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prd
Asked: 2016-07-05 02:45:14 +0800 CST

Hyper-V on 2012R2 HyperV Edition or 2008R2 Standard Edition?

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We are currently running VMWare ESXi, with 1 Windows 2008 R2 Standard instance, 1 Windows 7 instance and 2 Linux instances.

So, recently I wanted to upgrade my server, because there were a lot of things happened. I couldn't find Intel 1GB multiport adapter, so I get Dlink's adapter, but it was not supported by VMWare. Another issue is that our hardware NAS is extremely slow, and their technical support is dud at best. 20MB/s of RAID5 with NIC teaming and only iSCSI really can't say much in term of performance. So I have encountered Starwind VirtualSAN which can only run only under Windows. Therefore I plan to migrate my VMWare into HyperV.

We have only 1 Windows 2008 R2 Standard license available. But as I read on Microsoft site, Windows 2008 R2 Standard is eligible for 1 VM and 1 host. This Windows 2008 R2 is responsible for Citrix Remote Desktop.

I have successfully performed the migration, but I have a few question remains before performing the live migration.

  1. Since I can run 2 Windows 2008 R2 Standard total (host + VM), should I run Windows 2008 R2 Standard on top of Windows 2008 R2 Standard host, or is it better with Windows 2012 R2 HyperV host? Is there any new features in 2012 R2 I should know about than 2008 R2 counterpart?
  2. VMWare's Ubuntu support has been excellent, and it is very fast. How about HyperV performance? Anyone ever tried to compare Ubuntu server on HyperV and on VMWare?
  3. Is it better to let them VMs access iSCSI from their host, or just allocate fixed VHD to them? i.e, 100GB for VHD + 2TB of iSCSI, or just put 100GB VHD and 2TB VHD? The iSCSI will be cached by about 16GB cache RAM on the host. I really have to install Starwind on HyperV host, since I have another server which currently accessing iSCSI too.

Thank you for helping

iscsi starwind hyper-v-server-2008-r2 hyper-v-server-2012

2 Answers

  1. StarWind vSAN runs under VMware just fine. You have VMware's own vSAN there also. Shouldn't be an issue to live migrate your VMs.

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  2. Best Answer

    Ok.. it's been a while... I was hoping some has done some testing and can help me in this matter, but after last few days, I've been testing some configurations and benchmark them, trying to find and compensate myself. This may not be perfect config, but this is comfortable enough for me.

    1. I go with Windows 2012 HyperV + 2008 R2. StarWind running at windows 2012. 2012 hyperV is faster than 2008R2's HyperV. At least, I don't need it to leave overnight to finish an installation, unlike 2008 R2. Plus, I can NIC Teaming the server. Thus granting our iSCSI connection a full 3GBps bandwidth with 2 DLink plus one onboard. Our iSCSI running at around 2GB/s plus, close to 3GB. a very significant upgrade speed for our other servers, compared to old 20MB/s. Just lovely. More than that, Starwind can achieve much faster than that, read below.

    2. Ubuntu service was not good in 2008R2, but very good with 2012 R2 Gen2. another point in choosing 2012 R2 HyperV. Microsoft's Gen2 HyperV is a VERY significant update to old Gen1 one. Doesn't feel that different than those in VMWAre.

    3. I go with iSCSI starwind route, and minimal VHDX. The reason being, is that I can only achieve 50MB/s with VHDX, but I can achieve some 9 to 10GB/s with StarWind. Using 8GB RAM cache, plus 100GB L2 SSD Cache, Starwind is screaming FAST. And I really mean FAST. It also has server mirroring, so data integrity is covered there.

    4. Also as for migration, I don't really that care, since with iSCSI, I can simply disconnect the drive from VM 1, and connect it to another VM on another server or simply connect it to physical server, and resume operation at virtually no time lost. No migration needed, simply switch connection, and voila.. done.

    So, after running benchmark testing, I decided to go with HyperV 2012 R2, 2008 guest, and all data in iSCSI.

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