any Hyper-V guys in here? I have a few questions

[OutHouse]

I have been tasked to compare Hyper-V to ESXI. I am a ESX guy and have never touched HYPER-V and have been tasked to compare the two. I am going to copy/paste the exact questions that were asked of me from my management. If you can help in answering them i would really appreciate it.

What OS and versions of does HV ship with?

How many VMs can you have with a single server HV setup?

If I had a HV server and wanted to put 5 hosts on it, would I need to OS licenses for all 5 or are some included with the HV OS?

Does HV have the ability to shift servers between hosts like the paid for VMware?

How different is the user interface between the 2?

Are we getting the same functionality with free ESX as we would HV?

 

[JackMDS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/dd448604.aspx

http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtuali...soft-hyper-v-2012-vs-vmware-vsphere-51-217125

 

[OutHouse]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/dd448604.aspx

http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtuali...soft-hyper-v-2012-vs-vmware-vsphere-51-217125

read those last week. did not help with my specific questions.

 

[sourceninja]

I have been tasked to compare Hyper-V to ESXI. I am a ESX guy and have never touched HYPER-V and have been tasked to compare the two. I am going to copy/paste the exact questions that were asked of me from my management. If you can help in answering them i would really appreciate it.

What OS and versions of does HV ship with? Do you mean what windows OS's come with hyperV?

2008r2 and 2012 are what you should be looking at. If you are building a hyperv cluster from scratch you should only use 2012, it's head and tails better than 2008.

How many VMs can you have with a single server HV setup?

This is dependent on what those vm's are doing and how big your server is. Right sizing a server for your environment is not a question that can be answered like this. You need to know how much ram the vm's require, how much disk space, cpu power, iops, etc. This is a huge question.

If I had a HV server and wanted to put 5 hosts on it, would I need to OS licenses for all 5 or are some included with the HV OS?

I'm assuming you mean guests not hosts. In this case you would need licenses for guest OS's. Microsoft provides guest licenses with their host licenses. For example if your hyperV host is windows 2012 datacenter, you can run unlimited guests. 2012 standard allows 2 guests (I think). So if you buy 2012 datacenter you can run unlimited 2012 guests, but if you wanted to run redhat you would need to buy licenses.

Does HV have the ability to shift servers between hosts like the paid for VMware?

Yes, but you will need to build a hyperv cluster and it works with a different set of limitations.

How different is the user interface between the 2?

Not too much, I would much rather use vmware but you can't get the job done in hyperv.

Are we getting the same functionality with free ESX as we would HV?

Yes, I'd actually pick hypervover esxi free if those were my only two choices. I'd prefer to buy vmware vsphere essentials plus.

If you don't know what your doing, hire a consultant to help you. Rightsizing a vm environment and making the right choices is not easy.

 

[OutHouse]

Thanks sourceninja

i watched this vid and at the beginning the guy talks about pricing. I thought hyper-v was free. guess i was wrong in this assumption, so at what point does it cost?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKKhEDP4Qo4

 

[OutHouse]

If you don't know what your doing, hire a consultant to help you. Rightsizing a vm environment and making the right choices is not easy

i have no idea why our management has given me this task. I just upgraded from ESX4 to 5.1 in Jan and spent a boatload of money on expanding my cluster from 3 to 8 host.

i have never touched hyper-V so thanks for helping me out.

 

[sourceninja]

Thanks sourceninja

i watched this vid and at the beginning the guy talks about pricing. I thought hyper-v was free. guess i was wrong in this assumption, so at what point does it cost?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKKhEDP4Qo4

HyperV comes with 2012 and 2008 server. So it's free in that if you are going to run either OS, you get hyperv.

 

[OutHouse]

HyperV comes with 2012 and 2008 server. So it's free in that if you are going to run either OS, you get hyperv.

ok i get that, but at what point does it make it un-free and i would have to tell my boss "hey we need to budget for license"

 

[sourceninja]

ok i get that, but at what point does it make it un-free and i would have to tell my boss "hey we need to budget for license"

Just get a windows 2012 datacenter license for each host and use microsoft clustering and you are set for as big as you want to be.

That's it.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

2008r2 and 2012 are what you should be looking at. If you are building a hyperv cluster from scratch you should only use 2012, it's head and tails better than 2008.

Also remember that Hyper V Server is available as a baremetal hypervisor for free, but from what I've read, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of configuration, etc. compared to ESX.

This is dependent on what those vm's are doing and how big your server is. Right sizing a server for your environment is not a question that can be answered like this. You need to know how much ram the vm's require, how much disk space, cpu power, iops, etc. This is a huge question.

Exactly

I'm assuming you mean guests not hosts. In this case you would need licenses for guest OS's. Microsoft provides guest licenses with their host licenses. For example if your hyperV host is windows 2012 datacenter, you can run unlimited guests. 2012 standard allows 2 guests (I think). So if you buy 2012 datacenter you can run unlimited 2012 guests, but if you wanted to run redhat you would need to buy licenses.

That's my understanding as well and in fact, I believe that is technically the only difference between Windows 2012 Standard and Datacenter -- the VM licensing.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

i have no idea why our management has given me this task. I just upgraded from ESX4 to 5.1 in Jan and spent a boatload of money on expanding my cluster from 3 to 8 host.

i have never touched hyper-V so thanks for helping me out.

I think they're looking at costs down the road and figure it is worth a shot investigating Hyper V. I have experience with both (VMWare in an enterprise environment, Hyper V in a test environment) and can say that while VMWare is definitely better in terms of enterprise features and management, Hyper V is improving by leaps and bounds and is the cheaper solution. They implemented shared-nothing VM migration in the 2012 release and I believe actually beat VMWare to the market with that feature. I'm hoping to build another Hyper V server so I can do a cluster at home and run some tests.

 

[sourceninja]

Also remember that Hyper V Server is available as a baremetal hypervisor for free, but from what I've read, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of configuration, etc. compared to ESX.

Best bet, install 2012 server, configure hyperV then remove the GUI role. That gets you pretty close to baremetal hypervisor and if you need the gui back you can just add it back via powershell.

http://www.petri.co.il/switching-gui-server-core-windows-server-2012.htm

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Best bet, install 2012 server, configure hyperV then remove the GUI role. That gets you pretty close to baremetal hypervisor and if you need the gui back you can just add it back via powershell.

http://www.petri.co.il/switching-gui-server-core-windows-server-2012.htm

Exactly -- good point.

 

[imagoon]

Does 2012 Hyper-V still need that extra system control that MS sells for 4k + host cals to do most of the "cool stuff."

From my experience it seemed that HyperV starts off cheaper by a little bit (Comparing essentials to say HyperV free) but once you get to "enterprise" they are pretty neck and neck because of the extra licensing to use the HyperV enterprise features. At least that was 2008R2.

 

[imagoon]

Also that doesn't account for labor. I found that HyperV nearly always took "more work" to accomplish the same thing in ESXi/vCenter

 

[sourceninja]

Does 2012 Hyper-V still need that extra system control that MS sells for 4k + host cals to do most of the "cool stuff."

From my experience it seemed that HyperV starts off cheaper by a little bit (Comparing essentials to say HyperV free) but once you get to "enterprise" they are pretty neck and neck because of the extra licensing to use the HyperV enterprise features. At least that was 2008R2.

You don't need it, but System Center makes life much more tolerable.

 

[OutHouse]

Yes, but you will need to build a hyperv cluster and it works with a different set of limitations.

what are the limitations compared to ESXi/vcenter

 

[sourceninja]

what are the limitations compared to ESXi/vcenter

There are quite a few differences in ram allocations, how migrations work, cpu count, etc. It's really best to just read the MS technet on hyperV and compare that to what you know of esxi.

 

[quikah]

what are the limitations compared to ESXi/vcenter

HyperV uses Windows Failover Clustering for migration. You can lookup the requirements for Failover Clustering to get an idea of what you need. Although I think it is technically not needed it makes life a LOT easier if you have a windows domain to setup your cluster. Even then you are going to probably need a few days to chase DNS/permission issues, it is a pain to setup.

It is much easier to setup clusters with VMW.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

about how long do you think it would take to set up a cluster w/ H-V 2012 if you are relatively inexperienced with it?

let's say this is a test lab without using any kind of shared storage.

 

[sourceninja]

about how long do you think it would take to set up a cluster w/ H-V 2012 if you are relatively inexperienced with it?

let's say this is a test lab without using any kind of shared storage.

You can't setup a cluster without shared storage. I suggest you learn about microsoft clustering there are tons of documents on it and tutorials on the internet.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Ah I see. I will do that at some point. Does anyone have an anecdote as to how long it took them to set up a cluster, assuming shared storage was already present?

 

[quikah]

Ah I see. I will do that at some point. Does anyone have an anecdote as to how long it took them to set up a cluster, assuming shared storage was already present?

Hard to say as I don't dedicate 100% time on it, but it took me about a week to get 2 systems up.

By contrast it took about 4 hours to get vSphere 4.x cluster up and running the first time I did it. Although it takes much longer now with 5.x as SSO is dumb and causes many problems.

These are things on Windows that I needed to figure out how to do that are not required/automatic on vSphere:

1. setup firewall rules to enable remote management (not an issue unless you use server core, the "Enable remote management" option in sconfig doesn't actually do that)
2. setup multipathing
3. setup failover clustering
4. setup cluster filesystem
5. figure out how to get failover cluster to use the correct network cards (it seems to randomly pick the nics to use?!). I still haven't figured this one out, I wound up just creating dummy virtual switches in hyperv manager with my unused nics so it wouldn't try to use them for the cluster
6. enable the correct domain permissions to allow live migrations to work

Might be forgetting some stuff.

 

[imagoon]

Although it takes much longer now with 5.x as SSO is dumb and causes many problems.

5.1 SSO is pretty easy and is actually pretty awesome. I think the only time I had an issue with it is when I was upgrading. It the 5.1 proof of concept system I never even connected to SSO and it worked out of the box. It only added the time it took to install.

 

[Nothinman]

Hard to say as I don't dedicate 100% time on it, but it took me about a week to get 2 systems up.

By contrast it took about 4 hours to get vSphere 4.x cluster up and running the first time I did it. Although it takes much longer now with 5.x as SSO is dumb and causes many problems.

These are things on Windows that I needed to figure out how to do that are not required/automatic on vSphere:

1. setup firewall rules to enable remote management (not an issue unless you use server core, the "Enable remote management" option in sconfig doesn't actually do that)
2. setup multipathing
3. setup failover clustering
4. setup cluster filesystem
5. figure out how to get failover cluster to use the correct network cards (it seems to randomly pick the nics to use?!). I still haven't figured this one out, I wound up just creating dummy virtual switches in hyperv manager with my unused nics so it wouldn't try to use them for the cluster
6. enable the correct domain permissions to allow live migrations to work

Might be forgetting some stuff.

Yea, Hyper-V suffers from the standard over-engineering of management and under-engineering of technical capabilities MS applies to almost all of its products.