looking for any PRO's & CON's using Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSe, OSX, W7, W2K8 R2 etc. on: W2K8 R2 Enterprise Hyper-V or W7X64 with VMWare Workstation 7 Please post your answer here. Thanks applegate.
Legally/economically? You most likely never paid for Server 2008 R2 & never would, but if you did then you have Hyper-V for free You might have paid for W7 with new PC, still need to pay for Workstation So probably W7/VMW is cheaper sebus
I only use it to experiment at home and not for commercial use: My first findings on Hyper-V and W7x64/VMW. Hyper-V -A lot of (slow) network troubles on the host (fixed it with TCP offloading disabled on both fysical and virtual NIC). -More difficult to install linux. -Run the virtual machines in the background. Do not need to be loggged on at the host. -No Mac Os support. -Haven't got integration support for Fedora and Ubuntu working yet. -Hyper-v is more for the serious and professional virtual hosting solution. -More difficult to experiment with. W7 x64/VMW (workstation edition) -Much easier to install Linux -If you logoff as user on the host you kill all VM sessions. -VMW feels a lot faster and has better graphics capabilities -Better and easier sound integration -Workstation edition is nice to play with but not suitable for the more serious hosting (nice to experiment with). -Mac Os support. -Good intergration support for Fedora and Ubuntu Correction or other experiences are welcome.
I see you have Windows in both of your virtualization options. Windows is a big plate of stinkin, warm, crap when it comes to new technology. If you want real performance and be free to do whatever virtualization you want, try Xen on Fedora or Debian. (There is a nice GUI on Fedora). Or maybe XenServer from Xen directly. If you have Windows because you like it, or because some of your software depends on it, you can run it as a HVM and have full performance (like 99% bare-metal). Direct GPU access if you play games, automatic booting if you need Windows on a daily basis, not a problem. Network performance can be 100% maximum with I/O PCI(e) passthrough like it's done with video cards. Just add the PCI device path to the Windows VM and you have full device control. Same for audio and USB. You can even assign a hardware SATA controller if you like. Your system will then boot the Xen hypervisor, which then automatically boots windows, so you can actually just press power on your hardware and have a full-speed windows in 70 seconds (including BIOS/EFI time, Linux+Xen boot time and Windows 7 resume/booting). Hyper-V and VMW are fine for virtualization wannabe's or people just looking to make some profit with as little knowledge as possible. With your question, the answer would be: whichever you already have. Xen is better anyway.
Wannabe's? Really? People just looking to make profit? Yeah let me tell you those are about the farthest from what I am. I have been working with virtualization solutions exclusively for about 5 years now. No don't wanna be solutions either. I am talking full server farms of 40 virtual hosts. I can tell you from a real professional standpoint it depends on what your VI is going to look like. I have used all 3, Xen, VMWare, and Hyper-V. In most pure MS shops Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 is the way to go. It is easy to deploy using SCCM, and provisioning things with SCVMM 2008 R2 is a breeze. VMWare is just as easy, you set up your Org then you can manage pretty much everything through vCenter. Then you have Xen which is as good as the rest. So just because you prefer Xen don't sit there and be like "Xen kicks everything elses ass and if you use the other solutions you aren't a real IT Pro herp derp, and you are out just to steal people's money "
Right. We have similar size web farm run on clustered Hyper-V servers, but there are still few things missing in terms of reliability (i.e. subtle bugs) and functionality. I _REALLY_ hope MS will sort them out eventually. Again - all above just my IMO - nothing else... Shouldn't be posting at all, I guess