Why Choose VMware

When you compare costs of different virtualization platforms, look at the big picture -- not just your upfront costs. Include both the capital expenses and the ongoing operational expenses in your calculations. How many servers and how many software licenses do you need to buy? VMware lets you run more virtual machines on each physical server, reducing both your hardware and software costs, as well as the costs of space and cooling for those servers. In addition, look to see how your operational costs will be affected. vSphere with Operations Management lets you improve the efficiency of your staff so you can support more servers per IT admin.

The notion of "cost per server" is left over from the days of running one application per server. In a virtualized environment, you can run many applications (each on its own virtual machine) on a single physical server so the cost per server model is meaningless. Instead, calculate the cost per application (specific to vSphere). The more virtual machines you can fit on a physical server, the lower your costs. VMware lets you achieve a very high virtual machine density with technological innovations such as:

• Memory oversubscription - Make more efficient use of physical RAM through page sharing, reclaiming unused memory and memory compression
• DRS with resource pools - Dynamically load balance virtual machines across a cluster
• High performance scheduler - Dynamically allocate CPU and I/O resources
• Direct driver model - Deliver high I/O throughput
• Logical resource pools - Divide host clusters into pools of CPU, memory, networking and storage resources and assign pools to business units

Independent studies have shown that VMware delivers a 20-50 percent virtual machine density advantage over Microsoft and Citrix. See how VMware vSphere 5 outperformed Microsoft Hyper-V and how VMware has a higher VM density ratio than competitors with no performance penalties.

Finally, automating manual processes and simplifying administrative tasks with VMware reduces the time IT admins are required to spend maintaining your infrastructure. Key innovations include:

• Standardized host configurations with Host Profiles
• Automated host provisioning with Auto Deploy
• Automated virtual network provisioning with vSphere Distributed Switch
• Automated server load balancing with DRS and DPM
• Deploy and manage offloaded anti-virus solutions with vShield Endpoint
• Centrally manage and protect virtual machines with vSphere Replication
• Reduce diagnostics and problem resolution time with self-learning analytics and smart alerts

Our innovations include integrated storage management features, eliminating the need for manual storage management.

• Automated workload balancing with Storage DRS
• Intelligent storage selection with Profile-Driven Storage
• Cluster-wide prioritization of storage I/O with Storage I/O Control
• Improve capacity utilization and consolidation ratios with vSphere with Operations Management monitoring and optimization features

VMware’s cloud management platform simplifies and automates operations of heterogeneous environments and hybrid clouds.

vSphere with Operations Management delivers an integrated approach to operations management, converges disciplines, unifies teams and automates time consuming manual processes for maximum agility, resource utilization and operational efficiency by providing –

• Automated correlation of monitoring data and root cause analysis enable early warning smart alerts and reduce overall alert volume,
• Actionable recommendations provide in-context guidance and best practices on remediation actions,
• Automated workflow triggers enable administrators to associate workflows created in vCenter Orchestrator with vCenter Operations alerts. For example, these workflows can be used to automatically delete old VM snapshots when available capacity falls below a critical threshold or to add resources when workload demands are rising above normal. Automated workflows help improve mean time to incident (MTTI) and mean time to resolution (MTTR),
• Automated capacity optimization reclaims overprovisioned capacity, increases resource utilization and eliminates the need for spreadsheets or complex scripts. Wizard-based "What If" scenarios facilitate capacity optimizations and help defer unnecessary hardware investments,
• Automated detection, enforcement and remediation of security hardening guidelines, configuration standards and regulatory requirements across virtual and physical infrastructure and operating systems,
• Approximately 40% better capacity utilization; and 37% higher consolidation ratios which translate directly into TCO savings for customers.

Principled Technologies compared the operational expenses of VMware and Microsoft and found 91 percent lower operational expenses using vSphere and SRM. Register to download the full study.

Choose VMware and get started on the most trusted virtualization platform for running business critical applications at the lowest TCO.

Download a free trial of VMware vSphere now.