Hyper-V sanity check

[papercup]

I think I'm going nuts.

I have a physical server running 2012 Server (not R2) and Hyper-V. It has many VMs hosted on it, some running all the time, some not. A mix of 2003 server, 2008 server, 2008R2 server, 2012 server,(gui and cli), 2012R2 server, SBS2011, Windows XP, Vista, 7 & 8. All work fine all the time, and installed fine originally.

So last week I though I'd have a look at 2012 Foundation and 2012R2 Foundation before I sold one to a client, see how it interacts with an existing domain if left in workgroup mode. This is RDP-ing from my desktop PC to the 2012 Host server. I install it and I have no mouse. I get the message about it not being captured in hyper-v. I read up and apparently I shouldn't RDP to the host when installing, known issues, etc. I don't remember this issue with any of the others I've installed. So i sit in front of it and install 2012 Foundation and 2012R2 Foundation on new VMs. Its almost the same; i now have a mouse but I have to do the 'ctrl-alt-left arrow) thing to get the mouse released. I look in Device Manager on the VMs and there are unknown devices, and I have no networking either.

So I install the Integreation Services disk. On the 2012 Foundation machine it goes through the install, says its complete, and nothing changes, even after a reboot. On the 2012R2 Foundation it says it already has the latest version of them installed.

Still no networking, unknown devices in DevManager and mouse only works if sat in fromt of the console with ctrl-alt-left arrow.

So i have newborns and its been a while since I've installed a VM, but I'm starting to wonder if I'm taking crazy pills. I'm a few evenings into this now and none the wiser.

Can anyone think of anything?

[Randomthoughts]

It won't install as a VM in Hyper-V. No way, no how, no chance. It actively blocks it.

[papercup]

Randomthoughts said:

It won't install as a VM in Hyper-V. No way, no how, no chance. It actively blocks it.

what, just Foundation Edition won't install?

[maffski]

eBuyer are selling the HP Microservers for £110+vat if you need a test rig for it.

[Randomthoughts]

papercup said:

what, just Foundation Edition won't install?

Correct.

[papercup]

Randomthoughts said:

papercup said:

what, just Foundation Edition won't install?

Correct.

Christ, I never thought of checking the OS. Cheers.

Only wanted to have a look! Ended up installing it on a Dell PC I had lying about. Even tried P2V-ing that and putting it on the Host and it still wouldn't play ball. Now I know why...

[Randomthoughts]

Basically 2012 Foundation won't allow you to install the drivers to make it functional on a Hyper-V environment (network and integration bits).

A dirty bodge is to install an ESXi 'server' as a VM and then create Foundation under that!

[andycaca]

or just ditch hyper-v as its cack, and use esxi instead
not very helpful to you, but hyper-v is just so frustrating to use.
compared to esxi it is very poor and unstable.

[theboss]

Sounds like an OS I wouldn't like to sell to a client if you're left entirely dependent on the physical device it ships with. Genuine question as I haven't touched either of the lower-end editions - is there any advantage to supplying foundation over Essentials other than presumably cost?

[theboss]

andycaca said:

or just ditch hyper-v as its cack, and use esxi instead
not very helpful to you, but hyper-v is just so frustrating to use.
compared to esxi it is very poor and unstable.

I'd have agreed with you until 2012 and subsequently 2012 R2 shipped. It's perfectly stable and useable, and in many ways leaves ESXi feeling very frustrating to use, particularly in a standalone host scenario.

[Randomthoughts]

andycaca said:

or just ditch hyper-v as its cack, and use esxi instead
not very helpful to you, but hyper-v is just so frustrating to use.
compared to esxi it is very poor and unstable.

Wow it's like it's 2010 in here.

[Polariz]

Randomthoughts said:

andycaca said:

or just ditch hyper-v as its cack, and use esxi instead
not very helpful to you, but hyper-v is just so frustrating to use.
compared to esxi it is very poor and unstable.

Wow it's like it's 2010 in here.

He's overdramatizing but Hyper-V really isn't as good as ESXi. Until you see the price of both anyway...

[Randomthoughts]

Polariz said:

He's overdramatizing but Hyper-V really isn't as good as ESXi. Until you see the price of both anyway...

Overdramatizing? It's not been that bad for the last couple of versions, certainly 2-3 years as a minimum.

[theboss]

Polariz said:

Randomthoughts said:

andycaca said:

or just ditch hyper-v as its cack, and use esxi instead
not very helpful to you, but hyper-v is just so frustrating to use.
compared to esxi it is very poor and unstable.

Wow it's like it's 2010 in here.

He's overdramatizing but Hyper-V really isn't as good as ESXi. Until you see the price of both anyway...

If you're talking large scale Enterprise deployments then I'd agree VMware has the edge - but the thread is about small scale SMB deployments of low-end Windows Server editions. In that context I'd argue that Hyper-V 2012 R2 is *much better* than ESXi irrespective of cost.

[TonyRPH]

theboss said:

If you're talking large scale Enterprise deployments then I'd agree VMware has the edge - but the thread is about small scale SMB deployments of low-end Windows Server editions. In that context I'd argue that Hyper-V 2012 R2 is *much better* than ESXi irrespective of cost.

That's an interesting thought.

Until recently we were running HyperV 2012, and we switched to ESXi (free version currently). There was a small but noticeable performance improvement in general.

Also - we can now map USB devices to VMs - something we couldn't do with HyperV.

I think a lot of the free OOB functionality provided with HyperV is great though. But ESXi still wins for me.

[Randomthoughts]

Mapping stuff through USB is a daft thing to base a hypervisor decision on, purely because it stops the machine from being migrated between hosts and any HA events will fail, causing the machine to die.

[theboss]

TonyRPH said:

theboss said:

If you're talking large scale Enterprise deployments then I'd agree VMware has the edge - but the thread is about small scale SMB deployments of low-end Windows Server editions. In that context I'd argue that Hyper-V 2012 R2 is *much better* than ESXi irrespective of cost.

That's an interesting thought.

Until recently we were running HyperV 2012, and we switched to ESXi (free version currently). There was a small but noticeable performance improvement in general.

Also - we can now map USB devices to VMs - something we couldn't do with HyperV.

I think a lot of the free OOB functionality provided with HyperV is great though. But ESXi still wins for me.

I am thinking of the overall simplicity of deployment and management which is so relevant to the use case, rather more than purely technical merits or disadvantages of either product.

You're a techie from what I gather - so am I - I am more than happy to install free ESXi on a standalone box and 'figure out' how best to interact with and manage it, whether its by connecting a vSphere client, buying an Essentials license and deploying a small vCenter VM + Web Client, using PowerCLI or third party tools. The same applies when it comes to doing things like backup/restore, manipulating VMFS objects, patching/upgrading and so on. Free ESXi is near unusable on its own in these regards, but is very powerful if you're capable of working around the usability problems. For somebody who understands the products and works with them all the time, this is all fine.

On the other hand the advantages I consider, of Hyper-V 2012 R2, installed with a 'normal' parent OS are that you get to work with a familiar Windows desktop and admin consoles, working with simple VHD-on-NTFS files, with built-in backup/restore, migration, replication, snapshots etc. without requiring any further products or licenses, makes for a very simple and self-contained small scale setup, which is easy for administrators who aren't seasoned techies, to work with.

In what respect did performance suffer? I haven't really stretched Hyper-V guests but would be interested in making some performance comparisons.

Did anyone mention XenServer

[Randomthoughts]

theboss said:

Did anyone mention XenServer

The haters have a shock coming in the next few months.

[TonyRPH]

Randomthoughts said:

theboss said:

Did anyone mention XenServer

The haters have a shock coming in the next few months.

I've been using KVM at home - that's been an interesting experience.

In fairness - it's been very stable - but I've just had issues using USB stuff within the VMs (like HyperV!).

I used XenServer (I assume you're referring to the Citrix product?) in a commercial environment a couple of years back, and to be fair I was quite impressed overall.

[Randomthoughts]

I am indeed. The current tech preview fixes many of the peculiarities about XenServer (32-bit dom0, performance limitations, GPU pass through) and goes like fk on my development platform.

I expect snapshots will still be st though.