VMware to Hyper-V, back to VMware

[nezzbit]

I moved from VMware a couple of years ago to Hyper-V to save a few £££$$$.

I now have the option to move back which I want to do. What are the best tools for the job of migrating back, I used to use VMWare Converter for my P2V conversions, I also used 5nine to move from VMware to hyper-v. Both tools were simple to use and didn’t cause any problems. I am wondering if there are any major issues moving back from Hyper-V to VMware.

 

I know the obvious ones about setting up the esx host and changing the SAN so that the storage is correct.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Wubbalubbadub]

Side tracking from your question, but can i ask what VMware offers that Hyper-V doesn't? Genuinely don't understand what it offers over Hyper-V! That being said, that is just from reading! I haven't used it for years!

[ITGURU]

I'd be interested in what the best tools are for moving from esxi to hyperv. I've got a site which is on esxi 5.5 don't want to update it anymore but want to move the VMs over to another server which is hyperv then re-build the servers as hyper-v hosts and then move then vm's back

[3s-gtech]

I’ve used Disk2VHD to do that.

 

While I still run an ESXi host (only has SIMS and a DC on it now) I have been fully swayed by Hyper-V though. On the other hand, restoring ESXi from scratch is impressively quick and painless (typically, when the USB stick dies!)

[Norphy]

Having converted from VMware to Hyper-V just recently, this is what I think.

 

I used Starwind V2V Converter to convert my VMs. It can do P2V and V2V between Hyper-V, ESXi or KVM. I found it to be fast and reliable and used it to convert more than 100 VMs. Best of all, it's free.

 

As for the question about VMware vs Hyper-V, I'd say it's actually quite a complex question. In terms of performance and features, at the Hypervisor level I'd say that they're more or at parity at the level that we're looking at. Obviously there is a huge cost advantage for Hyper-V, it's part of the Windows license and there are no feature tiers like there are with VMware; you get a Windows license and all of the features of Hyper-V are available to you.

 

I'd say that the big advantage to going VMware is vSphere rather than ESXi. VMware's management interface is considerably better than what Microsoft make available to manage Hyper-V. Now whether that advantage is worth the significant outlay that vSphere requires is down to the organisation to decide.

[mavhc]

Depends how many computers you have, and how many of them run Windows VMs.

 

If you're not using any advanced features then the main question is: Gen1 or Gen2 HyperV VMs? Secure boot, uefi, drivers

[Norphy]

Depends how many computers you have, and how many of them run Windows VMs.

 

What? All of the commercial Type 1 hypervisors support Windows perfectly well. Even Hyper-V is pretty good at Linux these days. The guest OS is a fairly minor factor in your choice of hypervisor.

 

 

the main question is: Gen1 or Gen2 HyperV VMs? Secure boot, uefi, drivers

 

Um, no. The answer to that one is simple: If the guest OS supports it, Gen 2. Better Performance. Less hardware to emulate. Larger volumes supported. Larger CPU and RAM limits. Less load on the HyperV host. More boot options. Better security. Complete no-brainer.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Norphy

[mavhc]

What? All of the commercial Type 1 hypervisors support Windows perfectly well. Even Hyper-V is pretty good at Linux these days. The guest OS is a fairly minor factor in your choice of hypervisor.

 

In terms of licencing, if you're using Windows Server Hyper-V role to host non Windows VMs, could cost more.

 

 

 

Um, no. The answer to that one is simple: If the OS supports it, Gen 2. Better Performance. Less hardware to emulate. Larger volumes supported. Larger CPU and RAM limits. Less load on the HyperV host. More boot options. Better security. Complete no-brainer.

 

But the thread is about switching from HyperV to VMWare, and thus if you're converting the VMs, what kind of VMs matters.

[Norphy]

In terms of licencing, if you're using Windows Server Hyper-V role to host non Windows VMs, could cost more.

 

In terms of licensing, Microsoft don't care as long as the OS that you're running is licensed. If that means you have to buy a RHEL license to run RHEL, that's OK. Microsoft don't charge more to run non-MS operating systems.

 

If you're talking about running MS guest OSes on another hypervisor, as long as you have the appropriate license to run Windows, either enough Windows Standard licenses to cover the VMs or enough Datacenter licenses to cover the hosts, you're fine.

 

But the thread is about switching from HyperV to VMWare, and thus if you're converting the VMs, what kind of VMs matters.

 

OK, I concede that could be trickier but as long as the VMs aren't Bitlockered, converting a Gen2 Hyper-V VM to a UEFI VMware one should work fine.

[mavhc]

In terms of licensing, Microsoft don't care as long as the OS that you're running is licensed. If that means you have to buy a RHEL license to run RHEL, that's OK. Microsoft don't charge more to run non-MS operating systems.

 

But they charge you to run Windows Server as a hypervisor, so if you weren't running any Windows VMs on multiple hosts, that may be a waste (but Hyper-v Server is free)

[TechMonkey]

But they charge you to run Windows Server as a hypervisor, so if you weren't running any Windows VMs on multiple hosts, that may be a waste (but Hyper-v Server is free)

 

Get a Datacenter licence. Save you loads of money.

 

On topic, partly a historical thing really. VMWare used to be miles ahead of Hyper-V and had more support. It can also depend on your view. I have heard the opinion that VMWare means a difference in platform so if Windows gets attacked at least your infrastructure is OK, that being based on 'nix it is more stable and secure.

[mavhc]

Get a Datacenter licence. Save you loads of money.

 

£250 for 2 VMs vs £1500 for infinity VMs means you'd have to be running 12 Windows VMs on each server.

[Norphy]

I have 9 Hyper-V hosts running 125 VMs, the majority of which are also Windows. For an organisation the size of ours, I don't think that's especially unusual.

[mavhc]

Fair enough, I've no idea why someone would need 125 Windows servers

[TechMonkey]

£250 for 2 VMs vs £1500 for infinity VMs means you'd have to be running 12 Windows VMs on each server.

 

You need to change licence suppliers. I'm getting Datacenter for less than £500. Though if you are only running 2 VMs per host you may be overspending/overspeccing your solution, or underspeccing your servers.

 

Fair enough, I've no idea why someone would need 125 Windows servers

[/Quote]

 

Again, just because you can't understand something or have no experience of it doesn't mean it isn't possible, feasible or worth doing.

[mavhc]

You need to change licence suppliers. I'm getting Datacenter for less than £500. Though if you are only running 2 VMs per host you may be overspending/overspeccing your solution, or underspeccing your servers.

Where from?

 

Again, just because you can't understand something or have no experience of it doesn't mean it isn't possible, feasible or worth doing.

 

OK?, who said that wasn't true?

[flyinghaggis]

...can i ask what VMware offers that Hyper-V doesn't?

 

IME Stability and reliability. The features Hyper-V offers are fine but most companies seem to design drivers/hardware for VMWare foremost and Hyper-V seems to be an afterthought. Our Hyper-V cluster never ran reliably and often intermittently fell over when doing simple things like moving VM's between servers/etc.

[localzuk]

IME Stability and reliability. The features Hyper-V offers are fine but most companies seem to design drivers/hardware for VMWare foremost and Hyper-V seems to be an afterthought. Our Hyper-V cluster never ran reliably and often intermittently fell over when doing simple things like moving VM's between servers/etc.

This is the same reason I went from Hyper-V to VMWare. Stability. I had regular issues with Hyper-V. Since moving to VMWare, those issues have all disappeared.

[PotNoodleTech]

This is an interesting thread! I moved from Vmware to HyperV simply due to licence costs, and actually I don't regret it as it costs peanuts to licence and it has been 100% stable touch wood. I wouldn't move back now unless possibly Vmware did silly cheap licences, which is not gonna happen.

 

I think one of the reasons for the excellent stability is I like to keep things simple. Tier 1 hardware, Dell Poweredge R730XD in my case, and local storage only. No NAS/SAN/DAS. Every single thing you add that complicates things, increases the likelihood of unreliability due to complications. You absolutely can't go wrong with a simple Raid Array with battery backup cache and a load of decent SSDs in Raid 5 or 6. That basic formula has provided excellent stability for decades.

 

Yes, VMware is slicker and more focussed. But. It comes at great cost (compared to a few hundred quid a year for datacentre licence on each vm host).

[mavhc]

Where are people getting Datacenter licences, and how much?

 

Not that VMWare vs Hyper-V affects how many you have to buy if you're running Windows VMs on all your hosts

[ultima170387]

Never had any issues with Hyper-V either. Can't justify the cost of licensing VMware here.

 

We get our DC licenses as part of our MS OVS-ES, last lot were just a bit over £300 each

[MartinT]

I would say lack of stability is a host thing, not endemic to Windows Server or Hyper-V. We run Dell R730 servers and keep the BIOS and all firmware completely up to date (Dell offer a bootable Linux CD to automate this). Our disk RAIDs are all RAID 10 server level drives and they've been running 24/7/365 for a number of years. Windows Server is updated once a month. We move our Gen2 VMs around and all VMs have a replica on another host. We have VMs of various versions of Windows and Ubuntu. It all runs smoothly and reliably.

[mavhc]

I would suspect that VMWare is stable on a wider list of hardware though, simply because it's older. If you're buying new servers anyway won't make much of a difference, just buy whatever is certified then don't pay if it doesn't work

[Domino]

From my experience VMware can reach a greater VM Density (one of my clusters in London has 398 guests across 9 hosts) due to the way it deals with RAM allocation, and the Failover/HA/FT features just aren't quite there with Hyper-V.

 

Granted it's been a while since I've used it, but I remember the CSV setup being a pain. At the time it also had issues properly assigning multipathing across our HP Flex networking with Virtual Connect.

 

It wasn't a great experience in all, and VMware being *very* good at what it does means the company is happy to pay for it. Also at this point we've a lot of institutional knowledge in the platform, especially around performance tuning. That's not to be disregarded.

[Roberto]

Fair enough, I've no idea why someone would need 125 Windows servers

 

Think we've got about 5 times that in the cloud, alone. They're all quite busy.