} Lake Michigan College has been using
Microsoft Hyper-V as it’s primary server virtualization platform since 2008, in this presentation we will discuss the following;
◦ The reasons we chose this platform
◦ The difficulties we have had
◦ The evolution of Hyper-V at LMC
4
System Resource Hyper-V (2012) vSphere Hypervisor vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus
Host
Logical Processors 320 160 160
Physical Memory 4TB 32GB1 2TB
Virtual CPUs per Host 2,048 2,048 2,048
VM
Virtual CPUs per VM 64 8 642
Memory per VM 1TB 32GB1 1TB
Active VMs per Host 1,024 512 512
Guest NUMA Yes Yes Yes
Cluster Maximum Nodes 64 N/A3 32
Maximum VMs 8,000 N/A3 4,000
1 Host physical memory is capped at 32GB thus maximum VM memory is also restricted to 32GB usage.
2 vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus is the only vSphere edition that supports 64 vCPUs.
Enterprise edition supports 32 vCPU per VM with all other editions supporting 8 vCPUs per VM
3 For clustering/high availability, customers must purchase vSphere
vSphere Hypervisor / vSphere 5.x Ent+ Information: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r51/vsphere-51-configuration-maximums.pdf, https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-51-Platform-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf and
} In 2006, LMC began a Server refresh:
◦ Running Novell servers, some of which were sitting on
the floor
◦ Running Sun Linux servers that ran Banner Applications
◦ Had network wires laying on the floor
} The Refresh included:
o Replaced Servers with standardized server platform
(purchased 35 physical servers in first 2 years)
o EMC CX20-3 SAN with 4 drive chassis
} Issues we encountered:
◦ The addition of so many physical servers caused us
issues with power and air conditioning
◦ UPS run time was lowered
◦ We did not know what circuits were on emergency
generator
} Solutions:
o Added second AC unit, placed on emergency generator
o Purchased additional UPS units, placed on emergency
generator
o Identified emergency generator circuits
} In 2006:
◦ Microsoft’s virtualization platform was Microsoft Virtual
Server 2005
◦ VMWare ESX 3.0 was released
◦ LMC had not yet begun a server virtualization program
◦ LMC employees did not have much experience with any
virtualization solution
} In 2008:
◦ Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V
◦ Microsoft released SCVVM 2008
} In 2008:
◦ We started looking at pricing on virtualization platforms
◦ VMWare is the industry leader in virtualization
◦ Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 is a better solution then
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 was
} What we found:
◦ The cost of VMWare licensing was affordable, but yearly
support costs made it less attractive
◦ Microsoft Campus Agreement made Microsoft pricing
very affordable
◦ A proof of concept implementation of Microsoft Hyper-V
} Stand alone servers running Windows 2008
Advanced Server edition, first generation Hyper-V
} 16 Gigs RAM per server
} Dual Quad Core CPU’s
} 1 Terabyte of internal RAID
} Maximum of 4 VM’s per server
} Clustered servers running Windows 2008 R2
Data Center Server edition, Hyper-V 2.0
} 48 Gigs RAM per server
} Dual Quad Core CPU’s
} 1 Gig iSCSI RAID
} Clustered Share Volume
} Live Migration
} Clustered servers running Windows 2012
Data Center Server edition, Hyper-V 3.0
} 256 Gigs RAM per server
} Dual Eight Core CPU’s
} 10 Gig iSCSI RAID
} Shared Nothing Live Migration
} SCVMM 2012
} Separate 10 Gig switch stacks for network
} Our Servers have 256 Gigs of RAM in each
server.
} The current average for Memory of our virtual
servers is 2.25 Gigs
} As a rule of thumb, our 2 socket, 8 core
processors with Hyper Threading should be able to handle 256 virtual CPUs
} The current average for CPU’s of our virtual
} With an average of 2.25 Gigs per VM, in a
failed over cluster running on one node, we should be able to run 114 virtual machines
} With an average of 1.5 CPUs per VM, in a
failed over cluster running on one node, we should be able to run 170 virtual machines
} We’re currently running 82 virtual machines,
} LMC uses CommVault Backup software using
their Virtual Agent
◦ Allows restoration of complete Virtual Machines
◦ Allows restoration of individual files on VHD’s
} Once we have our second cluster up and
running, we will replicate critical servers to the remote cluster
◦ Servers not considered critical and not replicated
} Build another identical server cluster in
second data center
} Replicate critical virtual servers to different
data centers
} Yes, but with limitations
◦ Very little management capabilities
◦ Slow VM Pool spin up times
◦ No VM monitoring capabilities
◦ No Access from iOS, Mac, Linux or Android
} Quest vWorkspace adds the following
capabilities to VDI using Hyper-V
◦ HyperDeploy –
Reduces disk space requirements by nearly 50
◦ HyperCache -
Greatly reduces virtual desktop deployment times
◦ Allows management through a single console
◦ Free Connectors for iOS, Mac, Android, Linux and Java
◦ User Experience Monitoring with vFoglight
◦ Reporting of farm utilization, administrative actions, desktop state
and environmental configuration
} After a VDI cost comparison of VMware View
Premier and Quest vWorkspace Premier for 500 Concurrent Licenses, we found:
◦ vWorkspace Premier license costs was 15% lower
then VMware View license costs
◦ vWorkspace Premier ongoing maintenance/support
} LMC chose Microsoft Hyper-V over VMWare to
lower costs
} LMC has built three generations of Hyper-V
server platforms
} With each release of Hyper-V, Microsoft has
closed the gap with VMWare’s functionality
} There have been challenges
} LMC has done a proof of concept using
