Install Windows Features with Hyper-V
October 22, 2019
Install Windows Features with Hyper-V
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Hyper-V
Hyper-V is currently deployed as an HA cluster hosting IT management and VDI VMs. Tools such as file servers, Bomgar, Zerto, Microsoft System Center 2019, etc. It addresses the need for the IT staff to have an HA cluster outside of our other virtualization stacks that run core business systems. We are also running a second Hyper-V cluster as the replication target for Zerto for our DR.
- Ease of use for Windows administrators. These days the maturity of a virtualization platform is a non-issue. All have been around long enough to be full-featured and stable. If your current IT staff has a strong background in Windows systems then Hyper-V will be easy for them to manage without having to take on a full-time contract with a VAR.
- Cost of licensing. Licensing for Hyper-V using Microsoft's Datacenter licensing model will license all your servers and the Windows VMs without having to purchase two separate licensing. Lowers costs and makes licensing management easier. Which is always a plus with Microsoft.
- Portability and ease of recovery. This one is often missed when Hyper-V is discussed. In the case of a disaster and administrator to connect to a remote share, or copy the disk files from a Hyper-V VM right to their laptop. You can then double click that disk file and open it like a remote drive. This can save hours of recovery time during a migration or disaster. You cannot do that with other disk formats so seamlessly.
- Web-based management is still lacking. Microsoft's SCVMM is still a "thick" app and clunky to use compared to the HTML 5 based website of vCenter. Microsoft's new platform Windows Admin Center is trying to fix this gap, but it is not built for huge deployments and is still slow and difficult to manage users.
- Heavy PowerShell required for complicated deployments. I love PowerShell, but not everyone does. For your basic clusters, you do not need it. But if you want to delve into configurations like S2D you will need to know PowerShell.
- Difficult to find VAR support. Every vendor out there has engineers that know VMWare. It has been a challenge to find vendors that have Microsoft Hyper-V engineers on staff. The certification program for Hyper-V is not near as strong as VMWare.
- Hyper-V has saved a good deal of money for our company. We leveraged the licensing we have with Microsoft to "spin up" a cluster without having to purchase tens of thousands of dollars of additional licensing for virtualization.
- Applications, such as Zerto and Veeam, are slow to support the newest versions of Hyper-V 2019.
I would say Hyper-V would be a peer to VMWare. Features and stability are solid and full-featured for both products. Each have unique shortfalls that the other does not. VirtualBox is a great tool for desktop or laptop virtualization. It is not targeted as much for the enterprise.
Do you think Hyper-V delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Hyper-V's feature set?
Yes
Did Hyper-V live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Hyper-V go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Hyper-V again?
Yes