In a previous post I discussed an advanced feature that is included in only one of the leading virtualization platforms and involves the ability to over commit memory. I am, of course, talking about VMware’s unique ability to overcommit memory through a technique known as transparent memory page sharing. In this posting, which I will so cleverly call “Part 2”, I will discuss another technique used in overcommitting memory, the balloon driver.
Continue reading “Memory sharing – VMware has it and the others don’t! (Part 2)”
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of comparative documentation on three of the main players in the virtualization space which include VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. I have setup and used each of these virtualization platforms and each one has their own features and drawbacks. I think if you look long enough, you will eventually see through the marketing smoke and come to the conclusion that ESX, XenServer and Hyper-V are all great products that accomplish pretty much the same things. They all offer a solution for maintaining high availability. They all support virtual machines with enormous specifications and they all have the ability to migrate VMs between hosts.
Continue reading “Memory sharing – VMware has it and the others don’t! (Part 1)”
