I'm considering migrating from vSphere to Hyper-V and I wanted to know if others have made the switch. For those who have, what do you miss the most from vSphere? Did you face any challenges with iSCSI, especially when using IBM FlashSystem or Cisco UCSX servers?
7 Answers
I definitely miss having a unified web interface to manage virtual machines. The Windows Admin Center just doesn't cut it for me. Also, I've noticed that vSphere VMs generally boot much faster compared to Hyper-V guests.
Consider checking out Azure Local (formerly Azure Stack HCI). It could be beneficial for your setup!
You should be able to use the same fiber storage you had with vSphere in Hyper-V. I don't understand why you'd switch to iSCSI. The IBM FlashSystem hardware should support both connectivity options. If you're really into UCSX and M8 blades, they even allow NVMe over iSCSI support.
We moved away from FC over a decade ago because using standard Ethernet is so much simpler, and we could get up to 100Gbps with iSCSI, compared to 32Gbps with FC. We're now looking at NVMe over RDMA for a performance boost since Veeam has finally added NVMe support!
We just completed our migration and here are some pain points we experienced:
- No USB pass-through support
- Management tools feel clunky (I prefer VMware’s tools)
- Missing role-based access control (RBAC)
- No storage snapshot explorer in Veeam
- No continuous data protection (CDP) in Veeam
- The number of reboots was insane. During testing, I had to reboot Windows 5-6 times just to get things working properly. Each reboot took over 10 minutes with 768GB of RAM! Installing drivers, updates, joining the domain, setting up everything required multiple reboots, which was quite frustrating.
I think you can enable USB pass-through using enhanced session mode, which functions like RDP.
We recently migrated and honestly, I miss vSphere, particularly with setting up new clusters. vSphere’s networking and shared storage configurations are way better, in my opinion. Hyper-V is manageable, but the tools just aren't as effective, though it’s okay once everything is up and running.
I'm in the same boat, trying to figure out if I need to invest in Microsoft Unified support if I have production clusters or if most issues can be resolved without it. VMware felt like their paid support was essential due to complexity.
Consider getting unified support from a third-party partner rather than directly from Microsoft. They’ve streamlined their support staff and you might end up with someone who just forwards your issues anyway.
I appreciate VMware because I never needed to contact their support despite having it.
I have my doubts; it seems like Unified support just redirects your inquiries to AI today.
I can't provide direct input on Hyper-V since I lack experience, but have you looked into Proxmox? Is there a specific reason you're leaning towards Hyper-V over Proxmox?
We're exploring Proxmox, but we've encountered issues with lack of support from hardware vendors like Cisco or IBM. Many virtual appliances also don’t have vendor support.
It's mainly because Hyper-V is an enterprise-level solution, with strong backing from hardware vendors. Proxmox lacks that assurance.
Managing Proxmox requires solid Linux skills, which might not be present in most virtualization teams. You really need a broad skill set to handle it properly.
When we were using Hyper-V, iSCSI worked well for us. Eventually, we transitioned to Proxmox for various reasons.
Are you talking about Windows Admin Center itself or its virtualization mode? The WAC vmode has its perks!