Actually, with ESXi, if I want to manage all hosts with one vCenter, I need a license to manage each ESXi box in one console. In other words, on the ESX side, I have 3 paid licenses plus 1 vCenter console that can manage those three licensed hosts. To add an ESXi host, I need another license.
With HyperV, I can have all my hosts in the Hyper-V Manager. No added licensing costs, they're just there.
As for the 4 and unlimited thing, I had to do more digging, but you are absolutely right. Basically it is 1 Physical + 4 Virtual. If on ESX, you don't use the physical but you still get the 4 virtual. This is something I had completed missed. Thanks for the tip!
At this point, I will say that I am still evaluating HyperV. For my smallish environment, it seems to me more than adequate. I can manage ALL of the HyperV hosts in one console at no added cost, whereas ESX would like me to pay to have all the hosts in the same console. While this may seem to be a trivial point, it really makes a world of difference from managing multiple hosts.
Also what features would you be referring to? Storage VMotion? That to me is the one thing I would really like to have, but simply don't have. At present I have live migration from host to host so long as I am not moving storage.
First I would point you at "Essentials" if you don't care about vMotion (around a $1k and $100 a year for support) or "Essentials plus" if really want vMotion.
I was under the understanding that the hyperV Manager was a licensed item (I could be wrong here) edit: I was just looked it up
#1 I would mention is Upgrade Manager.
#2 Would be the performance monitoring.
I found VMware to handle memory management a bit better with the balloon driver and dedup.
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