has 2k8 Server hyper-v met your VM needs?

[holden j caufield]

Still mostly on vmware, just curious if more people are moving to 2k8 hyper-v, we've used it here and there but I wasn't too impressed.

 

[imagoon]

Not yet here. My biggest complaint at this point is MS insists on doing HA in the VM's (ie using clustering among other things.) VMWare lets you vmotion Windows XP if you wanted to. I have a couple of "XP" machines that run crap like the security doors and camera systems that do fine with a vmotion but have no native clustering support.

 

[yinan]

Nope, it is still not even close.

 

[Lifted]

Not yet here. My biggest complaint at this point is MS insists on doing HA in the VM's (ie using clustering among other things.) VMWare lets you vmotion Windows XP if you wanted to. I have a couple of "XP" machines that run crap like the security doors and camera systems that do fine with a vmotion but have no native clustering support.

I don't work with hyper-v much at all, but from what I've seen live migration on 2008 R2 is done on the hosts, which have to be clustered, but the guests don't have to be in cluster. Seems no different than vMotion to me from purely functional aspect (I'm not sure how System Center compares to vCenter).

Parts of our company are running Hyper-V, but from what I've seen of it, I'll not be migrating away from vSphere anytime soon.

Something to keep in mind though is the new licensing doesn't have any impact on our environment, but it could on much larger environment. If your datacenter is that large, I'm guessing you'd probably see pretty hefty discounts from vmware anyway, plus what in the world could you even move to for those large environments?

Then there's Veeam, which is missing most of it's major functionality in hyper-v. A product like Veeam is what makes virtualization worthwhile to me.

 

[Brovane]

We have looked at Hyper-V. From or research it appears that the Hyper-V solution is around 1/2 cost of a VMware solution.

Some of the problems I have with Hyper-V is as follows.

The guest VM's have to have the driver loaded on them for the physical hardware that the host machine is running on. I have always wondered if you have a cluster of servers if you move a VM from one server using Broadcom NIC's to a server running Intel NIC's. I like the VMware solution better where the guest VM's running a abstract VMware driver.

The second problem I have is a big one for me. It is how VM-Sphere manages memory versus Hyper-V. If you have a Hyper-V guest and you assign it 4GB of memory for RAM the Hyper-V guest will take up 4GB of memory on the host machine. So basically all that memory has been permanently set aside for just that VM to use. If you have a V-sphere guest and you assign the VM 4GB of memory. The V-sphere host only gives the guest as much memory as it currently needs. So if the VM only needs 1GB it will only get 1GB, it can go up to 4GB but it will only take up 1GB of space on the memory for the V-Sphere host. The other thing that V-Sphere does is that if you have for example have 16-Guests running on a host all running Server 2008-Standard and all have 4GB of memory assigned to it. There will be a lot of overlap between VM's of what is loaded into memory. It will not load the same parts of Server 2008 into memory 16times. I am not sure of the specifics but the VM's can essentially share the same parts of Server 2008 so it doesn't have to take up excess memory space. However it does it in such a way that if one machine has a issue it doesn't affect every machine. Overall V-Sphere is much more economical on how hardware usage.

 

[theevilsharpie]

We have looked at Hyper-V. From or research it appears that the Hyper-V solution is around 1/2 cost of a VMware solution.

Some of the problems I have with Hyper-V is as follows.

The guest VM's have to have the driver loaded on them for the physical hardware that the host machine is running on. I have always wondered if you have a cluster of servers if you move a VM from one server using Broadcom NIC's to a server running Intel NIC's. I like the VMware solution better where the guest VM's running a abstract VMware driver.

The second problem I have is a big one for me. It is how VM-Sphere manages memory versus Hyper-V. If you have a Hyper-V guest and you assign it 4GB of memory for RAM the Hyper-V guest will take up 4GB of memory on the host machine. So basically all that memory has been permanently set aside for just that VM to use. If you have a V-sphere guest and you assign the VM 4GB of memory. The V-sphere host only gives the guest as much memory as it currently needs. So if the VM only needs 1GB it will only get 1GB, it can go up to 4GB but it will only take up 1GB of space on the memory for the V-Sphere host. The other thing that V-Sphere does is that if you have for example have 16-Guests running on a host all running Server 2008-Standard and all have 4GB of memory assigned to it. There will be a lot of overlap between VM's of what is loaded into memory. It will not load the same parts of Server 2008 into memory 16times. I am not sure of the specifics but the VM's can essentially share the same parts of Server 2008 so it doesn't have to take up excess memory space. However it does it in such a way that if one machine has a issue it doesn't affect every machine. Overall V-Sphere is much more economical on how hardware usage.

I've never needed to load any host-specific drivers in a Hyper-V VM, and Hyper-V has been able to overcommit memory since Server 2008 R2 SP1 came out.

 

[Brovane]

I've never needed to load any host-specific drivers in a Hyper-V VM, and Hyper-V has been able to overcommit memory since Server 2008 R2 SP1 came out.

I can stand corrected if MS has fixed that issue. I do remember that last time I looked at it several years ago that this was a issue for Hyper-V. It is good if MS is finally catching up with the times and resolving these issues. I remember years ago that they couldn't even move a guest across hosts without bringing the VM down. I believe they called it quick migrate.

 

[Lifted]

The other thing that V-Sphere does is that if you have for example have 16-Guests running on a host all running Server 2008-Standard and all have 4GB of memory assigned to it. There will be a lot of overlap between VM's of what is loaded into memory. It will not load the same parts of Server 2008 into memory 16times. I am not sure of the specifics but the VM's can essentially share the same parts of Server 2008 so it doesn't have to take up excess memory space. However it does it in such a way that if one machine has a issue it doesn't affect every machine. Overall V-Sphere is much more economical on how hardware usage.

While ESX does have MUCH better memory management than hyper-v, the above does not happen. I believe this has been talked about (possibly by Microsoft?), but that's it.

Memory compression, swapping, ballooning, resource reservations... if necessary you can squeeze many more VM's onto an ESX host with the same hardware as a hyper-v host.

 

[stash]

I've never needed to load any host-specific drivers in a Hyper-V VM, and Hyper-V has been able to overcommit memory since Server 2008 R2 SP1 came out.

What Hyper-V does is not overcommitment.

 

[stash]

While ESX does have MUCH better memory management than hyper-v, the above does not happen. I believe this has been talked about (possibly by Microsoft?), but that's it.

He's referring to Transparent Page Sharing, and yes it does happen. Not as much on newer systems where large pages are usually used though.

 

[stash]

Not yet here. My biggest complaint at this point is MS insists on doing HA in the VM's (ie using clustering among other things.) VMWare lets you vmotion Windows XP if you wanted to. I have a couple of "XP" machines that run crap like the security doors and camera systems that do fine with a vmotion but have no native clustering support.

Not sure where you're getting this, but it's not true. You can migrate XP VMs on Hyper-V all day long and have HA.

 

[imagoon]

Not sure where you're getting this, but it's not true. You can migrate XP VMs on Hyper-V all day long and have HA.

Realize that because I am vested in VMWare that I don't stay that current with HyperV and quite often simply don't have the hardware available to throw a true environment at it. They may have updated it since then. It still seems excessively more complicated to get things to work well in HyperV compared to VMWare. Also with VMWare I always seem to end up with a performance edge also.

 

[stash]

Realize that because I am vested in VMWare that I don't stay that current with HyperV and quite often simply don't have the hardware available to throw a true environment at it. They may have updated it since then. It still seems excessively more complicated to get things to work well in HyperV compared to VMWare. Also with VMWare I always seem to end up with a performance edge also.

I agree, and I can't stand using Hyper-V myself. Just want to make sure the negatives are based on facts.

 

[Zargon]

Realize that because I am vested in VMWare that I don't stay that current with HyperV and quite often simply don't have the hardware available to throw a true environment at it. They may have updated it since then. It still seems excessively more complicated to get things to work well in HyperV compared to VMWare. Also with VMWare I always seem to end up with a performance edge also.

I agree, and I can't stand using Hyper-V myself. Just want to make sure the negatives are based on facts.

the big deal is how much VMWare can cost.

zero versus 10k+ annually in licensing is a big deal.

I am building an ESXi box at home to try out as we are tinkering with going virutal at work, but I dont think we can afford the licensing for vsphere @ like 8k/3 machines.

hyper-v is free. I've used it inside server 08r2, but not the true hypervisor

 

[stash]

Hyper-V isn't free, unless you are talking about the hypervisor-only version that is equivalent to the free license of ESXi. Otherwise, you still have Windows licensing costs, plus System Center costs. You need to use the Enterprise version of 2008 R2 to create a failover cluster.

Still probably a lot cheaper than vSphere, but not free.

The new version of Hyper-V coming in Windows Server 2012 looks promising, but for now it really is a case of you get what you pay for.

 

[imagoon]

the big deal is how much VMWare can cost.

zero versus 10k+ annually in licensing is a big deal.

I am building an ESXi box at home to try out as we are tinkering with going virutal at work, but I dont think we can afford the licensing for vsphere @ like 8k/3 machines.

hyper-v is free. I've used it inside server 08r2, but not the true hypervisor

You might want to check your prices. In SMB I have been using the Essentials editions and the annual support was $140 for essentials and $700 for essentials plus. The big money only really starts to take over when you go with the "full 7 course meal."

For cases of 3 hosts / 6 CPUs, just the savings in electricity paid for the $700 annual license. Toss on 6 MS 2008R2 Datacenter cpus and life is good.

I don't recall what the MS cost is for the System Center portion. I am ignoring MS OS licensing on purpose at this point. Mostly because unless you are only doing HyperV on a tiny machine, buying Datacenter would make more sense than Enterprise.

IMHO I see a lot of VMWare is slightly cheaper to about 20% more expensive at the SMB level. Once you get to "Large Enterprise" VMWare rules the roost and the labor not wasted save more than the VMWare licensing costs.

 

[Lifted]

Yeah, you shouldn't be even close to 10k in licensing for a 3 host environment. All of the Enterprise features, which I assume you're referring to based on that $10k, are not necessary for 3 hosts. If someone is pushing Enterprise on you, find a new partner or reseller to work with.

If you're going with Windows Datacenter edition anyway due to Windows licensing, yeah, it's free, but you still need System Center and you lose the ability to get the most out of Veeam.

 

[Zargon]

You might want to check your prices. In SMB I have been using the Essentials editions and the annual support was $140 for essentials and $700 for essentials plus. The big money only really starts to take over when you go with the "full 7 course meal."

For cases of 3 hosts / 6 CPUs, just the savings in electricity paid for the $700 annual license. Toss on 6 MS 2008R2 Datacenter cpus and life is good.

I don't recall what the MS cost is for the System Center portion. I am ignoring MS OS licensing on purpose at this point. Mostly because unless you are only doing HyperV on a tiny machine, buying Datacenter would make more sense than Enterprise.

IMHO I see a lot of VMWare is slightly cheaper to about 20% more expensive at the SMB level. Once you get to "Large Enterprise" VMWare rules the roost and the labor not wasted save more than the VMWare licensing costs.

I was looking at essentials for the HA and Vmotion

thats 4500 per 3, which I would have 4-5....so 9gs plus support.

and probably in a year roll out a remote site with 3 so another 4500 + 3 per year support.

I am looking at a few servers + storage setup and have ~60K. I need to run a few low load sql server instances with mirroring if I go to all this trouble.

without vmotion spec wise its not offering alot over hyper-v(of course I havent used hyper v MUCH and merely installed esxi at this point) because I really need 24/7 uptime on this stuff

thats summing a HOST is a hypervisor box right? so one license per 3 machines?


http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/pricing.html

 

[qft]

For a small biz environment it's fine. We're running vanilla Windows servers with Hyper V and virtualized SBS servers, and the occasionall additional VM app server (also usually vanilla Win server). Saves money and meets our needs.

For larger companies I still think VMware is the way to go.

 

[Lifted]

I was looking at essentials for the HA and Vmotion

thats 4500 per 3, which I would have 4-5....so 9gs plus support.

and probably in a year roll out a remote site with 3 so another 4500 + 3 per year support.

I am looking at a few servers + storage setup and have ~60K. I need to run a few low load sql server instances with mirroring if I go to all this trouble.

without vmotion spec wise its not offering alot over hyper-v(of course I havent used hyper v MUCH and merely installed esxi at this point) because I really need 24/7 uptime on this stuff

thats summing a HOST is a hypervisor box right? so one license per 3 machines?


http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/pricing.html

You can't have more than 3 hosts with essentials. You can, but you'd have to manage them with separate vCenter servers. It's basically a mini-cloud of 3 hosts + 1 management server... no adding to it.

Is there a reason you need more than 3 hosts? Have you spec'd this out? How many VM's will you be running? You're allowed 196GB RAM total (32GB/CPU, and most people would go with 64GB/host at the price of RAM these days), so unless you have an ton of VM's that will be eating up all of that RAM or processing (you can have 6 x 8-core CPU's between the 3 hosts), I don't see how 1 or 2 extra hosts would really make a difference.

$4,500 or so for essentials plus, which includes vCenter and you're done. Annual maintenance is only around $1k/year for an essentials plus installation, less with a 3 yr purchase. Of course you can get better pricing from any reseller, though it would only be around 5 or 10% off list.

Before going the bean counter route and looking only at price, look at features, 3rd party support (storage, backups, etc.). MS may be the better choice for you for whatever reason. Enterprise runs about $5k for 3 licenses, plus you'll need the SCVMM, and you get the 4 free VM's per Enterprise install. You could spend $18k on Datacenter, plus the cost of SCVMM, and get unlimited VM's if you require enough to make it worthwhile.

In the end, IMO, it really is a matter of you get what you pay for when comparing vSphere and Hyper-V. I don't think there is anyone outside of Microsoft employees or resellers that would say Hyper-V offers better features, or is more stable, or easier to manage, or can consolidate more VM's, but people do look at it probably to save a bit of money.

In 2 years when you're more or less stuck with this investment, will you look back and say "I'm so glad we saved 3.2% on the total cost of this project 2 years ago."? Probably not. Will you say "I wish I'd gone with one of the other options."? I hope not.

What I'm trying to say is, find the best technology that is right for your environment, and make a case for it, whichever it ends up being. Let the bean counters worry about saving 5% on the expected TCO, you should be focusing on the technology at this point.

 

[Agamar]

Figured I would throw my two cents in here:

I run both VWARE ESXi (3 server cluster) and 2 Hyper-V clusters (2 servers each), all connected to the same type os iSCSI back end.

-AFAIK (and I was doing Hyper-V during the beta testing) Hyper-V has always had HA at the server level, but you had an option with the guests also.(and only with shared storage), just like VMWARE. They did, at one time, make you have separate LUNs for each VM (which was terrible for me. I like using dynamic drive storage for my Win 7 VMs, and static LUNs makes that more of a pain when you need to grow). Now storage can be one big honking lun with as many iSCSI drives as you can throw at it.

-Hyper-V (as of R2 SP1) has "Dynamic Memory", which fills in for VMWARE's Overcommit (not exactly the same, but close enough from my standpoint. VMWARE's is more elegant)

-VWARE still has a few % better performance (except from a storage standpoint. I actually have been able to tweak some things on my Hyper-V clusters connected to the same storage to get just a bit more Mbs out of the host network with Intel 10G copper cards)

-If you go with Hyper-V for Windows Servers, buy a copy of Enterprise so you at least get the first 4 server VMs licenses free. This makes Hyper-V a better deal if you need to get in Enterprise class VMs for cheap (along with free Live Migration, etc. if you have shared storage)

-VMWARE has changed their licensing for 5 (it is based around memory per processor), so check how much RAM you have before upgrading, or you might get a nasty surprise (although most of the VMWARE servers I have worked on don't have an issue)

 

[Zargon]

You can't have more than 3 hosts with essentials. You can, but you'd have to manage them with separate vCenter servers. It's basically a mini-cloud of 3 hosts + 1 management server... no adding to it.

Is there a reason you need more than 3 hosts? Have you spec'd this out? How many VM's will you be running? You're allowed 196GB RAM total (32GB/CPU, and most people would go with 64GB/host at the price of RAM these days), so unless you have an ton of VM's that will be eating up all of that RAM or processing (you can have 6 x 8-core CPU's between the 3 hosts), I don't see how 1 or 2 extra hosts would really make a difference.

$4,500 or so for essentials plus, which includes vCenter and you're done. Annual maintenance is only around $1k/year for an essentials plus installation, less with a 3 yr purchase. Of course you can get better pricing from any reseller, though it would only be around 5 or 10% off list.

Before going the bean counter route and looking only at price, look at features, 3rd party support (storage, backups, etc.). MS may be the better choice for you for whatever reason. Enterprise runs about $5k for 3 licenses, plus you'll need the SCVMM, and you get the 4 free VM's per Enterprise install. You could spend $18k on Datacenter, plus the cost of SCVMM, and get unlimited VM's if you require enough to make it worthwhile.

In the end, IMO, it really is a matter of you get what you pay for when comparing vSphere and Hyper-V. I don't think there is anyone outside of Microsoft employees or resellers that would say Hyper-V offers better features, or is more stable, or easier to manage, or can consolidate more VM's, but people do look at it probably to save a bit of money.

In 2 years when you're more or less stuck with this investment, will you look back and say "I'm so glad we saved 3.2% on the total cost of this project 2 years ago."? Probably not. Will you say "I wish I'd gone with one of the other options."? I hope not.

What I'm trying to say is, find the best technology that is right for your environment, and make a case for it, whichever it ends up being. Let the bean counters worry about saving 5% on the expected TCO, you should be focusing on the technology at this point.

we run server 08 r2 standard and we are local govt so pricing is merely OK. SQL standard edition is generally what we run

going to 4 socket servers blows the budget pretty fast. Ive mostly priced poweredge's because dell is the defacto approved vendor from our main software vendor.

but its 20's for a 4 socket machine, vs 6-8 for a dual socket box , when you get to that level of hardware $$$ doesnt go near as far


I think the new VMWARE RAM penatly price is around 48 gb?

-If you go with Hyper-V for Windows Servers, buy a copy of Enterprise so you at least get the first 4 server VMs licenses free. This makes Hyper-V a better deal if you need to get in Enterprise class VMs for cheap (along with free Live Migration, etc. if you have shared storage)

thats a nice bonus.

 

[imagoon]

The 4 Virtual machines per Enterprise license applies to VMWare also. Same with the Datacenter unlimited rights.

The key with hyper-V is to be really careful because just adding "DHCP" to the host-os makes that license go from "free" to "1" meaning you can only virtualize 3 instances. Basically the host must do hyper-V only and nothing else to "not count."

 

[Zargon]

The 4 Virtual machines per Enterprise license applies to VMWare also. Same with the Datacenter unlimited rights.

The key with hyper-V is to be really careful because just adding "DHCP" to the host-os makes that license go from "free" to "1" meaning you can only virtualize 3 instances. Basically the host must do hyper-V only and nothing else to "not count."

they have a dedicated hypervisor you can run now

 

[Lifted]

we run server 08 r2 standard and we are local govt so pricing is merely OK. SQL standard edition is generally what we run

going to 4 socket servers blows the budget pretty fast. Ive mostly priced poweredge's because dell is the defacto approved vendor from our main software vendor.

but its 20's for a 4 socket machine, vs 6-8 for a dual socket box , when you get to that level of hardware $$$ doesnt go near as far


I think the new VMWARE RAM penatly price is around 48 gb?

thats a nice bonus.

You can't use 4 socket servers with essentials plus. I didn't mention anything about looking at 4 sockets (as 2 is the max with essentials), so not sure where that came from.