HYPER-V SERVER R2 (Esxi 5.5 needs PAID vCENTER - vmware)

[jimbo45]

Hi there.

I LIKE the idea of a bare metal Hypervisor - I've tried Esxi (VMware) in the past and although it works it's a bit fiddly on what hardware it works on and there's no CLI for managing VM's --you have to do this with a separate machine using vCenter which USED TO BE FREE -- and now this part is NOT available in the free offering any more (if you upgrade to the latest version of ESXI (5.5) you won't be able to manage / modify VM's any more - at least in the FREE offering -- you have to BUY the latest vCenter -- so I've now junked Esxi.

It seems from Internet discussions that Free ESXI might be being phased out anyway so a good time to jump ship to Ms.

Read this :

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2295098

Does 2012 HYPER-V SERVER R2 (it's FREE BTW) work decently as a hypervisor -- I'm only really interested in running Windows VM's.

I actually quite like W2012 SERVER but I don't really need the full server edition for hosting VM's. I want to use W2012 server as a VM anyway.

I've been quite a happy user of VMware workstation in the past but it's quite expensive and needs a full blown OS to run on even though it can now run VM's in the background.

I need to run the following Guest OS's (or VM's) on it ===> W2003 server, 2 XP PRO VM's (one ENG, on ISL), one W7 Enterprise, one W8.1 Enterprise and one W2012 server .

The Host machine has plenty of RAM and storage and has a decent 3.2 GHZ QUAD processor in it so running these VM's should be fine in theory.

The W2012 server will replace the w2003 server. I like running servers as VM's - IMO servers should be run as VM's in any case.

I assume that there is an easy way to convert a VMware VM to a Ms one via various utilities.

Anybody using the HYPER-V server as the HYPERVISOR -- not running on W8 or W2012 server -- I want to try the bare metal HYPERVISOR out.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[pparks1]

Vcenter server was Never free Jimbo.

You can still use the existing client to manage vms on the free esxi 5.5, but you need to be sure that you do NOT upgrade the vm hardware on these VMs to version 10. Even newly created vms will start as version 8, it's a manual process to upgrade them and it comes with a warning that the web client will be required.

I'm actually pretty surprised this is being handled this way, but it's not likely a big issue unless you ignore the warnings.

HyperV was never a product I liked. Prior to Windows 8, remotely managing vms was a total nightmare with a bunch of dcom stuff you had to manually set up. It's still a crapshoot whether a Linux vm is going to work. I steer clear of this supervisor.

Citrix Zen server is a free product. Pretty good too.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there.

Thanks for all the info

Will look at Citrix. Have also been looking at the idea of using some sort of XEN but most seem to rely on DEBIAN type of distro -- I don't have too much experience with DEBIAN -- might be interesting to play with it for the moment.

As for the client for managing the VM's - I seem to remember that was included with ESXI 4 and 5.0 Free products --I never had to pay for it. (I never upgraded to 5.1 BTW).

Cheers
jimbo

 

[pparks1]

Jimbo,

There is a client that you can use to manage VM's with all of the ESXi products. Even 5.5. However, it seems that there is "new" functionality in VM's that you upgrade to Hardware version 10 which is NOT compatible with the previous vSphere client (free). To manage these specific VM's, you need to use the web client, which is ONLY available with a vCenter setup (which is not free). So, the general guideline now is don't upgrade these VM's to version 10.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there.

Thanks for the clarification -- I'm staying with ESXI 5 (and V8 for the VM's) for the moment - working fine. I tried ESXI 5.5 on a "Whitebox" but it didn't like my NIC hardware and I couldn't find a decent way of loading a suitable driver. Not sure why but some of the drivers that worked with Esxi 5 seem to have been removed in the latest release. ( I was using the vSphere client for managing the VM's in ESXI rel 5).

The Citrix solution looks worth a try as does the XEN server -- I see SUSE has also incorporated it -- I've got experience with SUSE bot for desktop and the server versions so I'm more comfortable fiddling around with those rather than the DEBIAN type of distributions.

I gave HYPER-V a whirl on the W8.1 desktop just for a quick test with a single XP VM -- I don't really like it so I'll try the Linux based solutions -- a little more work but at least I can customize them. For "Whitebox" type of kit the Linux based solutions offer a more realistic way of getting it to work decently -- I don't have to design this for a huge corporation Virtualising a whole load of desktops !!!.

VMware workstation is a great product but it's getting a little pricey now if you want to use it on several desktops. - Some of these companies really should offer "Developer" type licenses - corporate ones are too expensive for small users but we need something better than pure retail - however this is also another issue. 60 day trials aren't always enough if you can't do this FULL TIME while 30 day trials for somebody like me who travels a lot to different sites is a total waste of time. - however that's another issue.

Will post back later on my results with XEN / CITRIX tests.

Cheers

Jimbo

 

[pparks1]

Yeah, we are on vSphere 5.1 on a few of our VMWare Clusters, and vSphere 4.1 on the one in my office. We have evaluated the move to 5.5, but we have some concerns with our third party backup solution and also the multipathing for our storage cabinets..thus we are staying put on 5.1 for the time being.

Trying to do a "whitebox" ESXi build can be tough with some hardware. The usual problem areas are 1). Storage Controllers and 2) Network cards. For my whitebox ESXi hosts, I either 1). Buy Intel motherboards as the Intel NIC's are pretty much always supported or 2). Just buy an Intel 10/10/1000 NIC to put into the box. Then I just troll the forums and google search on the particular mobo I plan to use to make sure somebody else has used it and verified that the storage controllers indeed work.

The one appealing part of 5.5 is that VMWare has removed the 32GB memory limit that was present in the free product. For most home users, or whitebox implementations, this isn't likely going to be an issue. But I have servers at work with 144GB of RAM, so it's nice to be able to use it all.

Yeah, I have purchased VMWare Workstation 8.x (Full) and VMWare Workstaiton 10.x (upgrade). Yes, it does get expensive, but I gain so much benefit from being able to clone templates that it's worth it to me. Technically, you can install VMWare Workstation onto multiple computers and the key will work...although you aren't compliant with the EULA. I figure, If I have paid for a personal copy and I use it for my own use, on machines that are only used by me, it's not a gross violation of the licensing agreement.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there again

Just downloaded OPENSUSE 13.1 (mega nice backgrounds etc on KDE screen) Just got up a basic XP virtual machine using KVM -- I think this is finally the route I'll choose -- I LIKE OPENSUSE and after a glitch or two - rel 12.x all versions were an absolute DOG but 13.1 has got back to working great again and I know OPENSUSE reasonably well.

There are options also to play around with "Complete Virtualisation" and "Para Virtualisation" so I'll have some "Geeky fun" this weekend -- coming up to Shortest day currently -- Sunrise isn't till around 11.00 AM -- sunset at 15.40 so days quite short and I can't spend ALL the time in the pub -- I'm off contract now until ist week in January. Fine for me as a lot of visiting over Xmas Hols.


This whole virtualisation thingy is getting quite sophisticated these days -- my first experience was way back with IBM's VM/370 running on "The Big Blue" 370 series mainframes -- we've come a long way since then although the basic idea hasn't actually changed that much. !!

Cheers
jimbo

.