As one of the world’s largest software corporations, Microsoft has paved the way for companies worldwide to conduct business more efficiently. Its role in cloud computing – and in particular, in hypervisor technology used to create and run virtual machines – is becoming more prominent as companies build out private and public clouds. However, Microsoft hasn’t always been viewed as the forerunner of this particular field.
Now that things have improved for Microsoft, they have carved out a path to become a market leader as a cloud solutions provider. There’s a growing buzz as more companies are making the switch from options like VMware and Citrix to become a part of the Microsoft family.
A survey taken at Microsoft Management Summit 2013 (MMS2013) shows that while VMware peaked at about 54 percent of the market share and is at a “slow decline,” Microsoft’s Hyper-V is at about 30 percent and has been increasing every quarter. While this source may not be impartial, this data represents a notable shift occurring between companies’ first choice of virtualization software – VMware and Citrix are no longer the only kids on the block.
The Windows Hyper-V virtualization platform was released in 2012, further enabling users to easily consolidate workloads onto a single physical server to provide a spectrum of services, including Microsoft SQL and third-party applications found on Windows or Linux servers. The release of Windows Server 2012 R2 has added further enhancements that improve performance and configuration flexibility, such as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) security support, SCSI Boot, automatic activation of VMs, VM copy and paste, live migration improvements, shared VHDX, Linux guest support and Hyper-V Replica improvements.
Hyper-V supports critical components such as live migration – a backup operational mode for systems such as processers, servers, networks or databases – as well as clustering, which entails a group of servers or resources combining to work as one single system. And while cost savings is a factor, with Hyper-V coming in 1/6th less than a comparable VMware setup, characteristics such as scalability, larger virtual machines and bigger clusters are also helping drive its strong market growth.
Those in the cloud interested in consolidating their servers could find a serious competitive advantage with Hyper-V. Hostway’s new WS 2012 R2 initiative is ready to go, with early adopter signup currently live. Click here to learn more about Hostway’s partnership with Microsoft.