Exploring Hyper-V from a VMware User's Perspective

all right friends this is the third installment on evaluating alternative hypervisors now that broadcom is making VMware untenable to use for home labs and small to medium businesses in the last two videos I focused on xcp and proxmox as alternatives to esxi if you haven't seen those videos check them out now it's time to talk about the third most requested hypervisor and believe it or not it's Microsoft hyperv let's get to it hey there home lbers and self posters Rich here this video is the third video focused on evaluating your options if you're coming from the world of VMware and esxi with this video in particular being focused on Microsoft hyperv again my background is in VMware so I'm going to be looking at this from that perspective and giving you my thoughts and opinions along the way and I'm going to be honest with you all I am personally not a fan of Microsoft hyperv but I will endeavor to be as open-minded and as Fair as I can v as we always do I think we should start with some background on hyperv and the history of the product first the origin story of Microsoft hyperv began with its initial release on June 26 2008 as part of an update to Windows Server 2008 it was a significant step for Microsoft marking its entry into the hardware virtualization space dominated by VMware and Citrix on October 1st 2008 Microsoft also released hyperv server built on Windows Server 2008 core this Standalone version of hyperv was freely available requiring no software license to operate with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 hyperv received several enhancements including live migration of VMS expanded support for operating systems and improved performance and stability with the release of Windows Server 2012 hyperv saw a major overhaul introducing features like hyperv replica for Disaster Recovery a new virtual hard disk format and network virtualization scalability was also significantly improved supporting much larger VMS and physical hosts them before the following year with the release of Server 2012 R2 hyperv saw an introduction of Gen 2 virtual machines enhanced live migration capabilities and storage quality of service with the release of Windows Server 2016 came support for Docker and containers nested virtualization and shielded VMS for improved security hyperv also received improvements to its software defined networking and storage capabilities Windows Server 2019 brought features focused on cloud and hybrid environments with hyperv gaining integration with Azure including azure backup Azure file sync and the storage migration service it also introduced Windows admin Center for easier management of servers clusters and hypercon converged infrastructure 2019 also saw the announcement from Microsoft officially ending the free hyperv server with the 2019 Edition being the final release support for hyperv Server 2019 will reach the end of support in 2029 the announcement of hyperv server was seen by many as the end of hyperv however there are no official plans known from Microsoft to allude to the end of hyperv as a built-in component of Windows Server so that's the history of hyperv in a nutshell since it's always been a feature add-on to Windows Server it makes sense that its feature enhancements are also tied to each Windows Server release I have to admit I didn't even know there was a free Standalone version of hyperv and when that announcement came out about its end I also assumed like many that it was the end of hyperv itself clearly it is not speaking of that this comparison is not based on the free hyperv server but instead is using server 2022 and the hyperv add-on within and with that let's talk about hyperv and how it compares to esxi let's start with architecture both Microsoft hyperv and VMR esxi are type 1 hypervisors however there are key differences in their deployment methodologies esxi is very Lightweight by Design only containing a minimum footprint to function and once booted runs solely from Ram all of the VMware esxi kernel is closed Source Microsoft hperb is a component of Windows server and as such is deployed after a complete setup of the Windows Server OS because Microsoft offers both a core or gooy list version of server and the full desktop experience version of Windows Server Footprints of a hyperv deployment can be dramatically different hyperv is also closed Source onto performance while performance is highly dependent on what's running in your workloads these days performance between the two hypervisors looks to be nearly equivalent version 8 of vxi supports a maximum of 896 logical CPUs and up to 24 terab of ram per host hyperv supports up to 512 logical CPUs and a maximum of 48 tby of ram in server 2022 now let's talk about usability both esxi and hyperv have built-in management goys for host and virtual machine management however that's where the similarities end esxi embedded web-based HTML 5 GUI is solely focused on singular host in virtual machine management and the extended functionality requires V Center in contrast Hyper's built-in management interface is not web based and there are a variety of ways a user can advancer hyperv but all access must be done from a Windows Os or a Powershell command line hyperv does support the same host in virtual machine management functionality but also provides extended features like clustering live migrations and backup functionality once again it's tough to compare these two management interfaces together for a few reasons for one hyperv is more than just a singular host in VM management system you can certainly just manage those things and a lot more there is no Venter equivalent for hyperv in terms of additional software however you will need to use different management consoles to manage different aspects of hyperv for example singular host management can be done using the hyperv manager but cluster management is handled through the failover cluster manager console or scvmm let's talk about features next esxi and Venter offer a wide range of advanced features including distributed resource scheduling High availability fa tolerance v motion which is vmware's term for live migration of VMS storage vmotion and API control however all these features require additional licensing to unlock by default the best you'll get with esxi is basic VM management out of the box without V Center hyperv also supports clustering live workload migrations live storage migrations High availability and workload balancing based on utilization for the most part hyperv is nearly feature complete with the licensable features of VMware now let's talk about scalability esxi is very well known for its scalability and is used in some of the largest virtual environments in the world esxi is fully capable of managing over a th000 VMS without issue and when adding Venter into the equation it has the ability to support up to 2 200 virtual hosts with many tens of thousands of VMS no sweat hyperv also features scaling and its adoption has been strong in the Enterprise space primarily because it's a free feature of the Windows Server platform hyperv natively supports over a th000 VMS running on a single host and in terms of clustering will service and manage up to 64 nodes per cluster with up to 8,000 VMS running and for the business-minded viewers let's talk about support VMware offers extensive professional support trainings certifications an extremely well-maintained public knowledge base and a large large community behind it that being said with the changes in broadcom's new ownership it's unclear exactly how that will affect product support access to the KB and so on hyperv being an add-on feature to Windows server has a variety of Support options via Microsoft support website Community forums and by contacting Microsoft directly for support Microsoft does not offer a certification path specifically for hyperv however there are numerous Windows Server certifications available and lastly cost here's where the rubber meets the road and for vmore esxi the most Rec changes being made to licensing by broadcom Will effectively put VMware out of the reach for most people it's very likely the reason you're watching this video now and to add insult to injury as of February 12th 2024 the VMware esxi free hypervisor is no longer available when considering licensing for hyperv on Windows Server your costs are dependent on which version of Windows Server you choose for Windows Server 2022 the data center version clocks in at 6,155 USD and licenses you to run unlimited windows VMS in hyperv the standarded Edition comes in at 1,69 USD and allows you up to two licensed Windows VMS there are no licensing limitations for Linux VMS and as previously mentioned you can still download the free Microsoft hperb 2019 server today which has an end of life in 2029 all right overview out of the way here let's look at some real world examples of the two side by side along with my thoughts on both as I mentioned earlier there are numerous ways to manage hyperv and I'm going to be using the built-in hyperv manager console I'm choosing to use the hyperv manager specifically because that's what comes with the default installation of hyperv yes I'm aware of Windows admin Center and scvmm feel free to tell me I'm doing it wrong and which alternative console I should use in the comments the first stop here is to take a look at both consoles and compare here are both consoles side by side and right away we see a huge disparity between the two we'll start with the incumbent esxi the esxi console provides some information about the physical host like esxi version information OEM Hardware manufacturer processor type count and speed and RAM amount on the host as well as the URL for web management in terms of configuration pressing F2 and logging into the host provides you with very basic management functionality in essence the most you can do is configure or change your management interface settings enable support functionality like enabling SSH or local prompt access enable lockdown mode and that's about it via F12 you can M shutting down or rebooting the host itself outside of these basic functions VMware expects anything Beyond this to happen from within the built-in HDML 5 management web GOI and in contrast hyperv doesn't have a console since hyperv doesn't exist without being installed on Windows your only interaction with it is via the graphical interface of Windows Server regardless of whether you're running Windows Server core or with the desktop experience the disparity between these two is pretty Stark and coming from the world of VMware I would typically complain about how a console is an absolutely critical component to a hypervisor and that is still the case but being is that the console is just Windows there really is no need for a discrete console for hyperv so let's dig into their respective management goys now and the differences between the two as I mentioned earlier both systems have a built-in management goey but how you access them is radically different if you watch the last two videos you can skip to the next timestamp as we'll be showing the same examples of the esxi web UI this is the web management UI of esxi landing on the main dashboard you're given a summary of all of your host State usage V switch and Port Group configs D doors mounted and free space system information and add a glance graph of overall CPU and RAM usage on the host on the bottom in the recent tasks pane are all of the active and recent tasks that are running or have occurred on the left is your navigation pane where you can dig deeper into your host configuration and monitor your performance Hardware events logs and more in the virtual machine tab you get a full list of the running VMS on the host details about storage usage guest OS config host name CPU and memory usage when you drill down into a specific VM you get health utilization and configuration information snapshot and access to the console as well as all the standard VM management functions like power suspend restart and Hardware configuration options in the storage tab you get an add a glance view of your mounted data stores their utilization and type as well as the ability to create new data stores across the top you view and manage your virtual storage adapters devices and so on when drilling down into a configured data store you view further information about the storage type location post connected virtual machines connected to it and with the data store browser at the top browse the storage system upload and download data and otherwise manage the data store as desired the last tab to touch on in the web guei is the networking tab at a glance you see all of the port groups configured on your host and drilling down into any of them provides you with detailed information about the port group VMS connected V switch that serves the group and a visualization of how the VMS with network interfaces assigned to that Port group connect to the physical Network backing out to the virtual switches Tab and viewing your configured V switches you get an incredibly Rich level of information about all virtual networks on your host the VMS connected to them and how they connect to your physical networks the main networking tab is also where you can view and manage physical network adapters on your host VM kernel Nicks TCP stacks and firewall rules hyperv manager is the gooey interface that installs by default when you install hyperv in Windows Server this guei is only available on Windows as it's based on the Microsoft Management console commonly known as MMC this console can also be installed on most windows and server desktops and can remotely connect to a hyperv server the hyperv manager interface shares some general similarities with the esxi GUI the left pane is focused on host navigation only and doesn't expand out to any components below the top pain lists the current VMS deployed in hyperb including their current state CPU usage assigned memory uptime status and configuration version the middle pane is where any snapshots or in hyper-v terms checkpoints for a VM would appear and down at the very bottom in the smallest pane we see actual information about the selected VM including an absolutely barebone summary with a tiny console a memory tab with basic memory information a networking tab with basic information about the network of the VM and a replication tab that would show you information about the replication status of the VM if that was configured on the right side we have all of the actions available to hyperv starting at the top new allows you to create a virtual machine hard disk or floppy disc and you can import an existing hyperv virtual machine using the import function next option is hyperv settings which is where the bulk of the configurations for hyperv live the first option virtual hard diss allows you to Define where on the file system your host will store the virtual hard diss for your virtual machines in the virtual machine section you define where on your file system you would like to store the configuration files for your virtual machines this is a much different approach compared to VMware VMware by default stores all the data associated with the VM in its own dedicated folder on the data store virtual discs configs snaps and everything else next is is the Numa spanning option which allows you to decide if you want to allow VMS with multiple virtual CPUs to span across multiple physical CPUs in your host it's nice that hyperv is Numa aware and that you have the option to allow Numa node spanning selectively in comparison to VMware the esxi hypervisor will automatically work to keep workloads in the same Numa node to prevent any Numa attacks or performance issues when running VMS next is the live migration setting which allows you if you have multiple hyperv servers to enable or disable incoming and outgoing lab migrations one thing to note here this feature is only available for hyperv servers that are joined to the same active directory domain now on to storage migrations this option allows you to define the number of concurrent storage migrations that can be performed on your hyperv server at any given time it's worth mentioning here that VM storage migrations is something that can be independent of live VM migrations if you want to move a VM data to another storage Target accessible to your local hyperv host you can do so without having to have a cluster this is not something you can do in esxi easily but it is a feature of Venter enhanced session Mode Policy enables a more interactive and feature experience when connecting to VMS using hyperv manager to take advantage of these features the VM has to support it and from my research looks like only Windows VMS do and now replication configuration hyperv provides a replication mechanism for virtual machines to enhance disaster recovery and business continuity this section allows you to enable your server as a replica server and configure settings around handling replications and that's all there is to server settings for hyperv the next section is focused on user interactivity with VM consoles like managing special keyboard Keys changing the combination to break your mouse free from VMS that aren't virtualization Weare how to handle enhanced session mode for VMS that support it and lastly an option to reset checkbox configs across your hyperv server and that's it from a general host configuration standpoint hyperv is pretty sparse however I'm going to cut it some slack here since things like storage configurations and overall host configurations is something that is handled by the windows OS itself and hyperv just sits on top of that and uses those configurations there are two additional configuration sections though that are specific to hyperv Virtual switch management and virtual stand management so let's check those out now virtual switch manager is next hyperv virtual switch manager is where you configure your virtual switches for your host hyperv essentially has three different types of switches external which is a virtual switch that connects to a physical network interface on the host providing VMS assigned to it to have access to the network internal which creates a virtual Network between VMS and the host itself and finally private which creates a virtual Network between VMS only it's hard to compare esxi V switch and Port groups to hyperv because there really is no reason for a VM to have access to the underlying host or its management plane and how your V switches and Port groups are configured in terms of connectivity is how you define what they have access to you can see I have a single virtual switch named external switch already defined on my host clicking on that shows you the extent of the configurability and functionality within I've connected my external switch to a singular network interface on my host it's worth noting here that you can only select one interface to bind to not multiples for redundancy for Network redundancy you need to configure that for the Windows Server itself through whatever means are available for your network interface there's also a subsection to enable or disable switch extensions and prioritize order if needed and lastly we have mac address range where you can Define the entire range of Mac addresses your hyperview host Provisions for each Network connected VM I'm not sure why anyone would want the option to change this considering you can really screw things up on your network but there it is Big differences here in terms of virtual networking between hyperv and esxi as previously mentioned it's clear that Microsoft's approach to providing three options for virtual switches is scoped around hard segmentation zones which is a fine approach in contrast esxi and even Venter for that matter are more configurable and flexible and there's no need for a VM to host only V switch in terms of network redundancy again it's a situation of what the Windows Server host is configured for in terms of physical Network fault tolerance and redundancy and hyperious piggybacks off those available Nick configurations ation one last thing to mention here in contrast on networking between esxi and hyperv is vlans in esxi you define the VLAN at the Port group level so that when you assign any VM to that Port group they're automatically tagged by the hypervisor for that VLAN with hyperv that is not the case VLAN tagging is handled at the virtual Nick level of the VM itself and lastly we have the virtual sand manager which is used for setting up access to fiber channel Sands and at least as far as I'm seeing that's all it does I don't have a fiber channel HBA in my system or a fiber channel s in my home lab and it's 2024 so I scuzzy or bust you can fight me in the comments edit dis starts a wizard that allows you to select and walk through expanding a virtual machine's virtual disc coming from the world of VMware it's a foreign concept to have a dedicated wizard just to increase dis size since in VMware you just pop into the virtual machines configuration settings and increase the disc to whatever new size you want speaking of VM discs hyperv only thin Provisions discs when you create virtual discs for your VMS there's no option for thick provisioning which these days is fine inspect discs just pops open explore window to all of the collection of virtual discs you have on your host again I'll point out that I find it so strange that Microsoft decided to spread the data of virtual machines around like this the next set of shortcuts on the left allows you to stop restart refresh and remove the current hyperv server from the MMC console change columns in your windows and start Windows help and now we're on to the contextual VM actions from this point we're affecting or interacting with the selected VM in in the top middle pane connect will pop open the console for the selected VM and allow you to interact with that VM one nice thing about the hyperv console over esxi is that the console window in hyperv isn't bound to the management guy like it is in the esxi web GUI in hyperv it's a separate window that you can open and minimize which I find Convenient settings pops open the configuration settings for the selected VM for people familiar with virtualization you get similar virtual Hardware options as you do in esxi hyperv has two generations of VMS gen 1 and Gen 2 the difference are numerous but to put it broadly Gen 2 has newer Hardware features and no Legacy Hardware this VM was built as a gen 1 and has more virtual Hardware by default than a gen 2vm you can see Hardware like comports and a floppy disc drive as well as the selection of a legacy network adapter which aren't available in Gen 2 VMS gen 1 VMS cannot hot add new hardware which is why all of the hardware Options under ad Hardware are grayed out Gen 2 VMS can hot add network interfaces but the rest must be done with the VM off gen 1 VMS are also bios boot only UEFI boot is only available under Gen 2 let's run through this quickly bios allows you to modify boot order for the VM Security in gen 1 is deprecated and in Gen 2 allows you to turn on trusted Boot and also supports virtual TPMS something that esxi does not in the memory section you can adjust the total memory provided to a VM and hyperv supports memory hot ad in the processor section you can Define how many virtual cores to assign to a VM but only cores you cannot Define core and socket count the compatibility subsection allows you to enable CPU compatibility for the VM this is similar to vmware's EVC in terms of CPU compatibility for VMS in the cluster the Numa section allows you to modify numat topology as it pertains specifically to the VM hyperv prefers a virtual IDE controller for genine VMS which we see here with the virtual hard disk attached in Gen 2 VMS hyperv defaults to a virtual scuzzy controller for virtual storage both Generations allow to hot add new discs to the VM as mentioned earlier if you wish to expand the virtual disc of a VM you must do so using the edit disc dis wizard on the left pane of the hyperview manager to expand the disc it's not done within the VM settings for the network settings you define which V switch your VM is connected to and you can Define what VLAN to have hyperv tag its traffic as depending on the generation selection of your VM and the type of network adapter chosen there are additional features like Hardware acceleration which are unavailable to the Legacy network adapter and downa management you can rename your VM and have spaces in the name which is great integration services are services that are made available to the VM from the hypervisor but the VM must support them to take advantage of them so basically Windows VMS only checkpoints allows you to Define where a VM snapshots live and what type of snap shots they are hyperv supports checkpoints with memory like VMware does but unlike VMware you can't choose to snap with memory or not at the time you create the snapshot it's based on the VM settings here odd smart paging file location allows you to define the location of the page or swap file for the VM again at a VM level and not at a machine level like vmw esxi automatic start action allows you to set the VM to start with the computer and automatic stop action allows you to Define what happens when you shut down the physical server itself so that's a comparison of the two interfaces now I'm going to talk about the things I like dislike and the good and the bad again coming from my Vore esxi perspective feel free to disagree with me in the comments of this video or on our Discord server here's where I say to you after using hyperv for x amount of weeks I can say that it will satisfy your needs as an alternative to esxi but I'm I'm not going to do that here yes you can run hyperv to run VMS but not all VMS are created equal in hyperv if you're a Windows shop and you're running only Windows VMS knock yourself out hyperv has all the compatibility you'll need to run Windows VMS on Windows Linux is not so lucky for example hyperv supports most Linux dros but the devil is in the details depending on which Linux distribution you're using there are varying degrees of support the website I'm showing you right now runs through the list of what supported and what's not and the gotchas of running Linux on hyperv it's up to you to make sure that what you're running is compatible with hyperv it's because of this I can't really say it's a good replacement for esxi e6i doesn't care one bit what I run in a virtual machine people run Mac OS all day long on VMware something that is not supported in hyperv hell I have a VM of haiku which is an xa6 reimaging of BOS from the '90s and it happily runs in my cluster and works without any issues because esxi has compatibility to support it if your home lab is focused on experimentation and learning it doesn't make any sense to use the hypervisor that imposes limitations on the types of os's it will run all right so let's talk about what I don't like even though it seems like I've already started well let's start with the user experience hyperv manager suffers from something I call MMC syndrome what is MMC syndrome you ask well MMC or Microsoft Management console syndrome is when every management interface on Windows gen generally looks the same because it's all shoved into the framework of MMC and the hyperv management interface is pure trash why would anybody at Microsoft think it's a great way to manage a hypervisor where your overview stats of your host as they pertain to virtualization operations not in hyperv manager that's for sure we the histograms of load and utilization for your VMS also not in hyperv manager what's the actual state of my VMS hyperview manager says they're running why the hell is the console snapshot image 4 AVM a tiny Square on the bottom of the screen and who at Microsoft thought it would be such a good idea to put all the checkpoint information so prominently in the middle of the hyperv manager the hyperv manager UI is a masterclass and either not caring about your job as a uiux engineer or Microsoft just gives zero FS I know what you're going to say you're going to say you're doing it wrong you should be using Windows admin Center or if you're an Enterprise you should be using scvmm and you know you're right if I did use hyperv I'd be crazy not to because they are better but in the case of Windows admin Center that option didn't come out until server 2019 and it's not built into hyperv as part of the installation it's an extra application to install and system center is an entirely different Beast all to itself how Microsoft could continue to lead with hyperv manager as the default management interface to this day is beyond me also Windows admin Center only provides you basic virtual machine and virtual switch management you still have to go to hyperv manager to manage the hyperv host set up or manage clusters and so on so it's really only a 50% solution at best and really if I'm being honest with you hyperv and his existence as a hypervisor has always felt like Microsoft created because they didn't want to be left behind during their early years of virtualization you got to remember that when hyperv arrived on the scene VMware and Citrix were The Darlings of the early days of mass adoption of virtualization in the data center I've always felt that hyperv for Microsoft at least as it pertains to on premise was an afterthought I know there are lots of businesses and msps that are running hyperv but I believe choice to do so was always driven by cost decisions not whether it was a superior product I have personally met Windows admins who would look me straight in the eye and say oh virtualization is virtualization hyperv is fine and it's free I don't have to pay anything additional for virtualization and in terms of msps again it's a cost decision if you told a business they needed to buy licenses for Windows server and also virtualization licensing they're going to say that's too much but if it's baked in already and you just pay for Windows licensing you're going to be good to go but ask anyone who us uses basically any other modern virtualization platform what they think of hyperv and they'll tell you it sucks and Friends they're right and that friends will do it for this video if you liked it throw us a sub and a like and if you have a beef with anything I've said here let me know in the comments below special thank you to our YouTube members you guys help keep the lights on and we thank you for it if you'd like to help support the channel consider becoming a member or buying some of our awesome swag it all helps us keep making these videos and now that you finish watching this video how about checking out this playlist over here of other great self-hosting and homelab videos we've done in the past if you're looking for your next great H laab idea we can [Music] help

Channel: 2GuysTek

Views: 32,303

Keywords: Exploring Hyper-V from a VMware user's perspective, Life after VMware, Hyper-V vs. VMware, Hyper-V, can Hyper-V replace ESXi, How does Hyper-V compare to VMware ESXi?, Moving to Hyper-V from VMware, Moving to Hyper-V from VMware ESXi, virtualization, Microsoft Hyper-V, Hyper-V Server, Hyper-V Virtualization, Hyper-V in the homelab, Comparing Hyper-V to ESXi, Life after Broadcom, Moving from ESXi to Hyper-V, a VMware User's perspective on Hyper-V, Open source hypervisor, hyper v

Id: hrfoCT9sioU

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2024