Hyper-V licencing

[MattDLEA]

Sorry for the questions today.

My Plan was to uses Xen server as a hypervisor? but with Veeam offering free back up for Hyper-V I thought id have a look.

Before I get to far though, If we have 2 server 2012r2 licences I have been told that we can use this for 4 instances of server 2012 so basically one licence allows two installs.

 

Now when I have used Virtual box in testing I install virtual box then make the servers then install the OS.

With hyper-v do i have to install server 2012 first then install hyper v from with in that OS, does that mean then I only have one OS to be able to virtualize ?

So id have to have a physical server with 2012 maybe make that the DC and then use the virtualised one as data etc. Bit confused

[Achandler]

It depends entirely on what licenses you have.

 

Standard server licenses mean you can run upto 2 virtual Windows Servers, Datacenter is unlimited.

 

So if you have two HyperV hosts, then get 2 datacenter licenses and you can run unlimited VMs

Edited March 10, 2015 by Achandler
Typo, and clarity

[Boredguy]

Hyper-V 2012 is free, so your VM licensing should be the same as if you were using Xen or ESXi

I think that you only get the core version, but as long as you have a Win 8 or another 2012 server running, you can access the Hyper-V manager remotely to create your servers

Edited March 10, 2015 by Boredguy
Typo

[MattDLEA]

I'm really confused now. We have the standard licence's of 2012. But lets just use one as an example.

I have one server 2012r2 Standard server licenses and my box. currently there is nothing on my box just to locigal drives which I have raided.

With XEN I understand that I install xen boot to it then create my two virtual servers and away we go.

With hyper-v what happens? do I install server 2012 on the box then install hyper-v if so how many virtual servers can I then have does the physical install count as one.

[plexer]

Windows Server 2012 Virtualisation Licensing Scenarios | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

 

Ben

[tmcd35]

^ beat me to it!

 

It's worth re-iterating, as @Boredguy points out, the Windows licencing requirements are the same regardless to whether you use Xen, Hyper-V, VMWare, VirtualBox, or whatever.

[Boredguy]

Hyper-V Server is quite a bit like Server Standard Core with all of the roles except Hyper-V (and other supporting roles and features) removed.

 

Now, in Server 2012, you can add the full UI back to the Server Core editions, but that's not an option with Hyper-V Server 2012 - it will always just be a command-line. That also means that the typical management UI tools won't run on Hyper-V Server 2012, so you'll need a machine that you can manage it from remotely (the PowerShell cmdlets for Hyper-V actually do work on Hyper-V Server, though).

 

This is the same as installing ESXi 5 free. The hypervisor itself is free and your licencing your VM's that you spool up on the server.

 

In your case, a single Hyper-V 2012 install would let you use both your 2012 standard licences to have 4 VM's on that host, but you would need another computer to remotely manage the VM creation (just like ESXI)

[tmcd35]

Hyper-V is included free as part of Windows Server, with full management GUI. So long as you are using the resultant host install to only manage and host VM's then there is no reason to use Hyper-V 2012 unless the host is starved of CPU and RAM resources to run a standard Windows GUI and host the required guest VMs.

 

I really wouldn't worry about or use Hyper-V 2012 unless you can think of a really good reason. If you can your server is probably under spec'd anyway. Just install Hyper-V as part of the full Windows GUI, makes life easier.

[snagrat]

I'm really confused now. We have the standard licence's of 2012. But lets just use one as an example.

I have one server 2012r2 Standard server licenses and my box. currently there is nothing on my box just to locigal drives which I have raided.

With XEN I understand that I install xen boot to it then create my two virtual servers and away we go.

With hyper-v what happens? do I install server 2012 on the box then install hyper-v if so how many virtual servers can I then have does the physical install count as one.

 

Basically install Server 2012R2 on the box and install the HyperV role. As long as you do not use this server for anything else other than HyperV then you still have your 2 licenses available.

 

So you can then install 2x virtual servers and run whatever you like on them.

 

So with your 2 licenses and boxes, you can run 4 virtual servers.