Should P2V be free?
Virtualization September 24th, 2008Recently I’ve been having a lot of interesting (but strong) discussions around a day in the life of a Windows Server.
Anyway, I have the [personal] opinion that your production Windows Servers should end their life as virtual machines. Yes, even if you [for what ever crazy reason] build a Windows Server on a physical box, there will be an inevitable moment, where it is time for the physical hardware to go away.
My belief behind this is, most windows servers (and the server app that they run) will typically have a life of “about 5-8 years”, and most go through a couple of software upgrades during that time. A lot can happen in the hardware world in that 5-8 years. But all of that is a discussion for another time. For the moment let’s just agree, that we have decided it is time for the physical hardware to go away. …and it’s time to convert the Physical Server into a Virtual Machine.
Now, when it comes to P2V, every man and his dog have a P2V tool – some are free, some are not. (Yes, VMware Converter is free). This isn’t a “my P2V is free-er than your P2V” post – but rather a question of: if you commit to releasing a hypervisor for free, are you obliged include P2V [and maybe framework] as part of that commitment as well?
Now I don’t have all the answers, or even the right questions – but it makes a very interesting discussion. So I thought I’d throw the idea out there for discussion. Thoughts anyone?
September 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I’m always surprised when a company decided to sell a product that would only drive demand for their own flagship product.
I had the same discussion with HP when they they released their P2P tool for migrating from older hardware or competitors hardware to their current generation hardware. They asked me when I would try it - and I told them when they made it free, because I had no plans to pay them for something that would lead to new, prieviously un-scheduled hardware purchases.
One interesting thing I noticed when installing XenServer Express on my home system was that they included the P2V client on the boot disk for the hypervisor. Seems like a good delivery model to me.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I think it’s working fine as it is at the moment, the VMware converter is great and it gets you from A to B (or P to V) but it doesn’t have some of the extra features that the third party tools have.
These can all be completed manually if you have the correct process written around VMware converter so it then becomes a question of how many servers you would want to P2V and how automated you would like it and if you have a budget for the conversions.
If there are more servers then the automation that the third party tools offer may be more beneficial and the costs may justify themselves as you will pay people less time to do the pre and post config tasks.
Alan
September 25th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I’m somewhere in between. I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t release a free P2V, but in saying that it doesn’t have to be the all encompassing P2V of SCVMM. Just a simple tool for moving 5-10 servers to Hyper-V one at a time, no scheduling etc etc. Just something to get he job done. For bigger jobs with multiple servers people are going to buy SCVMM anyway, but for the smaller jobs P2V’ing 8 servers is days and days quicker than trying to reinstall and migraite them all.
It’s hard to justify SCVMM to a SMB if they will realistically only use it to P2V and then never use it again.
Dave