The VMware Administrator′s Guide to

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012

Brien Posey

Microsoft MVMP

@Veeam

About today’s webinar

Thought leadership content from an industry expert

This webinar is recorded and you will get a link to replay

the webinar as well as download slides.

Ask questions!

About our speaker

Nine time Microsoft MVP

Freelance author and industry analyst since 2001

Formerly CIO for a national chain of hospitals and

healthcare facilities

Served as a network engineer for the DoD at Fort Knox

Worked as a network administrator for some of the

country’s largest insurance companies

Agenda

Why bother learning Hyper-V?

Hyper-V and VMware basics

Hyper-V equivalents to VMware features

Full disclosure

I am a Microsoft MVP and work with Hyper-V on a daily

basis.

This presentation is not about convincing you to switch

to Hyper-V, or about which hypervisor is better.

The purpose of this presentation is to expose VMware

admins to Hyper-V and Visa Versa.

Why learn Hyper-V?

VMware is the undisputed leader of the server virtualization market – for now.

Hyper-V 3.0 and VMware 5 are more similar than many admins realize.

Heterogeneous hypervisor environments are sure to become more common

Hyper-V costs less and is less expensive. You might encounter Hyper-V as a result of: ● Corporate mergers

● Internal transitions

● Low budget projects

A basic deployment

VMware Hyper-V

VMware uses a self

contained OS that installs

directly on a dedicated

server.

Although there is a

standalone version of

Hyper-V, most Hyper-V

deployments run as a

service on top of a parent

Windows OS.

Hardware considerations

VMware Hyper-V

Requires a 64-bit CPU with

hardware level virtualization

Requires a 64-bit CPU with

hardware level virtualization

Very limited support for

SATA drives

Works with SATA, SAS, and

SSDs

Requires dedicated storage

for the datastore

Doesn’t technically require

dedicated storage, but best

practice is to use dedicated

storage

Scalability VMware vSphere 5 Hyper-V 3.0

Maximum RAM supported within a VM 1 TB 512 GB

Maximum virtual hard disk size 2 TB 16 TB if using VHDX

Maximum number of virtual CPUs per virtual machine 32 32

The maximum number of virtual machines per host that

can be powered on at any given time 512 1024

Maximum number of virtual machines in a cluster 3000 4000

Maximum number of hosts per cluster 32 63

Maximum RAM per host server 2 TB 2 TB

Interacting with the hypervisor

VMware Hyper-V

Basic configuration is

performed through the

server console

Basic configuration is

performed through the

Hyper-V Manager (on the

server)

VM configuration and

management is performed

though the vSphere Client

VM configuration and

management is performed

through the Hyper-V

Manager or through

Windows PowerShell.

Virtual machines

VMware Hyper-V

Enlightenment VMware Tools Integration

Services

Settings Right click on the

VM in the

vSphere client

and choose Edit

Settings

Right click on the

VM in the Hyper-

V Manager and

choose Settings

Advanced features

The features discussed so far represent the most basic

aspects of server virtualization.

Both Hyper-V and VMware offer a number of advanced

features that are designed to make server virtualization

practical in a production environment.

Many of these features exist on both platforms, but have

different names.

Hyper-V main areas of improvement

Memory

Storage

Networking

High Availability

Disaster Recovery

Memory

Memory over commitment

Memory ballooning

Memory over commitment

Memory over commitment allows virtual machines to be

collectively assigned more memory than is physically

present in the host, allowing for greater VM density.

VMware has had a memory over commitment feature

for quite some time.

Microsoft introduced memory over commitment in

Hyper-V 2.0 (Windows Server 2008 R2).

Memory ballooning

Memory ballooning allows VMs to release unused

memory after the initial boot process completes.

Memory ballooning is supported by both VMware and

Hyper-V

Storage

Storage support

Storage migrations

Concurrent storage migrations

Low cost storage options

Offload Data Transfer

Storage support

VMware Hyper-V

Block level storage iSCSI and Fibre

Channel

iSCSI and Fibre

Channel

File system storage NFS SMB

Storage migrations

Storage migration refers to the ability to move a running

virtual machine from one host to another.

Microsoft refers to this as “Live Migration”. VMware calls

it vMotion.

Live Migration was introduced in Hyper-V 2.0 (Windows

Server 2008 R2).

Hyper-V 3.0 still offers live migration, but removes the

requirement for shared storage.

Concurrent storage migrations

VMware allows for 2 concurrent storage migrations per

datastore and up to 8 concurrent migrations per host.

Concurrent live migrations are new to Hyper-V 3.0,

which supports an unlimited number of simultaneous

live migrations.

Low cost storage options

VMware – use vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA). ● Creates shared storage from local disks

● Additional license is required.

Hyper-V – Shared storage is not required in version 3.0 ● Hosts can use local storage.

Offloaded data transfer

Both VMware and Hyper-V can offload file transfers to

the storage hardware ● VMware uses VAAI (vStorage API for Array Integration)

● Hyper-V / Windows Server 2012 use Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX)

Networking

NIC Teaming

Extensible Virtual Switch

NIC teaming

NIC teaming allows multiple physical NICs to work

together to achieve higher bandwidth and fault

tolerance.

NIC teaming is supported by VMware and Hyper-V 3.0.

Earlier versions of Hyper-V allowed NIC teaming, but

only at the hardware level.

Extensible virtual switch

The extensible virtual switch lets third party vendors to

build extensions for the virtual switch.

This will allow virtual switches to be monitored and

managed in a manner similar to that used for physical

switches.

VMware and Hyper-V both offer an extensible virtual

switch.

High availability

Failover Clustering

Migration of running virtual machines

Concurrent migrations

Live migration – Beyond the cluster

Controllable virtual machine placement

Failover clustering

Failover Clustering

VMware Hyper-V

Feature Name VMware HA Failover Clustering

Maximum Number of

Nodes

32 63

Maximum Number of

Virtual Machines per

Cluster

3000 4000

Shared Storage

Supported

Yes Yes

Shared Storage Required Yes No

Concurrent virtual machine migrations

vMotion Live Migration

2 per datastore, 8 per host (4 on a 1

Gigabit connection, 8 on a 10

gigabit connection)

Unlimited in Hyper-V 3.0, but

bandwidth must be considered.

Limited to 1 in Hyper-V 2.0

Live Migration – Beyond the cluster

Hyper-V 3.0 has the ability to live migrate virtual

machines to nodes that exist outside of the cluster.

VMware does not yet have this capability.

Controllable virtual machine placement

It is sometimes necessary to control virtual machine placement

during failover.

Some VMs must reside on the same host. Other VMs should never

reside on the same host.

If a host is overloaded VMs must be prioritized to control which VMs

start and which do not. VMware Hyper-V

Host rules, Affinity rules, and Anti-Affinity

rules

Cluster properties can be configured with

Affinity and Anti-Affinity rules. VM startup

can be prioritized.

Disaster recovery

Incremental block level backups

Disaster recovery options

Snapshot merge

Incremental block level backups

VMware Hyper-V

Based on Change Block Tracking Windows Server 2012 supports

incremental backups of virtual hard

disks.

Replication-based disaster recovery options

VMware Hyper-V

Feature vCenter Site Recovery

Manager

Hyper-V Replica

Licensing Requires additional

license

Built-in to Hyper-V 3.0

Snapshot support

VMware Hyper-V 2.0 Hyper-V 3.0

Snapshots can be

deleted or merged

without restarting the

VM.

Snapshots were fully

supported, but could

only be deleted or

merged while the VM

was offline.

Snapshots can be

deleted or merged

while the virtual

machine is running.

Hot resource allocation

Hot resource allocation refers to adding physical

resources to a VM while it is running.

VMware Hyper-V

Memory Yes Yes

Disk Yes Yes

CPU Cores Yes No

Conclusion

Hyper-V is finally becoming a contender

Virtualization admins may soon have to support both

platforms

Q&A

Thank you for attending!