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I'm Impressed: Hyper-V

MikeTrike

MikeTrike

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Nov 16, 2005
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Hyper-V has a ton of great features right out of the box, I was actually quite surprised.

Granted we use Citrix XenServer attached to our MD3000i and AX150i storage array's via iSCSI for our primary production environment. I opted to use Hyper-V for VDI to replace our aging terminal servers put in around 2004.

Hyper-V for me!


Here's the box, you may have seen it from other thread.


Hyper-V Host Specs:
Running Server 2008 R2 Enterprise w/SP1
SUPERMICRO AS-2022G-URF 2U Barebone Server
2 x AMD Opteron 6128 (16 x 2.0GHz cores)
ATI FirePro V7800 2GB for RemoteFX
64 GB DDR3 ECC RAM :)
Adaptec 6805 + Flash Module (8 x 500 GB, 7 in RAID6 + Hot Spare)

From where we're at so far, I think this is going to go well on roll out, just minor hiccups as expected. We'll be testing all this week on various thin clients and web access from regular desktops. If all goes well, I'll be grabbing another three of these boxes in the near future for the other remote sites. :D

And just to conserve space and energy we're going to also P2V the remote site AD servers.

Plan for the worst and hope for the best. :)
 
How does it (in your opinion) compare to ESXi (assuming you've tried it)?
 
I've purposely avoided VMware because of their licensing structure and EULA. I'm sure it's great, but I don't give a rats ass because of how they operate. Especially when other products are available that are solid these days.
 
I've always liked Hyper-V. It's generally capable enough and easy to use.
 
MikeTrike said:
I've purposely avoided VMware because of their licensing structure and EULA. I'm sure it's great, but I don't give a rats ass because of how they operate. Especially when other products are available that are solid these days.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I just haven't really looked that far into the product personally.
 
Jesse B said:
Fair enough, I just haven't really looked that far into the product personally.
Click to expand...

From what I can tell VMware is feature rich for enterprise use. However Citrix XenServer is enterprise class as well, depending on the license you use.

But for out of the box functionality, XenServer Free (or advanced if you want a paid license) and Hyper-V are pretty rock solid and a great value as well, of course. :D

Going back to XenServer, it's licensed per Hypervisor. It's the same price if you have a Quad Core CPU + 8GB of RAM as it is with 4 x 12 Core CPU's (48 cores) and 512GB of RAM. That's one of my favorite parts. :)
 
I've used both Hyper-V and VMware ESX and they were very similar for my purposes. I use VMware at home but that's just because I'm used to using it now.
 
I've used both - albeit not commercially. IMNSHO, Hyper-V is perfect and wonderful as long as all your guests are Windows based, but if you have a need for any kind of Linux, Solaris or other *nix OS it is very, very weak. It does not do all of the 'cool' things VMware can do (vmotion, etc) but it does the basics very well. Hyper-V will re-boot itself once a month on "patch Tuesday", which is a PITA, but you can turn that off if you need to.

ESXi, OTOH, is great for Linux guests & complex enterprise environments with needs for fault tolerance and such. It is OK for Windows guests too (though Hyper-V is more intelligent about MS memory management). It has much more limited hardware support than Hyper-V (Hyper-V supports pretty much any device supported under Windows Server 2008 - which pretty much means any device there is).

So, if you are pure Microsoft shop - Hyper-V all the way. Otherwise, probably VMware.
 
On the upside, MS has finally released CentOS support, like pretty much almost "right now ago." :)
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscent...ft_hyperv_now_supports_linuxbased_centos.html

Citrix XenServer also gives you the abilities akin to that of VMware. Just without all the licensing stupidity. I really hate the fact that you're not allowed to publish benchmarks against other hypervisors and VMware without legal action taken against you. :( It's crap like that that makes me say "fuck no, I'm not wasting my time with you."

Citrix XenServer being Linux based has pretty good hardware support over VMware as well. Which also has vast support for Windows and Linux guests. :)

As for "Patch Tuesday," I can live with that, we're running it for VDI to replace our Terminal Server(s).
 
I'm a VMware fanboi, don't flame me too much for it. I do think that VMware's EULA is somewhat BS, but in the interest of comparing it against Microsoft... you have to be kidding me if you're trying to make VMware appear more evil in general.

If Microsoft did stamp VMware out, as they did Novell, they would not play nearly as nice from then on. I think their track record is proof enough. VMware has forced their hand for the moment, just as all market leaders do to their competitors. I think competition is great, and, the vSphere 5 RC release notes were leaked and are out all over the internet now. VMware hasn't just stagnated, that is for certain. I don't see Microsoft catching up in the enterprise in the near future. It can be used and its limitations accepted, but you're not going to have the flexibility VMware provides, it isn't there yet, and it won't be for a good while. ESXi has such a small foot print in comparison and it receives patches far less often than Microsoft's Hyper-V does. Microsoft should not have taken the vision that the hypervisor is just a role of their general purpose OS -- that to me is their biggest mistake. I'm sitting here thinking how much work it would take to install monthly patches on 500+ hosts o_O. As often as ESXi does receive updates, it is still a pain for us.

For the sake of this thread though, I agree, in the SMB space Hyper-V is a competitor. In the enterprise it just isn't a competitor (to me). I just don't agree that being upset with their EULA restriction on publishing performance results is a good reason on its own to make a decision on which to use. What if you needed to switch later based on an actual business need -- that would suck, right? From my perspective I understand why VMware doesn't allow publication of performance comparisons... there are so many variables involved they don't want people doing it that they cannot trust did it right. I do understand the licensing cost as an issue for adoption -- I think VMware is moving to make that some what better in the near future... do a google search for the vSphere 5 release notes. It's a good read. The sentiment that their licensing is overpriced is wide spread, so VMware would be stupid not to address it. Maybe they still see enough people still buying their products that they don't feel a change is needed. Shrug. Dangerous game they're playing, if so.
 
@defuseme2k

I agree completely, that's why my primary HV's are Citrix. I only went with Hyper-V for our VDI project to replace terminal servers. I can also see Hyper-V being great for SMB usage.
 
from my experiences Hyper-V is the 'Apple OS' of Hypervisors. Its slightly niche, but what it does it does well.

On the ironic flip of the coin, VMWare is the 'Microsoft flavor OS' of Hypervisors. It appeals to the masses and as such is not perfect across the board.

As far as 'Nix support, Hyper-V can be made to work well with many versions, and there are several articles and packages to install on the guest OS in order to allow it to run. But for me 1) I have not had any luck with them, and thus have not had any non-supported (read Ubuntu) OS run flawlessly with full remote mouse and keyboard support and 2) seems too much like running wine on Linux to use a MS program, hackish.
 
I've seen a lot of customers who will use Hyper-V in branch or store scenarios. They buy a Hyper-V box with an Enterprise license, load it up with disk (internal or external array) and memory, then run a DC (or RODC), File and Print, Point of Sale, SQL Server and whatever else they need.
 
Quick update on our MS VDI deployment, so far it's going smoothly.

I'm currently testing with Wyse C10LE's and Wyse R10L's.

The C10LE's work flawlessly once configured, the R10L's on the other hand work, but have issues. I've been trying to get the updated Wyse OS. But their support portal is a piece of s***! Seriously, these guys are "enterprise class." I remember why I tossed them aside 3-4 years ago when looking at solid RDP thin clients for Terminal Services. Their thin clients pissed me off back then as well. Luckily we don't need many of the R10L's since 90% of our users have a single screen. However we'll end up getting more dual screens now that it will be easily supported under a VDI environment.

At any rate, as soon as I can get their support portal to function I'll get the updated OS. I'm going to assume since it uses the same OS it will work fine like the smaller single screen unit. I shall post further updates next week! :D
 
I love hyper v too, however on our last chat mike, i want to try the other virtual software you suggested.

hyper v has been running perfectly for me for the last few months no problems at all.


Dash
 
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