VMware Research Report Sample

While server virtualization has come to embody many of the most innovative capabilities in today’s IT infrastructures, the technologies are still evolving. Over the past few years, there has been a seemingly never-ending charge of new hypervisors into the market. Each newcomer comes with its own architectural approach and set of performance characteristics. Today, most of the hypervisors on the market are available in a fully functional free version, but free does not mean they are the same.

We’ve long held to our position that there are marked differences between hypervisor architectures. Some of these differences are based on maturity levels and others on fundamental choices in hypervisor architecture. In the end, the architectural differences between hypervisors can have a major impact on total solution cost. Hypervisor architecture will determine efficiency in processing workloads, and architecture plays an important role in determining whether an infrastructure is flexible and adaptable.

Yet architecture isn’t the entire story. Just as there are differences in hypervisor efficiency, there are also significant differences in management infrastructure efficiency.