Operational Efficiency - Hyper-V versus VMware ESX & vSphere Operations & Management Cost Analysis

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Every public sector organisation is striving to reduce the costs of their ICT operations. One area of investigation by many organisations is virtualisation. But which technology and what savings can be expected in ICT operations? 

Microsoft has just published independent research which examines which platform is less expensive in IT labour to operate on an on-going basis, and do the systems management products used to manage the environment impact the cost of managing either or both platforms (i.e. Hyper-V or VMware ESX).

Here’s a ‘taster’ of the top-line results:

  • Customers running Hyper-V spend 24% less on IT labour, on an ongoing basis, than customers using either ESX or vSphere
  • Customers using Microsoft system management products to manage their hosts had 15.6% lower annual IT labour costs ($9,486) per VM than customers using vCenter ($11,238) and 36.7% lower costs than customers using management products from a mix of vendors ($14,988)
  • The average customer would spend $6,828,142 in IT labour to run 501 Windows Server guests on VMware versus $5,189,233 in IT labour to run the same 501 guests on Hyper-V - an annual labour savings of $1,638,909 when using Hyper-V

The comparison figures are in $ but I am sure you can extrapolate the potential for savings in £ for your environment.

You can obtain a copy of the full report here. Go to the ‘related resources’ heading and you can download a copy of the report entitled ‘Hyper-V vs. VMware ESC and vSphere: Operations & Management Cost Analysis.

Posted by Ian