Because there is no simple way to shift between hypervisors it will not be a question of what should be your management solution, but what will be your hypervisor.

That’s why I replied as I did yesterday. I think Multi-hypervisor shops just should make up their minds, and choose. You really feel multi-hypervisor shops will be manageble? I don’t and will not any time soon… 😉 It will be only be a customer nightmare. On which hypervisor is my VM running and, is that the right one for my VM. OR will we try all 3 and then decide?

I think lot’s of “shops” want to build on what they already have (knowledge of), and take that to the next level. Some of them will jump into the public cloud, because that is no problem for them. Some will first build a privat cloud, and build a hybrid cloud right after that. As said earlier, I don’t think a lot of companies are “willing” to get multi hypervisors within their infrastructure. Sure some applications may work better on Hyper-V while XenDesktop (or XenApp) might perform a bit better on XenServer, but by investing a little more in hardware I can support all my applications on one platform instead of a hypervisor nightmare… Sorry, I just don’t believe in that! Want to go with Hyper-V? Just do it. Has Vmware been your thing for years now? Why not just stick to that?

I don’t see why one should have multiple hypervisors. That’s why in my eyes vCD is the future for VMware shops. And don’t forget it’s a relatively new product, so it will only become better in future releases.

Conclusion: VMware is my virtualization religion! If Hyper-V (or XenServer) is yours, good for you! But multihypervisor shops? In my opinion: A really bad idea….

You’re saying that vCloud Director is the best option at this moment but I’m not talking about good or bad? What I do think is that because of the limitation on vSphere maybe vCloud Director isn’t the best management solution for a multihypervisor shop? Because of the steps MS (and Citrix in a way) is making, Hyper-V 3.0 will be a valid solution, certainly when there’s a management solution that dynamically decides where to put a certain VM (based on it’s characteristics). Basically your management solution makes the discussion about the hypervisor unnecessary..

You know I agree with you on the management. As I said during our conversation, I think VMware needs to realize Hyper-V is closing the gap, and is becoming good “enough” for more and more companies (especially in the SMB in my opinion).

BUT. We’re still comparing apples and peaches here. Large Enterprises (as well as SMB’s) are adopting the cloud quick. I believe that vCloud is the best option at the moment. Don’t forget the fact that Hyper-V 3.0 is still a RC and many companies will wait for SP1 before upgrading to this release. In the meanwhile VMware won’t sit still either, I’ll expect vSphere 5.1, vCloud 5.1 and all other products to be released within the next 2 months. The adoption of vSphere products is much sooner BTW 😉

So Hyper-V 3.0 is coming with a lot of new (and good) features. I agree with you that on the hypervisor side could become a commidity. But don’t forget that more and more companies will be looking for cloud solutions, and I still believe VMware has the best cards in that area (by far) 😉

Great post BTW