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Arthalen

Arthalen

Arthalen

Associate
Joined
20 Apr 2006
Posts
2,037
Location
Leeds, UK
Looking at expanding my skill-set come 2012, so will be moving on from purely networking and expanding my technical skills for AD, Exchange & SQL primarily.

So i'm looking for a recommendation on a virtualisation product to do some home study on the above 3. Virtual-box? VMware Workstation? Something else?

I may take some MCITP exams later on or whatever, but it mainly to get a good handle on the technology involved, and how it actually works.

I have a great gaming PC right here, I7 950, 12GB RAM and will shortly have a decent 900GB of RAID5 space to work with. So I have the necessary oomph to run a bunch of concurrent Virtual machines.

I'll be looking at doing some proper virtual stuff later on, and for that I will have a separate box for it all, but for now I don't want to invest in seperate hardware.
 
I use Hyper-V in a full (i.e. not core) installation of Server 2008 R2, mostly because the remote control in VMWare Workstation via VNC is crap. To be honest it doesn't really matter what you use for your lab, as long as it supports snapshots (which VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation and Hyper-V all do).

On the subject of hardware, I'd suggest going to 24GB RAM if you have the money & slots available. It's not entirely essential, it just helps keep things smooth when you're running things like Exchange 2010 and a few clients. The rest of your system is excellent and will serve you well.
 
I would recommand VMware Workstation because it allows you to virtualise in a virtualized enviroment. This means that you can't just virtualize servers and clients but you can also virtualize Hyper-V or vSphere.

I think that working with Hyper-V version 3 (the Windows 8 version) will become very populair. It has nearly all the major features of vSphere but it is much less expensive. I think that being able to test this out before the official release of Windows 8 will give you a great advantage.
 
Thanks for the feedback, chaps.

I'll look at VMware first then, simply for the possibility of using a Hypervisor in a vm environment for testing/practice purposes. If it doesn't pan out, or the boss doesnt want to pay up for my 'learning expenses', I'll stick with Virtualbox and be done with it I think.
 
If you are working with an IT / consultancy company there is a fair chance that they have "test" licenses for all VMware products. I know our company has those license keys. (in the Netherlands) If you become b.t.w. a VCP then you get a Workstation license for free. It requires however a classroom coarse.
If you can't get a free license than it does not hurt to invest in your own future. I know many colleagues have invested in “server” hardware to be able to test things out. In the end you usually get more money out of your investment then you spend on hardware and software. A few colleagues of my don’t want to spend a cent on their education but they also tend to be the colleagues that miss out on bonuses and raises. Perhaps you spend now 200 pound on software, but in a year or two you get 200 pounds per month extra on your paycheck. That is a fair deal, don’t you think so?
 
All good points, Razorblade. Gonna go pick up that extra 12GB tomorrow as well for some comfort zone on memory allocation too.
 
As you're studying microsoft technologies it makes sense to use their hyper v as well. You can get free 180 day trial keys from google and after that just reinstall.
 
SoundsGood said:
As you're studying microsoft technologies it makes sense to use their hyper v as well. You can get free 180 day trial keys from google and after that just reinstall.
Click to expand...
I assume you're talking about using Hyper-V in a full Server 2008 R2 installation, rather than the standalone Hyper-V server? From what Arthalen said in his original post, he only has the one system, which means he'd be unable to use the system for anything else if he went for standalone Hyper-V. If he were to run the full Server 2008 R2, then he'd still be able to game on it (though gaming performance may suffer unless you use the trick mentioned in this blog). The upside to running Server 2008 R2 is that you can disable Hyper-V and use VMWare workstation if you really want to.

On the subject of nested virtual machines, which you can run Hyper-V virtually in VMWare Workstation, the performance can be pretty horrible. Whether this is an issue depends on how much you need to use Hyper-V. If you're studying for the 70-659 exam then you really do need to run Hyper-V on the bare metal. Until then, VMWare Workstation on Windows 7 is going to be the easiest way of going about it (in my opinion).

Edit: It seems that I forgot to mention one of Hyper-V's more frustrating limitations. Your choice of display resolutions using the native Hyper-V console are; 1600x1200, 1280x1024, 1152x864, 1024x768 & 800x600. That's it. It's not such a problem to me when I'm using my desktop, as 1280 x 1024 is just fine, but my laptop's display is 1440x900 which means I have to drop to 1024 x 768 in order to make the console window usable. Connecting to the virtual machines via RDP is the suggested work around, but I don't have my virtual machines on the real network, so it's not an option for me. This may not be a problem at all for you, but I felt it worth mentioning. VMWare Workstation has no such limitations; with the Virtual Tools installed, you can have whatever resolution you like.
 
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Slightly off the original post but still linked....

Last time I tried it, Hyper-V management tools would only work on a Win7-Pro or higher install (XP-Pro etc but not Win7 Home Premium) which was a killer for using it at home. Has this now changed ?.

A few suggestions if you wished to build a unit. I am build mITX ESXi machines for clients at the moment for this sort of purpose and you could get the parts and build for yourself an entry level unit for around 370GBP (give or take what UK VAT is currently sitting at) if you can get the bits.

Example light use mITX ESXi test machine (around 370 GBP, build thread here).
Antec ISK100-90 case
i3-2120T CPU
4GB non-ECC ram
Intel S1200KP mITX server board - dual lan, one supported by ESXi straight out of the box, support for non-ECC or ECC ram, can take E3 Xeon or i3 processors, uses C206 chipset).
250GB 2.5" hard drive.

Something a bit more powerful (still mITX)
Antec ISK310-1500 case
E3 Xeon 1235 CPU
16GB ECC ram (2x8GB)
Intel S1200KP mITX server board - dual lan, one supported by ESXi straight out of the box, support for non-ECC or ECC ram, can take E3 Xeon or i3 processors, uses C206 chipset).
2x 1TB 2.5" hard drives.

Rack mount (1U) - Short length.
Supermicro 1U short length case (CSE-813MTQ-600CB)
Supermicro 1U heat sink.
E3 Xeon 1230 CPU
32GB ECC ram (4x8GB)
Intel S1200BTL motherboard (C204 chipset, dual lan with one supported out of the box by ESXi, IPMI 2.0).
Up to 4 3.5" drives.

RB
 
RimBlock said:
Slightly off the original post but still linked....

Last time I tried it, Hyper-V management tools would only work on a Win7-Pro or higher install (XP-Pro etc but not Win7 Home Premium) which was a killer for using it at home. Has this now changed ?.
Click to expand...
No, it has not and will not change. You need the relevant Remote Server Administration Tools installed on your system; these don't exist for XP, and do not support Starter or Home Basic/Premium. I suppose It's another way for Microsoft to coax people off of XP in the business arena.
 
Saundie said:
No, it has not and will not change. You need the relevant Remote Server Administration Tools installed on your system; these don't exist for XP, and do not support Starter or Home Basic/Premium. I suppose It's another way for Microsoft to coax people off of XP in the business arena.
Click to expand...

So in order to manage a Hyper-V server you need to have at least one machine with Win7 Pro or higher installed.

This for me killed the use of Hyper-V for home. I have no other need for Win 7 pro features to justify buying Win7-Pro over Home Premium. With ESXi I can use the admin tools happily on Win7 Home Premium, test with it at home, play around, improve my knowledge and then use that knowledge gained in my job, if it so requires. It is a shame Microsoft chose to cut off the home market.

on the other hand not having the tool available for XP I can understand that totally :D.

RB
 
Well, 2nd set of 12GB ram ordered, so will have 24GB to play with tomorrow hopefully. After topping up 6-7 Virtual Machines with 2GB each, that 12GB ran gets eaten up pretty quickly!

I've also settled on VMware for time being, although that mini ESX mITX box looks interesting as a future project if I need a 'bare metal' box for my hypervisor learning needs.

There's plenty for me to get through this year alone to be honest, before I get to the Virtualisation study side of things :D
 
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