VM /ETC

VMware has announced a new online calculator that specifically compares the total cost of implementing VI 3.X and Microsoft Hyper-V. An online tool similar to Microsoft’s competitive calculator introduced last year, the VMware Virtualization Cost-Per-Application Calculator is designed to emphasize that the cost of implementing virtual infrastructure is more than the expense of licenses. In the past many have criticized the cost of VMware’s flagship suite of VI 3.X Enterprise products as too expensive, and with both Citrix and Microsoft now claiming to offer free hypervisors, VMware’s new calculator helps illustrate the message that VM density at equal performance matters to the cost analysis bottom line.

“Following the lead of analysts and customers, VMware has adopted “cost per application” as a more accurate metric to compare costs between virtualization solutions. Going beyond a simplistic license price comparison, evaluating cost per application takes into consideration the number of virtual machines that can be run on a single server, or the ”virtual machine density” enabled by a specific virtualization solution. The higher the virtual machine density enabled, the higher the server consolidation ratio. The higher the consolidation ratio, the more an organization can reduce its infrastructure costs (including costs for servers, networking. storage, power and datacenter space), and software costs, (including guest operating system and virtualization software licenses). Following this logic, the solution that can provide the higher consolidation of servers – without an impact to performance – also provides the most value to customers.”

I decided to test the calculator with a 50 VM / application example.

Note: I have not verified prices used in the VMware calculator, nor have I deeply analyzed the methodology.I would recommend companies considering virtualization use the results of the calculator as a starting point and adjust accordingly with real figures provided by the representatives and partners of both Microsoft and VMware.

VMware’s calculator requires answering six questions, and the result is a detailed report based primarily on the following formula:

Hardware Cost
(virtualization hosts, management servers, networking, storage)
+
Power and Cooling Cost
+
Datacenter Real Estate Cost
+
Guess Operating System Software Cost
+
Virtualization Software Cost
+
Virtualization Management Software Cost
=
Total Cost of Deployment
/(Divided by)
Number of Application Virtualized
=
Cost per Application

Screen shot of the 6 inputs:

After submitting, a 10 page report (after .pdf conversion) was generated. The Executive Summary section sums up the results:

Based on your inputs, the cost-per-application to virtualize 50 applications using VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise Edition is $3,105 — 20% lower than with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (Hyper-V) and System Center.

The report provides much more detail, but here is a summary table of the total costs:

For more details about the methodology and assumptions of the VMware Cost Per Application Calculator read this white paper.

I would not be surprised if there is a lot of debate between Microsoft and VMware over the methodology and the results.

I hope this this calculator is either expanded in the future or another one is introduced to compare XenServer and VMware VI Enterprise (current and future versions) as well.

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