Virtualization Redemption?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Not entirely. The client will have to pay for the conversion time that Hub spends converting from ESXi to Hyper-V - probably 2-5 times what the cost of ESXi Essentials is.
If this costs anywhere near as much as the ESXi licenses, something is wrong. This would be a simple and painless process. Not free, things take time, but should be trivial effort overall.
http://www.5nine.com/vmware-hyper-v-v2v-conversion-free.aspx
But as you've pointed out to me in the past, the tech gets paid for all time spent working on the project. I suppose he could do this remote, start the process, come back 3 hours later and click finish and hope all goes well, and only bill for one hour.
But that conversion also probably assumes that you have both a Hyper-V and an ESXi host up at the same time, which he does not. He has 2 ESXi hosts. Assuming both hosts have enough storage to hold everything, he could migrate everything to one host, (probably an hour or more billing), then build rebuild the now empty server as Hyper-V (let's say 30 mins of billing to be nice), then the conversion process. Assuming he only spends 1 hour of time managing the conversion we're now at around 2.5 hours at $200/hr = $500... OK that's less than the cost of ESXi.
But if he has to copy the ESXi files to a backup medium to clear up on host, then build the now empty as Hyper-V, then migrate from ESXi to Hyper-V, then backup Hyper to backup medium, restore ESXi to now empty ESXi, then convert to Hyper-V, then build now second empty ESXi host as Hyper-V and restore from backup... that will take a heck of a lot longer.
And the last situation I can think of:
Backup all ESXi to backup solution, format both ESXi servers to Hyper-V, then use tool to restore ESXi images as Hyper-V images on newly built servers - still will probably take more than 3 hours managing.You are correct, it can add up quickly. But so can going the ESXi route. Going to HyperV today is an investment in their future. If ESXi gets more expensive over time, the investment might pay off big time. ESXi is really technical debt for an SMB and just puts them at risk. Everything costs more and there are many fewer features. If it is anywhere close to breakeven, you want to spend the money on the future, rather than the past, just as a general rule.
Let's say that they decide that they need HA, vMotion or other relatively basic feature than ESXi Essentials cannot provide down the road.... suddenly the cost of staying with ESXi goes through the roof, but had they spent the same money migrating away they would have those features, for free, whenever they wanted them.
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Just to Re-Cap here is our ultimate goal with this client.
Currently we are running and will continue to run server 2008 R2. So Hyper-V would be 08r2 which i've heard nobody really likes.
Currently have 3 hosts, each exactly the same 64GB of ram and 2.2TB raid 10.
Going to re-purpose one host to become a DR server colocated in a datacenter about 600 miles away(not an important detail but whatever).
We want the VMs running on the two "main site" servers to be replicated to the DR server nightly. I dont want to have to log in and start a backup job every night.... I will need the backup to be able to do incrementals because The 3 VMs that i'm talking about moving totaled together for more than the capacity of 1 server, so i'm going to get two more 600gb drives and switch to raid6 on our DR server. So nightly backups of 2+ TB ain't gonna happen, hense incremental after the initial snapshot. I'm now looking for the most reasonable way to accomplish this.So, do i stick with ESX and get essentials for 666 bucks, and if so what backup do i use?
Do i switch do xen for the cost of me doing the work? if so what backup solution do i use?
Do i switch to Hyper-V 08r2? what backup solution do i use?Thanks for everything guys!
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Hyper-V is free, so you can download the Hyper-V direct install ISO and install that at no cost.
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@hubtechagain said:
Just to Re-Cap here is our ultimate goal with this client.
Currently we are running and will continue to run server 2008 R2. So Hyper-V would be 08r2 which i've heard nobody really likes.
Currently have 3 hosts, each exactly the same 64GB of ram and 2.2TB raid 10.
Going to re-purpose one host to become a DR server colocated in a datacenter about 600 miles away(not an important detail but whatever).
We want the VMs running on the two "main site" servers to be replicated to the DR server nightly. I dont want to have to log in and start a backup job every night.... I will need the backup to be able to do incrementals because The 3 VMs that i'm talking about moving totaled together for more than the capacity of 1 server, so i'm going to get two more 600gb drives and switch to raid6 on our DR server. So nightly backups of 2+ TB ain't gonna happen, hense incremental after the initial snapshot. I'm now looking for the most reasonable way to accomplish this.So, do i stick with ESX and get essentials for 666 bucks, and if so what backup do i use?
Do i switch do xen for the cost of me doing the work? if so what backup solution do i use?
Do i switch to Hyper-V 08r2? what backup solution do i use?Thanks for everything guys!
Why would you run Hyper-V 2008R2? You can run Server 2008/R2 on top of Hyper-V server 2012 R2.
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@hubtechagain said:
Currently we are running and will continue to run server 2008 R2. So Hyper-V would be 08r2 which i've heard nobody really likes.
Why would them having 2008 R2 have any connection to the HyperV level? I feel like this has been covered several times but just keeps coming back. I can understand that they flatly refuse to update, but that's not what is stated. What is stated here doesn't mean anything, what Windows you have is not related to what HyperV you have.
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Switch to Hyper-v and invest the money in the Veeam backup solution. They will save a lot of money in the long run.
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so hyper v 2012 = hypervisor and is free?
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Given the costs and the specific needs, I feel like XenServer and StorageCraft might be the most cost effective. All you have to license is the StorageCraft.
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@hubtechagain said:
so hyper v 2012 = hypervisor and is free?
Hyper-V 2012 R2. Is a hypervisor and like all hypervisors is free.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Given the costs and the specific needs, I feel like XenServer and StorageCraft might be the most cost effective. All you have to license is the StorageCraft.
XenServer is awesome. I have never used StorageCraft but have seen them in the community, they seem to have a good product.
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Because there are only three VMs to convert, I feel like the cost of conversion is likely to be very competitive (and in your favour personally because the money goes to you instead of to VMware, but that should not be a deciding factor, just one of those facts of consulting life) with licensing ESXi while providing many additional features and lowering low term risk. If it was a hundred tiny VMs, maybe the opposite. But three big ones, not much manual effort, hopefully.
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Veeam backs up to it's own file type - I don't think you can just load those files up on a new host and make them work like this scenario mentions.
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@coliver said:
@hubtechagain said:
so hyper v 2012 = hypervisor and is free?
Hyper-V 2012 R2. Is a hypervisor and like all hypervisors is free.
Well, that's not quite right..
Sure ESXi has a free version, but that free version doesn't include the backup APIs, so it's not Apples to Apples.
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@coliver said:
@hubtechagain said:
so hyper v 2012 = hypervisor and is free?
Hyper-V 2012 R2. Is a hypervisor and like all hypervisors is free.
It is important to note that this is all hypervisors on the market today. It's nothing intrinsic to hypervisors, just the market will not sustain a non-free hypervisor so the existence of one has not happened. In theory one could be non-free in the future, but unlikely.
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@Dashrender said:
Sure ESXi has a free version, but that free version doesn't include the backup APIs, so it's not Apples to Apples.
But the hypervisor itself is free, completely free. ALL of the virtualization is free. The backup API is a different animal and in no way makes the hypervisor less free by not existing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
@hubtechagain said:
so hyper v 2012 = hypervisor and is free?
Hyper-V 2012 R2. Is a hypervisor and like all hypervisors is free.
It is important to note that this is all hypervisors on the market today. It's nothing intrinsic to hypervisors, just the market will not sustain a non-free hypervisor so the existence of one has not happened. In theory one could be non-free in the future, but unlikely.
Right, I didn't think I needed to clarify that, it is a good point though.
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@scottalanmiller Would StorageCraft in this case basically just sync his VM's from one client to another at a given point in time? I think that is real goal here. If the main site dies, Hub wants to connect to the VM host in the remote DC and just turn on the VMs there so they company is back on line.
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There is one option not mentioned here that I don't think is a good fit here but has to be mentioned because from a technical perspective I am pretty sure is the best option, but of the OP is not an expert on this probably is not something that he wants to learn on the customer's dime: DRBD Proxy.
DRBD is what makes XenServer able to do HA for free. DRBD Proxy is an add on for the storage layer that allows DRBD to natively handle the asynchronous replication to the DR site using nothing but the existing tools and technologies. No need for backup products or third party products at all. Everything can be handled by the Xen / Linux / DRBD stack for both the local as well as the remote site!
Still want backups, of course, but you can use any backup technology or product for that and do not need to worry about the replication piece. It would be an integrated cluster between the two sites.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller Would StorageCraft in this case basically just sync his VM's from one client to another at a given point in time? I think that is real goal here. If the main site dies, Hub wants to connect to the VM host in the remote DC and just turn on the VMs there so they company is back on line.
Yes, it would be an incremental backup from one site to the other. As well as taking normal "on site" backups. It's a full backup utility.
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Dash, you are 1000000% correct.
