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Virtualisation Toolkit

Hyper-V review

		Product	Date	Editors' Rating	Members' Rating	Price
		Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of Windows Server virtualisation, although management tools are not included. This, together with deployment issues, could limit the appeal of Microsoft's standalone hypervisor beyond the enterprise market.	25 Nov 2009	7.5
		VMware vSphere 4 The latest release of VMware's enterprise-level hypervisor and management suite raises the bar with the addition of built-in backup, thin provisioning and fault tolerance options. The combination of functionality and a proven track record makes vSphere 4 an excellent choice for high-end server virtualisation projects.	27 Oct 2009	8.9		£8140
		vOptimizer Pro 2.1 This suite automatically reclaims over-allocated and under-utilised storage in Windows virtual machines. With SAN storage costing around £10/GB, Vizioncore's vOptimizer Pro could quickly pay for itself.	30 Apr 2009	7.5		£202
		Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 Despite taking a completely different approach to virtualisation, Virtuozzo Containers can match the best hypervisors on performance while at the same time making virtual workloads quick and easy to deploy and manage.	05 Dec 2008	7.7		£1850
		XenServer 5 Early releases of the Xen hypervisor showed promise but had lots of rough edges. Citrix's XenServer 5, however, is very much a production-class virtualisation solution with features that match, and in some cases exceed, what's available on rival platforms.	18 Nov 2008	8.0		£660
		VMware ESXi ESXi is the easiest hypervisor to install and use. It's based on VMware's ESX Server code, making it among the most stable and mature virtualisation options available. It also uses very little RAM and disk space, leaving more server resources free for your virtual machines.	17 Oct 2008	8.0
		Hyper-V Microsoft's Hyper-V is a solid virtualisation platform that's compatible with a wide range of modern server hardware.	18 Aug 2008	7.0		£881
		vCharter Pro This is a powerful performance monitoring and reporting system for servers running VMware ESX Server. Web-based dashboards show the resources in use by servers and their VMs, while the reporting module delivers printable reports of historical data.	03 Jul 2008	7.2		£279
		Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure This is an excellent tool for replicating virtual machines (VMs) running on VMware ESX Server 3.x and VirtualCenter 2.x. Although the suite is relatively new, impressive usability features hint at Double-Take’s long history in replication.	28 Aug 2007	7.5		£1720
		Product	Date	Editors' Rating	Members' Rating	Price Range

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