So I have my first hyper-v cluster spun up. Only one node so far - the parts for the 2nd one are trickling in. Most of the issues I had were the typical microsoft "we have it so the defaults are 95% right!" experience. Observations to date:
#1 If you want local storage on a hypervisor, vsphere makes it easy. Just stick one or more disks on the node, and you can storage vmotion guests to it at will.
#2 Hyper-V apparently doesn't allow that. At all. None of the sites I visited had a hint as to how to do that, and microsoft 'experts' pooh-poohed the very idea. I would have pointed out that if you have a setup where you don't have more than one SAN/NAS to use for storage, you can't shutdown the active storage. That is where vsphere has an edge. I could migrate all my guests storage to the 1TB SSD on that node, reboot the SAN, and migrate back. I tried to use the 1TB SSD by sharing a folder on it, and giving that to the hyper-v cluster 'move to' gui, but when you click on 'add share' and give the share info, it fails. Googling revealed the usual microsoft idiocy of requiring certain very specific permissions for very specific accounts. This is a general nuisance with anything to do with SMB in the hyper-v cluster system (e.g. I had the same problem trying to use an SMB share hosted on an omnios NAS/SAN appliance that I spun up for testing - I finally gave up on SMB and stood up an iSCSI volume - omnios makes that very simple.)
#3 Not having to deal with VCSA? Priceless! I've found that virtual appliance to be a pain. Full of bloated crap and often slowing down for no apparent reason, such that the spinning wheel would appear for 1-2 minutes when trying to navigate to a different page. Hyper-v presents a virtual management IP that maps to one host, and you just roll with that. Much more convenient.
#4 Cost: when my VMUG membership lapses, I probably won't renew it. Saving about $200/yr there. Note that I have to pay for two ws2019/standard licenses anyway, since I have 2 ws2019/standard VMs acting as AD/RADIUS/DNS/DHCP servers anyway, and the ws2019 licensing allows me to license both virtual servers, as long as both physical hosts are full licensed.
#1 If you want local storage on a hypervisor, vsphere makes it easy. Just stick one or more disks on the node, and you can storage vmotion guests to it at will.
#2 Hyper-V apparently doesn't allow that. At all. None of the sites I visited had a hint as to how to do that, and microsoft 'experts' pooh-poohed the very idea. I would have pointed out that if you have a setup where you don't have more than one SAN/NAS to use for storage, you can't shutdown the active storage. That is where vsphere has an edge. I could migrate all my guests storage to the 1TB SSD on that node, reboot the SAN, and migrate back. I tried to use the 1TB SSD by sharing a folder on it, and giving that to the hyper-v cluster 'move to' gui, but when you click on 'add share' and give the share info, it fails. Googling revealed the usual microsoft idiocy of requiring certain very specific permissions for very specific accounts. This is a general nuisance with anything to do with SMB in the hyper-v cluster system (e.g. I had the same problem trying to use an SMB share hosted on an omnios NAS/SAN appliance that I spun up for testing - I finally gave up on SMB and stood up an iSCSI volume - omnios makes that very simple.)
#3 Not having to deal with VCSA? Priceless! I've found that virtual appliance to be a pain. Full of bloated crap and often slowing down for no apparent reason, such that the spinning wheel would appear for 1-2 minutes when trying to navigate to a different page. Hyper-v presents a virtual management IP that maps to one host, and you just roll with that. Much more convenient.
#4 Cost: when my VMUG membership lapses, I probably won't renew it. Saving about $200/yr there. Note that I have to pay for two ws2019/standard licenses anyway, since I have 2 ws2019/standard VMs acting as AD/RADIUS/DNS/DHCP servers anyway, and the ws2019 licensing allows me to license both virtual servers, as long as both physical hosts are full licensed.