Thanks Greg. According to what Ken said, a single W2K8 license includes two product keys, one for the Hyper-V host and another to run as a VM guest. So the whole licensing sidebar (choosing to use one's W2K8 license for the host or the guest) was a non-issue, as well as not relevant to answering the question I posted - why would one, on a functionality level, choose a Windows 2008 Hyper-V host over a standalone Hyper-V host.
As far as clustering support and HA features, if I'm not mistaken you're talking about Windows 2008 Enterprise features, not in play for a 2008 Standard license. As for a 4 physical processor limit, assuming you're talking sockets and not cores, that's up to 16 cores, plenty for most, at least this year. Regarding the lost 512MB of RAM for running Windows 2008 as the host, I'd rather not waste it if there's not a good reason. Someone might run 2 or 3 VMs on a box with only 4GB (not all of those VMs server 2008 of course), so a loss of 512MB could be meaningful. A little less meaningful in my case (6GB soon to be 8GB, and just one quad-core) but I'd rather have that 512MB allocated to the VM's rather than running a host server for no good reason. So, what I get from all the discussion, I haven't heard any reason to prefer Windows 2008 as the Hyper-V host server in a non-Enterprise situation. I thought there could be management reasons, but it seems that equivalent management is possible without buying something. Thanks everyone for your input. Carl From: Greg Mulholland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 6:35 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I'll jump in in here where Ken left off. The great benefit as i see it of using the Standalone HyperV model is that you dont have to introduce win2k8 servers into your network if you are not ready to for whatever reason. In fact you could go totally license free presuming that you were using open sauce software as guest VM's. There will be some benefit on the hardware resource side but bugger all if you choose to install the Hyperv as part of a server core installation. But the additional 512mb you may gain might be enough for 'a' guest.. hardly worth the trouble, that and they have said that the performance characteristics between them will be identical. The drawback i see of the standalone hyperv is that you lose any clustering support and therefore what they call High Availability features obviously because you lose the benefits of the parent OS. It is also limited to 4 physical processors and 32GB RAM. Ken sort of did touch on these features but i guess you rubbed him the wrong way and he balked. So if i understand your question you want to make sure that when you buy your single 2k8 std license that it is utilised for something individual or important like a stand alone file server for instance and not a HyperV host?? If that is the case and you cant/wont buy more licenses the yes i would agree, but the point Ken was trying to make im sure, is that only you will be able to make that judgement. Hopefully i have provided some detail for you from what i know so far. If you still need more you are going to have to dig yourself and perhaps wait until it is released and there is better supporting documentation. HTH Greg _____ From: Ken Schaefer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 10:10 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 9:55 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V But what is the advantage to spending the resources (RAM, disk) on even a 2008 Server Core config to run the Hyper-V host, when my other choice is to save those resources for the actual VMs and use the standalone Hyper-V server instead? What feature in Hyper-V host services under 2008 makes it advantageous to use that instead of standalone Hyper-V server, for the functional requirement I've outlined? Answer the question or say "I don't know". This wasn't your original question. Please take your attitude somewhere else For reference, your original question was: Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? And the answer to that is "it depends". You go figure it out for yourself. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
