Microsoft: The State of the Virtualization Market - Part 2

This second installment of a three-part series examines the virtualization market post-Broadcom’s VMware acquisition. If you missed part one you can read it here. Initially, I discussed VMware’s evolving offerings and concluded that it would likely retain market leadership for the foreseeable future. However, I often assist customers exploring VMware alternatives, focusing on Microsoft and Nutanix, the two prevalent options.. 

Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has contested the virtualization market with its Hyper-V, challenging VMware. As the market evolved and VMware pulled away as the leader in datacenter virtualization, Microsoft was turning its attention and efforts to what was to become its public cloud offering, Azure. I mentioned in the first blog post that VMware was really leading the charge in the hybrid cloud space particularly as it pertains to customers with multi-cloud deployments/intentions. The VMware Cloud Foundation offering is the flagship and core to this strategy. Microsoft on the other hand has taken a different approach to how it is driving server virtualization in the hybrid world.  

Microsoft adopts an ‘Azure Everywhere’ strategy, prioritizing a unified Azure experience over multi-cloud enablement. Microsoft has introduced its Azure Stack family of products including Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Stack Edge to make this vision a reality. For the purposes of this discussion, we will be focusing on Azure Stack HCI, but Microsoft’s ultimate goal here is to provide the customer a seamless Azure experience from edge-to-core-to-cloud with the ecosystem being managed via a cloud-based control plane. If your organization is all-in with the Microsoft Azure vision, Azure Stack HCI has some compelling capabilities to consider. 

Azure Stack HCI evolved out of Microsoft’s Windows Server Software Defined (WSSD) program. It is delivered as a hyperconverged offering that is deployed with a proprietary OS. To be sure this new OS is heavily based on Windows Server/Hyper-V but it has been evolved specifically to enable cloud-based integrations.  This allows for a variety of native Azure services to run on Azure Stack HCI such as Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Virtual Desktop service and others with workloads being managed via the Azure Arc control plane.

Microsoft has partnered with major hardware vendors to deliver Azure Stack HCI in an appliance form, further simplifying infrastructure management overhead. So, for customers looking to maximize their investments in the Azure ecosystem, a compelling case can be made for leveraging Azure Stack HCI as the on-prem virtualization platform of choice.

Cost

Much like all Microsoft products, licensing for Azure Stack HCI can be tricky to understand at times and can be licensed in a number of ways with differing outcomes. With that said, if you have Windows Server Data Center licensing with Software Assurance (which many customers do regardless of hypervisor) you can leverage the Azure Hybrid Benefit to convert to Azure Stack HCI licenses at no additional cost. This gives you the "all you can eat" Windows virtualization capabilities along with Azure Stack HCI features. You may also leverage Azure Hybrid Benefits to get extended support coverage for any Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 that you may have in your environment, enabling you to get critical security updates on those products while working through your upgrades to currently supported versions. While certainly not an apples-to-apples comparison in terms of approach (much like VCF is the flagship for VMware’s hybrid ecosystem) so too is Azure Stack HCI for Microsoft. You’ll find the most complete technology stacks in these two offerings.  

Traditional Approach

Microsoft continues to include and iterate on Hyper-V as part of its Windows Server offering. What is most compelling here, particularly for small customers that may have been leveraging VMware’s now-discontinued free version of ESXi, is that Hyper-V is included as a service in Windows Server at no additional cost. Customers can run a Hyper-V cluster for their Windows and Linux workloads in addition to managing workloads through Windows Admin Console or SCVMM (additional licensing required). For customers who would like to do so in a hyperconverged fashion, Microsoft would recommend Azure Stack HCI. However it is possible to enable Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) to build and manage your own HCI infrastructure with Hyper-V. 

What are the decision points for a customer considering adopting a Microsoft-based solution for on-prem virtualization or hybrid cloud deployment?

- Are you all-in with the Azure ecosystem and have a need to run hybrid while leveraging cloud services on-prem with a cloud-based control plane?

- Do you have legacy software such as Windows 2012 R2 or SQL Server 2008 R2 in your environment that could benefit from the Azure Hybrid Benefit?

- Do you have Windows Server Datacenter licenses with Software Assurance that you can leverage to convert to an Azure Stack HCI deployment? 

If so, Azure Stack HCI can be a compelling offer. Moving down the stack to more traditional virtualized environments, it becomes a bit more of a cost consideration than a comparison of feature/functionality. If you have Windows Server, you already own Hyper-V and have the capability to run it in a traditional fashion, or as a hyperconverged system without the need for additional licenses. You can choose to manage the environment through Windows Admin Console or license System Center to gain additional capabilities.  

Next up will be a look at Nutanix and what they bring to the table as part of the discussion.