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Hyper-V or ESXi for small home server?

J

jmk396

Gawd
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
787
I'm a software developer looking to setup a small virtualized fileserver/testing-server and my server hardware should be compatible with both Hyper-V and ESXi.

My plan is to install Windows Home Server as the main operating system but than also install Windows Server 2008 to fool around with and even perhaps Ubuntu or something like that.

I've actually halfway tempted to just skip the whole virtualization thing and just install Windows Home Server since that is by far the primary purpose of my server, but my system seems a little bit too powerful for just one single purpose like this.

Here's what I have:

AMD Regor 250 (3.0 GHz, dual-core)
8 GB ECC RAM (DDR2 800)
4.5 TB Storage (1.5 TB, 1 TB x2, 500 GB x2)
Intel PCIe dual-port gigabit NIC

I'm even thinking that it would be neat to use the server as a super-powerful router but my WRT54G is pretty damn good...
 
HCL should make the decision for you.
Hyper-V R2 is out ::checks calendar:: today!

IMO go with Hyper-V
I have both ESX and Hyper-V and Hyper-V is just more noob friendly -- not that you're a noob :)
 
WHS supports a max of 4gb, and unless you install VS2005, you're not going to virtualize anything.

If you are a developer, chances are you would rather have ESXi.

And that box is WAY overkill for a router unless you have 100's of people behind it.
 
@gersson: My hardware will work with both so that's not really an issue, and as far as being a noob, yes I am. It's not a bad thing. :)

@sc0tty8: I didn't even think about WHS being 32-bit and the 4 GB limit. (actually it's really 3 GB and applications only use 2 GB, right?)

That means if I want to utilize the extra 4 GB than I need to virtualize some more servers onto that machine... I guess that means I'll be going that route, heh.

I'm also unsure what you meant by saying, "unless you install VS2005, you're not going to virtualize anything." I wouldn't be installing Visual Studio onto my server. I'd be installing Windows Server 2008 R2 alongside Windows Home Server.

As for the the router, I meant that I would virtualize a small routing operating system (pfSense or whatever). I know that it's probably beyond overkill though :)

Also, why would I prefer ESXi over Hyper-V because I'm a developer? (I'm just not sure what you meant)

Thanks so much for the help!
 
jmk396 said:
@sc0tty8: I didn't even think about WHS being 32-bit and the 4 GB limit. (actually it's really 3 GB and applications only use 2 GB, right?)

That means if I want to utilize the extra 4 GB than I need to virtualize some more servers onto that machine... I guess that means I'll be going that route, heh.

I'm also unsure what you meant by saying, "unless you install VS2005, you're not going to virtualize anything." I wouldn't be installing Visual Studio onto my server. I'd be installing Windows Server 2008 R2 alongside Windows Home Server.

As for the the router, I meant that I would virtualize a small routing operating system (pfSense or whatever). I know that it's probably beyond overkill though :)

Also, why would I prefer ESXi over Hyper-V because I'm a developer? (I'm just not sure what you meant)

Thanks so much for the help!
Click to expand...

WHS is based off of win2k3, so, 4gb max, and it can use it, although, for the most part you won't need to give it that much.

VS2005=Virtual Server...I didn't know if you where planning on WHS and then virtualizinf from there or?

I like ESXi for the ability to easily export templates for ease of deployment, and the advanced network features. Either way, if you are going withWHS for any type of mass-storage needs, you'll need to create multiple virtual hard drives to pool together. esxi I think the max is 250? GB and I don't remember if hyperv had a limit.

I also find that using ESXi was easier to interact with the virtual machines since I run my box headless, via RDP, it is a pita to navigate virtual machines w/o a mouse.

Yeah, def. tos your router of choice into the mix. I actually do this.
 
What you should do is just Install Server 2008 and install WHS inside Hyper-V

ESXi wont work because WHS needs jbod disk, and using the VMFS and virtual disk to pass onto WHS would just be over complicating things, and make it damn near impossible to recover your data if something Effd up.

With Hyper-V you can pass a HDD to a VM.

And since you are using Server2008 as the host you can utilize more than 4GB of Ram.

Only Caveat is installing WHS....getting through the installer without the Hyper-V tools is a PITA because of no mouse support.
 
nitrobass24 said:
What you should do is just Install Server 2008 and install WHS inside Hyper-V

ESXi wont work because WHS needs jbod disk, and using the VMFS and virtual disk to pass onto WHS would just be over complicating things, and make it damn near impossible to recover your data if something Effd up.

With Hyper-V you can pass a HDD to a VM.

And since you are using Server2008 as the host you can utilize more than 4GB of Ram.

Only Caveat is installing WHS....getting through the installer without the Hyper-V tools is a PITA because of no mouse support.
Click to expand...

How can he utilize more then 4gb of ram because its installed on hyper-v over esxi? 4 gigs is 4 gigs for whs.

You can also add hard drives in esxi, so, the statemend about adding drives in esxi vs hyper-v doesn't make much since. I wouldn't advise virtualizing whs to take advantage of its storage purposes.

And if you use esxi, with vsphere you can access the vm as if you are in front of the pc, so, the box runs headless and its much more of a breeze.
 
IF server 2008 is the Host Server2008 can use all 8GB for whatever he wants them to.
Yes in the VM he can only Assign 4gb to the WHS, but thats not any different thatn ESXi is it?

But then he still has 4 other GB that are not being used that can be used for Development VM's or whatver else he wants to.

if he uses WHS as the host then he only has 4gb total and will be limited on VMs he can run on VPC or VMware server.

If you are suggesting he virtualize WHS on ESXi over Hyper-V then you obviously have not done both.
I have and using it in ESXi makes it harder to deal with the Data storage of WHS.
Also the Hyper-V manager which is free BTW also allows you to acces the VM as if you are in front of the PC and can still run headless.
 
nitrobass24 said:
If you are suggesting he virtualize WHS on ESXi over Hyper-V then you obviously have not done both.
Click to expand...

^^Bingo.

I had to find out the hard way that if I wanted WHS in a VM with direct access to the HDD's it would be Hyper-V over ESXi. Believe me, I wanted more than anything to use ESXi.

But what it comes down to, and I posted it earlier. Try both, and then make a decision. They both have their place for different situations.
 
Well, as a user of ESX and later ESXi for quite awhile (counting both, about 5 years), I've just moved everything over to Hyper-V 2008 R2 on my AMD Phenom 9600 box with cheap ECS Nvidia 6100/Nforce 430 motherboard. Why? Simple: It works better and more reliably. It's faster, it's easier to get it to work on the hardware without jumping through a bunch of hoops (I typically have used ESX and ESXi on enterprise hardware at work, but for home that kind of investment is unrealistic and VMWare's performance simply isn't worth the price of the hardware I'd have to buy to make it stable).

With Hyper-V I can install it on virtually any x64 compatible hardware with virtualization support I want. Missing a driver? Grab the Windows driver, done. Missing a driver in VMWare? Hunt. Peck. Pray. Edit configuration files. Hack. Pray.

It's probably that for future enterprise deployments I'll also be using Hyper-V 2008 R2. It's just a lot easier to get it to do what we need it to do :). It's been a nice ride, VMWare, but your time is coming to an end, at least in the non-specialized hardware arena.
 
If you plan on using all MS products then I would suggest using Hyper-V with Server2008 as your base install. This will allow you to use WHS, and MS clients if needed.

It does get a little messy with Linux distributions. I have not tried Ubuntu, however Fedora Core works for the most part. You will have to manually exit the VM with Fedora Core though, which can be a pain when the mouse gets 'locked' in the VM window. Also- you will have to learn to use ctrl+alt+end when the VM says press ctrl+alt+del.

Server2008 with Hyper-V is a good solution, and gets my recomendation for you. It is a straight forward out of the box solution.
 
physical hard disk pass through for ESX, this works like a charm. my dell perc 5i controller has 4 160GB wd drives in a raid 5 config formatted as my VMFS partition, then I have 4 640GB wd Black drives in a raid 5 config, however this raid set has been passed using the link below directly to the guest OS.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1429640

While this may take more effort (or not) to do than doing the same in Hyper-V in a low memory system you will be able to deploy more VM's in ESX than you could under Hyper-V while needing a smaller footprint to start.
 
DragonMasterAlex said:
Well, as a user of ESX and later ESXi for quite awhile (counting both, about 5 years), I've just moved everything over to Hyper-V 2008 R2 on my AMD Phenom 9600 box with cheap ECS Nvidia 6100/Nforce 430 motherboard. Why? Simple: It works better and more reliably. It's faster, it's easier to get it to work on the hardware without jumping through a bunch of hoops (I typically have used ESX and ESXi on enterprise hardware at work, but for home that kind of investment is unrealistic and VMWare's performance simply isn't worth the price of the hardware I'd have to buy to make it stable).

With Hyper-V I can install it on virtually any x64 compatible hardware with virtualization support I want. Missing a driver? Grab the Windows driver, done. Missing a driver in VMWare? Hunt. Peck. Pray. Edit configuration files. Hack. Pray.

It's probably that for future enterprise deployments I'll also be using Hyper-V 2008 R2. It's just a lot easier to get it to do what we need it to do :). It's been a nice ride, VMWare, but your time is coming to an end, at least in the non-specialized hardware arena.
Click to expand...

You ever check out the whitebox website for ESXi?

i built one with spare parts and all i had to order to get it to work was a new HDD controller(cheap adaptec) and intel NIC. All on an old Asus P5B with Q6600. Works like a champ since ESXi 3.5U2 and currently running ESXi4.

Also, ESX/ESXi is supported with just about any typical server out that nowadays, from Dells to HPs to IBMs to anyone. Specialized hardware is where you run into issues with compatibility, not non-specialized hardware.

Last i tried screwing around with Hyper-V the permissions were a SOB to get around(for home use in a workgroup, not a domain). Any clue if that was ever resolved? wouldn't mind screwing around with it again.
 
While I agree whole hartedly with you about getting ESX to run on non "server" hardware, it sounds like DragonMasterAlex likes the fact that he can install Hyper-V on any windows supported hardware, unfortuatly you loose things like page pool sharing, memory overcommitment with Hyper-V. Remember that Hyper-V is XEN running on a windows kernel instead of a linux kernel so the product is quite solid. However I still continue to be a VMware fanboy, I made a well informed purchase when I bought my last MOBO which included 2 VMware supported broadcom nics, a pci-x slot and pci-e x8 slot. Recently upgraded from an adaptec 6 port pci-x sata card to a Dell Perc 5i 8 port card. with a core2 duo and 8gb ram it's a workhorse for a lab boxen. Even managed to get ESXi to boot from a USB stick.:p

himmy said:
You ever check out the whitebox website for ESXi?

i built one with spare parts and all i had to order to get it to work was a new HDD controller(cheap adaptec) and intel NIC. All on an old Asus P5B with Q6600. Works like a champ since ESXi 3.5U2 and currently running ESXi4.

Also, ESX/ESXi is supported with just about any typical server out that nowadays, from Dells to HPs to IBMs to anyone. Specialized hardware is where you run into issues with compatibility, not non-specialized hardware.

Last i tried screwing around with Hyper-V the permissions were a SOB to get around(for home use in a workgroup, not a domain). Any clue if that was ever resolved? wouldn't mind screwing around with it again.
Click to expand...
 
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