Tricky_Dicky Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Hi all, I'm just putting together the hardware for virtualising our servers and was wondering what software people would recommend? I was going to work with Hyper-V because of the cheaper licensing costs, but was wondering if people had any real world examples or an opinion either way. Cheers Rich
timbo343 Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 I would go with VMWare my self over Hyper-V. With VMWare you install its self on a bare machine rather than installing MS and then sticking hyper-v on it.
sparkeh Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 I would go with VMWare my self over Hyper-V. With VMWare you install its self on a bare machine rather than installing MS and then sticking hyper-v on it. Not entirely true as you can download the free Hyper-V server which installs on bare metal. Anyway even if you want to install the full 2008R2 its not too much hassle to tick the box to install Hyper-V.
ZeroHour Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 We use hyper-v with clustering support here and its excellent and like you say, cheaper. 1
RabbieBurns Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 HyperV runs on bare metal and the hypervisor loads before the actual operating system. As mentioned above you can run the barebones hyperV core and just install the management console on a seperate machine.. We went HyperV as we were already fully MS licensed anyway
Tricky_Dicky Posted January 21, 2011 Author Posted January 21, 2011 Not entirely true as you can download the free Hyper-V server which installs on bare metal. Anyway even if you want to install the full 2008R2 its not too much hassle to tick the box to install Hyper-V. HyperV runs on bare metal and the hypervisor loads before the actual operating system. As mentioned above you can run the barebones hyperV core and just install the management console on a seperate machine.. We went HyperV as we were already fully MS licensed anyway I didn't know you could do that. Is it just a matter of downloading and installing it from Microsoft? This is all part of upgrading the entire network to Server 2008r2 and Windows 7 so I was going to just install a full version of 2008r2 on the servers. Is this not the way you would recommend? Why not Xen? Fear and misunderstanding I suppose. I presume you are using it? How easy/difficult is it to install, configure and use?
zag Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 We use Hyper-V. Absolutely love it, its revolutionary. The only problem I have come across is it doesn't work with smoothwall or cachepilot.
jamesreedersmith Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Xen - easy - as easy as VMWare with lots of the features you have to pay for in VMWare included for free.
webman Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Xen is just as easy as VMWare (used), couldn't comment on Hyper-V though. The free edition of Xen has more features than the free VMWare. If you have the hardware to use, you have nothing to use by trying it. It's also the better option if you plan to run any Linux servers. Hyper-V... Absolutely love it, its revolutionary. The only problem I have come across is it doesn't work with smoothwall or cachepilot. Lol, not that revolutionary then? Considering VMWare/Xen can happily run those?
Soulfish Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Using XenServer Enterprise here very successfully. Great product at a great price. For comparable features from VMWare it would have cost us 4 x the cost in initial licenses . Unfortunately Hyper-V didn't have some of the features we wanted at the time. The latest release of Hyper-V seems better, but not as good/easy to use as the free XenServer product. Any questions about XenServer feel free to ask 1
RabbieBurns Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Our HyperV hosts run 2008R2 Datacenter edition, but have a read of these about the core version: Server Core Installation Option Getting Started Guide https://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/r2-compare-core-installation.aspx 2008(r2) core is comparable slightly to a Desktop Vs Server install of a linux distribution, if you have any experience with those.. The core install is command line only, and run via powershell commands, however you can connect to it via MMC from a GUI version of windows.. to be honest, ive not had a play with the core versions of windows yet, might do so this term someteim.. One thing that is the main bind for me at the moment with hyperV, is the lack of passthrough support for USB. I have my nagios install virtualised on hyperV, and ive got a usb SMS device approved in this years budget. Howver for it to work, Im going to need to migrate nagios onto actual hardware to get the USB support i require.. I believe Citrix and VMWare both support USB passthrough to their virtual clients.. 1
zag Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 The main advantage of Hyper-V is its ease of install. As someone already said, it is quite literally is as simple as checking a role box in Windows 2008 R2.
andrew-virtusolve Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 If price is a constraint go Xen, you get enterprise features for no money. If you want the best possible solution out there go VMware, you can use the free version of ESXi, but if you want more advanced features and hypervisor level backup you will need the paid version. It doesn't have to be hugely expensive though, you can get the Essentials versions that allow for unlimited virtual machines on up to three hosts and up to 6 physical CPUs for less than £500. Hyper-V is just so far behind where VMware are - its an easier jump to make if you are so used to Windows, but an inferior product IMHO
Tricky_Dicky Posted January 21, 2011 Author Posted January 21, 2011 Using XenServer Enterprise here very successfully. Great product at a great price. For comparable features from VMWare it would have cost us 4 x the cost in initial licenses . Unfortunately Hyper-V didn't have some of the features we wanted at the time. The latest release of Hyper-V seems better, but not as good/easy to use as the free XenServer product. Any questions about XenServer feel free to ask What features were missing? I've heard of the ability for VMware to be able to constantly keep a mirror SAN in another location which sounds amazing, but I just don't think I could stretch to the cost of two complete SANs for the sake of stepping back an hour in time using the snapshots.
Tricky_Dicky Posted January 21, 2011 Author Posted January 21, 2011 If price is a constraint go Xen, you get enterprise features for no money. If you want the best possible solution out there go VMware, you can use the free version of ESXi, but if you want more advanced features and hypervisor level backup you will need the paid version. It doesn't have to be hugely expensive though, you can get the Essentials versions that allow for unlimited virtual machines on up to three hosts and up to 6 physical CPUs for less than £500. Hyper-V is just so far behind where VMware are - its an easier jump to make if you are so used to Windows, but an inferior product IMHO What happens if you need to go beyond 3 physical hosts? I thought it would be a lot more than though. What sort of features are cut for the essentials version?
Theblacksheep Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 (edited) If you can afford it VMware. If you cant MS, but lots on here use Xen, I cannot comment on Xen. Linux support on MS is practically non-existant. VMware also has better MS OS support, storage vmotion, better memory management, memory reclamation, memory compression, memory overcommit, Hot adding of cpu and memory. Dynamic resource scheduling and allocation. Traffic shaping. Edited January 21, 2011 by Theblacksheep
Tricky_Dicky Posted January 21, 2011 Author Posted January 21, 2011 Linux support on MS is practically non-existant. VMware also has better MS OS support, storage vmotion, better memory management, memory reclamation, memory compression, memory overcommit, Hot adding of cpu and memory. Dynamic resource scheduling and allocation. Traffic shaping. When you say it is virtually non-existant, do you mean it just won't work? So for example, I was going to put a simple CentOS based Webserver on there, is it possible? I'll be honest with you, most of the things you list look great (those that I understand) but I'm not sure just how much I would use them. Would it be worth paying the extra for it do you think? Thank you to everyone for the quick and fantastic replies, really interesting to see the different scenarios every one is in.
m25man Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 So, you install VMWare and the first thing you have to do is install a load of tools on a PC to manage it with anyway! With 2008R2 the Host License includes a Guest OS anyway so you might as well install the 2008R2 GUI and anyone can RDP in and manage the Hyper-V anyway! Yes the VMware footprint is tiny and it takes less time to load but at least 2008R2 will support your HP embedded raid drivers and a bucket of other stuff that VMware throws a hissy fit at! If youre a fruit cake and have a load of NIX boxes that you want to virtualise you should stick with VMware ESXi if you already have an M$ Licensing agreement then Enterprise Server or Datacentre and Hyper-V is the way to go. I'd rather save the VMware Licensing money and buy a SAN with the cash I've left over....
Arthur Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 (edited) When you say it is virtually non-existant, do you mean it just won't work? So for example, I was going to put a simple CentOS based Webserver on there, is it possible? Microsoft only officially supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Other distributions will work fine, it just means you won't be able to ask Microsoft for help. Whichever Linux distribution you choose, you will probably want to install the Hyper-V integration services. For details on how to do this see the links below. CentOS: http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-linux-integration-services-v2.1-hyper-v-r2-on-centos-5 Ubuntu: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2010/10/21/installing-ubuntu-server-10-10-on-hyper-v.aspx Edited January 21, 2011 by Arthur 1
Steven_Cleaver Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Another vote for XEN here I have used this at two sites now and have found it really reliable and has some great features Snap Shotting of VM Servers, Monitoring all the Servers quickly from one Console, Live Migration of VM's, Build one template for a Server, then build other Servers from this templare etc. and much more as well as all these features being available on the free version.I have also found this a great way of developing new funtionality on the Network as you can build a VM Server from a template pretty quickly, test things without causing you problems on other Servers, Snapshot it before making large configuration changes if the changes don't work return it to its previous state.I could go on.
imiddleton25 Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 We use Xen also, easy to install, cheaper than vmware, been rock solid . we also host our virtual desktops (Xendesktop) on the xenserver.
john Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Another XenServer user here, was going to use Hyper-V but decided to go to Xen instead and not looked back
irsprint84 Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 Another vote for XEN here I have used this at two sites now and have found it really reliable and has some great features Snap Shotting of VM Servers, Monitoring all the Servers quickly from one Console, Live Migration of VM's, Build one template for a Server, then build other Servers from this templare etc. and much more as well as all these features being available on the free version.I have also found this a great way of developing new funtionality on the Network as you can build a VM Server from a template pretty quickly, test things without causing you problems on other Servers, Snapshot it before making large configuration changes if the changes don't work return it to its previous state.I could go on. We use xen few heart in mouth moments when pooling! also with 5.6 and 5.6.1 does it still use 100% same space when snap shoting? how much space does vmware and hyper v user lets a 100GB server?
glennda Posted January 21, 2011 Posted January 21, 2011 I use linux KVM running on Ubuntu 10.04 using a oracle file system cluster between hosts - runs really well plus you can do live migration between hosts for free. Only thing is you cant get the high availability stuff as it doesnt exist (yet).
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