Another HyperV vs VMWare thread

[MrDudeMan]

I'm setting up a virtualized environment for a small business and I need to make a choice regarding the hypervisor fairly soon. I'm torn at the moment.

I know and understand vSphere + vCenter, but it's awfully expensive. For that reason, HyperV is attractive, but I don't have any experience with it. Normally, I'd say the lack of experience is enough to simply go with what I know, but this is a small business and $5,500 for a license isn't exactly an easy sell especially when a free alternative exists. With that said, is HyperV actually free? Google says yes and no, but I can't figure out why.

My main concern is with failure scenarios. vSphere Essentials Plus comes with high availability, vMotion, etc. that make VM migrations dead simple. The other major benefit is vSAN. I see these things listed on the HyperV 2016 feature list, but I don't have any experience with them so it's hard to know how much of it is hot air.

I'm not opposed to learning something new and I don't have any irrational biases about vendor choice. The cost of vSphere severely diminishes my ability to upgrade network hardware, which is part of the concern. In short, I'm trying to make the best long term decision both technically and financially.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Wow, I just realized vSAN is not included in vSphere Essentials Plus, which makes the cost way higher if I'm understanding the pricing model correctly. It looks like vSAN is per CPU, which could end up costing another $4-8k. That would be a showstopper for sure, which would push me to HyperV. Thoughts?

 

[fleshconsumed]

AFAIK with Hyper-V there are 3 options:
- Windows Datacenter 2016 gives you unlimited Windows Guest OSes but it's insanely expensive, small business can't afford that
- Windows Standard 2016 gives you 2 free guest Windows OSes, thus you can have 3 windows servers, 1 physical and 2 virtual ones, moderately affordable option
- Windows Hyper-V Server 2016, haven't played with it, but from what I understand it's a free gui-less hypervisor, pro it's completely free, cons it doesn't come with any free guest OSes

If you plan on running freeware linux/unix servers as your guests, Hyper-V server could be a good option depending on particular flavor of the guest OS (I'd test to make sure they play nice together). If your client needs windows servers, Windows Standard would be the best option for a small business.

 

[quikah]

What are their needs? Have you looked at a Cloud solution (AWS or Azure)?

I haven't used Hyper-V since Server 2012, but from my experience it was hard to use (compared to vsphere) without System Center, I am not sure what the situation is like now, but maybe another cost.

 

[MrDudeMan]

What are their needs? Have you looked at a Cloud solution (AWS or Azure)?

I haven't used Hyper-V since Server 2012, but from my experience it was hard to use (compared to vsphere) without System Center, I am not sure what the situation is like now, but maybe another cost.

At the very least, it has to run the domain controller. If that's possible (and generally accepted as a good idea), I'm all for it. The biggest concern would be if login/dns/etc. services would go down if the internet connection dropped.

Aside from the DC, all of the other apps could probably be run in the cloud without a huge amount of effort. Spinning everything up internally is attractive for other reasons (security, continued work without an internet connection, etc.), but it can all be handled or mitigated with enough up-front planning.

 

[Beer4Me]

Assuming you are a small company based upon what is provided. First off, are you using DAS or do you actually have a dedicated SAN? If you're using DAS, then VMware Essentials plus is all you need. HyperV 2016 requires CSV for live-migration, so you would need a SAN. Also, many features of HyperV are not available unless you also buy SCCM with Virtual Machine Manager which further complicates your HyperV deployment and costs. For our customers, HyperV usually loses out once you factor in all of the add-ons and layers of complexity MS makes you jump through to get the same level of functionality as VMware. Just sick with VMware. Get Veaam to do your backups. Call it a day.

HyperV can be fine if we're just talking about a few standalone host, and all you want is virtualization (but you don't really need all the bells/whistles). Otherwise, IMHO, the cost & complexity involved with HyperV deployments is just not worth it in the end. VMware is just so much easier. Also, some may play the Dell card since Dell owns EMC. That agreement is just for EMC storage division and has NO bearing on VMware (separate entity, even though EMC owns VMware).

 

[quikah]

Also, some may play the Dell card since Dell owns EMC. That agreement is just for EMC storage division and has NO bearing on VMware (separate entity, even though EMC owns VMware).

While VMware is treated as a separate entity it is majority owned by Dell. From the quarterly report:

"Effective September 7, 2016, Dell Technologies Inc. (“Dell”) (formerly Denali Holding Inc.) acquired EMC Corporation (“EMC”), including EMC’s majority control of VMware (the “Dell Acquisition”). As a result of the Dell Acquisition, EMC became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell and VMware became an indirectly-held, majority-owned subsidiary of Dell. As of May 5, 2017 , Dell controlled 81.8% of VMware’s outstanding common stock and 97.6% of the combined voting power of VMware’s outstanding common stock, including 34 million shares of VMware’s Class A common stock and all of VMware’s Class B common stock."

 

[MrDudeMan]

Assuming you are a small company based upon what is provided. First off, are you using DAS or do you actually have a dedicated SAN? If you're using DAS, then VMware Essentials plus is all you need. HyperV 2016 requires CSV for live-migration, so you would need a SAN. Also, many features of HyperV are not available unless you also buy SCCM with Virtual Machine Manager which further complicates your HyperV deployment and costs. For our customers, HyperV usually loses out once you factor in all of the add-ons and layers of complexity MS makes you jump through to get the same level of functionality as VMware. Just sick with VMware. Get Veaam to do your backups. Call it a day.

HyperV can be fine if we're just talking about a few standalone host, and all you want is virtualization (but you don't really need all the bells/whistles). Otherwise, IMHO, the cost & complexity involved with HyperV deployments is just not worth it in the end. VMware is just so much easier. Also, some may play the Dell card since Dell owns EMC. That agreement is just for EMC storage division and has NO bearing on VMware (separate entity, even though EMC owns VMware).

Thanks. I'm going to do some more digging to figure out which solution will work best. To answer your questions, yes, this is a small business and we're talking about two or three hosts max. Even so, HyperV is really frustrating to try to understand because there's not a clear "this is how you do it" guide that starts from step 1 for the uninitiated. VMware's demo sucks, but the documentation is really easy to understand.

I'll take a few days/weeks to run some tests on spare hardware and then present the findings to the decision maker. Personally, I want to pick VMware and be done with it, but I don't control the budget.

 

[Scarpozzi]

VMotion is nice because you can patch the hypervisor/reboot the hardware your virtuals are running on without having much of a hiccup on the user side. However, the cost of that is pretty steep. I used to be a VMware expert and ran ESX back in the 2-3.5 days. (changed job roles, so I don't do much enterprise stuff anymore)

If you're installing this in a place that expects 99% uptime and has already invested in infrastructure like UPS/Generator/DataCenter Cooling/SAN, go for it. If it's just a small operation, I would probably throw it all on one box with direct attached storage and don't plan on migrating anything. Store the virtual disks on the direct attached storage and back them up externally. Schedule downtime to update the hypervisor and patch the BIOS semi-annually, buy 4 hour support for the server and call it a day.