Virtualization Redemption?
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@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.
What's the conversion time? How many are there? ESXi Essentials is not a one time cost but a long term commitment to recurring costs. Yes the biggest one is up front, but you have to just keep paying both as you maintain your license and even more as you want more hosts, CPUs, memory, features, etc.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
If I recall correctly Veeam proper really isn't that expensive, Unitrends isn't either may be worth looking into a paid version of both of those.
Boy, what is your definition of not expensive? Unitrends the last time I looked at them were $1500+ for their baby appliance, and $2000+ for a VM (I think that allowed the backup of something like 2-3 TB).
That said I overheard @KatieUnitrends tell someone at SWorld that Unitrends now has a $399 option, but I didn't get any details.
Are you quoting me for effect? lol
Fixed her name.
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
If I recall correctly Veeam proper really isn't that expensive, Unitrends isn't either may be worth looking into a paid version of both of those.
Boy, what is your definition of not expensive? Unitrends the last time I looked at them were $1500+ for their baby appliance, and $2000+ for a VM (I think that allowed the backup of something like 2-3 TB).
That said I overheard Katey tell someone at SWorld that Unitrends now has a $399 option, but I didn't get any details.
Hmm, I could have sworn that they offered the 3TB backup thing in the $1000 range. That doesn't seem very expensive to me if you are considering VMWare and this is critical infrastructure.
Compared to Veeam at $800 it's not bad - though there is no size limit on Veeam.
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@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
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@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
@coliver said:
If I recall correctly Veeam proper really isn't that expensive, Unitrends isn't either may be worth looking into a paid version of both of those.
Boy, what is your definition of not expensive? Unitrends the last time I looked at them were $1500+ for their baby appliance, and $2000+ for a VM (I think that allowed the backup of something like 2-3 TB).
That said I overheard Katey tell someone at SWorld that Unitrends now has a $399 option, but I didn't get any details.
Hmm, I could have sworn that they offered the 3TB backup thing in the $1000 range. That doesn't seem very expensive to me if you are considering VMWare and this is critical infrastructure.
is that the appliance cost?
No VM. I could be wrong though.
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@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. -
@Dashrender said:
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.
I would assume that he has other work to do as well, not only this. Likely there is a lot of time to do this as a background task. Not necessarily, but likely. If not, this project probably would have moved a lot faster because it would have been a focus rather than a background task. Typically this is something you kick off while watching television or having dinner on a weekend, not something you do while sitting on site at the desk. And that's for internal or consulting staff, nothing about this particular circumstance.
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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.
