Virtualisation: Reviews

HP 3PAR StoreServe 7400 combines high scalability, high performance, and a big bag of tricks for easing storage management

VMware takes virtualization higher and deeper with rich storage automation and more advanced virtual networking tools

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V brings advanced virtualization features to small shops, but VMware still reigns at the high end

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V combines easy setup and management with new features that lower the entry barrier to highly available virtualization clusters

Thin clients can't be cracked or hacked; they don't have fans or disks to fail; they don't need to be patched nearly as often as Windows; they don't draw much power; and they don't cost a whole lot of money to buy or maintain.

The Cisco CSR 1000V router is designed for enterprise network managers who want to have a little piece of their Cisco infrastructure in the cloud.

Dell's VMware-based cloud infrastructure provides all of the flexibility and complexity of the leading enterprise virtualization platform

The race for virtualization dominance between Microsoft and VMware has become more interesting with VMware's recent release of vSphere 5.1. We obtained vSphere around the same moment as the final release of Windows Server 2012, whose newly included virtual switch and enhanced Hyper-V features were designed to clobber VMware.

We tested the Windows Server 2012 Editions and Windows 8 Professional/Enterprise Editions on a Gigabit Ethernet switched network, principally using an HP DL580G8 with four 2.17Ghz quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs, 64GB of memory, and four high-speed local drives. We also used an NFS store for developing ISO images, then used VHD and VMDX images to build Windows 2012 and experimented with Windows 8 images. We also tested Windows Server 2012 on VMware vSphere 5.1, and Citrix XenServer 5.6, where we found no difficulties in mounting and managing Windows Server VMs. We tested features, spawned new virtual machines, configured routing and (tiny) VLANs to emulate environmental multi-tenancy successfully.

VMware Workstation is richer in features and polish than ever, but VirtualBox is still both capable and free

The System Center 2012 modules that we previously tested -- Orchestrator and Configuration Manager -- require forklift upgrades. But the modules we tested this time around - App Controller, Virtual Machine Manager and Data Protection Manager -- are more graceful and, in some cases, more powerful.

We initially attempted to implement System Center 2012 modularly, which is almost impossible, so we used the Unified Installer after reading the salient documents for each module, then installed each module into its own VM, combining SQL Server resources where necessary. We recommend that up to four SQL Server instances may be necessary for protecting all of the modules.

VMware's new, Flash-based Web management GUI is easy to like, but it comes with a few gotchas

Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion support are promoted, but existed already in the previous versions. So what else is new?

MokaFive Suite brings polish and control to virtual desktops on Windows, OS X, or bare metal, with a nod to the iPhone and iPad

HP’s LeftHand P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance offers a wealth of flexibility with a few caveats

With the revamped System Center 2012 suite of management tools, Microsoft has launched a powerful new weapon in the battle to control the virtualized data center and the cloud, both private and public.

While SQL Server 2008 was little more than a service-pack level upgrade, the 2012 version of Microsoft's database has a boatload of new features and delivers solid performance improvements.

Virtually all our testing took place across 512Kbps frame relay, T-1 and T-3 WAN links. The test bed network consisted of six Fast Ethernet subnet domains linked by Cisco routers. Our lab's 50 clients consisted of computing platforms that included Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/Win7, Macintosh 10.x and Red Hat Linux (both server and workstation editions).

We initially attempted to implement System Center 2012 modularly, which is almost impossible, so we used the Unified Installer after reading the salient documents for each module, then installed each module into its own VM, combining SQLServer resources where necessary. We recommend that up to four SQL Server instances may be necessary for protecting all of the modules.