Type 1 Hypervisor Poll

[Marshalus Veteran]

 

 

Sometimes called a ?bare metal hypervisor? or ?native? because it runs directly on a bare metal physical server, a type 1 hypervisor has direct access to the hardware. With a type 1 hypervisor, there is no operating system to load as the hypervisor that you load IS the operating system.

via http://www.virtualizationsoftware.com/type-1-hypervisors/

 

I'm curious to see what hypervisors people are using. Please keep your voting limited to what you actually have running in production, not just testing in a lab or at home. I'll probably throw up a similar poll centered around type-2 (VirtualBox/VMware Workstation) workloads.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

VMWare ESXi 5.5 here.

 

I likely will give Hyper-V some evaluation time on some spare metal I have.

[+BudMan MVC]

Here at work we have esxi, hyper-v and citrix xenserver running.. Supporting different customers and their needs.

[Max Norris]

I've set up a number of both ESXi and Hyper-V installations for various clients, plus a Hyper-V setup here, work related, getting rather fond of that one.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Hyper-V for all my VMs. I have used others but I just stay with this cuz I like it and it works for me.

[Sikh]

Esxi here. Got into virtualization with esxi and just stuck with it.

Also from what I've seen and haven't put much research into it hyper v requires a windows server to run on which means technically you would pay for 2(?) Licenses instead of 1 like you would with VMware esxi.

Again that's my impression and I could be wrong.

[riceBox]

We use ESXi at work and for the clients.

[Brian M. Veteran]

As work we use ESXi for everything.

[Skiver Veteran]

In my department we use;

 

Hyper V (2008 and 2012 building in progress)
ESX with a mix of versions
Citrix < not really sure about this one much

Mainly for Software compatibility testing and development labs.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Hyper-V running on Server 2008 R2.

[Xahid]

KVM at work !

Tested Vmware & MS Hyper-V too much resource hungery.

[REM2000]

Pretty much all Hyper-V's ranging from 2008R2 - 2012R2, The 2012R2 version of Hyper-V is incredible.

[tonyh2004]

_{Hyper V all the way totally brilliant}

[Aergan]

Here at work we have esxi, hyper-v and citrix xenserver running.. Supporting different customers and their needs.

 

Ditto. There seemed to be a 3 for 2 deal when they were rolling out our infrastructure.

[ITFiend]

Esxi here. Got into virtualization with esxi and just stuck with it.

Also from what I've seen and haven't put much research into it hyper v requires a windows server to run on which means technically you would pay for 2(?) Licenses instead of 1 like you would with VMware esxi.

Again that's my impression and I could be wrong.

 

Hyper-V is a free standalone product, built-in to Windows 8 and above Professional & Enterprise SKU's, as well as Windows Server Standard and Datacenter. As such Hyper-V as a feature is as free as ESXi can be.

 

The real cost is management.  In Hyper-V, you may or may not require System Center 2012 for Virtual Machine Manager depending on your management needs.  ESXi requires vCenter long before Hyper-V (at least when used in Standard or Datacenter) requires SCVMM.

 

Frankly, if your server virtualization environment is running Microsoft workloads, then you are wasting money using anything than Hyper-V.  The scale of waste depends on how many processors are being licensed for a third party virtualization platform.  The more you have, the more you shouldn?t be using a third party virtualization vendor.

 

If you are running Windows VDI workloads, well, things are more muddled.  Unidesk supports VMware now, and have been claiming for years that support is coming to Hyper-V. The layering in Unidesk for applications is superior to Application Virtualization.  This makes Hyper-V a poorer option for VDI at this time because of Unidesk.

 

Personally, I wish Microsoft would fully license Unidesk for integration into System Center Configuration Manager and then connect ConfigMgr to SCVMM.  If Microsoft were to implement it there, and then just enable the Windows bootloader to support virtual disk layering, then layering could become an excellent deployment platform for both VDI and physical workstations. (If you are not aware, the Windows 7 and above bootloaders support booting physical machines from virtual disks. Windows 7 can native boot from a VHD, the Windows 8 bootloader gained support for native booting VHDX, and the Windows 8.1 Update 1 bootloader gained support for native booting WIM files.)

 

Linux support for Hyper-V significantly improves with the newest kernel. Install, enable SSH, and your mostly good to go.  Older versions may still require the drivers be installed, and some variants require a config file be changed to enable Hyper-V support. That said, I would personally never attempt to run a production Linux VDI environment from within Hyper-V at this time (if ever).

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

VMware / ESXi. 

 

We're extremely happy with it as a product, despite how much it costs. We've scaled up from like 3 ESXi servers running 10 VM's about 6 years ago to 95% of our x86 estate running on it - so about 60 ESXi servers and approaching 700 Virtual Machines. We architected it well, on good quality storage, and it's just scaled perfectly. 

 

And there's no compelling reason to change away from it at the moment. 

[Sikh]

Hyper-V is a free standalone product, built-in to Windows 8 and above Professional & Enterprise SKU's, as well as Windows Server Standard and Datacenter. As such Hyper-V as a feature is as free as ESXi can be.

The real cost is management. In Hyper-V, you may or may not require System Center 2012 for Virtual Machine Manager depending on your management needs. ESXi requires vCenter long before Hyper-V (at least when used in Standard or Datacenter) requires SCVMM.

Frankly, if your server virtualization environment is running Microsoft workloads, then you are wasting money using anything than Hyper-V. The scale of waste depends on how many processors are being licensed for a third party virtualization platform. The more you have, the more you shouldn?t be using a third party virtualization vendor.

If you are running Windows VDI workloads, well, things are more muddled. Unidesk supports VMware now, and have been claiming for years that support is coming to Hyper-V. The layering in Unidesk for applications is superior to Application Virtualization. This makes Hyper-V a poorer option for VDI at this time because of Unidesk.

Personally, I wish Microsoft would fully license Unidesk for integration into System Center Configuration Manager and then connect ConfigMgr to SCVMM. If Microsoft were to implement it there, and then just enable the Windows bootloader to support virtual disk layering, then layering could become an excellent deployment platform for both VDI and physical workstations. (If you are not aware, the Windows 7 and above bootloaders support booting physical machines from virtual disks. Windows 7 can native boot from a VHD, the Windows 8 bootloader gained support for native booting VHDX, and the Windows 8.1 Update 1 bootloader gained support for native booting WIM files.)

Linux support for Hyper-V significantly improves with the newest kernel. Install, enable SSH, and your mostly good to go. Older versions may still require the drivers be installed, and some variants require a config file be changed to enable Hyper-V support. That said, I would personally never attempt to run a production Linux VDI environment from within Hyper-V at this time (if ever).

Thanks for the detailed response. We run all unix so hyper v won't do us any good seems like. But you are right if your a windows network then hyper v sounds like the obvious choice. I see Microsoft is helping make Linux virtualization better in hyper v.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Thanks for the detailed response. We run all unix so hyper v won't do us any good seems like. But you are right if your a windows network then hyper v sounds like the obvious choice. I see Microsoft is helping make Linux virtualization better in hyper v.

Yeah Azure is driving some improvements in this space. Microsoft won't be able to rock the boat of Amazon without decent Linux support in Azure.

 

This is definitely a good development as it will hopefully keep VMWare on their toes.

 

Like hopefully reversing their decision to mandate all vmx-10 VMs use the vCenter Web Client to edit...

[dragon2611]

KVM for my own machines (Co-lo'd) via proxmox although I'm removing most of that kit now.

 

Also there is a Free Hyper-V server edition available ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205299.aspx ), I have no idea if you need something else to manage it as the last time I played with the standalone Hyper-V server it was the 2008 version and it seemed to have nothing more than a CLI interface.

[rr_dRock]

Esxi here. Got into virtualization with esxi and just stuck with it.

Also from what I've seen and haven't put much research into it hyper v requires a windows server to run on which means technically you would pay for 2(?) Licenses instead of 1 like you would with VMware esxi.

Again that's my impression and I could be wrong.

 

It comes as Hyper-V server as well (which installs as a server core edition), which is free. But the licenses for Windows Server 2012 allows for 1 physical install (IE: the hypervisor), 4 vms on standard and unlimited vms for Datacenter licenses.

 

 

 

Hyper-V, for the reasons explained by Kaedrin.

 

 

EDIT: annnnd, it seems I'm a bit late to the party.

[Squirrelington]

Hyper-V is a free standalone product, built-in to Windows 8 and above Professional & Enterprise SKU's, as well as Windows Server Standard and Datacenter. As such Hyper-V as a feature is as free as ESXi can be.

 

The real cost is management.  In Hyper-V, you may or may not require System Center 2012 for Virtual Machine Manager depending on your management needs.  ESXi requires vCenter long before Hyper-V (at least when used in Standard or Datacenter) requires SCVMM.

 

Frankly, if your server virtualization environment is running Microsoft workloads, then you are wasting money using anything than Hyper-V.  The scale of waste depends on how many processors are being licensed for a third party virtualization platform.  The more you have, the more you shouldn?t be using a third party virtualization vendor.

 

If you are running Windows VDI workloads, well, things are more muddled.  Unidesk supports VMware now, and have been claiming for years that support is coming to Hyper-V. The layering in Unidesk for applications is superior to Application Virtualization.  This makes Hyper-V a poorer option for VDI at this time because of Unidesk.

 

Personally, I wish Microsoft would fully license Unidesk for integration into System Center Configuration Manager and then connect ConfigMgr to SCVMM.  If Microsoft were to implement it there, and then just enable the Windows bootloader to support virtual disk layering, then layering could become an excellent deployment platform for both VDI and physical workstations. (If you are not aware, the Windows 7 and above bootloaders support booting physical machines from virtual disks. Windows 7 can native boot from a VHD, the Windows 8 bootloader gained support for native booting VHDX, and the Windows 8.1 Update 1 bootloader gained support for native booting WIM files.)

 

Linux support for Hyper-V significantly improves with the newest kernel. Install, enable SSH, and your mostly good to go.  Older versions may still require the drivers be installed, and some variants require a config file be changed to enable Hyper-V support. That said, I would personally never attempt to run a production Linux VDI environment from within Hyper-V at this time (if ever).

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205299.aspx

 

There is also a standalone flavor of Windows Server 2012 R2 just for Hyper-V role with other stuff stripped out. I realize the site says evaluation center but it seems to imply that it is a full product and only registration and download is required. There maybe something in the terms that limits it but it seems like it may be an alternative for some folks.

 

  Hyper-V Server is a dedicated stand-alone product that contains the hypervisor, Windows Server driver model, virtualization capabilities, and supporting components such as failover clustering, but does not contain the robust set of features and roles as the Windows Server operating system. As a result, Hyper-V Server produces a small footprint and requires minimal overhead. Organizations consolidating servers where no new Windows Server licenses are required or where the servers being consolidated are running an alternative OS may want to consider Hyper-V Server.

[PGHammer]

Esxi here. Got into virtualization with esxi and just stuck with it.

Also from what I've seen and haven't put much research into it hyper v requires a windows server to run on which means technically you would pay for 2(?) Licenses instead of 1 like you would with VMware esxi.

Again that's my impression and I could be wrong.

Afraid so, Sikh.  Hyper-V is supported on all of the following:

Windows 8 and later (all SKUs except Core)

Windows Server 2003 and later

Microsoft Hyper-V Server

 

Hyper-V Server itself is free.

 

The *sting* in the tail with Hyper-V is that most existing virtualization setups are built around vmWare, and getting companies to switch from vmWare is like getting desktop users to switch from Microsoft Office - downright difficult.

However, if you don't need System Center (and if you are an SMB, you may not), Hyper-V makes a lot more sense than any other Type I hypervisor for the SMB.

 Except on the desktop, Hyper-V's requirements are actually identical to vmWare Player - and lower than ESXi.  Also, unlike ESXi, it does NOT require a dedicated server - though it can be used with one (either Hyper-V Server or Windows Server).

[Marshalus Veteran]

Like hopefully reversing their decision to mandate all vmx-10 VMs use the vCenter Web Client to edit...

Not going to happen. Embrace the Web Client. :)

Also, unlike ESXi, it does NOT require a dedicated server - though it can be used with one (either Hyper-V Server or Windows Server).

There is no reason why I would ever recommend running anything else but the hypervisor roles on your hosts, unless it was directly related to the purposes of virtualization.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

I don't really have a data centre.  I have a server, it runs ESXi 5.1.

I do want to play with KVM, XenServer, Hyper-V - but I'd need another server because to all intents and purposes my current server is 'production'.

 

At work, we are a VMWare house.  Running vCenter and ESXi in a whole host of versions.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Not going to happen. Embrace the Web Client. :)

 

I expect there will be a free web client in the next few versions that will be built into the hypervisor and won't require vCenter and replace the native client.  I just hope it is completely HTML5 (even the console) and doesn't require any plug-ins.