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46 days ago I made this comment: "crickets from VMWare/EMC. Docker/containers will eat their lunch if they don't jump in and get involved." after an announced

46 days ago I made this comment: "crickets from VMWare/EMC. Docker/containers will eat their lunch if they don't jump in and get involved." after an announced partnership between the major tech players and Docker. I take it back and the more the merrier.

limaoscarjuliet 12y ago
Just a reminder, adding VMWare-like virtualization layer (i.e. full virtualization) to the mix will cost you more than 40% of your CPU: http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/0929052195DD819C85257D2300681E7B/$File/rc25482.pdf http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/0... In my view one of the key reasons to do it is to use AWS or the like. Until they have full Docker support on bare metal that is. P.S. There are other reasons, e.g. Docker makes it difficult to create a separate publicly visible network interface. But these I feel will go away soon as well.
- skybrian 12y ago
  Looks like VMWare is working on that too: http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/08/containers-vms-kubernetes-and-vmware.html http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/08/containers-v...
- acdha 12y ago
  > Just a reminder, adding VMWare-like virtualization layer (i.e. full virtualization) to the mix will cost you more than 40% of your CPU … on a couple of microbenchmarks when you define “CPU” to mean “I/O”. Even if you ignore the question of whether KVM performance is the same as VMware's (hint: no), most of the the charts in that paper contradict such a broad statement.
- jasongill 12y ago
  This article only mentions VMware twice in the body, both in passing. The majority of the article is a comparison of KVM and Docker. Many of the points in the article don't apply to VMware at all, or refer to things that are KVM specific limitations which VMware has already overcome. In fact, the article says "KVM has much higher overhead, higher than 40% in all measured cases." - saying nothing of "VMware-like virtualization" or VMware ESXi at all. While it's true that containerized "virtualization" traditionally has less overhead than a hypervisor like ESXi, the difference is increasingly small and in most environments negligible, especially considering the added features and flexibility of ESXi vs containers. From my experience and tests, the performance difference between an app in a container running on bare metal vs the same app running in VMware has been insignificant, so to say that there is a 40% performance penalty is probably disingenuous.
rsync 12y ago
Neither jail nor Solaris Zones ate vmwares lunch ...
- contingencies 12y ago
  VirtualBox is a bigger threat
  - nl 12y ago
    Because Oracle is easier to work with than VMWare? Wait, that doesn't seem right...
    - contingencies 12y ago
      No, because their feature set is similar for many purposes, their stuff works well cross-platform and is free. The way I see it, VMWare was a one trick pony and the horse has bolted, and while expanding their offering in to virtual networking topology provision and serious hardware infrastructure provision has been tried, it inevitably fails in subtle ways. Simply put: people need transparency in dynamic, modern infrastructure and they don't get it from 'put me in the middle' commercial vendors. Nor does the complexity cost of the mystical one size fits all virtualization solution magically dissipate when marketers invoke the ancient spirits of enterprise requirements.
      - nl 12y ago
        I'm not aware of many people using VirtualBox for server virtualization. That's where VMWare makes (almost all) of their money. VirtualBox isn't better in anyway then VMWare - except it is cheaper. That isn't really enough on its own (and there are plenty of more viable competitor of zero cost is all that matters: Xen, KVM, etc etc). OTOH, Docker is cheaper, faster, much less resource intensive, and less secure. That's disruptive, and much more difficult for VMWare to fight than another conventional virtualization competitor.
        12y ago

limaoscarjuliet 12y ago

Just a reminder, adding VMWare-like virtualization layer (i.e. full virtualization) to the mix will cost you more than 40% of your CPU: http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/0929052195DD819C85257D2300681E7B/$File/rc25482.pdf http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/0... In my view one of the key reasons to do it is to use AWS or the like. Until they have full Docker support on bare metal that is. P.S. There are other reasons, e.g. Docker makes it difficult to create a separate publicly visible network interface. But these I feel will go away soon as well.

skybrian 12y ago
Looks like VMWare is working on that too: http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/08/containers-vms-kubernetes-and-vmware.html http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/08/containers-v...
acdha 12y ago
> Just a reminder, adding VMWare-like virtualization layer (i.e. full virtualization) to the mix will cost you more than 40% of your CPU … on a couple of microbenchmarks when you define “CPU” to mean “I/O”. Even if you ignore the question of whether KVM performance is the same as VMware's (hint: no), most of the the charts in that paper contradict such a broad statement.
jasongill 12y ago
This article only mentions VMware twice in the body, both in passing. The majority of the article is a comparison of KVM and Docker. Many of the points in the article don't apply to VMware at all, or refer to things that are KVM specific limitations which VMware has already overcome. In fact, the article says "KVM has much higher overhead, higher than 40% in all measured cases." - saying nothing of "VMware-like virtualization" or VMware ESXi at all. While it's true that containerized "virtualization" traditionally has less overhead than a hypervisor like ESXi, the difference is increasingly small and in most environments negligible, especially considering the added features and flexibility of ESXi vs containers. From my experience and tests, the performance difference between an app in a container running on bare metal vs the same app running in VMware has been insignificant, so to say that there is a 40% performance penalty is probably disingenuous.

rsync 12y ago

Neither jail nor Solaris Zones ate vmwares lunch ...

contingencies 12y ago
VirtualBox is a bigger threat
- nl 12y ago
  Because Oracle is easier to work with than VMWare? Wait, that doesn't seem right...
  - contingencies 12y ago
    No, because their feature set is similar for many purposes, their stuff works well cross-platform and is free. The way I see it, VMWare was a one trick pony and the horse has bolted, and while expanding their offering in to virtual networking topology provision and serious hardware infrastructure provision has been tried, it inevitably fails in subtle ways. Simply put: people need transparency in dynamic, modern infrastructure and they don't get it from 'put me in the middle' commercial vendors. Nor does the complexity cost of the mystical one size fits all virtualization solution magically dissipate when marketers invoke the ancient spirits of enterprise requirements.
    - nl 12y ago
      I'm not aware of many people using VirtualBox for server virtualization. That's where VMWare makes (almost all) of their money. VirtualBox isn't better in anyway then VMWare - except it is cheaper. That isn't really enough on its own (and there are plenty of more viable competitor of zero cost is all that matters: Xen, KVM, etc etc). OTOH, Docker is cheaper, faster, much less resource intensive, and less secure. That's disruptive, and much more difficult for VMWare to fight than another conventional virtualization competitor.
      - 12y ago