Somethings You Need To Know About Hyper-V
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In the family of the four enterprise hypervisors (consisting of VMware ESXi, Xen, KVM and Hyper-V), Hyper-V is the baby of the group, years younger than KVM, the next youngest product. Because of this, Hyper-V has had a rough time attempting to compete with more mature and featureful rivals. It needed to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time.
Hyper-V today is a full fledged member of the four and is a full, enterprise ready hypervisor that will go toe to toe with any of the other three. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, some technical, some from licensing and some vendor and support related, but all have managed to carve out a place for themselves.
Hyper-V, because it is young and was presented not to virtualization engineers primarily but to Windows Administrators as the "backdoor" into the infrastructure decision making process, tends to be surrounded by myth. Three key myths that have doggedly refused to not remain attached to Hyper-V. Why Hyper-V can't shake the myths is uncertain, but this has hurt Hyper-V greatly and justified many claims that it used to only be installed by accident and never because someone had carefully evaluated it. That situation is getting better but some basics about Hyper-V that need to be understood are:
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Hyper-V, like any enterprise hypervisor, is a type 1 hypervisor (aka bare metal or native hypervisor.) Hyper-V, with no exceptions, runs right on the physical system itself. Every OS instance running on that box runs on top of Hyper-V. It is commonly confusing to look at the box itself and find what appears to be Hyper-V running as a role on top of Windows Server. Rest assured, this is only a view presented to the Windows Admin is in no way reflects reality. There is no version of Hyper-V and never has been any that runs in any mode except as on the bare metal. That it is installed as a "role" is purely a convenience means of portraying this with the expectation that most Windows Admins do not understand virtualization and want to see the installation process in a convenient, familiar way. No matter how, when or where Hyper-V is installed it is always a type 1 hypervisor. If this were not true, Hyper-V would not be considered a viable virtualization product for servers and the base OS would violate one of the most basic rules of IT infrastructure today - never run an OS on bare metal except when there is no other choice.
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Hyper-V is not Windows. They are two quite different things.
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Hyper-V is not a component of Windows. Hyper-V is a standalone product separate from Windows.
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Hyper-V is free. You can pay for other products to use with Hyper-V if you want, but Hyper-V itself is, and always has been, completely free. There are no exceptions to this, ever. It is a free product including all of its features.
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Hyper-V comes with no special licensing for Windows Server. Windows Server's licensing is applied evenly and equally regardless of the hypervisor chosen. There is no licensing benefit to Hyper-V over Xen, Vmware or KVM. None.
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As a best practice, Hyper-V should always be installed directly, not installed via Windows Server and the "role" function. This keeps the Hyper-V installation as lean as possible without accidentally creating any cumbersome licensing liabilities from the Windows Server control environment.
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For those wondering why people feel that HyperV has special Windows licensing....
When running virtualized, Microsoft grants Windows Server 2012 users two VMs with a standard license and unlimited with a datacenter license (on the same physical box.) These are usable VMs, you can run any workload on them that you want. Licensing is not quite that simple, but those are the basics that you need to understand.
An extra "physical" VM (what a confusing name) is granted to use with Windows Server Standard when HyperV is used, but this "physical" VM is useless, it is forbidden to be used for any purpose other than manage HyperV itself so has no actual value. If you were running VMware ESXi, KVM or Xen there would be no use to such a VM so none is offered. So this VM can be ignored as it is pointless in terms of comparisons, it simply acts as a means to bring HyperV more in line with other offerings in certain cases. The availability of this VM has no benefit to you as an end user and would never be a reason to choose HyperV over any other option.
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@scottalanmiller said:
HyperV today is a full fledged member of the four and is a full, enterprise ready hypervisor that will go toe to toe with any of the other three. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, some technical, some from licensing and some vendor and support related, but all have managed to carve out a place for themselves.
A comparison of the 4 would be really amazing, it would make a killer 5 part blog - one for each and then one to compare at the end. Hint hint....
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The more I look at virtualization options, the more I'm drawn to Hyper-V. It seems to have a nice niche where it's free like XenServer but with more support for some really handy things like Veeam and Starwind vSAN.
The main thing keeping me from going into the deep end with it right now is that, based on my current understanding, it sounds like you need a full version of Server 2012 running to have easy configuration through a GUI. I guess it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to learn how to manage it from Server Core's CLI, but right now I'm happily doing what I need to with XenCenter so it's hard to justify the switch.
Is that an accurate representation of the state of Hyper-V management or is that another myth?
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@WingCreative said:
it sounds like you need a full version of Server 2012 running to have easy configuration through a GUI.
Really? I wouldn't know as I'm an ESXi guy. But I didn't think server core meant no GUI, I thought it meant you use client GUIs. I still manage my core servers with the same GUI's I've always done, I just run them on my PC. Which would be the same as ESXi, where I manage everything via vSphere Client running on my PC (other than installing the hypervisor itself) - there is no server GUI.
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@WingCreative said:
The main thing keeping me from going into the deep end with it right now is that, based on my current understanding, it sounds like you need a full version of Server 2012 running to have easy configuration through a GUI. I guess it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to learn how to manage it from Server Core's CLI, but right now I'm happily doing what I need to with XenCenter so it's hard to justify the switch.
Is that an accurate representation of the state of Hyper-V management or is that another myth?
Complete Myth my friend, yes i admit getting the tools set-up on both a windows machine and get the settings right on the HyperV server can be a pain the first few times you do it (well it was for me). Once you got the hang of it deployment becomes easier. You also have free tools like 5nine manager to help.
I'm considering more too HyperV now for new hardware.
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@WingCreative said:
The more I look at virtualization options, the more I'm drawn to Hyper-V. It seems to have a nice niche where it's free like XenServer but with more support for some really handy things like Veeam and Starwind vSAN.
The main thing keeping me from going into the deep end with it right now is that, based on my current understanding, it sounds like you need a full version of Server 2012 running to have easy configuration through a GUI. I guess it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to learn how to manage it from Server Core's CLI, but right now I'm happily doing what I need to with XenCenter so it's hard to justify the switch.
Is that an accurate representation of the state of Hyper-V management or is that another myth?
That's mostly true. The GUI bit is only true if you want the included GUI from MS. There are third parties that make free ones too (disclaimer: that I have not tested personally.)
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These days, if I am making client recommendations for a new platform (e.g. not updating what they already have installed) we've moved from VMware being the go to answer to it being the last of the list (although KVM never bubbles up either, but would outrank VMware these days) with HyperV and XenServer being the only two that actually end up getting recommended when deploying a hypervisor.
When deploying appliances (a la Scale) then we don't care what the hypervisor is because we only care how the appliance behaves and is supported, not "how the sausage is made." So KVM ends up getting recommended through that path, but never on its own.
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@scottalanmiller What is the ratio of XenServer to Hyper-V that you guys are seeing your clients adopt?
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We always give the clients their options when helping them make decisions: that being said the last 10 migrations we have done here is the breakdown:
Hyper-V : 8
Xenserver-1
The other I can't find. -
@hobbit666 said:
Complete Myth my friend, yes i admit getting the tools set-up on both a windows machine and get the settings right on the HyperV server can be a pain the first few times you do it (well it was for me). Once you got the hang of it deployment becomes easier. You also have free tools like 5nine manager to help.
To expand on this, as long as you join the Hyper-V server to the domain then there is almost no extra configuration needed on the Hyper-V host as that is how it is designed to work. Then you just add the Hyper-V tools on any other Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 machine and manage everything from there.
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@JaredBusch said:
@hobbit666 said:
Complete Myth my friend, yes i admit getting the tools set-up on both a windows machine and get the settings right on the HyperV server can be a pain the first few times you do it (well it was for me). Once you got the hang of it deployment becomes easier. You also have free tools like 5nine manager to help.
To expand on this, as long as you join the Hyper-V server to the domain then there is almost no extra configuration needed on the Hyper-V host as that is how it is designed to work. Then you just add the Hyper-V tools on any other Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 machine and manage everything from there.
How does that work in a one server situation? you need to reboot the host and....?
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@Dashrender said:
How does that work in a one server situation? you need to reboot the host and....?
The same as a one server setup with any other Hypervisor? You declare a maintenance window and shut down the guests and reboot.
What are you actually getting at?
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller What is the ratio of XenServer to Hyper-V that you guys are seeing your clients adopt?
HyperV wins by far. XS is more niche, but still very viable and the only real competitor to HyperV at this point in the SMB. Because both have the full stack for free, and both are quite mature (Xen being extremely mature and HyperV finally getting there) there is little means for another vendor to wiggle into the space.
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@JaredBusch said:
@Dashrender said:
How does that work in a one server situation? you need to reboot the host and....?
The same as a one server setup with any other Hypervisor? You declare a maintenance window and shut down the guests and reboot.
What are you actually getting at?
Can you log into the Hyper-V hypervisor while the VM that is the DC is down?
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@Dashrender said:
Can you log into the Hyper-V hypervisor while the VM that is the DC is down?
Can you log in to your workstation when the DC is down?
The answer is of course you can. Windows caches credentials. Always has.
Even if you somehow have been down so long that cached credentials no longer work, it is just like any other windows system ever made. Log in with the local account.
All of that said though, if you properly configured your Hyper-V server to launch the various guests at power on, then this will not be an issue anyway.
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@Dashrender said:
Can you log into the Hyper-V hypervisor while the VM that is the DC is down?
I should add this to the list of myths. I forgot how often people feel that HyperV either is required to be on a domain or that being on a domain makes it super fragile. You can do HyperV standalone if you want or, as @JaredBusch points out, lacking AD does not stop you from logging into a machine.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Can you log into the Hyper-V hypervisor while the VM that is the DC is down?
I should add this to the list of myths. I forgot how often people feel that HyperV either is required to be on a domain or that being on a domain makes it super fragile. You can do HyperV standalone if you want or, as @JaredBusch points out, lacking AD does not stop you from logging into a machine.
Hyper-V is DESIGNED to be on a domain. So that is the best way to manage it. But as with anything else Windows, a domain is not required.
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@JaredBusch said:
Hyper-V is DESIGNED to be on a domain. So that is the best way to manage it. But as with anything else Windows, a domain is not required.
Sure, not disagreeing there. It's generally the best way to go. But if you are on a workground or have no AD or whatever, those aren't barriers to HyperV.
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It sounds like it might be feasible to run a free Hyper-V host without any sort of Windows VM involved... As I am a fan of irony, I may just have to try it and see what I can do with ManageEngine's Hyper-V configuration tool (the best free option Google has found for me so far).
