum required for using parity
- Virtual disks to be used with a failover cluster must use the NTFS file system not ReFS, cant use thin provisioning and must use the mirrored (not parity) option.
- Performance considerations (software RAID, JBODs of different types, multiple virtual disks per pool etc.)
Storage Spaces FAQ here: http://bit.ly/UxZ1FP
Windows Server 2016 brings Storage Spaces Direct which is a solution that enables to use direct attach storage devices in each node to create a highly available storage system. With this solution, you can deploy hyperconverged solution. The storage devices must be NVDIMM (SCM), NVMe, SATA or SAS. The disks can be SSD or HDD. You can mix the storage device type to create multi-resilient virtual disk to maximize the performance and the storage efficiency. For more information you can read this topic: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-overview
Storage Spaces Direct requires Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition
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No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vSAN 6.5)
VMware vSAN extend virtualization to storage with an integrated hyper-converged solution.
new in vSAN 6.5
Virtual SAN iSCSI Service (MS Cluster support)
2-Node Direct Connect (cross-connect two VSAN hosts with a simple ethernet cable)
512e drive support
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Storage Integration (API)
Details
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Integrated StorageLink (deprecated)
Integrated StorageLink was retired in XenServer 6.5.
Background: XenServer 6 introduced Integrated StorageLink Capabilities. It replaces the StorageLink Gateway technology used in previous editions and removes the requirement to run a VM with the StorageLink components. It provides access to use existing storage array-based features such as data replication, de-duplication, snapshot and cloning. Citrix StorageLink allows to integrate with existing storage systems, gives a common user interface across vendors and talks the language of the storage array i.e. exposes the native feature set in the storage array. StorageLink also provides a set of open APIs that link XenServer and Hyper-V environments to third party backup solutions and enterprise management frameworks. There is a limited HCL for StorageLink supporting arrays. Details: http://bit.ly/2DvcCXY
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SMI-S / SMP, ODX, Trim, ReFS Accelerated VHDX Operation
(no major updates with WS2019)Server 2012 deliverd significantly improved storage management.
- The Windows Storage Management API (SMAPI)
- PowerShell cmdlets enabling scriptable and remote administration
- A new interface - the Storage Management Provider framework - enabling customers to easily manage 3rd-party Storage subsystems using either a Storage Management Provider (SMP), or SMI-S Provider.
Microsoft has introduced several storage related integration points with Server 2012 that improve virtualization environments. You can now e.g. manage SMI-S / SMP compliant storage arrays directly from with VMM 2012 for virtualization related task (creating LUNs etc.).
Improved storage integration capabilities include:
- Management of compliant arrays directly from VMM 2012
- Windows Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) enables the arrays to directly transfer data within or between compatible storage devices, bypassing the host computer. Requires ODX-compatible storage arrays and applications (e.g. Hyper-V operations that transfer large amounts of data like creating a fixed size virtual hard disk, merging snapshot or converting virtual hard disks)
- Trim: Windows Server 2012 provides a new API that enables applications to release storage when it is no longer needed. NTFS issues trim notifications when appropriate in real time. In addition, trim notifications are issued as a part of storage consolidation and optimization, which is performed regularly on a scheduled basis. Requires Trim compatible hardware
The improvment of ReFS in Windows Server 2016 brings Accelerated VHDX Operation. This accelerates the checkpoint merging process and the creation of fixed VHDX. ReFS should be used only when deploying Storage Spaces Direct.
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Yes (VASA, VAAI and VAMP)
VMware provides various storage related APIs in order to enhance storage functionality and integration between storage devices and vSphere.
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Basic
Virtual disks on block-based SRs (e.g. FC, iSCSI) have an optional I/O priority Quality of Service (QoS) setting. This setting can be applied to existing virtual disks using the xe CLI.
Note: Bare in mind that QoS setting are applied to virtual disks accessing the LUN from the same host. QoS is not applied across hosts in the pool!
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Distributed Storage QoS
(no major updates with WS2019)WS 2012 R2 introduced a new Storage QoS function that enables you to specify the maximum and minimum I/O loads in terms of I/O operations per second (IOPS) for each virtual disk in your virtual machines (ensuring that the storage throughput of one virtual hard disk does not impact the performance of another virtual hard disk on the same host).
- Specify the maximum IOPS allowed for a virtual hard disk that is associated with a virtual machine.
- Specify the minimum IOPS - receive a notification when the specified minimum IOPS for a virtual hard disk is not met.
- Monitor storage-related metrics through the virtual machine metrics interface.
Details here: http://bit.ly/1ayzAuW
Previous to WS 2012 R2 there was no native method of implementing storage I/O control for disk objects of hosts or virtual machines in Server 2012.
However storage control was possible if the storage is network based (e.g. iSCSI, NFS or SMB) by regulating the network traffic that carries the storage I/O. Please note that control is limited to either the physical network port or the virtual port on the hyper-v switch). As an individual virtual disk that is e.g. stored on SMB is presented as disk object to the virtual machine (not associated with a unique virtual network port) control for individual virtual disk objects is typically not possible.
Background for network based I/O control:
Windows Server 2012 introduces QoS control for physical networks as well as virtual networks (on the port level of the hyper-V virtual switch) with the ability to guarantee a minimum bandwidth to a virtual machine or a service.
With System Center 2012 (min SP1) you can configure some of the new networking settings centrally (but System Center is not required) including Bandwidth settings for virtual machines and IEEE priority tagging for QoS prioritization - PowerShell will be required for the more advanced networking options.
Windows Server 2012 also takes advantage of Data Center Bridging (DCB)-capable hardware to converge multiple types of network traffic on a single network adapter, with a guaranteed level of service to each type.
Unlike in Server 2008 R2 (where only the maximum bandwidth was configurable - without being able to guarantee a minimum bandwidth) Server 2012 introduces a bandwidth floor - the ability to guarantees a certain amount of bandwidth to a specific type of traffic (port or virtual machine).
Windows Server 2012 offers two different mechanisms to enforce minimum bandwidth:
- through the enhanced packet scheduler in Windows (provides a fine granularity of classification, best choice if many traffic flows require minimum bandwidth enforcement, example would be a server running Hyper-V hosting many virtual machines, where each virtual machine is classified as a traffic flow)
- through network adapters that support Data Center Bridging (supports fewer traffic flows, however, it can classify network traffic that doesnt originate from the networking stack e.g. can be used with a CNA adapter that supports iSCSI offload, in which iSCSI traffic bypasses the networking stack - because the packet scheduler in the networking stack doesnt process this offloaded traffic, DCB is the only viable choice to enforce minimum bandwidth)
Another example is Server Message Block Direct (SMB Direct), a Windows Server 2012 feature that builds on Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). SMB Direct offloads the SMB traffic directly to an RDMA-capable NIC to reduce latency and the number of CPU cycles that are spent on networking.
Again, you can use Data Center Bridging (implemented by some NIC vendors) in network adapters. DCB works in a similar way as Minimum Bandwidth, each class of traffic, regardless of whether its offloaded or not, has bandwidth allocation; in the event of network congestion, each class gets its share - otherwise, each class gets as much bandwidth as is available.
In both cases, network traffic first must be classified (built-in classifications in Server 2012 include iSCSI, NFS, SMB and SMB Direct). Windows classifies a packet itself or gives instructions to a network adapter to classify it. The result of classification is a number of traffic flows in Windows, and a given packet can belong to only one of them.
Details here: http://bit.ly/Ueb07L
In Windows Server 2016, Microsoft brings the distributed Storage QoS. The Storage QoS policy are stored in the cluster database. They can be applied to a single VM or to multiple VMs. The Storage QoS policy is aware about the underlying storage IOPS and can manage centrally the IOPS distribution. The QoS policy can limit the minimum and the maximum IOPS or/and the bandwith to a virtual disk in bytes per second. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-qos/storage-qos-overview
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Yes (Storage IO Control )
In vSphere 6.5 Storage IO Control has been reimplemented by leveraging the VAIO framework. You will now have the ability to specify configuration details in a VM Storage Policy and assign that policy to a VM or VMDK. You can also create a Storage Policy Component yourself and specify custom shares, limits and a reservation.
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Networking |
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Advanced Network Switch
Details
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Yes (Open vSwitch) - vSwitch Controller
The Open vSwitch is fully supported
The vSwitch brings visibility, security, and control to XenServer virtualized network environments. It consists of a virtualization-aware switch (the vSwitch) running on each XenServer and the vSwitch Controller, a centralized server that manages and coordinates the behavior of each individual vSwitch to provide the appearance of a single vSwitch.
The vSwitch Controller supports fine-grained security policies to control the flow of traffic sent to and from a VM and provides detailed visibility into the behavior and performance of all traffic sent in the virtual network environment. A vSwitch greatly simplifies IT administration within virtualized networking environments, as all VM configuration and statistics remain bound to the VM even if it migrates from one physical host in the resource pool to another.
Details in the XenServer 7.3 vSwitch Controller Users Guide: http://bit.ly/2r1WuaS
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Yes (Hyper-V Virtual Switch); Extended Port ACLs, vRSS, DLB - Switch Embedded Teaming - Network Controller
(no major updates with WS2019)Arguable the biggest improvements to virtualization and cloud environments with Server 2012 have come with the addition of the Hyper-V Extensible Switch (Hyper-V as well as free Hyper-V Server).
Its essentially an Ethernet switch that runs in the management operating system of the Hyper-V parent partition and allows to connect virtual machines to both virtual networks and the physical network. In addition, the Hyper-V Virtual Switch provides policy enforcement for security, isolation, and service levels.
The Hyper-V Virtual Switch enables ISVs to create extensible plug-ins (Virtual Switch Extensions) that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities. Management of the Hyper-V extensible switch, including deployment and configuration of virtual switch extensions using a new logical switch concept can be done through VMM 2012 (min SP1).
Note: The Extensible Switch is strictly speaking not a natively distributed switch (i.e. there are individual switch instances on each host). However, using the Virtual Switch Extensions Hyper-V can provide more advanced and fully distributed virtual switches (e.g. using Ciscos 1000v) but these are typically fee-based.
New with WS 2012 R2 are the following enhancements:
1. Extended Port ACLs (configure ACLs to provide firewall protection and enforce security policies for the tenant VMs in their datacenters)
- In Windows Server 2012, you were able to specify both source and destination MAC and IP addresses for IPv4 and IPv6. For Windows Server 2012 R2 you can also specify the port number when you create rules
- Stateful rules that are unidirectional and provide a timeout parameter (after the rule is utilized successfully one time, the two traffic flows are allowed without having to be looked up against the rule again for a period of time that you designate using the timeout attribute)
2. Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB) of traffic types (WS 2012 provided simultaneous load distribution and failover, but did not ensure load distribution between the NICs in a NIC team in a balanced manner - in WS 2012 R2, dynamic load balancing continuously and automatically moves traffic streams from NIC to NIC within the NIC team to share the traffic load as equitably as possible).
3. Hyper-V Network Virtualization coexists with third party forwarding extensions
When you have a third party forwarding extension installed, Hyper-V Virtual Switch now performs hybrid forwarding. With hybrid forwarding, network traffic that is NVGRE encapsulated is forwarded by the HNV module within the switch, while all non-NVGRE network traffic is forwarded by the third party forwarding extensions that you have installed.
In addition to forwarding, a third party forwarding extension can still apply other policies, such as ACLs and QoS, to both the NVGRE and the non NVGRE-encapsulated traffic. The forwarding extension that you install must be able to process both types of network traffic based on their intended destinations. The policies and capabilities of the Hyper-V Virtual Switch and third party extensions do not displace each other – instead, they are mutually available.
4. Reduced bottle-necks with vRSS
In WS 2012 Receive Side Scaling (RSS spreads the processing across multiple cores on the host and multiple cores on the VM) over SR-IOV was supported; now in Windows Server 2012 R2, virtual RSS (vRSS) is supported on the VM network path, allowing VMs to sustain a greater networking traffic load. To take advantage of vRSS, VMs must be configured to use multiple cores, and they must support RSS. vRSS is enabled automatically when the VM uses RSS on the VM network path.
Other key features of the Hyper-V Virtual Switch:
Multi-tenancy - through the Extensible Switch, Server 2012 provides now the isolation and security capabilities required for multi-tenancy by offering:
- Multitenant virtual machine isolation through PVLANs
- Protection from Address Resolution Protocol/Neighbour Discovery (ARP/ND) poisoning (also called spoofing)
- Protection against DHCP snooping and DHCP Guard
- Virtual port ACLs
- The capability to trunk traditional VLANs to virtual machines
- Monitoring Windows PowerShell/Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
The Hyper-V Extensible Switch can be configured as:
- External (ports that connect to a single external NIC as well as one or more virtual NICs in vims)
- Internal (allowing communication between parent and child partitions, i.e. host and guests)
- Private (communication between child partitions only)
Details here: http://bit.ly/Ue8K0u
In Windows Server 2016, Microsoft has improved the virtual switch because it manages now the teaming. It is not necessary anymore to create teaming and then create the virtual switch on top. This is called Switch Embedded Teaming. Thanks to SET, we can now enable RDMA, vRSS on virtual NIC located in the hyperviseur (parent partition). This enables to converge everything on two network adapters (Storage, Live-Migration, Management, Heartbeat and so on). https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/wsnetdoc/2015/09/01/switch-embedded-teaming-network-adapter-teaming-within-hyper-v-virtual-switch/
Moreover Microsoft has improved the Software-Defined Networking layer. The all layer can be managed accross the Network Controller. Network Controller provides API to manage all the network devices (virtual switches, software load balancer and so on). The network controller can be managed accross System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The Network Controller requires Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition
In WIndows Server 2016, the SDN layer supports VXLAN
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Yes (vDS)
vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) spans multiple vSphere hosts and aggregates networking to a centralized datacenter-wide level, simplifying overall network management (rather than managing switches on individual host level) allowing e.g. the port state/setting to follow the vm during a vMotion (Network vMotion) and facilitates various other advanced networking functions - including 3rd party virtual switch integration.
Each vCenter Server instance can support up to 128 VDSs, each VDS can manage up to 2000 hosts.
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Yes (incl. LACP - New)
XenServer 6.1 added the following functionality, maintained with XenServer 6.2 and later:
- Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) support: enables the use of industry-standard network bonding features to provide fault-tolerance and load balancing of network traffic.
- Source Load Balancing (SLB) improvements: allows up to 4 NICs to be used in an active-active bond. This improves total network throughput and increases fault tolerance in the event of hardware failures. The SLB balancing algorithm has been modified to reduce load on switches in large deployments.
Background:
XenServer provides support for active-active, active-passive, and LACP bonding modes. The number of NICs supported and the bonding mode supported varies according to network stack:
• LACP bonding is only available for the vSwitch, while active-active and active-passive are available for both the vSwitch and Linux bridge.
• When the vSwitch is the network stack, you can bond either two, three, or four NICs.
• When the Linux bridge is the network stack, you can only bond two NICs.
XenServer 6.1 provides three different types of bonds, all of which can be configured using either the CLI or XenCenter:
• Active/Active mode, with VM traffic balanced between the bonded NICs.
• Active/Passive mode, where only one NIC actively carries traffic.
• LACP Link Aggregation, in which active and stand-by NICs are negotiated between the switch and the server.
Reference: http://bit.ly/13e9mxc
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Yes (LBFO); Dynamic Load Balancing - Switch Embedded Teaming
(no major updates with WS2019)With Server 2012 MS finally introduced native NIC teaming capabilities in the OS (rather than relying on third-party solutions) - providing integrated bandwidth aggregation and traffic failover.
Microsoft also refers to it as Load Balancing/Failover (LBFO).
- works with (and between) different NIC vendors, fully supported by MS
- supports up to 32 NICs in a team
New in WS 2012 R2 is the Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB) of traffic types (WS 2012 provided simultaneous load distribution and failover, but did not ensure load distribution between the NICs in a NIC team in a balanced manner - in WS 2012 R2, dynamic load balancing continuously and automatically moves traffic streams from NIC to NIC within the NIC team to share the traffic load as equitably as possible).
Restrictions - NIC teaming is compatible with all networking capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2 with five exceptions:
- SR-IOV
- Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA)
- Native host Quality of Service
- TCP Chimney Offload
- 802.1X Authentication
Algorithms:
Option 1: Switch-independent mode; NICs can connect to different switches, doesnt require the switch to participate in the teaming, typically less sophisticated load balancing
Option2: Switch-dependent mode; requires a compatible switch to participate in the teaming, all interfaces of the team are connected to the same switch, typically supports more advanced load balancing
Load Balancing modes for both switch-dependent and independent (new with R2):
- Address Hash distribution
- Hyper-V Port distribution
- Dynamic distribution
Generally the Dynamic Distribution will provide better performance and should be used - details on which mode to deploy in WS 2012 R2 (a scary 52 pages white paper) here: http://bit.ly/1ayFmwk
In Windows Server 2016, Microsoft has improved the virtual switch because this last can now manage the NIC Teaming. This feature is called Switch Embedded Teaming. Thanks to SET, you no longer need to create a NIC Teaming and then, create the virtual switch. With SET, you specify the network adapters that will be part of the teaming inside the virtual switch. Thanks to SET, you can now enable RDMA, vRSS and DCB on virtual network adapters located in the parent partition. This enable to converge all traffic accross two network adapters.
Set supports only the switch independent load-balancing mode and dynamic or Hyper-V port algorithm. Microsoft recommends to use the dynamix algorithm. For further information about SET, you can read this topic: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/wsnetdoc/2015/09/01/switch-embedded-teaming-network-adapter-teaming-within-hyper-v-virtual-switch/
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Yes (up to 32 NICs)
vSphere has integrated NIC teaming capabilities. To utilize NIC teaming, two or more network adapters must be uplinked to a virtual switch (standard or distributed).
The key advantages of NIC teaming are:
- Increased network capacity for the virtual switch hosting the team.
- Passive failover in the event one of the adapters in the team goes down
There are various NIC load balancing (e.g. based on originating port, source MAC or IP hash) and failover detection algorithms (link status, Beacon probing).
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Yes (limited for mgmt. and storage traffic)
NEW
VLANs are supported with XenServer. To use VLANs with virtual machines use switch ports configured as 802.1Q VLAN trunk ports in combination with the XenServer VLAN feature to connect guest virtual network interfaces (VIFs) to specific VLANs (you can create new virtual networks with XenCenter and specify the VLLAN IDs).
XenServer 6.1 removed a previous limitation which caused VM deployment delays when large numbers of VLANs were in use. This improvement enables administrators using XenServer 6.x and later to deploy hundreds of VLANs in a XenServer pool quickly.
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Yes
(no major updates with 2019)
Yes, supports static VLAN and VLAN tagging
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Yes
Support for VLANs, VLAN tagging with distributed or standard switch. Private VLANs (sub-VLANs) are supported with the virtual distributed switch only
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No
XenServer does not support PVLANs.
Please refer to the Citrix XenServer Design: Designing XenServer Network Configurations guide for details on network design and security considerations http://bit.ly/2n2aWwW
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Yes
(no major updates with 2019) Server 2012 introduced support for PVLANs, which provides isolation between virtual machines on the same VLAN. (A common example is a guest network in a hotel where all guest want to communicate with the outside world e.g. through a router - but avoid communication with each-other).
You can do this by assigning every virtual machine in a PVLAN one primary VLAN ID and one or more secondary VLAN IDs. The PVLAN ports can operate in one of three modes
- Isolated (cant communicate at layer 2)
- Promiscuous (Promiscuous ports can communicate with any port on the same primary VLAN ID - this would be the router in our hotel example)
- Community ports on the same VLAN ID can communicate at layer 2)
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Yes
Private VLANs (sub-VLANs) are supported with the virtual distributed switch.
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Yes (guests only)
XenServer 6.1 introduced formal support for IPv6 in XenServer guest VMs (maintained with 7.2). Customers already used it with e.g. 6.0 but the 6.1 release notes list this as new official feature: IPv6 Guest Support: enables the use of IPv6 addresses within guests allowing network administrators to plan for network growth.
Full support for IPv6 (i.e. assigning the host itself an IPv6 address) will be addressed in the future.
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Yes
(no major updates with w2019)
Windows Server 2012 has full IPv6 support for host and vms (parent and child partitions).
The new features of IPv6 in Windows Server 2012 are
- better connectivity on the Internet (IPv6 attempts to connect, If this connection fails, Windows marks the network interfaces as unusable for IPv6, causing the IPv6 destination addresses for the Internet properties to be unreachable - reaching it through IPv4 instead)
- a protocol translation service for DirectAccess clients NAT64/DNS64 work together to translate incoming connection traffic from an IPv6 node to IPv4 traffic. The DNS64 resolves the name of an IPv4-only host to a translated IPv6 address. The NAT64 translates the incoming IPv6 traffic to IPv4 traffic and performs the reverse translation for response traffic)
- better manageability of IPv6 settings through Windows PowerShell (The ability to manage IPv6 settings in the common management environment of Windows PowerShell, including scripts and workflows)
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Yes
vSphere supports IPv6 for all major traffic types.
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SR-IOV
NEW
Experimental support for SR-IOV-capable networks cards delivers high performance networking for virtual machines, catering for workloads that need this type of direct access.
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Yes - SRIOV (incl. Live Migration)
(no major updates with WS 2019)
In order to achieve native I/O for the network in virtual machines Windows Server 2012 (maintained with R2) added the ability to assign SR-IOV functionality from physical devices directly to virtual machines. This gives virtual machines the ability to bypass the software-based Hyper-V Virtual Switch, and directly access the network adapter. As a result, CPU overhead and latency is reduced, with a corresponding rise in throughput.
Requirements:
- host hardware that supports SR-IOV (e.g. CPU with Intel VT-d2, chipset support for interrupt and DMA remapping)
- SR-IOV-capable NIC in the virtualization host
Features:
- Live Migration is fully supported. You can Live Migrate a VM using SR-IOV to another host that either does or does not support SR-IOV, and back again. The VM will use SR-IOV if it is available on the target host, and if SR-IOV is unavailable, it will use the traditional software network path.
Limitations:
- Nick Teaming & SR-IOV: when a NIC team is created on top of SR-IOV capable physical NICs, the SR-IOV capability is not propagated. So you cant team in the parent partition and use the same NICs for SR-IOV in the vims at the same time (instead present two SR-IOV NICs to the vims and team them in the guest OS)
- SR-IOV causes the virtual machines traffic to bypass the Hyper-V Virtual Switch. If any switch port policies are set, SRIOV functionality is revoked for that virtual machine
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Yes (SR-IOV and VMDirectPath)
vSphere 6.5 SR-IOV support for 1024 Virtual Functions.
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Yes
You can set the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) for a XenServer network in the New Network wizard or for an existing network in its Properties window. The possible MTU value range is 1500 to 9216.
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Yes
(no major updates with WS 2016) Support for Jumbo frames has been added with 2008 R2 and is maintained with Server 2012 and 2012 R2.
These are the basic steps to enable Jumbo frames in Server 2012 for you virtual machines:
- Networking hardware must support jumbo packets and the feature must be enabled
- Hyper-V virtual switch must have jumbo frames enabled
- The individual virtual NICs must have jumbo frames enabled
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Yes
vSphere supports jumbo frames for network traffic including iSCSI, NFS, vMotion and FT
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Yes (TSO)
TCP Segmentation Offload can be enabled, see http://bit.ly/13e9WLi
By default, Large Receive Offload (LRO) and Generic Receive Offload (GRO) are disabled on all physical network interfaces. Though unsupported, you can enable it manually http://bit.ly/2djwZiZ
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Yes (RSS,VMQ,VMMQ, Ipsec Offload, SR-IOV )
(no major updates with WS 2019)
Server 2012 supports various functions that improve the networking performance by offloading operations to specialized hardware.
- SR-IOV (assign SR-IOV -capable network adapters directly to a virtual machine to maximize network throughput while minimizing network latency and CPU overhead.)
- Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue (D-VMQ) - essentially allows the hosts single network adapter to appear as multiple network adapters to the virtual machines, allowing each virtual machine its own dedicated network adapter, resulting in less data in the hosts buffers and an overall performance improvement to I/O operations. New in Server 2012: dynamically distributes incoming network traffic processing to host processors, based on processor use and network load. If network load is heavy, D-VMQ automatically uses more processors - with light network load, Dynamic VMQ uses fewer CPUs.
- IPsec Task Offload for Virtual Machines (uses hardware capabilities of server network adaptors to offload IPsec processing. This reduces the CPU overhead of IPsec encryption and decryption)
- Accelerating network traffic through Receive-side scaling and Receive Segment Coalescing
Note: In Server 2012 Virtual machine (VM) Chimney, also called TCP Offload, has been removed (incompatible with native NIC teaming in Server 2012) so TCP chimney will not be available to guest operating systems.
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Yes (TSO, NetQueue, iSCSI)
Supports TCP Segment Offloading, NetQueue (VMwares implementation of Intels VMDq and iSCSI HW offload (for a limited number of HBAs).
No TOE support (you can use TOE capable adapters in vSphere but the TOE function itself will not be used)
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Yes (outgoing)
QoS of network transmissions can be done either at the vm level (basic) by setting a ks/sec limit for the virtual NIC or on the vSwitch-level (global policies). With the DVS you can select a rate limit (with units), and a burst size (with units). Traffic to all virtual NICs included in this policy level (e.g. you can create vm groups) is limited to the specified rate, with individual bursts limited to the specified number of packets. To prevent inheriting existing enforcement the QoS policy at the VM level should be disabled.
Background:
To limit the amount of outgoing data a VM can send per second, you can set an optional Quality of Service (QoS) value on VM virtual interfaces (VIFs). The setting lets you specify a maximum transmit rate for outgoing packets in kilobytes per second.
The QoS value limits the rate of transmission from the VM. As with many QoS approaches the QoS setting does not limit the amount of data the VM can receive. If such a limit is desired, Citrix recommends limiting the rate of incoming packets higher up in the network (for example, at the switch level).
Depending on networking stack configured in the pool, you can set the Quality of Service (QoS) value on VM virtual interfaces (VIFs) in one of two places-either a) on the vSwitch Controller or b) in XenServer (using theCLI or XenCenter).
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Yes (max and min bandwidth); SMB traffic types
(no major updates with WS 2019)
Windows Server 2012 introduces QoS control for networking with the ability to guarantee a minimum bandwidth to a virtual machine or a service.
With System Center 2012 (min SP1) you can configure some of the new networking settings centrally (but System Center is not required) including Bandwidth settings for virtual machines and IEEE priority tagging for QoS prioritization - PowerShell will be required for the more advanced networking options.
Windows Server 2012 also takes advantage of Data Center Bridging (DCB)-capable hardware to converge multiple types of network traffic on a single network adapter, with a guaranteed level of service to each type.
Unlike in Server 2008 R2 (where only the maximum bandwidth was configurable - without being able to guarantee a minimum bandwidth) Server 2012 introduces a bandwidth floor - the ability to guarantees a certain amount of bandwidth to a specific type of traffic (port or virtual machine).
Windows Server 2012 offers two different mechanisms to enforce minimum bandwidth:
- through the enhanced packet scheduler in Windows (provides a fine granularity of classification, best choice if many traffic flows require minimum bandwidth enforcement, example would be a server running Hyper-V hosting many virtual machines, where each virtual machine is classified as a traffic flow)
- through network adapters that support Data Center Bridging (supports fewer traffic flows, however, it can classify network traffic that doesnt originate from the networking stack e.g. can be used with a CNA adapter that supports iSCSI offload, in which iSCSI traffic bypasses the networking stack - because the packet scheduler in the networking stack doesnt process this offloaded traffic, DCB is the only viable choice to enforce minimum bandwidth)
In both cases, network traffic first must be classified. Windows classifies a packet itself or gives instructions to a network adapter to classify it. The result of classification is a number of traffic flows in Windows, and a given packet can belong to only one of them.
Details here: http://bit.ly/Ueb07L
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Yes (NetIOC)
vSphere 6.x Network I/O Control (NIOC) Version 3
- Ability to reserve bandwidth at a VMNIC
- Ability to reserve bandwidth at a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) Portgroup
Network I/O control enables you to specify quality of service (QoS) for network traffic in your virtualized environment. NetIOC requires the use of a virtual distributed switch (vDS). It allows to prioritize network by traffic type and the creation of custom network resource pools.
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Traffic Monitoring
Details
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Yes (Port Mirroring)
The XenServer vSwitch has Traffic Mirroring capabilities. The Remote Switched Port Analyzer (RSPAN) policies support mirroring traffic sent or received on
a VIF to a VLAN in order to support traffic monitoring applications. Use the Port Configuration tab in the vSwitch Controller UI to configure policies that apply to the VIF ports.
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Yes (port mirroring); enhanced tracing
(no major updates with WS 2019)The Hyper-V Extensible Switch in server 2012 provides port mirroring, which allows an administrator to designate which virtual ports should be monitored and to which virtual port the monitored traffic should be delivered for further processing. For example, a security monitoring virtual machine can look for anomalous patterns in the traffic flowing through other specific virtual machines on the switch. In addition, an administrator can diagnose network connectivity issues by monitoring traffic bound for a particular virtual switch port.
New with WS 2012 R2 is a streamlined and more detailed network tracing capability - network traces now contain switch and port configuration information, and tracing packets through the Hyper-V Virtual Switch and any forwarding extensions you have installed are easier to use and read.
Using the new Microsoft Message Analyzer (not just R2) you can also mirror and capture network traffic for remote and local viewing.
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yes (Port Mirroring)
Port mirroring is the capability on a network switch to send a copy of network packets seen on a switch port to a network-monitoring device connected to another switch port. Port mirroring is also referred to as Switch Port Analyzer (SPAN) on Cisco switches. Distributed Switch provides a similar port mirroring capability that is available on a physical network switch. After a port mirror session is configured with a destination -a virtual machine, a vmknic or an uplink port-the Distributed Switch copies packets to the destination.
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Hypervisor
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General |
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Hypervisor Details/Size
Details
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XenServer 7.1: Xen 4.7 -based
XenServer is based on the open-source Xen hypervisor. XenServer 7.5 runs on the Xen 4.7 hypervisor and adds support for 'live-patching' of the Xen hypervisor, allowing issues to be patched without requiring a host reboot. Xen 4.7 also includes various performance improvements, and updates to the virtual machine introspection code (surfaced in XenServer as Direct Inspect).
XenServer uses paravirtualization and hardware-assisted virtualization, requiring either a modified guest OSs or hardware assisted CPUs (more commonly seen as its less restrictive and hardware assisted CPUs like Intel VT/AMD-V have become standard). The device drivers are provided through a 64-bit Linux-based guest (CentOS) running in a control virtual machine (Dom0).
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Hyper-V 4
Hyper-V is Microsofts proprietary hypervisor. Since Server 2012 / 2012 R2 it can be installed as role in a full Windows OS, the stripped down Windows OS Server-Core mode or the standalone Hyper-V Server.
The Hypervisor itself is only
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Virtual Hardware version 13
VMware developed/proprietary bare-metal hypervisor, which with vSphere 5 onwards is only available as ESXi (small foot-print without Console OS). The hypervisor itself is < 150MB. Device drivers are provided with the hypervisor (not with the Console OS or dom0/parent partition as with Xen or Hyper-V technologies).
ESX is based on binary translation (full virtualization) but also uses aspects of para-virtualization (device drivers, VMware tools and the VMI interface for para-virtualization) and supports hardware assisted virtualization aspects.
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Host Config |
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Max Consolidation Ratio
Details
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1000 VMs per host
Citrix has listed the new scalability limits for XenServer 7.5 within the published configuration limits document https://bit.ly/2rcrjZx
- Concurrent VMs per host (Windows or Linux): 1000
- Concurrent protected VMs per host with HA enabled: 500
Disclaimers are:
- The maximum number of VMs/host supported is dependent on VM workload, system load, and certain environmental factors. Citrix reserves the right to determine what specific environmental factors affect the maximum limit at which a system can function. For systems running over 500 VMs, Citrix recommends allocating 8GB RAM and 8 exclusively pinned vCPUs to dom0, and setting the OVS flow-eviction-threshold to 8192.
The maximum amount of logical physical processors supported differs by CPU. Please consult the XenServer Hardware Compatibility List for more details on the maximum amount of logical cores supported per vendor and CPU.
Each plugged VBD or plugged VIF or Windows VM reduces this number by 1
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1024 vims/host, 2048 vCPUs/host
(no major updates with WS 2019)
Server 2012 supports a maximum of 1024 powered-on vims per host and a maximum of 2048 virtual CPUs per host (in case of running virtual machines with multiple vCPUs the limit that is reached first applies).
Actually achievable maximum number depends obviously on workload characteristics and hardware configuration.
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1024 VMs
vSphere 6.5 Maximums
- 64 hosts per cluster
- 8000 VMs per cluster
- 576 CPUs
- 12 TB of RAM
- 1024 VMs per host
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288 (logical)
XenServer 7.5 supports up to 288 Logical CPUs (threads) e.g. 8 socket with 18 cores each and Hyper-Threading enabled = 288 logical CPUs
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512 Logical CPUs
(no major updates with WS 2019)
In Windows Server 2016, the support of logial processors is extended to 512.
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576 physical
Hosts will support up to 576 physical CPUs (Dependent on hardware at launch time).
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Max Cores per CPU
Details
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unlimited
The XenServer license does not restrict the number of cores per CPU
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unlimited
(no major updates with WS 2019)
Number of cores per CPU (socket) are not restricted with the Hyper-V/Hyper-V Server license
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unlimited
unlimited (since vSphere 5)
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Max Memory / Host
Details
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5TB
XenServer supports a maximum of 5TB per host, if a host has one or more paravirtualized guests (Linux VMs) running then a maximum of 128 GB RAM is supported on the host
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24TB
Hyper-V in Server 2016 and further supports up to 24TB of physical RAM per host.
Hyper-V in Server 2016 supports up to 24TB of physical RAM per host
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12TB
vSphere 6.5 Maximums
- 64 hosts per cluster
- 8000 VMs per cluster
- 576 CPUs
- 12 TB of RAM
- 1024 VMs per host
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VM Config |
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32
XenServer 7.5 supports 32vCPUs for Windows and Linux VMs. Actual numbers vary with the guest OS version (e.g. license restrictions).
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up to 240 vCPU (Win) / 240 vCPU (Linux)
Maximum number of virtual CPUs configurable in a Windows and Linux virtual machine - achievable numbers vary greatly with specific guest OS version, please check! (240 vCPUs supported for e.g.: Windows Server 2012, 2008R2, CentOS 5.7. 5.8, 6.0-6.3, RHEL 6-6.3, SLES11SP2 etc.).
For all supported guests with Server 2016 see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/compute/hyper-v/supported-windows-guest-operating-systems-for-hyper-v-on-windows
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128 vCPU
128 vCPU
Maximum number of virtual CPUs configurable for the vm and presented to the guest operating system - supported numbers vary greatly with specific guest OS version, please check!
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1.5TB
A maximum of 1.5TB is supported for guest OSs, actual number varies greatly with guest OS version so please check for specific guest support.
The maximum amount of physical memory addressable by your operating system varies. Setting the memory to a level greater than the operating system supported limit, may lead to performance issues within your guest. Some 32-bit Windows operating systems can support more than 4 GB of RAM through use of the physical address extension (PAE) mode. The limit for 32-bit PV Virtual Machines is 64GB. Please consult your guest operating system Administrators Guide and the XenServer Virtual Machine Users Guide for more details.
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12TB
Maximum virtual RAM supported per virtual machine is 12TB.
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6TB
NEW
6TB
amount of vRAM configurable in a virtual machine (presented to the guest OS)
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No
You can not configure serial ports (as virtual hardware) for your VM
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yes (named pipe)
(no major updates with WS 2019)
virtual machine serial port (max 2) can natively only be connected to a named pipe (i.e. not to the host physical port or network unless using 3rd party options)
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32 ports
32 ports
Virtual machine serial ports can connect to physical host port, output file, named pipes or network.
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Yes
NEW
XenServer 7.5 includes USB pass-through support. USB pass-through enables more use cases for your virtual environment, such as accessing USB storage devices directly from within the VMs, and running software that requires USB licensing dongles.
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Yes
By connecting the USB Device to the host and configuring a physical hard disk, the USB device can be mounted inside the virtual machine in passthrough mode.
Be aware that Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016 can redirect local resources - including USB devices - to a virtual machine session through Virtual Machine Connection tool. The enhanced session mode connection uses a Remote Desktop Connection session via the virtual machine bus (VMBus), so no network connection to the virtual machine is required.
The other (native) exception is provided for virtual desktop workloads where you can use the capabilities of the RemoteFX protocol to redirect USB devices to virtual machines.
There are however several 3rd party utilities that allow you to redirect USB over IP and provide connectivity to vims in this way. Another work-around is to connect a local USB device to the vm while connecting with the standard RDP client (mstsc.exe) and selecting to connect your local USB device through the Local devices and resources option.
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Yes (USB 1.x, 2.x and 3.x) with max 20 USB devices per vm
vSphere supports a USB (host) controller per virtual machine. USB 1.x, 2.x and 3.x supported. One USB host controller of each version 1.x, 2.x, or 3.x can be added at the same time.
A maximum of 20 USB devices can be connected to a virtual machine (Guest operating systems might have lower limits than allowed by vSphere)
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Yes (disk, NIC)
XenServer supports adding of disks and network adapters while the vm is running - hot plug requires the specific guest OS to support these functions - please check for specific support with your OS vendor.
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Yes (except CPU)
(No major change in WS2019)Server 2012 / R2 Hyper-V allows to hot-add memory to the virtual machine as long as the memory is configured as dynamic, essentially allowing to adjust the memory while the vm is up and running. Server 2016 allowed to hot-add static memory and network adapters to the running VMs.
Since 2008R2 Hyper-V allows to add virtual storage (only when connected to virtual SCSI adapter - not IDE) is supported while the vm is running.
Windows Server 2016 enables to hot add/remove virtual NIC and static memories. Windows Server 2016 doesnt support the hot add vCPU. However guest applications as SQL Server need to be restarted when a vCPU is added to the VM; even on VMware
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Yes (CPU, Mem, Disk, NIC, PCIe SSD)
vSphere adds the ability to perform hot-add and remove of SSD devices to/from a vSphere host.
VMware Hot add (Memory and CPU) and hot plug (NIC, disks) requires the guest OS to support these functions - please check for specific support.
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Graphic Acceleration
Details
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Yes
Citrix XenServer is leading the way in the virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics applications and workstations. Its offerings include GPU Pass-through (for NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs) as well as hardware based
GPU sharing with NVIDIA GRID™ vGPU™ and Intel GVT-g™.
XenServer 7.5 customers can use AMD MxGPU on 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2016 VMs.
Details: http://bit.ly/2sJOcW4
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Yes (Discrete Device Assignement)
(No major change in WS2019)Windows Server 2016 enables to pass through the graphical card to the VM for performance. 60 FPS can easily be reached for graphical process. The feature is called Device Discrete Assignment. Thanks to this feature, CAO can be now done in VM
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Yes (NVIDIA vGPU)
GRID vGPU is a graphics acceleration technology from NVIDIA that enables a single GPU (graphics processing unit) to be shared among multiple virtual desktops. When NVIDIA GRID cards (installed in an x86 host) are used in a desktop virtualization solution running on VMware vSphere® 6.x, application graphics can be rendered with superior performance compared to non-hardware-accelerated environments. This capability is useful for graphics-intensive use cases such as designers in a manufacturing setting, architects, engineering labs, higher education, oil and gas exploration, clinicians in a healthcare setting, as well as for power users who need access to rich 2D and 3D graphical interfaces.
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Memory |
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Dynamic / Over-Commit
Details
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Yes (DMC)
XenServer 5.6 introduced Dynamic Memory Control (DMC) that enables dynamic reallocation of memory between VMs. This capability is maintained in 7.x.
XenServer DMC (sometimes known as 'dynamic memory optimization', 'memory overcommit' or 'memory ballooning') works by automatically adjusting the memory of running VMs, keeping the amount of memory allocated to each VM between specified minimum and maximum memory values, guaranteeing performance and permitting greater density of VMs per server. Without DMC, when a server is full, starting further VMs will fail with 'out of memory' errors: to reduce the existing VM memory allocation and make room for more VMs you must edit each VMs memory allocation and then reboot the VM. With DMC enabled, even when the server is full, XenServer will attempt to reclaim memory by automatically reducing the current memory allocation of running VMs within their defined memory ranges.
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Yes - Dynamic Memory (Linux guest support)
(no major updates with WS2019) SP1 introduced Dynamic Memory for Hyper-V. Dynamic Memory is a feature that lets Hyper-V balance memory automatically among running virtual machines. This feature adjusts the amount of memory available to the virtual machines in response to the needs of the virtual machine, based on values that you specify resulting in higher virtual machine consolidation ratios.
New in WS 2012 R2 is the support for Linux guest - supported Linux operating systems with updated integration services take advantage of Dynamic Memory the same way as virtual machines running Windows Server.
In Server 2012 / R2 Dynamic Memory has the following configuration item, minimum memory that lets Hyper-V reclaim the unused memory from the virtual machines (resulting in increased virtual machine consolidation numbers, especially in VDI environments where many vims can be idle).
Server 2012 also introduced Hyper-V Smart Paging - if a virtual machine has a smaller amount of memory than its startup memory and it is restarted, Hyper-V needs additional memory to restart the machine. Due to host memory pressure or virtual machines states, Hyper-V may not always have additional memory available potentially causing sporadic virtual machine restarts. Smart paging uses disk resources as additional, temporary memory when more memory is required to restart a virtual machine.
Additionally with Server 2012 / R2, you can change the maximum memory amount and apply that change while the virtual machine is running.
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Yes (Memory Ballooning)
vSphere uses several memory optimization techniques, mainly to over-commit memory and reclaim unused memory: Ballooning, memory compression and transparent page sharing. Last level of managing memory overcommit is hypervisor swapping (not desired).
When physical host memory is over-committed (e.g. the host has a total of 128GB of RAM but a total of 196GB are allocated to virtual machines), the memory balloon driver (vmmemctl) collaborates with the server to reclaim pages that are considered least valuable by the guest operating system. When memory is tight (i.e. all virtual machines are requesting their maximum memory allocation to be used), the guest operating system determines which pages to reclaim and, if necessary, swaps them to its own virtual disk.
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Memory Page Sharing
Details
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No
XenServer does not feature any transparent page sharing algorithm.
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No
(no major updates with WS 2019)
There is no page sharing technology in Hyper-V. Microsoft points out that page sharing becomes less efficient with larger memory pages as it is less likely to find common pages. Also newer OSs tend to reduce zero pages through other mechanisms (e.g. SuperFetch). That means that page sharing tends to be more efficient with legacy guest OSs, less efficient with newer ones.
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Yes (Transparent Page Sharing)
vSphere uses several memory techniques: Ballooning, memory compression and transparent page sharing. Last level of managing memory overcommit is hypervisor swapping (not desired).
A good example is a scenario where several virtual machines are running instances of the same guest operating system, have the same applications or components loaded, or contain common data. In such cases, a host uses a proprietary transparent page sharing technique to securely eliminate redundant copies of memory pages. As a result, higher levels of over-commitment can be supported.
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No
There is no support for larger memory pages in XenServer
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Yes
(no major updates with WS 2019)
Yes, supports 2MB pages for guests and hypervisor memory management (i.e. virtualized workloads can still benefit even if the are not large page aware)
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Yes
Large Memory Pages for Hypervisor and Guest Operating System - in addition to the usual 4KB memory pages ESX also makes 2MB memory pages available.
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HW Memory Translation
Details
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Yes
Yes, XenServer supports Intel EPT and AMD-RVI, see http://bit.ly/2r2ezp0
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Yes (SLAT)
(no major updates with WS 2019)
Yes, Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) leverages AMD RVI and Intel EPT technology to reduce the overhead incurred during virtual to physical address mapping performed for virtual machines therefore reducing the complexity of the Windows hypervisor and the context switches needed to manage virtual machine page faults.
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Yes
Yes, vSphere leverages AMD RVI and Intel EPT technology for the MMU virtualization in order to reduce the virtualization overhead associated with page-table virtualization
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Interoperability |
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Yes, incl. vApp
XenServer 6 introduced the ability to create multi-VM and boot sequenced virtual appliances (vApps) that integrate with Integrated Site Recovery and High Availability. vApps can be easily imported and exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard. There is full support for VM disk and OVF appliance imports directly from XenCenter with the ability to change VM parameters (virtual processor, virtual memory, virtual interfaces, and target storage repository) with the Import wizard. Full OVF import support for XenServer, XenConvert and VMware.
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Yes (OVF Import/Export)
A new extension to VMM is the OVF Import/Export tool that consists of cmdlets that enable VMM 2012 users to import and export virtual machines that are packaged in the OVF format. You can use the OVF Import/Export tool to import a virtual machine from other virtualization platforms (currently VMware vCenter and Citrix XenServer) or to export a virtual machine for use on another platform.
The OVF format uses an XML file with the extension .ovf together with one or more virtual disks. The OVF Import/Export tool does not convert virtual hard disk file formats. You may need third-party tools to convert a virtual hard disk format.
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Yes
vCenter can export and import vm, virtual appliances and vApps stored in OVF. vApp is a container comprised of one or more virtual machines, which uses OVF to specify and encapsulate all its components and policies
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Improving
XenServer has an improving HCL featuring the major vendors and technologies but compared to e.g. VMware and Microsoft the list is somewhat limited - so check support first. Links to XenServer HCL and XenServer hardware verification test kits are here: http://hcl.xensource.com/
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Strong Windows Ecosystem
As it is build on the Windows 2019 Server Operating System, Hyper-V can utilize the existing (vast) Windows Operating System ecosystem and qualification structures. Microsoft focusses on the extensibility of Server 2019 and Hyper-V through this existing ecosystem as System Center or Microsoft Azure.
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Very Comprehensive (see link)
vSphere has a very comprehensive and well documented set of hardware components.
For compatible systems and devices see http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php
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Good
NEW
All major:
- Microsoft Windows 10
- Microsoft Windows Server 2016
- Ubuntu 14.14, 16.04
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3, SLED 11SP3, SLES 11 SP4, SLES 12, SLED 12, SLED 12 SP1
- Scientific Linux 5.11, 6.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.10, 5.11, 6.5, 6.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2
- Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5.10, 5.11, 6.5, 6.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2
- Oracle UEK 6.5
- CentOS 5.10, 5.11, 6.5, 6.5, 7.0, 7.1, 7.3
- Debian 7.2, 8.0
Refer to the XenServer 7.5 Virtual Machine User Guide for details: http://bit.ly/2rHOmPh
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Closing the gap
Guest Support for Hyper-V (including free Hyper-V Server) 2016 and WS 2016 has clearly improved but there is still a gap compared to VMwares support for older or less mainstream operating systems.
For specific levels/version check (Software Requirements section) : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/compute/hyper-v/supported-windows-guest-operating-systems-for-hyper-v-on-windows
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Very Comprehensive (see link)
Very comprehensive - vSphere 6.5 is compatible with various versions of: Asianux, Canonical, CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD, OS/2, Microsoft (MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT4, 2000, 2003, 2008, 2012 incl. R2, XP, Vista, Win7, 8), Netware, Oracle Linux, SCO OpenServer, SCO Unixware, Solaris, RHEL, SLES and Apple OS X server.
Details: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?action=base&deviceCategory=software
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Container Support
Details
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Yes
Docker support for XenServer is a feature of XenServer 6.5 SP1 or later and is delivered as a supplimental pack named 'xs-container' which also includes support for CoreOS and cloud-drives.
More info: http://bit.ly/2mM2vde
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Yes (Windows containers, Hyper-V Containers, Kubernetes - NEW)
NEW
Hyper-V under Windows Server 2016 supports containers based on docker. Two kinds of containers exists:
· Windows container: these containers share the Operating System. Only the application dependencies are inside the container (eg: IP stack, .NET, application itself and all change made on the OS)
· Hyper-V container: these containers are located on top of a virtualization layer to increase the security level for multi-tenant environment. The libraries and the binaries are located in the container to avoid interference between the containers
Since Windows Server 2019, Kubernetes containers can be hosted.
The Windows Server 2019 Standard license support only two Hyper-V containers on the same host. For unlimited Hyper-V containers, you require Windows Server 2019 Datacenter.
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Yes
NEW
vSphere Integrated Containers
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Yes (SDK, API, PowerShell)
The Software Development Kit provides the architectural overview of the APIs and use of SDK tools provided: http://bit.ly/2rSZ83K
The XenServer 7.2 management API is documented in detail here: http://bit.ly/2rHMhTI
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Yes (WMI API, PowerShell)
(no major updates with WS 2019)You can use PowerShell for scripting and interface with the published WMI Providers.
In Windows Server 2016, Windows PowerShell 5.0 delivers over 5,000 cmdlets to enable you to manage server roles and automate management tasks.
For new features in PowerShell see: http://bit.ly/1ayOSQh
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Web Services API/SDK, CIM, Perl, .NET, Java SDKs, Client Plug-In API, vSphere Clip, vMA
VMware provides several public API and Software Development Kits (SDK) products. You can use these products to interact with the following areas:
- host configuration, virtualization management and performance monitoring (vSphere Web Services API provides the basis for VMware management tools - available through the vSphere Web Services SDK). VMware provides language-specific SDKs (vSphere SDKs for Perl, .NET, or Java)
- server hardware health monitoring and storage management (CIM interface compatible with the CIM SMASH specification, storage management through CIM SMI-S and OEM/IHV packaged CIM implementations)
- extending the vSphere Client GUI (vSphere Client Plug-In API)
- access and manipulation of virtual storage - VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK with library of C functions and example apps in C++)
- obtaining statistics from the guest operating system of a virtual machine (vSphere Guest SDK is a read-only programmatic interface for monitoring virtual machine statistics)
- scripting and automating common administrative tasks (CLIs that allow you to create scripts to automate common administrative tasks. The vSphere CLI is available for Linux and Microsoft Windows and provides a basic set of administrative commands. vSphere PowerCLI is available on Microsoft Windows and has over 200 commonly-used administrative commands.
Details Here: https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/developer/
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CloudStack APIs, support for AWS API
Citrix CloudPlatform uses a RESTful CloudStack API. In addition to supporting the CloudStack API, CloudPlatform supports the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API. Future cloud API standards from bodies such as the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) will be implemented as they become available.
Details on the CloudPlatform API here: http://bit.ly/2slkJ7R
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Service Provider Foundation API, Azure Service Management API
(no major updates with WS 2019)In addition to PowerShell / WMI based automation and scripting capabilities MS introduced specific cloud APIs for Service Providers with the Service Provider Foundation and an extended Service Management API with the Windows Azure Pack. The Virtual Machines service of the Windows Azure Pack builds on the Service Provider Foundation (SPF) API provided with System Center 2012 to enable self-service IaaS.
The Service Provider Foundation (SPF) API is an extensible OData REST API in System Center 2012 that enables hosters to integrate their System Center installation into their customer portal and is automatically integrated with customers on-premises installation of AppController. A simple exchange of credentials enables enterprises to add the Service Provider cloud to App Controller for consumption alongside private and public cloud resources. SPF also has multi-tenancy built-in enabling operation at massive scale, controlling multiple scale-units built around Virtual Machine Manager.
The Windows Azure Pack provides a solution for enterprises looking to act as service providers and service providers that want to attract enterprise workloads.
It runs on top of Windows Server and System Center and aims to provide the capabilities of Windows Azure in your datacenter, enabling you to offer a self-service, multi-tenant cloud with Windows Azure-consistent experiences and services.
The Windows Azure Pack is essentially a collection of Windows Azure technologies that install in enterprise and service provider datacenters, integrating with their existing System Center and Windows Server environments.
The Management Portal of the Azure Pack replicates the Windows Azure Developer portal experience found in Windows Azure, along with a subset of the services available in Windows Azure. The capabilities available in the Management Portal can be accessed programmatically through the Service Management API, an OData/REST API. This accessibility enables you to completely replace the portal, for example, if a service provider has their own portal, which they want to integrate with Azure services.
Details here: http://bit.ly/YuRVQl
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vCloud API
vCloud API - provides support for developers who are building interactive clients of VMware vCloud Director using a RESTful application development style.
VMware provides a comprehensive vCloud API Programming Guide. vCloud API clients and vCloud Director servers communicate over HTTP, exchanging representations of vCloud objects. These representations take the form of XML elements. You use HTTP GET requests to retrieve the current representation of an object, HTTP POST and PUT requests to create or modify an object, and HTTP DELETE requests to delete an object.
The guide is intended for software developers who are building VMware Ready Cloud Services, including interactive clients of VMware vCloud Director. The guide discusses Representational State Transfer (REST) and RESTful programming conventions, the Open Virtualization Format Specification, and VMware Virtual machine technology.
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Extensions
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Cloud |
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CloudPlatform; OpenStack
Note: Due to the variation in actual cloud requirements, different deployment model (private, public, hybrid) and use cases (IaaS, PaaS etc) the matrix will only list the available products and capabilities. It will not list evaluations (green, amber, red) rather than providing the information that will help you to evaluate it for YOUR environment.
After the acquisition of Cloud.com in July 2011, Citrix has centered its cloud capabilities around its CloudPlatform suite.
Citrix CloudPlatform (latest release 4.5.1) powered by Apache CloudStack - is an open source cloud computing platform that pools computing resources to build public, private, and hybrid Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. CloudPlatform manages the network, storage, and compute nodes that make up a cloud infrastructure. Use CloudPlatform to deploy, manage, and configure cloud computing environments.
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Cloud OS: System Center, Hyper-V, Azure
NEW
Comment: Due to the variation in individual cloud requirements, different deployment model (private, public, hybrid) and use cases (IaaS, PaaS etc) the matrix will only list the available products and capabilities. It will not list evaluations (green, amber, red) rather than providing the information that will help you to evaluate it for YOUR environment. Use the Analyse & Print Report function to perform a custom evaluation.
Comment End
Microsoft continues to promote its Cloud OS vision, that aims to provide customers with one consistent platform for infrastructure, applications, and data - spaning across customer datacenters, hosting service provider datacenters, and the Microsoft public cloud.
In simplified terms Microsoft wants to provide a common management layer with the components of System Center 2016 that manages not only your private cloud (hosted e.g.on WS 2016) but also public cloud instances (based on Azure) or any hybrid scenarios where you combine on-premise and off-premise cloud resources.
Private Cloud:
The core components of Microsofts private cloud are provided by Windows Server (e.g. Hyper-V provided by 2016) and System Center 2016 for the management of this environment. (For details see: Private Cloud)
In 2017, Microsoft will deliver Azure Stack which is Microsoft Azure in your datacenter. It will not use SYstem Center has a management point. Instead, Azure Stack will use SDC, SDS and SDN management point (eg: network controller, storage spaces direct and Hyper-v). Azure Stack will be sold in CPS format)
Public Cloud:
Microsoft Azure is Microsofts public cloud computing platform (separate offering - not included in Server 2016 or System Center!). It primarily started out as a PaaS environment used to built applications with different programming languages, tools and frameworks through a network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Today Windows Azure provides various services for both Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services and a range of associated services. (For details see: Public Cloud)
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VMware Cloud Foundation
NEW
VMware Cloud Foundation is the unified SDDC platform that brings together VMware’s vSphere, vSAN and NSX into a natively integrated stack to deliver enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure for the private and public cloud.
https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-foundation.html
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Desktop Virtualization |
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Citrix Desktop Virtualization (XenDesktop & XenApp 7.6 - NEW; ViaB; associated products)
Citrix is by many perceived to own the most comprehensive portfolio for desktop virtualization alongside with the largest overall market share.
Citrixs success in this space is historically based on its Terminal Services-like capabilities (Hosted SHARED Desktops i.e. XenApp aka Presentation Server) but Citrix has over time added VDI (Hosted Virtual Desktops), mobility management (XenMobile), networking (NetScaler), cloud for Service Providers hosting desktop/apps (CloudPlatform) and other comprehensive capabilities to its portfolio (separate fee-based offerings).
Citrixs FlexCast approach promotes the any type of virtual desktop to any device philosophy and facilitates the use of different delivery technologies (e.g. VDI, application publishing or streaming, client hypervisor etc.) depending on the respective use case (so not a one fits all approach).
XenDesktop 7.x history:
- Citrixs announcement of Project Avalon in 2011 promised the integration of a unified desktop / application virtualization capability into its CloudPlatform product. This was then broken up into the Excalibur Project (unifying XenDesktop and XenApp in the XenDesktop 7.x product) and the Merlin Release aiming to provide multi-tenant clouds to manage virtual desktops and applications.
- XenDesktop 7.1 added support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, and new Studio configuration of server-based graphical processing units (GPUs) considered an essential hardware component for supporting virtualized delivery of 3D professional graphics applications.
- In Jan 2014 Citrix announced that XenApp is back as product name, rather than using XenDesktop to refer to VDI as well as desktop/application publishing capabilities, also see http://gtnr.it/14KYg4b
- With XenDesktop 7.5 Citrix announced the capability to provision application and or desktop workloads to public and or private cloud infrastructures (Citrix CloudPlatform, Amazon and (later) Windows Azure. Wake-on-LAN capability has been added to Remote PC Access and AppDNA is now included in the product.
-With XenDesktop 7.6 includes new features like: session prelaunch and session linger; support for unauthenticated (anonymous) users and connection leasing makes recently used applications and desktops available even when the Site database in unavailable.
VDI in a Box: Citrix also has VDI in a Box (ViaB) offering (originating in the Kaviza acquisition) - a simple to deploy, easy to manage and scale VDI solution targeting smaller deployments and limited use cases.
In reality ViaB box scales to larger (thousaunds of users) environments but has (due to its simplified nature and product positioning) restricted use cases compared to the full XenDesktop (There is no direct migration path between ViaB and XenDesktop). ViaB can for instance not provide advanced Hosted Shared Desktops (VDI only), no advanced graphics capabilities (HDX3DPro), has limited HA for fully persistent desktops, no inherent multi-site management capabilities.
Overview here: http://bit.ly/1fXeA38
Recommended Read for VDI Comparison (Ruben Spruijts VDI Smackdown): http://www.pqr.com/downloadformulier?file=VDI_Smackdown.pdf
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Remote Desktop Services (included in Server 2019)
vGPU (Remote FX)
Passthrough GPU (Device Discrete Assignment)
(no major updates with WS 2019)Microsoft introduced VDI capability (in addition to the existing Terminal Services capabilities) as part of the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) of the Server 2008 R2 operating system.
RDS provides hosted sessions (aka terminal services) as well as virtual desktop functionality (VDI).
With RDS in Windows Server 2012 / R2 , Microsoft has enhanced VDI to provide a more capable single infrastructure to enable the above mentioned virtual and session-based desktops as well as RemoteApp programs - building on the features that were available with 2008 R2.
Note: RDS related capabilities are NOT listed as Fee-Based Add-Ons (no purchase of additional VDI management software is required or licenses involved to enable the RDS management capability).
However, you will require relevant client access licensing to run either sessions or virtual machines (e.g. VDAs, RDS CALs), see http://bit.ly/1cBdgAm for details
There have been a large RDS related enhancements in WS 2012 R2:
User and admin experience:
- Session Shadowing (shadow a session-based or virtual machine-based desktop or RemoteApp program e.g. for helpdesk and troubleshooting)
- Single server RDS deployment including Active Directory (RD Connection Broker role service on the same physical instance as an Active Directory Domain Controller)
- Improved RemoteApp behavior- transparency, live thumbnails, and seamless application move that allows the application content to remain visible while the application is moved on screen
- Quick reconnect for remote desktop clients (reconnect in less than 10 seconds)
- Dynamic display handling - display changes on the client to be automatically reflected on the remote client (seamless device rotation, monitor addition and removal for both remote sessions and RemoteApp programs).
- RemoteFX virtualized GPU supports DX11.1
Reducing Network and Storage Requirements:
- Improved compression and bandwidth usage - using codecs that enable better compression & deliver bandwidth savings (e.g. video content delivery over a WAN utilizes up to 50% less bandwidth compared to WS 2012)
- RemoteFX Codec improvements further reduce bandwidth for non-video content
- Ability to offload all progressive decode processing to AVC/H.264 hardware if available, enabling client implementations on lower-end CPU devices, with better user experience and lower bandwidth than in RDP 8.
- RemoteFX Media Streaming has up to 50% reduced bandwidth compared to WS 2012.
- Online Storage Deduplication - deduplication now works with online vhds (running desktops) on SMB3 storage (for VDI only)
- The new Tiering feature in Storage Spaces allows an SSD tier for frequently accessed data, and a HDD tier for less-frequently accessed data. Storage Spaces transparently moves data at a sub-file level between the two tiers based on how frequently data is accessed. Tiering is frequently used in virtual desktop environments where different data tiers require different storage perfromance.
- Write-back cache: Storage Spaces in WS 2012 R2 supports creating a write-back cache that uses a small amount of space on existing SSDs in the pool to buffer small random writes (predominant in VDI environments)
In WIndows Server 2016, Hyper-V is able to provide a GPU core directly to the VM (passthrough). This enables to get an application running 60 FPS inside a VM. This feature is called Discrete Device Assignement.
A VM supports now the 4K resolution, a VDI VM can be a gen 2, H.264/AVC codec investment, OpenGL & OpenCL API Support.
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VMware Horizon 7 (Vendor Add-On)
VMware Horizon 7
Deliver virtual or hosted desktops and applications through a single platform with VMware Horizon 7
http://www.vmware.com/products/horizon.html
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1 |
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no
There is no specific Storage Virtualization appliance capability other than the abstraction of storage resources through the hypervisor.
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Improved (Storage Spaces); Storage Spaces Direct
(no major updates with WS 2019)Windows Server 2012 introduced the concept of Storage Spaces (supported for Hyper-V and free Hyper-V Server environments). In simplified terms Storage Spaces allows you to use inexpensive SAS/SATA drives (JBODS) to provide more advanced pooled and redundant storage through a Storage Virtualization layer. First you create a storage pool specifying the physical disk drives to be used and subsequently you create virtual disks (not to be confused with vhd for virtual machines) within the pool. These disks are appearing then to the host like new physical disks with changed attributes (resilience, capacity etc.) by adding mirroring or parity to the disk and pools can be dynamically expanded. These can now be used for local storage, failover clustering and SMB Direct (RDMA).
WS 2012 R2 introduced significant enhancements to Storage Spaces:
1. Tiered Storage
Ability to to provide tiered storage (that automatically moves frequently accessed data to faster (SSD) storage and infrequently accessed data to slower (HDD) storage).
Microsoft has developped Storage Spaces direct in Windows Server 2016 that enables to use DAS storage device to create highly available storage system. This works as Storage Spaces but by using local DAS storage device. This enables to create hyperconverged solution based on Microsoft technologies. For more information, you can read the following topic: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-overview
- To create a storage space with storage tiers, the storage pool must have a sufficient number of hard disks and SSDs to support the selected storage layout, and the disks must contain enough free space.
- When creating a storage space using the New Virtual Disk Wizard or the New-VirtualDisk cmdlet you can now specify to create the virtual disk with storage tiers.
- The virtual disk must use fixed provisioning, and the number of columns will be identical on both tiers (a four-column, two-way mirror with storage tiers would require eight SSDs and eight HDDs).
- Volumes created on virtual disks that use storage tiers should be the same size as the virtual disk.
- Administrators can pin (assign) files to the standard (HDD) or faster (SSD) tier by using the Set-FileStorageTier cmdlet, ensuring that the files are always accessed from the appropriate tier.
2. Storage Spaces Write- Back Caching:
Storage Spaces can use existing SSDs in the storage pool to create a write-back cache that buffers small random writes to SSDs before later writing them to HDDs.
- write-back cache is transparent to administrators and users and is created on all new virtual disks as long as there is a sufficient number of SSDs in the storage pool (Simple spaces: one SSD, Two-way mirror spaces and single-parity spaces: two SSDs, three-way mirror spaces and dual parity spaces: three SSDs)
- write-back cache works with all types of storage spaces, including storage spaces with storage tiers
- newly created storage spaces automatically use a 1 GB write-back cache (as long as the storage pool contains enough disks with MediaType set to SSD or Usage set to Journal)
3. Parity space support for failover clusters, dual parity and automatic rebuild from storage pool free space (rather than hot spares)
- You can now use parity spaces to maximize capacity and resiliency while still offering the ability to fail over to another cluster node
- Dual parity enables you to keep a high level of resiliency when using a parity space with a large number of disks or any time when you need to help protect against two simultaneous disk failures
- When a disk fails, instead of writing a copy of the data that was on the failed disk to a single hot spare, the data is copied to multiple drives in the pool such that the previous level of resiliency is achieved
Please note: Storage spaces can be provided from a single file server node using (non-raided!) SAS or SATA JBODs. For clustered nodes you will need SAS JBODs (not SATA) in a SHARED JBOD enclosure (Storage Spaces does NOT present virtualized local storage as shared storage like e.g. VMware VSA). MS will list certified JBOD enclosures.
Advantages:
- Provide reliable and scalable storage with reduced cost (cheap JBODs)
- Aggregate individual drives into storage pools
- Expand storage pools on demand
- Deploy specific drives as hot spares
Limitations:
- Fibre-channel and iSCSI are not supported
- SAS or SATA JBODs only, no HW Raid, for clustering SAS only and a shared SAS (no SATA) JBOD enclosure
- A mirrored pool must have at least 2 drives, three drive minimum required for using parity
- Virtual disks to be used with a failover cluster must use the NTFS file system not ReFS, cant use thin provisioning and must use the mirrored (not parity) option.
- Performance considerations (software RAID, JBODs of different types, multiple virtual disks per pool etc.)
Storage Spaces FAQ here: http://bit.ly/UxZ1FP
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vSAN 6.5 (Vendor Add-On)
VMware vSAN 6.5 extend virtualization to storage with an integrated hyper-converged solution.
http://www.vmware.com/products/virtual-san.html
comparison: https://www.whatmatrix.com/comparison/SDS-and-HCI
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Application Management
Details
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Vendor Add-On: XenDesktop
Citrix Director
The performance monitoring and trouble shooting aspect of Application Management in the context of Citrix is mostly applicable to XenDesktop 7 Director and XenDesktop 7 EdgeSight
- Desktop Director is a real-time web tool, used primarily for the Help Desk agents. In XenDesktop 7, Directors new troubleshooting dashboard provides the real-time health monitoring of your XenDesktop 7 site.
- In XenDesktop 7, EdgeSight provides two key features, performance management and network analysis.
With XenDesktop 7, Director (the real-time assessment and troubleshooting tool is included in all XenDesktop 7 editions.
The new EdgeSight features are included in both XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum editions entitlements however these features are based on the XenDesktop 7 platform. The environment must be XenDesktop 7 in order to leverage the new Director.
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Yes (SC Operations Manager 2019, Azure Monitor);
SC 2012 R2 Operations Manager enables you to monitor services, devices, and operations from a single console. Azure Monitor can also monitor your infrastructure from Microsoft Cloud
Numerous views show the state, health, and performance information, as well as alerts generated for availability, performance, configuration and security situations.
Specifically for virtualization and cloud aspects you can connect System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) with Operations Manager to monitor the health and availability of the virtual machines and virtual machine hosts that VMM manages. You can also monitor health and availability of the VMM management server, the VMM database server, library servers, and VMM Self-Service Portal web servers, and see diagram views of the virtualized environment through the Operations console in Operations Manager.
A close integration between System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager and System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager introduces System Center cloud monitoring of virtual layers for private cloud environments. To get this new functionality, use the System Center 2012 Management Pack for System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager Dashboard, which is imported automatically when you integrate Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager.
With System Center 2012 R2 management packs are also updated with new metrics for chargeback purposes that are based both on allocation and utilization. This provides better integration with chargeback and reporting, and enables monitoring of tenant-based utilization of resources that allows chargeback and billing.
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App Volumes
App Volumes is a portfolio of application and user management solutions for Horizon, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, and RDSH virtual environments.
https://www.vmware.com/products/appvolumes.html
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Vendor Add-Ons: NetScaler Gateway, App Firewall, CloudBridge
NetScaler provides various (network) security related capabilities through e.g.
- NetScaler Gateway: secure application and data access for Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenMobile)
- NetScaler AppFirewall: secures web applications, prevents inadvertent or intentional disclosure of confidential information and aids in compliance with information security regulations such as PCI-DSS. AppFirewall is available as a standalone security appliance or as a fully integrated module of the NetScaler application delivery solution and is included with Citrix NetScaler, Platinum Edition.
Details here: http://bit.ly/17ttmKk
CloudBridge:
Initially marketed under NetScaler CloudBridge, Citrix CloudBridge provides a unified platform that connects and accelerates applications, and optimizes bandwidth utilization across public cloud and private networks.
CloudBridge encrypts the connection between the enterprise premises and the cloud provider so that all data in transit is secure.
http://bit.ly/17ttSYA
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Azure Monitor, Azure Sentinel, Azure Security Center
(No major change in WS 2019) Microsofts security infrastructure plus wider Windows ecosystem (3rd party solutions)
There have been a number of security related updates on Windows Server and System Center with the 2012 R2 release (see security section in the management category)
Microsoft Forefront is a suite of security related products that deliver end-to-end security and access to information through an integrated line of protection, access, and identity management products.
Main products are:
- Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010
- Forefront Protection Suite
- Forefront Identity Manager 2010
- Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server
- Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint
- Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010
- Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010
For features and details see: http://bit.ly/1aZL5s4
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NSX (Vendor Add-On)
VMware NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center.
http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx.html
NSX embeds networking and security functionality that is typically handled in hardware directly into the hypervisor. The NSX network virtualization platform fundamentally transforms the data center’s network operational model like server virtualization did 10 years ago, and is helping thousands of customers realize the full potential of an SDDC.
With NSX, you can reproduce in software your entire networking environment. NSX provides a complete set of logical networking elements and services including logical switching, routing, firewalling, load balancing, VPN, QoS, and monitoring. Virtual networks are programmatically provisioned and managed independent of the underlying hardware.
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Workflow / Orchestration
Details
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Workflow Studio (incl.)
Workflow Studio is included with this license and provides a graphical interface for workflow composition in order to reduce scripting. Workflow Studio allows administrators to tie technology components together via workflows. Workflow Studio is built on top of Windows® PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation. It natively supports Citrix products including XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer and NetScaler.
Available as component of XenDesktop suite, Workflow Studio was retired in XenDesktop 7.x
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Yes (SC Orchestrator / SC Service Mgr 2019, Azure Automation), Included
(No major change in SC 2019) System Center 2012 / R2 includes the Orchestrator product (Opalis acquisition). Orchestrator provides a workflow management solution that lets you automate the creation, monitoring, and deployment of resources in your environment.
Essentially Orchestrator provides the glue between the various System Center and other infrastructure components and allows automated interaction between the components through workflow automation (runbooks). This enables you to automate any process in your environment through a drag-and-drop interface by linking activities into runbooks.
Orchestrator includes many built-in standard activities and you can expand Orchestrators functionality and ability to integrate with other Microsoft and third-party products by installing integration packs.
Integration packs for Orchestrator contain additional activities that extend the functionality of Orchestrator. Details here: http://bit.ly/Un9Quf
Updated in Orchestrator in SC 2012 R2 are the Windows Azure Integration Pack for Orchestrator in System Center 2012 SP1 and System Center 2012 R2 and the System Center Integration Pack for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager.
Orchestrator also provides extensible integration to any system through the Orchestrator Integration Toolkit. You can create custom integrations that allow Orchestrator to connect to any environment.
System Center 2012 / R2 Service Manager provides an integrated platform for automating your organizations IT service management best practices, such as those found in the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It provides built-in processes for incident and problem resolution, change control, and asset lifecycle management.
You will often find a direct integration between e.g. Service Manager and Orchestrator where e.g. a service request is handled / approved by a Service Manager workflow and subsequently triggers an Orchestrator runbook e.g. a user could request a virtual machine or service (service template) from the self service portal in Service Manager integrated with an Orchestrator runbook that triggers the virtual machine deployment through Virtual Machine Manager.
With Windows Sever 2012, Microsoft introduced PowerShell 3 which provides a wide range of Cmdlets to manage almost all possible configuration and management tasks in the operating system. Essentially all Windows roles and features can be managed using PowerShell.
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vRealize Orchestrator
vRealize Orchestrator is included with vCenter Server Standard and allows admins to capture often executed tasks/best practices and turn them into automated workflows (drag and drop) or use out of the box workflows.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-orchestrator.html
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Integrated Site Recovery (incl.)
XenServer 6 introduced the Integrated Site Recovery (maintained in 7.0), utilizing the native remote data replication between physical storage arrays and automates the recovery and failback capabilities. The new approach removes the Windows VM requirement for the StorageLink Gateway components and it works now with any iSCSI or Hardware HBA storage repository. You can perform failover, failback and test failover. You can configure and operate it using the Disaster Recovery option in XenCenter. Please note however that Site Recovery does NOT interact with the Storage array, so you will have to e.g. manually break mirror relationships before failing over. You will need to ensure that the virtual disks as well as the pool meta data (containing all the configuration data required to recreate your vims and vApps) are correctly replicated to your secondary site.
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Hyper-V Replica (included) , Storage Replica, Azure Site Recovery or 3rd party Fee-Based Add Ons
Disaster recovery capability has been enhanced through the introduction of Hyper-V Replica - an asynchronous replication of virtual machines over a network link from one Hyper-V host at a primary site to another Hyper-V host at a replica site. In the event of failure at the primary site, administrators can manually fail over production virtual machines to the Hyper-V server at the recovery site.
During failover, virtual machines are brought back to a consistent point in time, and they can be accessed by the rest of the network. Minimum interval of replication is 5 minutes (so there is the usual data loss associated with asynchronous replication) .
With WS 2012R2 you can also configure extended replication where the Replica server forwards information about changes that occur on the primary virtual machines to a third server for additional protection. In addition the frequency of replication, which previously was a fixed value, is now configurable. You can also access recovery points for 24 hours. Previous versions had access to recovery points for only 15 hours.
Hyper-V Replica Pros:
- Affordable DR solution (included in Server 2012, no extra licenses required)
- Does not require expensive SAN based replication
- Test Failover without impact on production vims
Cons:
- Manual failover and recovery actions
- Aimed at smaller scale deployments
- no integration with SAN array replication (like vSphere SRM), no synchronous replication
You can of course use (independent of Hyper-V replica) manual array based replication mechanisms to replicate virtual machines on LUN level between sides. This would either be a pretty manual process or requires (fee-based) third party solution with varying levels of integration and complexity.
In Windows Server 2016, we can leverage Storage Replica to replicate block-to-block from one volume to another. Its work for SAN or Storage Spaces (Direct) solution. So you can replicate the volume from one room to another. It can be part of your recovery plan. The replication can be synchronous or asynchronous depending of the latence of the link between both rooms.
Microsoft provides also Azure Site Recovery to replicate VM from one room to Azure or to another room. This technology is based on Hyper-V Replica.
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Site Recovery Manager (Vendor Add-On)
VMware Site Recovery Manager
Perform frequent non-disruptive testing to ensure IT disaster recovery predictability and compliance. Achieve fast and reliable recovery using fully automated workflows and complementary Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) solutions.
http://www.vmware.com/products/site-recovery-manager.html
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Vendor Add-On: CloudPortal Business Manager, CloudStack Usage Server (Fee-Based Add-Ons)
The workload balancing engine (WLB) was introdcued within XenServer 5.6 FP1 introduced support for simple chargeback and reporting. The chargeback report includes, amongst other data, the following: the name of the VM, and uptime as well as usage for storage, CPU, memory and network reads/writes. You can use the Chargeback Utilization Analysis report to determine what percentage of a resource (such as a physical server) a specific department within your organization used.
see http://bit.ly/2sK6siq
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Hyper-V Resource Metering and Service Manager (included), Health Service
(No major updates in Windows Server 2016 except when Storage Spaces Direct is enable. In this case we can leverage Health Service to gather cluster information such as CPU average usage, IOPS, capacity and so on)
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 introduced Resource Metering, a feature that allows customers to create usage-based billing solutions.
MS provides 2 mechanisms to collect this data (without System Center): Hyper-V cmdlets in Windows PowerShell and the new APIs in the Virtualization WMI provider. These metrics are exposed: Average CPU usage, Average physical memory usage, Minimum memory usage, Maximum memory usage, Maximum amount of disk space allocated to a virtual machine, Total incoming network traffic, Total outgoing network traffic.
Microsoft has extended the Resource Metering feature in Hyper-V 2012 R2 to include additional metering objects.
The actual chargeback function can either be provided by the one of the many 3rd party tools or now also by System Center 2016 Service Manager. Service Manager works in conjunction with Operations Manager and VMM. Price sheets, or rate cards, are created in Service Manager for Virtual Machine Manager clouds. The clouds are then assigned to prices sheets. For example, you might have price sheets that are associated to silver and bronze clouds in order to differentiate levels of service.
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vRealize Business (Vendor Add-On)
VMware vRealize Business Enterprise is an IT financial management (ITFM) tool that provides transparency and control over the costs and quality of IT services, enabling the CIO to align IT with the business and to accelerate IT transformation.
http://www.vmware.com/products/vrealize-business.html
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Network Extensions
Details
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NSX (Vendor Add-on)
VMware NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center.
http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx.html
NSX embeds networking and security functionality that is typically handled in hardware directly into the hypervisor. The NSX network virtualization platform fundamentally transforms the data center’s network operational model like server virtualization did 10 years ago, and is helping thousands of customers realize the full potential of an SDDC.
With NSX, you can reproduce in software your entire networking environment. NSX provides a complete set of logical networking elements and services including logical switching, routing, firewalling, load balancing, VPN, QoS, and monitoring. Virtual networks are programmatically provisioned and managed independent of the underlying hardware.
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Hyper-V Extensible Switch - 3rd party Extensions (Nexus 1000V - Fee-Based Add On)
(No major updates in WS 2016) The Hyper-V Virtual Switch enables ISVs to create extensible plug-ins (Virtual Switch Extensions) that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities.
Deatils on Ciscos 1000v for Hyper-V here: http://bit.ly/1aZTXOk
New in 2012 R2 is the ability to give third party extensions visibility into both Hyper-V Network Virtualization address spaces.
The HNV module was moved to inside the virtual switch so that extensions could see both the provider (PA) and virtual (CA) IP address spaces. This allows forwarding and other types of extensions to make decisions with knowledge of both address spaces.
The second change was to implement hybrid forwarding. Hybrid forwarding directs packets to different forwarding agents, based upon the packet type. In the Windows Server 2012 R2 implementation a packet that is NVGRE is forwarded by the HNV module. A packet that is non-NVGRE is forwarded as normal by the forwarding extension. Regardless of which agent performs the forwarding computation, the forwarding extension still has the opportunity to apply additional policies to the packet. If there is no forwarding extension, the Microsoft forwarding logic takes over for non-NVGRE packets.
Details here: http://bit.ly/1aZTz2p
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NSX (Vendor Add-on)
VMware NSX is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center.
http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx.html
NSX embeds networking and security functionality that is typically handled in hardware directly into the hypervisor. The NSX network virtualization platform fundamentally transforms the data center’s network operational model like server virtualization did 10 years ago, and is helping thousands of customers realize the full potential of an SDDC.
With NSX, you can reproduce in software your entire networking environment. NSX provides a complete set of logical networking elements and services including logical switching, routing, firewalling, load balancing, VPN, QoS, and monitoring. Virtual networks are programmatically provisioned and managed independent of the underlying hardware.
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