I'm trying to go more in depth on virtualization in my lab. Right now I use hyper-v since I can still "use" the computer as a normal windows PC which before was an issue. Now I have a spare box I'm building from the ground up and I'm wondering what it's the best approach?
Is the performance any different between the two? Density is mostly my concern right now
Posted Apr 15, 2016, 5:12 PM UTC
I like Hyper V on a 2012R2 DC license. Can't argue with as many free Server 2012R2 guests as I desire thanks to AVMA.
Care to cite that? So far as I've known, the only way a single DC license can do that is when you add the hyper v role and use AVMA licenses.
The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is on page 9.
Like I said, it's a little-known fact.
I would say you're partially correct. According to your reference,
As Windows Server 2012 Datacenter permits an unlimited number of instances of the server software to run in virtual OSEs, in multi-server installations with VMware vMotion, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager
My understanding is you need vMotion or SCVMM in order to take advantage of this. Not something every homelabber has at their disposal.
Was good for Microsoft when we had our recent audit , 1x dc licence per physical host in the cluster with a ratio of 30 guests to 1 host on average on esxi 5.1 through to 6 and even some kvm
If I could guess, you probably had a site/volume license and not a DreamSpark or msdn license.
You are correct, we've gone through that audit as well. One DC license per host is all you need, irregardless of hypervisor.
I might be wrong, but afik r2 standard is 2 guests for the limit. Win 10/8 don't have these limits, so why don't people use "desktop" os'es for non critical vms
I might be wrong, but afik r2 standard is 2 guests for the limit.
The 2012 R2 Standard limit of 2 is just for licensing. You can run as many VMs as you want on it, but on VM #3+ you have to provide additional licensing vs just using AVMA/the host license key.
Win 10/8 don't have these limits, so why don't people use "desktop" os'es for non critical vms
With Windows 8+ clients, you have zero licensing boons, and all your VMs need to be licensed separately from the host OS (≥$800/license for server software).
There is no hard limit for the number of machines a host can actually house/run, though. It's all about licensing.
Little-known fact: when you buy a 2012 R2 Standard license, you get two VM licenses regardless of what hypervisor you use. The same goes for Datacenter with its unlimited VM licenses.
Edit: I thought this would be obvious, but as u/Zergom pointed out, Windows licensing only applies to (you guessed it) Windows VMs. To look at it a different way: the host doesn't necessarily need a license to host VMs (but it needs a license for itself, if that makes sense), it's the VMs that need a license to be hosted. Since free Linux is free, the license is implicit.
Oh fantastic, I never knew that. So I install one with the normal key, and I can use the AVMA key against that thereafter?
The guest limit is actually only for Windows VM's. If you run a Hyper-V host with 30 linux VM's you're still in compliance. If there's three guest VM's, then you need an additional standard license, because you'd be out of compliance.
Also, with the Windows 8+, I believe that you need SA to use them in the HyperV environment. I know, for sure according to my MS rep, that you need SA to install the HyperV role on a workstation to be in compliance.
[deleted]
Little-known fact: when you buy a 2012 R2 Standard license, you get two VM licenses regardless of what hypervisor you use. The same goes for Datacenter with its unlimited VM licenses.
Unless you know something I don't, that's incorrect. Std licenses allow for hosting 2 VMs. Not that you can use them twice. Same goes for DC. You can host as many as you want using hyperv (and use avma as licensing). but it doesn't allow you unlimited activations with one key unless you have a volume license.
He's right, 1 x 2012 R2 Standard licence allows you either one physical instance, or two virtual instances.
Or, one physical and two virtual as long as the physical instance only has the Hyper-V role to host the two virtual instances.
Please refer to this comment response.
Edit: Also, AVMA is not a licensing scheme, it's just a convenient way to activate VM installations without allocating specific keys to specific VMs.
I knew it was licencing limits but let's say if I bought 4 copies of windows 7 at bestbuy, what "extra" steps would I have to do on 2012 vs 8.1/10?
You could run four Windows 7 VMs if you don't need any of the features Windows Server provides. There's nothing stopping you or anyone else from doing this. There are also no "extra steps" to doing so on either host operating system other than assigning and physically entering in one Windows 7 key to each VM.
Server 2012 provides zero Windows 7 VM licenses (but it does provide two 2012 VM licenses, so you would only need two copies of Windows 7), and 8.1/10 just provides zero VM licenses in general (unless you're using the license for just the VM, and not the host). Your licensing cost is the same either way, though, if you opt for just four Windows 7 VMs.
I believe some people do things like this when they have VM-based VDI. Minimal server OS license, and a bunch of Windows client OS licenses.
AVMA talks about the MS licensing for guest OSs. When you run 2012R2DC, you can use AVMA keys in your guest OSs instead of actual MS keys. For me, this means I'm not bound by the 6 month restriction on any guest OSs and I'm not juggling keys for things I may or may not keep around.
Oh I wasn't aware of AVMA!
One reason I haven't seen mentioned here is license cost. I was leaning towards figuring out ESXi's free 3-month tier, but then I found out that my university had a Microsoft Dreamspark license which gave me a ton of free OS's, including Windows Server 2012r2, which I just added the Hyper-V role on to. Could obviously have pirated either, but at the moment I have a fully-licensed, 100% free virtualization license.
Totally not an argument for one system or the other - but if you can get one for free, I'd go with that one =)
Also, regarding using your Hyper-V machine as a normal computer - you certainly can, as in install Office and Chrome on top of Server 2012...but I wouldn't recommend it. Basically, anything you do at that level puts all of your VMs at risk. Just yesterday I clicked through an iTunes install (on a regular PC) too quickly and it restarted my computer. Had I done that on my Hyper-V server, it would have temporarily taken down all of my VMs. It also could potentially be a lot worse than just a restart. If I have to use anything, I'd use a VM on that machine.
That's part of the reason I'm on hyper-v (do the keys timebomb btw?)
I realized that if I get serious into this I may need to switch to linux :/ and probably over to esxi
ESXi free has nearly everything you need for a homelab, unless you want to hot-migrate VMs between multiple clustered hosts, and have a full high availability setup with vSphere vCenter.
When you install ESXi you get full features for 60 days, then it goes back to free license.
I think the only feature I saw esxi didn't have was remote mgmt of multiple servers. (for free version)
You mean sending a command or operation for all servers to do at once?
In case you weren't aware, ESXi free can be managed remotely by the vSphere client and SSH, but you'll have to connect to each host server. Within that host, you can manage multiple VMs in one program/view.
do the keys timebomb btw?
The keys never go bad unless specifically blacklisted for being heavily distributed/abused. Even the keys I got from TechNet back in the day are still valid.
ok thx for the info! This is what I get for trusting random students on campus lol
Don't forget about XenServer. It's also free, performs well and extremely solid. More features than the free version ESXi too.
What features does XenServer have that ESXi lacks? I ran XenServer for a bit and while it was solid it didn't feel as full featured as ESXi free.
It has support for high availability and migration, central management with XenCenter is fully supported, you can absolutely run a whole datacenter from it without paying. There are only a few features that require a license, so it absolutely has more functionality than ESXi.
I'd say that the real difference between them is that vSphere is complicated and gives you the impression of more features, where XenCenter is less complicated but not less powerful.
To get access to some more advanced features, especially for troubleshooting and fixing some kinds of problems, you do need to use the CLI. But it's easy to use.
Ok, I didn't know about HA and the centralised management as I haven't ever run more than one node. One thing I remember that was annoying was that you needed to load ISOs from an external share. The other thing was that there was a lot less in the way of virtual networking options. (Though that could have changed in the year since I've used it)
You have to enable vSwitch, and it's then controlled from a separate application.
Don't forget that XenServer's much more forgiving about hardware requirements, which is ideal for building a homelab with pre-existing hardware.
Absolutely, you can run it on almost anything that has a x86 processor.
There's no real performance difference between the two. ESXi can virtualize Hyper-V, which doesn't work the other way around.
ESXi can virtualize Hyper-V
As of 2016 TP4 this is now reciprocal.
Edit: my dreams are crushed. Hyper-V can only host another Hyper-V installation.
Hyper-V still can't virtualize ESXi or other hypervisors. Both have a way to work with docker containers but both don't support microkernels.
After some checking it appears as though you are correct. Hyper-V can only officially nest another Hyper-V hypervisor :(
I used Hyper-V because I wanted to pass through disks easily without the expense of parts on the ESXi hardware list.
Can't argue with free
I'm on Hyper-V because:
I use hyper-v at home because I can back it up. The free version of ESXi doesn't support backups. I grabbed an NFR license for veeam and passthrough a large external USB drive for my backups.
backup isn't too big of an issue since all the VM's are identical. I know it's ghetto AF but for windows I clone the boot ssd onto some old HDD's I have laying around
What are your career goals and current situation (if the lab is for career based learning)?
Enterprise tends to be skewed towards VMware, small business/msp towards hyper-v.
I'm hoping for enterprise. Might try some cool features with the 60 day trial later on
One is Windows and will constantly crash on you.
One is solid and will have endless uptime.
mostly true in my case
You will get a bit more density with VMware right now, due to lower OS costs. Performance is good on both. *nix guests on VMware are much better than Hyper-V. Although Hyper-V can do pretty much anything ESXi can do, I find ESXi is much more polished.
Hyper-v is so unpolished even compared to 2008 when I started.
What is unpolished about Hyper-V in Server 2012 R2?
I'm using it on win 8.1 but I feel some issues will apply to both.
Preview windows aren't updated frequently so occasionally when scrolling around I have to hit 5. But despite being highlighted you have to click on he vm name again.
Other annoying things like no shared clipboard. I have to hit PASTE clipboard text and can only copy FROM host. The network limiter never worked for me either.
It's dozens of little things like that which kind of annoy me.
I leave my guest VMs logged out, so don't really use the preview much.
Enable Enhanced Sessions to get nearly identical clipboard to normal RDP.
Anything else?
I agree. I don't find anything unpolished about it. I use it at my house and have no problems and implement it for work and it does what we want without complaining. Plus since we have Server 2012 R2 licenses we also install that as the host and have a full GUI That we can RDP into. (although you can only use it as a host)
I find Hyper-V to be unpolished because SCVMM is shit compared to vCenter.
The management of Hyper-V isn't as polished as a properly configured vCenter setup. With Vmware I can use the web client, the vSphere client, ESXi shell, or the web ui for the individual hosts.
Vmware also has much better third party vendor support, but that's possibly irrelevant to a homelab.