One Small Press Release for Microsoft, One Giant Leap for Virtualization

Microsoft made a major annoucnement today regarding the licensing and support of their products in the virtual environment, and even threw a curveball in one of the linked kb article.

First up, the shift in licensing policy. previously Microsoft licensing was tied to server named instances, with a single move permitted every 90 days. This announcement seems to be suggesting a move toward capacity on demand. The other part of the announcement was a brief explanation of the much longer new Microsoft whitepaper on licensing on virtual hardware, found here: Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments I didn't find anything too surprising in the document.

The other half of the announcement was an explanation of what the SVVP is, and how it is going to help you when you need to call Microsoft for support. The SVVP is the Server Virtualization Validation Program. Similar to the move by Citrix to expands the ranks of it's application ISV partners, Microsoft has created a program to enhance cooperation among TSanet members with a focus on virtualization. The cost of entry is not too bad, as they are requiring a TSanet membership (this appears to be $1500 annually), and $250 per virtualized configuration. It will not be a logo program, but rather a list of certified vendors and applications maintained by Microsoft. I think this will help reduce finger pointing between application vendors that are members, but it is not a seismic shift in policy, as Microsoft still reserves the right to require a virtual instance to be reproduced outside of the 3rd party virtualization environment. Some industry heavyweights have already joined the program, including the expected such as Citrix and Cisco, and at least one surprise, Sun Microsystems.

Now for the curveball. It was very subtle, hidden in the kb article associated with the press release. I don't know if you noticed that when I mentioned reproducing a problem, I didn't say "on physical hardware". Microsoft has announced that you now have the choice of reproducing the problem on physical hardware *or* in Hyper-V. Now, that is a brilliant move by Microsoft, that may lead to beachheads of Hyper-V in otherwise pure VMware or XenServer shops.

Virtualization Certification Trifecta

For a long time, there was only one player in the Virtualization certification market - VMware with their VCP. I was waiting for them to broaden their certification beyond the initial certification, so I was please to see the announcement of the VCDX program.

VMware is no longer the only one in the virtualization certification race, as Citrix has released their Xen CCA, and Microsoft is preparing a virtualization certification as well.

So how do those certification programs compare in difficulty and return on investment?

Let's start with the first program out of the gate - the VCP.

• Difficulty: I found this certification to not be incredibly difficult for people that have spent a good amount of time with VMware, and have had access to the official training materials. This certification has some "paper certification" protection in the sense that to be a VCP you must have completed some form of official training. I'm not sure I completely agree with this requirement, as I have seen some passionate fans of the product being held back by the lack of training budget.
• Return on Investment: Very high in my opinion, but I think that large company HR departments aren't looking for the VCP yet , it seems to be more the consulting companies specializing in Virtualization that know to ask. A quick search of dice.com found 96 of the 1547 VMware jobs in the US looking for a VCP. Just for a point of reference - a search for MCSE found 1801 results. Here's an interesting article on the value of the VMware certification: http://servervirtualization.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/10/12/the-value-of-the-vcp-vmware-certified-professional/

Now the VMware VCDX - of course the tests are not fully released so this is all speculation based on the announcements that were made.

• Difficulty: I think this will be the king of Virtualization certifications for the near future. I think that for the rest of 2008 and probably well into 2009 there will be less than 1000 of them. I think the most difficult part for the majority of people will be the Submission of a successful VMware Infrastructure design plan.
• Return on Investment : I think this will be very high for high end consulting jobs, and elite enterprise customers - I don't see it being a big draw for the average job. Oddly enough - there are already 4 jobs from dice.com looking for the certification. The VMware Enterprise Administration exam is just being released this month.

Citrix CCA in XenServer - They appear to have recently released a new revision of this exam - A02 that is focused on the XenServer Enterprise Edition 4.1 product. http://www.citrixtraining.com/courses/course_list.cfm

• Difficulty : While I have not taken this exam (yet), from the material available it appears to be very similar to the VCP in difficulty level, without the requirement to take the training class that tends to restrict some people.
• Return on Investment : Hard to say. It appears to be a niche skill right now, and most of the people that are actually looking for Xen on dice.com are actually VMware consulting companies. I found no jobs looking for Xen CCAs It is possible that companies are training up internally rather than searching for external talent.

Microsoft's 70-652 Technical Specialist : Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring. The test is planned to be released this August. http://www.virtualization.info/2008/07/microsoft-releases-hyper-v-10-exam.html (link courtesy of Mark Bradley)

• Difficulty: Based purely on the published exam objectives, I would place the difficulty somewhere between VCP/Xen CCA and VCDX. I think anyone with a background in Windows clustering will tend to have a advantage on this exam.
• Return on Investment : Time will tell. There are already 16 jobs on dice.com looking for Hyper-V and the Microsoft marketing machine is only getting started. I think the strength of Microsoft name and marketing arm will drive the value of this certification very quickly.

I would definitely like to go for the trifecta of Virtualization Certification, with a VCP, XenServer CCA, and a MS TS in Hyper-V. Having a little product diversity never hurt the resume.

I would be interested to hear other people's opinion on the value of the various certifications, so feel free to leave a comment, I would be especially interested to hear from my new readers in the UK and Australia as to how you see the value of the various certifications in your local job markets.

High Density Virtualization Environments and Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition

In November of 2007, Microsoft made an announcement I truly found shocking - When purchasing Windows 2008 the customer is entitled to "unlimited virtual instances per license".

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/datacenter/unlimitedvirtualization.mspx


Now that Hyper-V is reality, the consequences of this move are huge.

As an example - let's take a DL585 with 4 sockets and do the math on this using list price.

• 4 processors of datacenter edition @ ~$3000 per processor would be $12,000
• 1 single Windows 2003 server Standard license costs $1000.

The break even point on Datacenter edition is 12 servers (depending on the number of CALs that need to be purchased). If you are using Datacenter Edition, you effectively saved money on every copy of Windows required past that instance.

So you may be thinking "What is considered a high density server environment?". Lacking an official ruling on the term, I would place it at anytime you are averaging more than 3 virtual machines per processor (not core). For example a fully populated DL585 with dual core processors would need to have more than 24 guests to enter this category.

Going with the example number of 24 guests on the virtual machine with the Datacenter edition license, and the pricing from the example above - you have now saved $12,000 in budget without having to make any difficult decisions. The savings are even larger if you deploy virtualized instances of Windows 2003 Enterprise.

The best news is that this doesn't just apply to Hyper-V, it also applies to VMware, Citrix Xen, and assumedly any other virtualization software deployments as well.