Hyper-V or VMWare?

pblakeIL

pblakeIL

pblakeIL

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Hi all,

I'm new to the forum and am trying to get a little information, if you don't mind.

I'm trying to find out what would be the best virtualization set-up for a small office of 20 employees? I've heard that Hyper-V is good enough on the Windows R2 2008 server (which we've got), so why do so many professionals favour VMWare? Any advice or links to a relevant blog/video to help me understand the space a little more would be great.

Many thanks!

:)
 
VMware is more mature, more feature-rich, better proven, and currently boasts greater availability/uptime than any other hypervisor.

The question I'm going to ask is why do you feel there is a need to virtualise for only 20 users? What are you going to virtualise? I hope your host (if you go the 2008 R2 Hyper-V route) isn't also your Domain Controller (or indeed part of an SBS/EBS environment).

How many servers are in your organization? What do you hope to achieve by virtualisation?

I'm not saying that you are necessarily wrong, but a lot of people are needlessly jumping on the virtualisation bandwagon in the blind faith that it'll solve all their problems, when in reality it doesn't tend to be particularly beneficial unless you have carefully planned the resource allocation and utilisation.

Oh, and for future reference, there is a "Servers and Enterprise" subforum ;)

EDIT: Beaten to it by a mod :(
 
VMware as said is more mature, but HyperV is a good product (problem is it needs all the management tools set up too so it's a fairly big job to get working right). If you have a microsoft partner status and hence 'free' software then it's worth pursuing, otherwise vmware is in first place at the moment...
 
My understanding was that Microsoft weren't interested into getting into the virtualisation management tools, rather just create the APIs and let other vendors resell the tools. VMware seem to be about providing more of a turnkey solution by providing the whole stack from hypervisor to management toolset.
 
growse said:
My understanding was that Microsoft weren't interested into getting into the virtualisation management tools, rather just create the APIs and let other vendors resell the tools. VMware seem to be about providing more of a turnkey solution by providing the whole stack from hypervisor to management toolset.
Click to expand...

The Microsoft SCVMM management platform is actually very good, but it is a very costly option.
 
SCVMM is overkill for a single Hyper-V server! You can remotely manage Hyper-V servers from Vista/7 using the RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools), available for free from the Microsoft website. It shouldn't too cumbersome to use until you get to say 10+ servers.

I do not see what you hope to gain from this if you have only twenty users; I assume you have only one server?
 
I havent used SCVMM, but comparing the "bare" products (eg ESX without vCenter), it's so clear cut in VMWare's favour it's not even funny.

I was recently "forced" down the Hyper-V route for a particular project, and while it does the job, it's completely pants. Little more in the way of features than Virtual Server had! I had a fair few VMs and wanted to organise them a bit...any sort of folder structure? Nope. Resource pools? Nope. Performance information beyond basic CPU usage? Nope.

Useless
 
Hyper-V will eventually overtake VMware on features and usability, Microsoft are pouring so much money into it and the System Center tools that go along side.

If you a MS Partner, then Hyper-V is essentially free, but like someone said you need the tools. You can get SCVMM Workgroup Edition which just manages 5 hosts, this isnt too costly. But you can manage without the tools of you're not cloning or doing P2V.

Hyper-V's live migration (V-Motion) function isn't too good, you need special clusters setup (CSV) that only Hyper-V can see, so you then need special backup agents installed using like DPM 2010 or some other expensive product to backup the VHDs.

Bottom line is, Hyper-V is very easy and cheap to get a basic setup going, for a small office it's great, but it can very involved if you need HA, Performance Monitoring and everything else you'd want in the Enterprise.

As for VMware, well I've leave that to someone to give you the pros and cons, as when we were decided what path to go, VMware was about 10x more expensive.
 
I very much doubt it will overtake any time soon - remember VMware have been doing this a lot longer so all their money is being put into developing their core product.

It's just like Terminal Services will never overtake Citrix, one will always be playing catchup. Which proves best value or best fit is another matter though
 
If you are just looking to virtualize just Microsoft Windows servers then take a look at Hyper-V and VMWare. If you have a mixed environment Windows & Linux, then VMWare.
 
We're currently going through a virtualisation programme where I work and I'm having a look into three possible hyper visors:

Citrix Xenserver
Microsoft Hyper-V
VMWare ESX/ESXi

I looked at Hyper v several months ago and when I checked it out (may not be the case now) it requires to be installed on top of a general purpose OS (Windows Server Core) albeit a stripped down version. I didn't like this idea and as previous posters have said, Hyper-V is a newcomer to the Virtualisation world.

Xenserver looks promising, and like VMWare they offer a free hypervisor with some very handy features of out the box (live migration). But again, although Citrix have an excellent reputation with application virtualisation they are relatively new to server virtualisation.

VMWare is looking the most likely candidate for us at the moment. I've already installed their free hypervisor (ESXi) which I'm very impressed with. We would have to pay more with VMWare than Citrix Xen for the same level of features, but at the end of the day they are at the top of their industry and the extra cost may be worth having that extra bit of confidence with the organisation.

For a small organisation I would recommend you go with VMWare ESXi or Citrix Xen server. A friend of mine works for a educational institution and is currently using Xenserver, and likes it very much.
 
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I was planning to use free version of ESXi but found vmware have put to many restrictions on it. Couldn't find any official way of connecting UPS to ESXi server without hacking into CLI. Most of the good backup apps like Veeam also don't support free version of ESXi.

I tried XenServer 5.5 and liked it but came across a few issues when P2V a few boxes. XenConvert was taking days to P2V servers.

In the end I used Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V role. Very easy to use and haven't had any issues.
 
VMWare. Every time.

Though I do have to agree with paradigm;

paradigm said:
The question I'm going to ask is why do you feel there is a need to virtualise for only 20 users? What are you going to virtualise? I hope your host (if you go the 2008 R2 Hyper-V route) isn't also your Domain Controller (or indeed part of an SBS/EBS environment).(
Click to expand...
 
iaind said:
I very much doubt it will overtake any time soon - remember VMware have been doing this a lot longer so all their money is being put into developing their core product.

It's just like Terminal Services will never overtake Citrix, one will always be playing catchup. Which proves best value or best fit is another matter though
Click to expand...

Works both ways though, Microsoft have heaps of revenue from other business units to pour into development, VMware don't have the same luxury of being able to borrow from other products profits.

I'd also say, by most people's measure, terminal services (while not as advanced in some ways as citrix) has probably overtaken it by most measures.
 
iaind said:
It would be even cheaper to run all your servers on old P4 desktops, doesnt make it the best option though ;)
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I never said it was. But if HV has all the features we need from it, then why pay more? Plus having the rest of the Microsoft SC tools already set up at our company we actually gain while a few things for very little / no extra cost that we don't have with VMware.
 
After recently evaluating Hyper-V and VMware I've decided to go for VMWare. The product has way more features and feels much more polished. The price difference imo is worth it (around 5-6k more IIRC).
 
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