Virtualization basics: Choosing between the strengths of Hyper-V and VMWare

For many companies and solution architects, the argument for virtualization in a Dynamics environment is a solid one. As this series has covered for Dynamics AX and for Dynamics CRM, add virtual machines (aka instances) to a computing environment without adding physical boxes has become an invaluable tool and part of standard operating procedure in many organizations.

For at least some IT goals - such as increasing a system's robustness and enabling it to handle big influxes of connections and system usage - the need for a hypervisor isn't really the question. The question is which one.

There are two big players in this space, VMWare and Microsoft's own hypervisor product, Hyper-V. A few years ago, according to many reviews of the competing products, VMWare was squarely leading the pack. And Hyper-V was just beginning to play catch-up, both in terms of product maturity and market share. Today, though, according to many users Hyper-V is at least as good as VMWare if not in some cases better.

And according to numbers shared last week at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference 2014 (WPC), Hyper-V has steadily gained market share.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner announced during his keynote presentation that Hyper-V now has a 30.6 percent market share, and that the product has gained 6 percent in the last year while VMWare has lost 5 percent, down to 46 percent. He urged Microsoft partners who are still deploying VMWare virtualization to adopt Hyper-V as Microsoft becomes even more aggressive in gaining market share.

"So if any of you are still on the fence out there, we're looking for you," he told the audience. "...