ESXi Free vs Hyper V

What would you implement for a small business 20 users to let`s say 50 users that might expand. Let`s say 1 or 2 physical servers with lots of ram and quad core xeons. Would you implement ESXi 4 free or would u use the Hyper V for Virtualization (not the server role, THE MAIN HYPER V install bare metal hypervisor). All servers need to be virtualized:

2 DC, DHCP, DNS 2008 Standard,
1 fileserver DFS and print server role, application server
1 or 2 WDS and maybe WSUS together

Please state exact the reason why would you go with that specific implementation.

Thanks guys.

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Comments

astorrs

I'm not sure I'd even bother implementing it for such a small environment. I would probably just consolidate all those functions into one (or possibly two) physical servers. It'll make supportability for the client much easier in the future.

What benefit did you see virtualization bringing to the table?

Daniel333

This situation is a complicated one. I need a lot more information from you.

Say you go roaming profiles. What is your disk IO looking like? You SAN selection here is the critical decision. etc etc

BUT given the choices you gave me, I would side with Hyper-V since the monitoring is already built into Windows. It will certainly help you when you get that call "XYZ is slow".

Lets us know a little more about the customer's needs and we can help you advocate some more right on decisions.

HeroPsycho

If you wanted High Availability, you could build a 2 node Hyper-V cluster for probably less than it would cost to do the same thing with VMware, but that would mean you need a SAN. If you're not gonna do that, ESXi free hands down. It performs better than Hyper-V.

Just deployed Hyper-V R2 cluster, and it pretty much confirmed what I suspected already about Hyper-V - the only reason you'd ever go with Hyper-V is it's cheaper. Once you take cost off the table, vSphere and it's related products are superior in just about every aspect.

nasu

most likely the client will want to go with the esxi.. which I prefer too. I will implement virtualization because these days virtualization is the key and every company should implement that on their servers especially if they got the hardware to do so. VMWARE has so many benefits in the long run when you upgrade from the free one to advance, enterprise for HA and vMotion.

I just wanted to see what you guys think is best for those small business clients.

Many admins think differently but I like to implement the newest tech out there to my clients so that they have the ability to grow later on. The strong foundation of the IT is the key for small businesses to go large scale.

Hyper-Me

In such a small environment either one is going to work fine, liikely.

I think that HeroPsycho's assessment is a fair one, so if price is a huge factor if things expand then Hyper-V might be a better choice. But it doesnt sound like things will get that big.

nasu

HeroPsycho did you implement Hyper-V as a server role or as a bare metal hyper visor ?

astorrs

I'm going to repeat what I said earlier. I'm not sure virtualization makes sense here.

As I see it without shared storage you're not getting high-availability and even with some of the virtual storage appliance's like StorMagic or LeftHand VSA I'm not sure you're going to be able to show a reasonable ROI.

Perhaps you could clarify what you meant by "1 or 2 WDS..." would that be Windows Deployment Services or something else? If that's all it is, again I would just role it up into 1 or 2 physical servers and do what's best for the client.

P.S. I'm the biggest advocate of virtualization and have been working with it since 2001 - but it has to make economic sense for the client.

blargoe

I agree with Andrew on this one. You don't go with virtualization "just because". A couple of 2008 standard servers would be more than enough.

HeroPsycho

nasu wrote: »

HeroPsycho did you implement Hyper-V as a server role or as a bare metal hyper visor ?

No, due to management concerns, I had to deploy a full Windows install and add the role for Hyper-V. The host partition however has nothing else installed.

I can see going with no virtualization or using either free product here. With virtualization being low cost, going virtual from the get go has its advantages. Just encapsulation alone allows for easier DR capabilities and other flexibility, and it does sound like some money could be saved in physical hardware to make up for the cost of a SAN to a degree. But astorrs is right; the client could go without it, too.

nasu

HeroPsycho wrote: »

With virtualization being low cost, going virtual from the get go has its advantages. Just encapsulation alone allows for easier DR capabilities and other flexibility, and it does sound like some money could be saved in physical hardware to make up for the cost of a SAN to a degree. But astorrs is right; the client could go without it, too.

You are my man. That`s exactly why we go with this path. Most likely our client will go with the Free ESXi 4.

Thanks