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/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
This brings up something I thought about when first heard of this licensing modelwould there be any reason for a small shop not to buy a server, throw 2008 Server Hyper-V on it, then throw a VM'd 2008 Server OS on top of that to run the daily business? From a DR standpoint this would make it easy as a restore could go onto anything running Hyper-V, right? Seems like a painless way to do a restore to dissimilar hardware, as you could bring up the VM's OS and then just load whatever drivers you need - or am I overlooking something? David Lum // SYSTEMS ENGINEER NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION (Desk) 971.222.1025 // (Cell) 503.267.9764 From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 4:41 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V The standard licenses that I received from MS came with two Product Keys - one for installing the physical host, and one for installing a VM. Not sure what type of license these where (retail, NFR, whatever), but if those are what you have, then you can install a Hyper-V host, and then use the same license to give yourself the first guest machine. Cheers Ken ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
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/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
Install it on 2008 core. S From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 2:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
Server Core makes no difference architecturally to what is happening Cheers Ken From: Steve Moffat [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of NTSysAdmin Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 5:42 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Install it on 2008 core. S From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 2:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
Your parent partition (the first copy of Win2k8 you installed) *is* running on the hypervisor. I will send you some slides offlist that explain what is happening from an architectural perspective. The hypervisor now arbitrates all access to CPU (for example), however access to physical resources (e.g. disk, network) are handled by drivers in the parent partition. Guest machines use VMBus to send data to the parent partition (e.g. via shared memory space or CPU cache) which then sends it to physical resources. The problem with the stand alone Hyper-V is no clustering feature support. That means you don't get any HA features. As you surmise, you probably can't use the host for very much except being a host. But that's probably what you want to do anyway (gives you more resources for the guests), and if you buy an Enterprise license you get 1 physical license, and 4 guest licenses, so you aren't wasting anything per se - you can't convert the physical licence into an extra virtual one to run an additional workload. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 3:20 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
In this particular (small) environment, a copy of 2008 Enterprise is not available. Only one copy of Windows 2008 Standard is available. My goal is to pick up and re-host any/all virtual servers, including the single 2008 server, to spare hardware within record time. So I don't want to spend my only 2008 server license on a not-100%-virtual Hyper-V host. From this perspective, I would say that standalone Hyper-V makes more sense. Counterpoint? Don't spend what I haven't got or promote features I don't need. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 6:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Your parent partition (the first copy of Win2k8 you installed) *is* running on the hypervisor. I will send you some slides offlist that explain what is happening from an architectural perspective. The hypervisor now arbitrates all access to CPU (for example), however access to physical resources (e.g. disk, network) are handled by drivers in the parent partition. Guest machines use VMBus to send data to the parent partition (e.g. via shared memory space or CPU cache) which then sends it to physical resources. The problem with the stand alone Hyper-V is no clustering feature support. That means you don't get any HA features. As you surmise, you probably can't use the host for very much except being a host. But that's probably what you want to do anyway (gives you more resources for the guests), and if you buy an Enterprise license you get 1 physical license, and 4 guest licenses, so you aren't wasting anything per se - you can't convert the physical licence into an extra virtual one to run an additional workload. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 3:20 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238 http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentI D=723 DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
Your Windows Server 2008 Standard license should give you one physical and one virtual license. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 8:37 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V In this particular (small) environment, a copy of 2008 Enterprise is not available. Only one copy of Windows 2008 Standard is available. My goal is to pick up and re-host any/all virtual servers, including the single 2008 server, to spare hardware within record time. So I don't want to spend my only 2008 server license on a not-100%-virtual Hyper-V host. From this perspective, I would say that standalone Hyper-V makes more sense. Counterpoint? Don't spend what I haven't got or promote features I don't need. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 6:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Your parent partition (the first copy of Win2k8 you installed) *is* running on the hypervisor. I will send you some slides offlist that explain what is happening from an architectural perspective. The hypervisor now arbitrates all access to CPU (for example), however access to physical resources (e.g. disk, network) are handled by drivers in the parent partition. Guest machines use VMBus to send data to the parent partition (e.g. via shared memory space or CPU cache) which then sends it to physical resources. The problem with the stand alone Hyper-V is no clustering feature support. That means you don't get any HA features. As you surmise, you probably can't use the host for very much except being a host. But that's probably what you want to do anyway (gives you more resources for the guests), and if you buy an Enterprise license you get 1 physical license, and 4 guest licenses, so you aren't wasting anything per se - you can't convert the physical licence into an extra virtual one to run an additional workload. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 3:20 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
How is that going to help OP's position. It doesn't. Cheers Ken From: Steve Moffat [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of NTSysAdmin Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 9:11 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Wait until next month when Hyper-V Server 2008 is released...:) With Hyper-V Server 2008, Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor is installed in the parent partition, and it provides just the bare essentials required for booting the system, providing hypervisor services, and exposing the management hooks necessary for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. It does include drivers as well, but little else from Server 2008. It's not Server Core. It's much less than that: At boot time, you'll be prompted from a command line interface to configure some basic configuration options. But management occurs from the free Hyper-V management console (on Vista or Server 2008) or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. S From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 7:37 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V In this particular (small) environment, a copy of 2008 Enterprise is not available. Only one copy of Windows 2008 Standard is available. My goal is to pick up and re-host any/all virtual servers, including the single 2008 server, to spare hardware within record time. So I don't want to spend my only 2008 server license on a not-100%-virtual Hyper-V host. From this perspective, I would say that standalone Hyper-V makes more sense. Counterpoint? Don't spend what I haven't got or promote features I don't need. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 6:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Your parent partition (the first copy of Win2k8 you installed) *is* running on the hypervisor. I will send you some slides offlist that explain what is happening from an architectural perspective. The hypervisor now arbitrates all access to CPU (for example), however access to physical resources (e.g. disk, network) are handled by drivers in the parent partition. Guest machines use VMBus to send data to the parent partition (e.g. via shared memory space or CPU cache) which then sends it to physical resources. The problem with the stand alone Hyper-V is no clustering feature support. That means you don't get any HA features. As you surmise, you probably can't use the host for very much except being a host. But that's probably what you want to do anyway (gives you more resources for the guests), and if you buy an Enterprise license you get 1 physical license, and 4 guest licenses, so you aren't wasting anything per se - you can't convert the physical licence into an extra virtual one to run an additional workload. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 3:20 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
The standard licenses that I received from MS came with two Product Keys - one for installing the physical host, and one for installing a VM. Not sure what type of license these where (retail, NFR, whatever), but if those are what you have, then you can install a Hyper-V host, and then use the same license to give yourself the first guest machine. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 9:21 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Yeah, I know about that - that's what I've been calling Standalone Hyper-V. Notice the URL in my OP? I was just trying to discern if there is *any* advantage to running Hyper-V hosting features on 2008 Standard server, when I need that 2008 server to also provide all the usual server functions. Looks like there isn't. From: Steve Moffat [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of NTSysAdmin Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 7:11 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Wait until next month when Hyper-V Server 2008 is released...:) With Hyper-V Server 2008, Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor is installed in the parent partition, and it provides just the bare essentials required for booting the system, providing hypervisor services, and exposing the management hooks necessary for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. It does include drivers as well, but little else from Server 2008. It's not Server Core. It's much less than that: At boot time, you'll be prompted from a command line interface to configure some basic configuration options. But management occurs from the free Hyper-V management console (on Vista or Server 2008) or System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. S From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 7:37 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V In this particular (small) environment, a copy of 2008 Enterprise is not available. Only one copy of Windows 2008 Standard is available. My goal is to pick up and re-host any/all virtual servers, including the single 2008 server, to spare hardware within record time. So I don't want to spend my only 2008 server license on a not-100%-virtual Hyper-V host. From this perspective, I would say that standalone Hyper-V makes more sense. Counterpoint? Don't spend what I haven't got or promote features I don't need. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 6:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Your parent partition (the first copy of Win2k8 you installed) *is* running on the hypervisor. I will send you some slides offlist that explain what is happening from an architectural perspective. The hypervisor now arbitrates all access to CPU (for example), however access to physical resources (e.g. disk, network) are handled by drivers in the parent partition. Guest machines use VMBus to send data to the parent partition (e.g. via shared memory space or CPU cache) which then sends it to physical resources. The problem with the stand alone Hyper-V is no clustering feature support. That means you don't get any HA features. As you surmise, you probably can't use the host for very much except being a host. But that's probably what you want to do anyway (gives you more resources for the guests), and if you buy an Enterprise license you get 1 physical license, and 4 guest licenses, so you aren't wasting anything per se - you can't convert the physical licence into an extra virtual one to run an additional workload. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 3:20 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
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. It's not enough that I *can* do it with a single Server 2008 standard license - the question is WHY do it if I have a minimal footprint Hyper-V solution which is similar to VMWare ESXi but with full support for all hardware supported by Windows. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 7:39 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Your Windows Server 2008 Standard license should give you one physical and one virtual license. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 8:37 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V In this particular (small) environment, a copy of 2008 Enterprise is not available. Only one copy of Windows 2008 Standard is available. My goal is to pick up and re-host any/all virtual servers, including the single 2008 server, to spare hardware within record time. So I don't want to spend my only 2008 server license on a not-100%-virtual Hyper-V host. From this perspective, I would say that standalone Hyper-V makes more sense. Counterpoint? Don't spend what I haven't got or promote features I don't need. Carl From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 6:20 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V Your parent partition (the first copy of Win2k8 you installed) *is* running on the hypervisor. I will send you some slides offlist that explain what is happening from an architectural perspective. The hypervisor now arbitrates all access to CPU (for example), however access to physical resources (e.g. disk, network) are handled by drivers in the parent partition. Guest machines use VMBus to send data to the parent partition (e.g. via shared memory space or CPU cache) which then sends it to physical resources. The problem with the stand alone Hyper-V is no clustering feature support. That means you don't get any HA features. As you surmise, you probably can't use the host for very much except being a host. But that's probably what you want to do anyway (gives you more resources for the guests), and if you buy an Enterprise license you get 1 physical license, and 4 guest licenses, so you aren't wasting anything per se - you can't convert the physical licence into an extra virtual one to run an additional workload. Cheers Ken From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 3:20 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V I was asking about standalone Hyper-V some time ago and looks like it's almost here. http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238 http://windowsitpro.com/mobile/pda/Article.cfm?ArticleID=100238DepartmentI D=723 DepartmentID=723 Meanwhile, I installed Server 2008 for testing and installed the Hyper-V features and much to my newbie surprise, my 2008 server was not converted to a virtual instance of itself. I understand the reason for that now. The question boils down to, wouldn't I want all instances of servers on a hardware platform to be running on the bare metal hypervisor if possible? One of the goals of virtualizing is easy portability to run on alternate/standby hardware, and the 2008 Hyper-V host server isn't portable. That means not using the host server for anything but a host server, and that's a waste of a license. Am I missing anything? Why would I NOT prefer to use standalone Hyper-V for all virtualized servers including 2008? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/ ~
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/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
So Carl's not allowed to ask more than one question per post. I think your attitude is the bad attitude. They must be giving MVP status to anyone in OZ nowadays... From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 9:10 PM 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/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
Carl's saying: answer the question, or say 'you don't know' That's some kind of ultimatum that isn't necessary. I'm trying to help the guy answer his original question. If he wants to change the question, that's fine, but he can do so without the attitude. His original post, about how the parent partition works, contained some factual inaccuracies, and I'm trying to provide information on how this stuff actually works. Turning around with attitude is called biting the hand that feeds you. As far as I'm concerned, he can go figure it out himself then. Lastly, the MVP thing is irrelevant. I don't put myself out as an MVP - I don't have a sig, or anything similar. So, please don't bring irrelevancies into the conversation. Cheers Ken From: Steve Moffat [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of NTSysAdmin Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 10:22 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V So Carl's not allowed to ask more than one question per post. I think your attitude is the bad attitude. They must be giving MVP status to anyone in OZ nowadays... From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 9:10 PM 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/ ~
RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V
watch it buddy!! :p From: Steve Moffat [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of NTSysAdmin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 10:21 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Standalone Hyper-V vs. 2008 Hyper-V So Carl's not allowed to ask more than one question per post. I think your attitude is the bad attitude. They must be giving MVP status to anyone in OZ nowadays... From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 9:10 PM 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/ ~
