vSphere FT vs Hyper-V R2 vCPU Count

So we have primarily been a Hyper-V shop but I'm looking into the vSphere option. I have experience with ESXi but not a lot on the clustering side. If I'm interupting the documentation I'm reading correctly I'm seeing (what I consider) a HUGE downfall for vSphere when pitted against Hyper-V R2.

In a Hyper-V R2 cluster if a hardware node fails, the VM will be live migrated to an available node. No downtime, application stays up. The VM being failed over can have 1 vCPU or 4 vCPU's assigned. It doesn't matter.

On the vSphere side of things, if you have a VM with a decent load and need more than 1 vCPU you can not use FT. HA is your only option, and in that case the VM actually has go offline and then be re-started on the new node.

Am I unerstaning this right? Considering how mature vSphere is compared to Hyper-V I'm really surprised by this.

I think you are mistaken. If you have a Hyper-V VM on an active node in the cluster and that node crashes..how is it going to live migrate? Example..you have a two node Hyper-V cluster, the VM in question is on NODE 1, NODE 1 BSOD's, how would it live migrate? Hyper-V will only allow this Live Migration if you manually move it. In the event of a NODE failure, which, in reality, is what you're protecting yourself from, the VM comes up on the other NODE just like vSphere.

vSphere brings the VM up on the other node when running HA on top of that vSphere offers Fault Tolerance, which truely offers redundancy to VM's with ZERO downtime. Hyper-V does not have a feature like that. Of course, you see the limitations of FT, but at least there is an option. On top of that vSphere offers DRS to automatically manage and Live Migrate resources to other nodes to improve performance and even out NODE resources. Hyper-V does no such thing other than in SCVMM it provides a star rating based on availabe NODE resources so you know what the best NODE is to configure your VM.

We run both Hyper-V managed by SCVMM and vSphere in our Enterprise. One of the only compelling things that I find Hyper-V offers over vSphere is storage connectivity redirection. For example, we have a couple of 6-node Hyper-V clusters for Development. We are running 10Gbe iSCSI to connect to the storage. We have had bad luck with the Qlogic 10Gbe HBA's where we have had both cards fail in a single server. Hyper-V can provide access to the storage environment on that node by redirecting the storage traffic via the network to another node through it's HBA's. That's one of the only benefits i'm finding other than the license differences..etc.

Vader said:

I think you are mistaken. If you have a Hyper-V VM on an active node in the cluster and that node crashes..how is it going to live migrate? Example..you have a two node Hyper-V cluster, the VM in question is on NODE 1, NODE 1 BSOD's, how would it live migrate? Hyper-V will only allow this Live Migration if you manually move it. In the event of a NODE failure, which, in reality, is what you're protecting yourself from, the VM comes up on the other NODE just like vSphere.

Click to expand...

True.
Live migrade only happens if you manually move the vm or soft shut down the host. Did hyper-v cluster as my thesis year ago and tried hard shut down on the host (unplug the power), second host just noted that node1 is offline and so is the VM and did nothing about it.

Just my 2 cents about this topic

Live migrade only happens if you manually move the vm or soft shut down the host. Did hyper-v cluster as my thesis year ago and tried hard shut down on the host (unplug the power), second host just noted that node1 is offline and so is the VM and did nothing about it.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you had it set up incorrectly. When you created the VM you have to make it Highly Available. This is how it works, and is the correct way.

Also..Live Migration also happens when you put the NODE in maintenance mode as well...should point that out.

Good info. Thanks guys, I've never actually pulled one of our nodes out of the cluster so I wasn't sure how exactly it handled it.

Vader. Since you seem to have a lot of experience with both sides, what are your opinions on the two? I realize vSphere has a larger feature set and a lot more enterprise features, but for the SMB or low end enterprise market how do you rank Hyper-V R2?

Have you noticed larger performance differences between the two in the 10-20:1 consolidation range? I know VMware scales better but realistically none of my clients are that big.

It's quite hard to get a real subjective opinion on the topic cause most people usually nut hug one way or the other.Would love to hear your thoughts on the two as a whole.

I wouldn't say I have extensive experience with vSphere. In the past year i've stood up a 300 seat View deployment soon to grow to 600 seats, and i've migrated about 40% of our baremetal server environment to vSphere, soon to be 90%. Prior to that, I had about 6 months experience managing the older environment on 3.5 so there are others here that can add on to my opinions with much more experience.

From a performance standpoint, you really have to look at overhead, as well as how you build your backend. I can't stress enough , and i'm sure others will agree, you really have to know what your requirements are from a network/storage standpoint, compute is obviously important as well, but it's getting less important based on the latest technologies coming out of the Intel/AMD shops.

My current Hyper-V environment is all Development. The number one reason why we went this route was obvious, cost. The environment it supports is 100% Windows 2008 R2 so that was another factor in the decision. Unfortunately, when I pushed UCS and Blades, the "masterminds" thought that it was "too risky."..which I find rediculous. They also didn't want to leverage our current EMC SAN..etc so we went with a cheaper HP-Lefthand P4000 iSCSI system. To get back to your original question, I would say that, as a Windows guy, Hyper-V is fairly easy to stand up and manage and it works well, especially for a 100% Windows Dev Environment. Having said that, you still have the flaws of using Windows/Hyper-V, even at the core level, there are some glaring issues their most of which are driver/hotfix issues that you will find frustrating..etc.

vSphere, on the other hand, especially ESXi is better in every way except pricing. ESXi is extrememly efficient, running on USB keys..etc. With host profiles it's very easy to bring up multiple nodes in our cluster and with vCenter, while much more robust and than SCVMM, it's a joy really to work with once you get the hang of it. There is so much more you can do with vCenter pertaining reporting, etc. Couple that with DRS/HA/FT, integration into our EMC SAN, and it truely is the ultimate virtualization platform. It get's better with every release, and the releases bring the features that administrators not only want, but really need in order to manage there environments better, especially on a grander scale with multiple locations..etc.

Unfortunately, i'm speaking from Enterprise experience so this may not assist you in your decision for the SMB market. There are others here with way more experience, and hopefully, they will chime in here to address some of your questions.

I will end with this, now that i've used both environments, and based on my own expereiences, I would choose VMware every time.

Microsoft wins on licensing, and that's it. They don't win on features or ease of use. I think the vSphere Essentials kits are very well positions for SMB. If you haven't seen those check them out.