This is another post in my series about Hyper-V vs. VMware.
This time it is about storage in terms of virtualization. And as you could read everywhere, Microsoft did also a lot of improvements for the Windows Server 2012 release.
- New Virtual Disk format (VHDX) – Supports up to 64 TB Virtual Hard Disks
- Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) – Offloads storage-intensive tasks to the SAN
- Data De-duplication
- Storage Spaces and Storage Pools – Data Advanced Storage Array Features to Windows Server
- Virtual Machine boot from SAN
- Live merging of VHDs and Virtual Machine Snapshots
- Native 4K Disk Support – Take advantage of enhanced density and reliability
- Virtual Fiber Channel – Connect a Virtual Machine directly to a Fiber Channel SAN
- Support for File based Storage with SMB 3.0
- New file system (ReFS)
- BitLocker encryption support – BitLocker is now available for Cluster Shared Volumes to support encryption in cluster environments
Capability | Windows Server 2012 RC Hyper-V | VMware vSphere Hypervisor | VMware vSphere 5.0 Enterprise Plus |
Virtual Fiber Channel | Yes | Yes | Yes |
3rd Party Multipathing (MPIO) | Yes | No | Yes (VAMP) |
Native 4-KB Disk Support | Yes | No | No |
Maximum Virtual Disk Size | 64TB VHDX | 2TB VMDK | 2TB VMDK |
Maximum Pass Through Disk Size | Variable | 64TB | 64TB |
Offloaded Data Transfer | Yes | No | Yes (VAAI) |
Storage Encryption | Yes | No | No |
- The maximum size of a physical disk in attached to a Hyper-V virtual machine is determined by the guest operating system and the chosen file system within the guest
- vStorage API for Multipathing (VAMP) is only available in Enterprise & Enterprise Plus editions of vSphere 5.0
- vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) is only available in Enterprise & Enterprise Plus editions of vSphere 5.0
- VMware documentation does not suggests that their respective platforms support 4K Advanced Format Drives
Sources:
- TechEd session “VIR311 – Compete to Win | Part I: Comparing Core Virtualization Platforms” from Matt McSpirit
- http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r50/vsphere-50-configuration-maximums.pdf
- http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html
Check out my Blog post Hyper-V 2012 – Hey I Just Met You And This Is Crazy for more information about the latest version of Hyper-V.
Tags: Hyper-V, Hyper-V 2012, Microsoft, Storage, VHD, VHDX, Virtual machines, Virtualization, vmdk, VMware, vSphere, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 Last modified: July 11, 2012