Best Practices - DC in Hyper-V Environment.
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@coliver said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
So is ESXi.
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
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@thecreativeone91 said:
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
All HyperV is bare metal. It's a type 1 hypervisor. There is no way to use it any other way.
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I got you @MattSpeller no need to rock the boat
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@coliver said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
So is ESXi.
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
Hyper-V isn't free for all features either. To get some of the more advanced stuff you need SCVMM. Not that the majority of SMBs actually need the advanced stuff to begin with.
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@coliver said:
If you are looking at cost, why not look at XenServer? It has all the enterprise capabilities for free in an easy to use package. Full disclosure, I deployed a Hyper-V infrastructure.
It's easier too. Downsides to XenServer is the lack of free backup options for small scale and lack of simple replicated local storage. You can do it, but it is more complicated (by quite a bit.) But overall, XenServer is my favourite.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
All HyperV is bare metal. It's a type 1 hypervisor. There is no way to use it any other way.
Yes but it's inside the OS we well. They call it Server 2008/2012 with Hyper-v or Hyper-v 2008/2012 Server.
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@coliver said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 @Hubtech
Yes, to elaborate, $$$$$$
MS almost gives away their stuff to non-profits and thus... hyper-v everything.
And Hyper-v baremetal is free.
So is ESXi.
All four bare metal hypervisors have a free version: HyperV, VMware ESXi, Xen / XenServer and KVM.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
HyperV isn't free with all the features either. But with more than ESXi. I think blocking the backup API was SO foolish on VMware's part. It made their free version never make sense. Either XenServer or HyperV is always a better choice.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
HyperV isn't free with all the features either. But with more than ESXi. I think blocking the backup API was SO foolish on VMware's part. It made their free version never make sense. Either XenServer or HyperV is always a better choice.
I get what you mean but you can back up the machines, just not at the block level. While this is a limiter, for someone who uses it in a very small business or even at home, this isn't really an issue. I use my UEB to back up at the file level. It's not as efficient and recovery times are slower, but it works.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Yes but it's inside the OS we well. They call it Server 2008/2012 with Hyper-v or Hyper-v 2008/2012 Server.
That OS is actually an interface running in a VM. It's not on bare metal and HyperV is never "in" it. It looks that way for some weird marketing reason. They go way out of their way to give the impression that it is somehow on top of Windows. But it isn't in any fashion. The installer shims it beneath the Windows instance and does a P2V of the running Windows system transparently so you never know that you have switched to looking at a VM with console redirection.
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@coliver said:
Hyper-V isn't free for all features either. To get some of the more advanced stuff you need SCVMM.
That doesn't make Hyper-V not free. It's still free. System Center is to Hyper-V as VMware vCenter Server is to ESXi
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@coliver said:
Hyper-V isn't free for all features either. To get some of the more advanced stuff you need SCVMM.
That doesn't make Hyper-V not free. It's still free. System Center is to Hyper-V as VMware vCenter Server is to ESXi
It enabled features, though, similar to how ESXi does it. It's better, but still some things aren't available in another way AFAIK.
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@scottalanmiller I really don't blame VMware for the decision. More for free is always nicer, but you get the backup API portion with their lowest level of licensing, so I don't see it as unreasonable.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@scottalanmiller I really don't blame VMware for the decision. More for free is always nicer, but you get the backup API portion with their lowest level of licensing, so I don't see it as unreasonable.
Oh it's not unreasonable. Just ridiculously dumb. They've created the HyperV market and started their own demise. Which hypervisor vendor has the worst long term prospects? Vmware.
Xen and KVM have a bright future, possibly through merging, but both are healthy, growing and own critical market niches. HyperV is rapidly taking over the SMB and expanding its scope. VMware is just losing ground. It's being crushed by high end Xen on one side and low cost HyperV on the other. VMware is huge and has a long way to fall, but their market is evaporating rapidly.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@coliver said:
Hyper-V isn't free for all features either. To get some of the more advanced stuff you need SCVMM.
That doesn't make Hyper-V not free. It's still free. System Center is to Hyper-V as VMware vCenter Server is to ESXi
Not that I am aware of... there are still features that are baked into the hypervisor that can only be accessed through SCVMM. Or at least that was the case when I last looked into it.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
HyperV isn't free with all the features either. But with more than ESXi. I think blocking the backup API was SO foolish on VMware's part. It made their free version never make sense. Either XenServer or HyperV is always a better choice.
I get what you mean but you can back up the machines, just not at the block level. While this is a limiter, for someone who uses it in a very small business or even at home, this isn't really an issue. I use my UEB to back up at the file level. It's not as efficient and recovery times are slower, but it works.
Traditional Backups don't understand Virtulization They also may not be hardware/platform independent. You also can't do snapshots inside of the OS.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
ESXi isn't free with all feature. ESXi does have a free version but the essentials license are $560/year if you want updates which is for three servers (with a max of 2 cpu's per server).
HyperV isn't free with all the features either. But with more than ESXi. I think blocking the backup API was SO foolish on VMware's part. It made their free version never make sense. Either XenServer or HyperV is always a better choice.
I get what you mean but you can back up the machines, just not at the block level. While this is a limiter, for someone who uses it in a very small business or even at home, this isn't really an issue. I use my UEB to back up at the file level. It's not as efficient and recovery times are slower, but it works.
Traditional Backups don't understand Virtulization They also may not be hardware/platform independent. You also can't do snapshots inside of the OS.
I agree here, VM level backup is a HUGE feature. It's massive. It is needed for rapid bare metal recovery. It literally makes ESXi Free version a worthless toy. Good code, no value.
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@scottalanmiller said:
VMware is huge and has a long way to fall, but their market is evaporating rapidly.
If Microsoft spent time making Hyper-v management separate from the domain and making tools for it to be managed with out system center it would have already replaced most of vmware. XenServer and Ctrix XenDesktop are already doing more VDI deployments and better than VMware is.
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Hyper-V has matured into a robust and reliable HyperVisor and I have been using it reliably since the first iteration. With 2012 R2 the feature set makes it a no brainier when compared to ESX on purely cost basis.
Back to the original question regarding having a DC on the same box as the Hyper-V Hyper-visor and having it attached to the domain.
Two ways I can say I would set this up.
First way if I had access to only one Bare Metal box would be to leave the Hyper-V server off the domain and run it stand alone. This would remove the requirement of having the DC online before you login to the Hyper-V server and control functions.
Second way if I DID have access to another physical box would be to add a second domain controller as a second VM on a Second Hyper-V box. This way you almost always have a DC online to run creds against so you can attached the Hyper-V server to the domain.
Third way I have seen this setup is to have a completely separate domain for just the Hyper-V servers. I have only seen this in very large datacenter deployments so I don't really think this applies.
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@GregoryHall My thought was the 2nd way as well - thank you!
edit: we do have two hyper-v servers, just not enough guts in them to think about HA
