Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Microsoft VPS

[boonchuan]

Anyone tried the Microsoft VPS, hows't it compared to SW-soft?

[dkitchen]

It's just as rubbish...

There's really only one decent solution and thats VmWare GSX.

Dan

[boonchuan]

U mean Sw-soft's also rubbish? But it seems the de facto VPS software in the market.

[BurstNET]

We looked into it, and didn't particularly care for it.
As a MS Certified Partner, we were going to get decent pricing on it, but found it just wasn't quite worth it.

SW-Soft's Virtuozzo for Windows has been quite buggy up until recently. They just released a new version however, and that seems to have corrected most issues.

[dkitchen]

Originally posted by boonchuan
U mean Sw-soft's also rubbish? But it seems the de facto VPS software in the market.

Yes, I've only tried the first version, and TBH it was really dreadful, wouldn't dear put that into a production environment.

Virtuozzo for Linux seems to do a good job, I still prefer UML, but it's my second choice.

Dan

[tanfwc]

btw, who is providing Microsoft VPS?

[boonchuan]

Do you have any idea if the Virtual server licensing is released to SPLA yet? On my side, doesnt seem to be released yet.

Originally posted by BurstNET
We looked into it, and didn't particularly care for it.
As a MS Certified Partner, we were going to get decent pricing on it, but found it just wasn't quite worth it.

SW-Soft's Virtuozzo for Windows has been quite buggy up until recently. They just released a new version however, and that seems to have corrected most issues.

[WH-Coach]

Virtual Server is not on SPLA yet. Their new list comes out in April though so maybe they'll do it then.

SW-Soft's product for Windows is not the same as their product for Linux, btw. You can't apply OS patches to your environment like you can to a linux VPS and OS upgrades mean the whole machine gets rebooted, not just your VPS.

[TomK]

Also, it is my understanding with the Microsoft and VMWare products, you need an OS license PER VPS (either SPLA or otherwise), with the Virtuozzo product, you do not.

We've been testing the Virtuozzo for Windows product since the first public release (many months now), and the most recent release has been pretty good.

But imo it is NOT ready as a salable product for customers to run any serious hosting off of yet. We are doing open public beta testing and finding issues every couple of hours, some very serious and require that the hardware nodes need to be rebooted when they get in this 'funny' state, hence the term BETA.

They are doing a great job cleaning up the bugs when we report them, that's for sure, I think they may do another RC2 release before final/gold.

[boonchuan]

Yeap just got a reply from Microsoft, around Mar and Apr I guess. But having a headache what to use SW-soft or Microsoft VPS. : (

Originally posted by WH-Coach
Virtual Server is not on SPLA yet. Their new list comes out in April though so maybe they'll do it then.

SW-Soft's product for Windows is not the same as their product for Linux, btw. You can't apply OS patches to your environment like you can to a linux VPS and OS upgrades mean the whole machine gets rebooted, not just your VPS.

[dkitchen]

Well I've just tried the second version of Virtuozzo for Windows, and TBH, I really don't like it. Yes, it doesn't crash now, but I still have major problems with its design.

The reason that VmWare costs per license is because it uses a full OS install, and runs the full OS. Virtuozzo runs one copy of the kernel, and then runs the rest on top (meaning it can run a VM with just 32mb of RAM for example).

That's my main hate, a shared kernel and core under Windows is really not a good idea, and it takes an awful lot of control away from the VPS.

Dan

[Stas]

Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
Well I've just tried the second version of Virtuozzo for Windows, and TBH, I really don't like it. Yes, it doesn't crash now, but I still have major problems with its design.

The reason that VmWare costs per license is because it uses a full OS install, and runs the full OS. Virtuozzo runs one copy of the kernel, and then runs the rest on top (meaning it can run a VM with just 32mb of RAM for example).

That's my main hate, a shared kernel and core under Windows is really not a good idea, and it takes an awful lot of control away from the VPS.

Dan

could you please elaborate - what problems do you see with Virtuozzo design and why do you think that shared kernel takes a control away from VPS? i mean - maybe some examples

[kookiez]

Originally posted by RazorBlue - Dan
Well I've just tried the second version of Virtuozzo for Windows, and TBH, I really don't like it. Yes, it doesn't crash now, but I still have major problems with its design.

The reason that VmWare costs per license is because it uses a full OS install, and runs the full OS. Virtuozzo runs one copy of the kernel, and then runs the rest on top (meaning it can run a VM with just 32mb of RAM for example).

That's my main hate, a shared kernel and core under Windows is really not a good idea, and it takes an awful lot of control away from the VPS.

Dan

no, not true...It's not really important that non-administrative users also use shared kernel with admin/root, right? OS itself manages these permissions. So this is the same thing that Virtuozzo does - manages permissions between VPS and host OS

[hostingasia]

Originally posted by kookiez
no, not true...It's not really important that non-administrative users also use shared kernel with admin/root, right? OS itself manages these permissions. So this is the same thing that Virtuozzo does - manages permissions between VPS and host OS

So is this a reliable and secure design or not?

Btw, does this mean we can run unlimited W2K3 Std VE/VM by purchasing only one copy of W2K3? That would be really cost saving in M$ history!!!

[dkitchen]

I don't like the design, and it's possible that there's *a lot* of security holes in it.

Purely because users have administrative acccess to the VE, which is then locked down in areas to prevent messing with the kernel. There's potentially lots that hasn't been locked down.

It's also very hard to customise, for example all the major services are run shared (supposedely to save memory/licencing costs), if you need to customise or add something to the kernel or a core service, you can't.

A good example is Kerio Firewall, one of my favourite firewalls for Windows boxes, and I cannot get it to run on a Virtuozzo Windows machine.

Dan