Hypervisor preference fight - GO!

[cyclone3d]

Moving this discussion here from a different thread.

My preferences are:

1. For VM servers - Hyper-V on Server 2025 Datacenter
Reasons:
A. Windows Server VMs do not require a license (unlimited)
B. Clustering / Failover works very well once configured properly.
C. Just about as quick as bare metal...maybe a tiny bit behind ESXi
D. Networking is dead simple to set up.

2. For local VMs - VMWare Workstation Pro
Reasons:
A. Free
B. Way more mature than VirtualBox - faster, less buggy, and just works.
C. USB Device mounting actually finally works properly
D. Shared folder with host is easy to set up and use.
E. Doesn't delete the virtual drive like ESXi does when deleting a VM.
F. Broadcom ruined ESXi with their stupid pricing.

Questions:
VirtualBox
1. Has it been fixed to actually work properly with an XP VM? Last time I tried it, it had major issues with color and resolution settings and would just lock up / stop responding.
2. Has performance been fixed? It has been super slow compared to ESXi, Hyper-V and ProxMox.

Proxmox
1. Has the issues with syncing between clustered servers been fixed? When I was using it not too long ago, if one server lost connection or was rebooted, it was a huge tossup of whether or not the heartbeat and thus syncing / failover would show back up properly. This was with a cluster of 3 identical servers.

 

[LodeRunner]

I run a Windows 2019 DC failover cluster with StarWind VSAN at home, and a larger identical cluster with a hardware SAN at work.

A lot of my workloads are Windows (RDS Server, AD DC (DNS and DHCP), Exchange for giggles (on prem at work has been shut down after hybrid conversion).

I run Linux workloads, mostly Ubuntu but some RHEL, and they perform fine.

I kinda wish I had SCOM:VMM as it was the MS sort of equivalent to the vSphere management appliance. But my network isn’t sober complex so it’s not hard to create the network config and replicate it to the other hosts.

For work, the DC pricing just made sense, we have enough Windows VMs for various reasons that buying standard and then the necessary additional licenses would have cost more than getting DC for the hosts.