Hyper-V vs. ESXi management

I’ve compared Hyper-V and ESXi in the past. Since then, the virtualization market has changed. I was also able to get more experience, and have two HP ML110 G5 that run ESXi (albeit unsupported) and Hyper-V Server.

I’ve ran a test environment, mostly to play with Citrix XenApp, SBS 2008 and EBS 2008. Especially the latter, as multi server solution, could be run with multiple roles distributed on Hyper-V and ESXi hosts, which made it interesting to deal with.

Hyper-V Server management
Well, i’ll be blunt. Hyper-V Server standalone management sucks. Big time. The problem here is that you need a Vista machine (which is a problem in the testlab which mostly consists of older PCs), and then you’ll need to create same-username same-password accounts to connect the two.

Also, if you just want to delegate specific VMs, you’ll need to dive into the depths of WMI.

Many of those problems vanish when you’re using a domain setup, with Hyper-V Server joined to the domain. But that’s usually not the case in a test lab.

Add to that that Server Core is still very young, and a lot of 3rd party hardware manufacturers do not have anything Server Core ready yet. Many don’t even announce whether certain tools are supported on Server Core or not.

This doesn’t mean Server Core is a bad idea - it just means that we will need to wait for hardware manufacturers to catch up - also management agents like Backup, Anti Virus, etc. will need to get up to speed for running on Server Core.

ESXi management
ESXi works very well with standalone management. You go to the website, download the VI Client, enter user and password, and you can manage the VM host - you can also delegate permissions easily.

From what i’ve read so far, using single signon and Active Directory with ESXi is more cumbersome than on Hyper-V server. Makes sense.

ESXi integrates a lot of hardware drivers and management. However, fewer servers are supported than with Hyper-V Server. On the other hand, you can use the native ESXi tools to create teams etc., something which you can’t on Server Core because the HW manufacturers do not ship the tools for Server Core.

My opinion
ESXi works very well in a standalone lab environment. Hyper-V is lackluster at best. What does that mean for you? If you want to build a test lab, go with hardware that supports ESXi, or if that is too expensive, go with hardware that at least works with ESXi.

Category: Hyper-V, Windows 5 Comments