Boss had me build a small pc for testing purposes. I stuck an evaluation copy of windows 2012 and got 3 VMs up and running smoothly. I dont have the server aspect running, just logging in each one via logmein for now. What Im wanting to know is, Im really only interested in having a system that can run a few VMs, say around 3-6 for now. We dont plan on running these VMs in server mode, we're ok with running internally with access via logmein for now. Should I keep playing with windows 2012 or is there something better suited for running just multiple VMs bypassing an OS like Win 2012?
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Newbie VM questions
- Thread starter Kingpin
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RabidSmurf
n00b
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- Jun 30, 2009
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I am assuming what you mean by "Bypass an OS" is to use VMWare ESXi (Which is itself an OS by the way) instead of Windows 2012?
Server 2012, and 2008 R2, etc uses Hyper-V as it's virtualization hypervisor. It is comparable in performance and features to VMWare ESX. Hyper-V runs at the hardware layer in a similar fashion as ESXi despite using Windows as the host OS. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor. So there is no performance hit by using Server 2012 instead of ESX to run VMs
As far as I know, the only reason to use ESXi over Server 2012 is that ESXi has a free version. The free version has a few limitations such as not supporting VM snapshots and I believe a few other minor things. I have also heard of some issues running certain linux/unix distros in Hyper-V due to driver issues, so that may be another reason to use ESXi instead, but I haven't personally encountered these problems.
Personally my preference is ESXi because it's free and I know I will be able to run whatever guest OS I want without any compatibility issues. In a corporate environment running Windows only VMs with access to Windows licenses, I would probably opt for Hyper-V instead as it seems a bit simpler to set up.
Server 2012, and 2008 R2, etc uses Hyper-V as it's virtualization hypervisor. It is comparable in performance and features to VMWare ESX. Hyper-V runs at the hardware layer in a similar fashion as ESXi despite using Windows as the host OS. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor. So there is no performance hit by using Server 2012 instead of ESX to run VMs
As far as I know, the only reason to use ESXi over Server 2012 is that ESXi has a free version. The free version has a few limitations such as not supporting VM snapshots and I believe a few other minor things. I have also heard of some issues running certain linux/unix distros in Hyper-V due to driver issues, so that may be another reason to use ESXi instead, but I haven't personally encountered these problems.
Personally my preference is ESXi because it's free and I know I will be able to run whatever guest OS I want without any compatibility issues. In a corporate environment running Windows only VMs with access to Windows licenses, I would probably opt for Hyper-V instead as it seems a bit simpler to set up.
Last edited:
dbwillis
[H]F Junkie
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to create the VM's youll need the vspere client that you can download from the web interface of the ESXi machine and install on any other windows pc to manage the ESXi machine.