from reader Mark who was less than enthusiastic about Hyper-V.
Here are some more of your thoughts on the Microsoft hypervisor:
Sounds like he has a axe to grind. Hyper-V demonstrates a much more mature
software product than the pre 1.0 that the reviewer exclaims. I have found
Hyper-V to be an extremely stable and flexible product with a full Windows
2008 install or with a Server Core, the latter being much more locked down
and hacker-safe.
In the next year or two, this product will have "world-class"
written all over it.
-Howard
The issue at hand is that everyone (including Microsoft) is comparing
this product to VMware ESX. Just because they strip the Start menu out of
the OS to make Server Core, doesn't mean this is a bare-bones hypervisor.
It's merely an evolution of Virtual Server allowing deeper penetration into
VMware-entrenched territory. Now with the use of clustering, you can perform
cold migrations and have the ability to use a ridiculous amount of processors
in a VM.
There are other more glaring problems than killing a host through the
parent partition -- like not being able to over-commit the level of RAM or
iSCSI-only support. Hyper-V is a good ESX 1.0 competitor but no one will take
it seriously until you get those two limitations straightened out, along with
Live Migration.
-Lee
I have been using Hyper-V for about two months with few problems except
for the following:
- NO support for wireless adapters. Yes, you may argue that there is
no place for wireless in a server environment, but what about us developers
who emulate the complete client system on our laptops? I have been told
that the reason is that Microsoft can not clone the MAC address of the wireless
-- but it worked with Virtual PC!
- Still no USB support.
As to running out of resources on the root/parent machine, that has never
been a problem. I have configured it as core and not used the core machine
for anything (other than Hyper-V). Bottom line, I think it is a good product
and will become even better when Exchange 2007 is certified to run on Hyper-V.
-Tim
VMware Enterprise has many very cool features that Hyper-V lacks, but
the reality is that Hyper-V is version 1 and really cheap to buy and use!
For a test environment, it works great and is easy to use and set up. Heck,
VMware now gives some of its products away for free in reaction to/anticipation
of Microsoft's entry to the virtualization market.
The writing is on the wall for VMware. By the time Hyper-V is in rev
3 or 4, it will be able to support enterprise virtualization very well. Why
pay 5K a processor for VMware Enterprise when you can get it much cheaper
in Windows? Why hire a VMware OS expert when anyone that can admin Windows
can admin Hyper-V?
-Chris
I'm planning to try Hyper-V as a small computer science experiment so
that I can run Vista and XP in parallel. Toward this end, I built a new machine.
I've installed Vista Ultimate on this machine while waiting for the Hyper-V
RTM and discovered that it does a good job of supporting the hardware the
Vista analyzer said wouldn't be supported (Epson Perfection 1650 scanner and
ATI HDTV Wonder). But even so, I want to continue with my experiment to see
what happens and possibly write up my experience for the benefit of others.
This is going to be a budget project; I got Vista Ultimate and a one-year
Windows 2008 trial from Microsoft for free. Now my wait for Hyper-V is over
and I'm ready to start.
But where to start? This is the purpose of this e-mail. Do I have to
build a new system from scratch, starting with Win08, reinstall Vista, etc.?
Or can I "import" an existing installation of Vista and install
a new version of XP? And what do I do with the downloadable images Microsoft
provides? Should I use a core Win08 60-day trial and just extend it three
more times as Microsoft suggests? Then can I update that install with my one-year
trial product key? Can I extend my one-year trial three times? Does virtualization
share peripheral hardware (i.e., NICs) or do I really need to have two machines
worth of hardware on one motherboard? It doesn't seem likely that two OSes
can share the same MAC/IP address, I must admit, but that would be quite a
problem if I wanted to run 12 OSes as "astute reader Mark" desires
to do.
Keep the info coming. I'm indeed about as giddy as Mark suggests but
I'm not going to let his comments spoil my buzz. I can see from his comments
why an actual server administrator might be a bit less than over-enthused
by Hyper-V 1.0. If I can get just XP Pro and Vista Ultimate to coexist, I'll
be one happy camper.
-Eric