After hearing some debatable claiming from a Microsoft salesman (something Microsoft should start to control much more carefully), Geert Baeke wrote a piece about how differently virtual machines high availability (achieved with host OS clustering) is treated in a Virtual Server 2005 R2 infrastructure and in a ESX Server 3.0 + VirtualCenter 2.0 + VMotion.
The article exposes true differences and it’s worth to read, but approach it carefully. Going beyond a mere technical point of view I would object the comparison should not even take place considering that VMware solution in the scenario starts from 5,750 dollars. Virtual Server offers weaker high availability capabilities but it costs zero.
The real problem is Microsoft insists to compare Virtual Server to VMware ESX Server + VirtualCenter (now called Virtual Infrastructure). It’s not the case. And everybody in the market should avoid to mimic such bad marketing approach.
Let’s compare Virtual Server 2005 R2 with upcoming VMware Server 1.0. That would be much more honest.