Considering migration from Hyper-V to vCenter

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
Just want some thoughts here?

Been a long time Hyper-V user in my home lab.
Considering switching to vCenter, cost is not really an issue, home lab, but for work purposes, and using corporate licensing for MSFT and VMWare.

Primary motivator is central management in vCenter, vs. RDP to Windows host and then using Hyper-V manager.
I know, I can use a domain and SCOM overkill, or use remote admin tools, but it only works when using domain admin account, or requires jumping through hoops to get permissions working if not using admin account, and I do not want to use domain, nor do I want to run with admin account for daily use.

I do run some vCenter Essentials virtual appliance in a VM, and ESXi 5.5 at my office, and it is really easy to manage in one place.
Big downside is how complicated it is to make ESXi use any type of hardware that is not in the inbox image, including how super complicated it gets to remotely manage RAID controllers.

How do you manage multiple Hyper-V hosts from one convenient place, in an as easy as vCenter virtual appliance way?

P.
 

Darkytoo

Member
Jan 2, 2014
106
4
18
I used to run vcenter and I really liked it, but I switched to using straight hyper-v because I support microsoft products all day long and it seemed silly to run ESX at home, plus I like being able to use the actual console of the system for management when things hit the fan.

Microsoft has a software called "Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager" that does everything that vcenter does. It manages all the VMs across all the hosts in a single interface, it manages the health and updates on the hosts, and has some pretty strong template capabilities. SCVMM will also monitor the VM loads and can re-distribute them among the hosts to more accurately balance them automatically, it's also smart enough to see if the load is small enough it will move the vms off of un-needed hosts and then shut the machine down (via IPMI) and then turn it back on if needed (IPMI) I use it in my lab and it works really well. My only real problem with it is the same problem I have with vcenter, is that it's meant for much larger environments so you need a SQL server also, and it's very intensive to setup, so read the setup guides before jumpng into it, i've redone my SCVMM setup about 6 times due to setting things up wrong and not know it until later.
 

OBasel

Active Member
Dec 28, 2010
494
62
28
How do you manage multiple Hyper-V hosts from one convenient place, in an as easy as vCenter virtual appliance way?
Install Microsoft RSAT and Hyper-V manager and be done with it? Once you get it setup it is relatively easy to work with.
 
Install Microsoft RSAT and Hyper-V manager and be done with it? Once you get it setup it is relatively easy to work with.
I've tried this before, and there was tons of steps I needed to follow to get the correct account permissions to allow my non-admin and non-domain accounts to be able to manage the servers, I gave up and just RDP'd to each box.
Has this been improved with W2K12R2 and Win8.1?
I.e. how easy is it to manage hosts from a non-admin local account that is not the same as the host account admin account?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
I've tried this before, and there was tons of steps I needed to follow to get the correct account permissions to allow my non-admin and non-domain accounts to be able to manage the servers, I gave up and just RDP'd to each box.
Has this been improved with W2K12R2 and Win8.1?
I.e. how easy is it to manage hosts from a non-admin local account that is not the same as the host account admin account?
I am not sure if you saw my Hyper-V cluster exploration thread. I ended up just using Hyper-V hosts and then I have a windows 8.1 domain VM that sits on one of the servers. It has made administration much easier.
 
Hi Patrick, I read this thread:
http://forums.servethehome.com/wind...-hyper-v-web-hosting-cluster-exploration.html

Did not see anything about how you finally configured the system to run Win8 joined to a domain in a VM?
Did you join each host to a domain?
Did you join a Win8 VM to the domain for admin purposes, then RDP to the Win8 box for admin?
Did you make each Hyper-V host a DC, or do you run a DC as a VM on a host?
Are you using System Center Virtual Machine Manager, installed on a VM?

P.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
A quick outline of what I did was:
1. Install the first Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 hypervisor
2. Make a DC in a virtual machine
3. Join the Hypervisor to the domain
4. Make a Windows 8.1 (need 8.1 for R2) VM and join to the domain for management
5. Add a second Hypervisor

Overall this worked really well. You can also install something like teamviewer in the Windows 8.1 management VM and have access from mobile devices if RDP is blocked.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
With only 2 hypervisors no real need for VMM with the capability set I wanted/ needed.
 

mason736

Member
Mar 17, 2013
111
1
18
Patrick, what are you doing with the windows 8.1 VM and second hypervisor, that you couldn't do with the first hypervisor on windows server 2012? I am in a similar space. I have windows server 2012 r2 with the essentials experience installed on one node of a 6100, and it is acting as the DC. I have Hyper-V setup on another node, running server 2012 datacenter. I find my self using the hypervisor node to launch all the control windows, and do management there.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Patrick, what are you doing with the windows 8.1 VM and second hypervisor, that you couldn't do with the first hypervisor on windows server 2012? I am in a similar space. I have windows server 2012 r2 with the essentials experience installed on one node of a 6100, and it is acting as the DC. I have Hyper-V setup on another node, running server 2012 datacenter. I find my self using the hypervisor node to launch all the control windows, and do management there.
Less of a question of what I cannot do with Windows Server 2012 R2. The big driver for the Windows 8.1 VM is that I want to keep the DC/ DNS server standalone and have a management server that I can spin up/ down remotely. That lets me have some remote access protocols I would not want to have on for a always-on machine. It also allows me to install utilities then revert to a previous checkpoint if they are suspect in any way.

Using Dynamic memory I think the DC/ DNS server is currently using under 800MB.
 

mason736

Member
Mar 17, 2013
111
1
18
Considering my DC/dns is running in 2012 essentials, and I have a separate node as a hypervisor, I think I have a similar setup