jmair Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 I currently have five servers that would be ideal to migrate to a single Virt server to save some money. I've used VirtualBox for years, though I'm not sure on the stability of it for hosting windows server machines for extended periods of time. Can anyone suggest a free visualization solution for hosting mostly dedicated mundane servers?
Norphy Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 VMware ESXi or Hyper-V Server would be the obvious choices.
FragglePete Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 We've been using XenServer for a number of years without any major hic-cups. Had three servers almost hit the 1000 day mark a while back until a forced power outage made us have to shut them down. I am moving over the Hyper-V now purely because of a new SAN unit we have in place and can monitor the hardware better with Windows unlike XenServer - but I have nothing but praise for XenServer - totally free now including the HA features that use to have to pay for, you only pay for support if you need it. Pete
Arthur Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 (edited) VMware ESXi or Hyper-V Ditto! VirtualBox would be very a poor choice. Do you have EES? If so, you can get a Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter licence for not much money and you wouldn't have to worry about Windows licences for the guest VMs on that host anymore. Edited January 26, 2015 by Arthur
Michael Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 I'd say Hyper-V, especially when you're doing server upgrades, it's more straight forward.
jmair Posted January 26, 2015 Author Posted January 26, 2015 Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll check out Hyper-V then. I didn't know it was free.
Arthur Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 (edited) I'll check out Hyper-V then. I didn't know it was free. Hyper-V Server is free, but the Windows guest VMs would obviously still need to be licensed. Hyper-V Server is a dedicated stand-alone product that contains the hypervisor, Windows Server driver model, virtualization capabilities, and supporting components such as failover clustering, but does not contain the robust set of features and roles as the Windows Server operating system. As a result, Hyper-V Server produces a small footprint and requires minimal overhead. Organizations consolidating servers where no new Windows Server licenses are required or where the servers being consolidated are running an alternative OS may want to consider Hyper-V Server. Most people install the Hyper-V role in Windows Server since it's easier to manage with a GUI (as explained in the article below). www.aidanfinn.com/?p=13208 Edited January 26, 2015 by Arthur
dwg32 Posted January 26, 2015 Posted January 26, 2015 I agree, Hyper-V is the way to go. We have EES licensing and a few physical servers running 2012R2 Data Center with Hyper-v. Easy to configure, replicate, migrate...etc... Go with Data Center and you do not need to worry about Guest licensing.
cpjitservices Posted January 27, 2015 Posted January 27, 2015 If you have 5 and your going to virtualize them onto one then I would use another as a replication just incase the one server you use for Hyper-V falls over.
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