All-In-One and Hyper-V

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Franko

Weaksauce
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Jan 17, 2009
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I am doing some research for a visualization project for my home and am wondering if it is possible to use Hyper-V instead of ESXI for an All In One system. It seems like being able to use a single socket Opteron board and 64 or 128 gigs of ram would be a bit of an advantage over the 32 gigs I would be limited to for ESXI. Is this possible and if so is it advisable?

My skill level is low (this is only a hobby) and I am considering virtualizng a ZFS or Flexraid storage instance along with WHS 2011 and a few other assorted vm's.

Thanks for the feedback in advance.
 
Unless you have a Windows Server domain, Hyper-V Server is a bit of a pain to administer. Two more options are KVM and XEN although I find XEN is much easier to setup than KVM. Hyper-V seems to have far worse disk throughput although it is ok with Windows and much better in Ubuntu 12.04 and above if you plan to use linux.

I use XEN, ESXI, Hyper-V, and KVM at work. I have KVM on two servers, and Hyper-V role enabled on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard system at home which makes administration easy, but I also have a Windows Domain at home.
 
I would love to keep using vsphere, if I didn't have to pay for basic vmotion. I can get that for free with xenserver (and xen storage motion if you use XCP). Proxmox allows me to migrate guests too, free clustering, blah blah blah. Not only does vsphere cost for (IMO) basics like this, but a lot of the goodies require using vcenter, which also costs, unless you are willing to keep reinstalling it every couple of months. Ugh...
 
All in one is totally possible with Hyper-V. I would likely suggest just using a Windows or Linux storage option though.
 
Completely possible. A basic domain is dead simple to deploy as well.

Personally I run two hosts off local storage. No shared storage at all. But i still have full live migration and HA via replication :)
 
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Thanks for the info. I appreciate the all the help. Now I just need to figure the rest...
 
jimh425 said:
Unless you have a Windows Server domain, Hyper-V Server is a bit of a pain to administer. Two more options are KVM and XEN although I find XEN is much easier to setup than KVM. Hyper-V seems to have far worse disk throughput although it is ok with Windows and much better in Ubuntu 12.04 and above if you plan to use linux.

I use XEN, ESXI, Hyper-V, and KVM at work. I have KVM on two servers, and Hyper-V role enabled on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard system at home which makes administration easy, but I also have a Windows Domain at home.
Click to expand...

Hyper-V Server is a PITA to administer not due to any DOMAIN requirements itself (as it doesn't have any) but due to the best native Hyper-V admin tools are in System Center 2010 Essentials OR System Center 2012 - both of which require Active Directory; otherwise you have to make do with Hyper-V Manager (which has gotten better with Server 2012) or spend a ton of time fiddling with PowerShell scriptlets.

For simple VM admin (very little of that on [H] from what I see), Hyper-V Manager (any iteration of Windows Server 2012, including Hyper-V Server, and even client Hyper-V in Windows 8) has improved markedly over the same in the previous versions of Windows Server - and not just the Linux support; the nicer surprise improvement is improvements in virtual adapter switching. One thing I like in Hyper-V is that instead of managing virtual adapters at the VM level, you manaqe them at the switch level.
 
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