how to run hyper-v like vmware

Solution 1:

To create true HA you need shared storage, Windows 2016 has S2D feature, but it's available in Datacenter license. In Hyper-V it's easier to create an HA because you no need any additional licenses (vCenter) and it's available right from the box. All S2D features can be used starting from four nodes, if you're using fewer nodes, here is the nice topic describing it https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1445491-s2d-vs-starwind-virtual-san BTW, here is the step by step guide on how to deploy a Hyper-V cluster. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj863389(v=ws.11).aspx

Solution 2:

Hyper-V vs VMware

SCOM (System Center Operation Manager)

SCO (System Center Orchestrator)

SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager)

Surprisingly Hyper-V can run like VMware better in some ways, there is a major gotcha that Microsoft throws in there which I will put at the end. I am not going to go into too much detail about networking as that is a different topic.

Things that were needed (no particular order)

Two shared storage appliances, Using the builtin Hyper-V replication you can have Fault Tolerance in that the vhdx files are kept in sync and through SCO and SCVMM you can configure if a VM goes down the other one will be spun up to take its place.

Load Balancer, using host affinity also setup in the SCVMM you can select which host a VM will be on and also which host a VM should never be on.

The pros:

Single pane of glass not only do you get the VMware functionally but you also get some very useful Remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools, to keep system updated, antivirus, etc.

Honestly that is about it.

Cons:

Extremely hard to setup. You need to have 3 different servers for each of the SC products, I was using the Eval Copies but as far as i know in production each product must be on physical boxes (3), and if one goes down you will lose the functionality of the that server so to ensure your environment never goes down you have 2 servers (6) that are clustered and in sync.

The Eval copies were not easy to setup there is very little documentation online however the Microsoft Virtual Academy has some really great walk through videos that if you manage to get all the systems setup and to the most recent build numbers (Very important!!!) walk you through how to setup and configure everything. Also make sure your SCVMM server name does not contain SCVMM.

The price, here is where they get you, $3,607 PER CORE, 16 core minimum Equaling $57,712, now that does get you everything. Compared to VMWare $31,908 (2 Proc) for 3 hosts. which also gets you everything, (vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus) Basically you would need to have 5.5 VMWare hosts before you would see any cost savings, depending on your environment how many you need.

My conclusion, VMWare is the winner, the headache was not worth getting the Hyper-V HA setup done, it was cumbersome, Microsoft support was no help, yes I did call after I got it all setup to see how knowledgeable they were I got routed around and talk to about 6 different people/departments until I got to someone who knew a little about the SC products, after a brief 20 minute discuss while he tried to sell me more stuff I think I knew more than he did.