Hyper-V

Minimized hardware costs

Maximized availability

ROI has been amazing for server consolidation projects.

Before Hyper-V, I had a computer under my desk and a version of Norton Ghost. To test a new release of our software involved me re-imaging that machine. This took about half a day and was just ONE machine. Hyper-V I have many developers connected to our Hyper-V server rolling machines back on-demand, with almost instant results. The impact of this has been huge on the level of testing our products get.

We don't need to have a room full of servers, this has not only made our server room look a lot tidier, but has reduced our power requirements by not having to run many different 'real' servers.

We were able to build environments that we used for software development. These environments could then be customized, turned off, and saved for later use. Months could then go by and when the environment was restarted it was great to know that the software would be in exactly the same state as when we last used it.

We use VMs for demo purposes. These environments too are configured, backed up, and then shut down. When we need to do a demo we can easily spin up an environment and be confident that the demo will run smoothly.

Freed up considerable money over VMware.

Hosted 1000+ VMs on 8 hosts, whish saved money.

Negative impact was downtime of critical business process because of cluster instability.

We experienced a lot of hardware problems which resulted in restart of all the nodes which is the exact opposite of what I think a cluster should do.

Thanks to Hyper-V, we are able to fully utilize our hardware and therefore cram our 600+ VMs on our 10 hosts.

Thanks to Microsoft developer program we can run most of our developer VMs for a really competitive price.

Sometimes the live backup fails with an error and I am forced to shut down the server to make the offline backup with its downtime. It is not critical for a cluster, but very critical when you have only one working server.

The allure of Hyper-V is its initial cost, but the real TCO is not as clear as the skills required are hard to come by and the overall reliability due to complexity wind up being less.

For simple single server installations the ROI may be valid, but you must look at all aspects of supportablility and possibly having split trained staff.

There is definitely a financially positive impact because we are already a Windows shop. This, combined with our limited use of VMs makes the purchase of other vendors (such as VMware) a difficult proposition to defend.

The relatively simple learning curve along with no integration requirements makes the setup quick and limits the need for expert contractors.

Hyper-V in DR allowed us to save scores of thousands annually on VMware support and licenses without us having to pay anything extra (we already have Hyper-V in our EA). Great ROI!

Ultimately we did not choose Hyper-V due to the limitations mentioned previously.

The best, most obvious, and biggest benefit we have experienced by investing in the use of Hyper-V for our SQL Server farms, has been the TCO. We are, and will continue to experience over the next five years a huge savings (millions) in SQL Server licensing costs.

As stated previously, Hyper-V is difficult and cumbersome regarding balancing storage requirements. Where clients are consuming large datastores, balancing or moving that load around in order to bring balance, is difficult and time/personnel consuming.

It allowed us to automate our VM creation process using PowerShell which cut our VM creation time down from 8+ hours to under 2 hours. This allowed us to respond to clients faster and get testing done in a much quicker manner.

Negative impact was setting up and testing the VM creation automation process took multiple months. Part of this was because we developed a .NET interface that was used for VM data collection (name, HD size, RAM, etc) and creating and testing that application took time but getting the remote PowerShell command syntax correct and tested did take time.

It's easy for Windows systems administrators to learn this product.

It's not picky for hardware it uses.

I have not seen any positive or negative impacts on our overall business objectives as we use it primarily for dev and test workloads.

Cheaper capex

Ability to split DCs from file/print at ROBO

Cost avoidance

Faster Server OS migrations

Reduced downtime

Reduced RTO

Hyper-V cut licensing, power, and hardware maintenance costs by 2.2 million dollars over 5 years.

We have realized savings of $50K a year in the elimination of VMWare fees.

We have realized savings of $100K a year in reduction of hardware.

We have realized faster recovery times in full VM restores from backups.

We have realized better backout plans for changes using checkpoints on the VMs before making a change.

Fast OS deployments

Hyper-V Virtualization, get rid of aging servers.

Ease of Support, I view this as a ROI because I'm not spending much needed time trying to manage it like with previous operating systems.

It increased efficiency in our remote management department and gave us the ability to perform other roles.