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I would probably go VMware. Hyper-V is still playing catch-up ball, in my opinion. IF Microsoft ever delivers a product with a similar feature set and it's well polished like VMware's offerings, then I would consider Hyper-V. On the other hand, Troy is correct; with the correct license for Windows Server, Hyper-V is included at no additional cost. We just renewed our VMware licensing and it ran us about $2,800/processor. For a 7 server cluster, all with dual procs, it came out to about $40,000. My advice on the cost is that you let the number of VMs you plan to create guide you. My VMware servers' hardware cost me another $40,000 or so, so my total VMware related costs are $80,000. Balance that against the 43 VMs I'm currently running (currently a 6 to 1 ratio; we are planning for a 12 to 1 ratio) which would cost me an easy $200,000 to $300,000 if I had to buy server class hardware for each one of them. So the point is, regardless of what hypervisor you choose, there is a huge financial savings to be had by virtualizing, so don't get too hung up on the numbers. In my experience, it really just takes a nicely formatted report illustrating the cost savings to get the bosses on board. VMware Server was End-Of-Support on June 30,2011 (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/overview.html). That said, you could certainly still use it for testing. Personally, I wouldn't run production VMs in it. Another option you have is to download VMware vSphere 5 (https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/index.php?p=free-esxi5&lp=default), which you can run in evaluation mode for 60 days. The nice thing there is, if you want, you can just purchase licensing, enter the keys and go, no rebuild required. Ryan M. Finn Systems Administrator Residential and Hospitality Services Michigan State University -----Original Message----- From: Oscar Castaneda [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2012 12:00 PM To: Ryan M. Finn Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] VMware If you have to chose your virtualization platform, would you go VM or Microsoft? Right now I am thinking on downloading VM Server and use it for a while. I assume that I could install it in the computer where I have my virtual machines and "import" them, or whatever it is called and manage them from there. Does it make sense? I was told that VM server is not going to be supported soon. Is that right? On 1/5/2012 11:52 AM, Ryan M. Finn wrote: > We (Residential and Hospitality Services, Information Services) use VMware pretty heavily. We'd be more than happy to share our experiences. > > Also, in line with what was mentioned about Windows Server Enterprise licensing, Windows Server Datacenter licenses (which are per processor) are under $300 from CStore and allow unlimited Windows Server Guest OS installs. > > Ryan M. Finn > Systems Administrator > Residential and Hospitality Services > Michigan State University > > -----Original Message----- > From: Oscar Castaneda [mailto:[log in to unmask]] > Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2012 11:17 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [MSUNAG] VMware > > In an effort to simplify some complicated scenarios, we want to start to use VMware. > It goes a little like a blind exercise because we have only some basic understanding of how it works: we created a few virtual machines using VM Player, and I had been reading all I can find about it. > > I am considering now moving things one notch up. Since most of the VMware products are still apparently high priced, I thought that I would like to start using VMware Workstation to manage my few existent virtual machines and see what I can do with it so perhaps down the road I can sell the idea to my management. > > Who has experience with VMware software? Does it make sense to get Workstation and start using it? Did you buy the big software pieces? any words of wise advise? > > > oscar > > -- > Oscar Castaņeda > Global Observatory for Ecosystem Services Michigan State University > -- Oscar Castaņeda Global Observatory for Ecosystem Services Michigan State University