We're a large multinational company looking to switch from our VMware environments to Hyper-V. We've had some issues with licensing costs, particularly with our Essentials site, so we're making this change to save money. Currently, we have a management portal (Morpheus) that allows users to self-provision VMs using predefined templates. We have around 20 hosts, approximately 2000 cores, and 2000 VMs, with a mix of Windows and Linux running on iSCSI storage. If anyone has experience with this transition, I'd love to hear your advice or recommendations for tools to make the process smoother!
5 Answers
It’s critical to break the project down into manageable waves. Ensure you identify technical and business owners and have a solid service delivery plan in place. That'll really help with smooth transitions and avoid issues later.
SCVMM is a solid choice, but if it's out of reach, consider using PowerShell scripts to help automate some tasks and ease the user experience. Just a heads up though, the native migration options can feel a bit limiting. I’ve looked into Starwinds, but it seems they only allow one VM at a time for migrations. I’m also in talks with Veeam and waiting to get more info from them.
I share your concerns with migration options. I’m waiting to hear back from Veeam too about their capabilities.
I’ve found that even Veeam's free version can be a great asset for migrations, minimizing downtime during the process. It’s worth checking out!
That’s interesting! Does the free version allow migration of multiple VMs at once, or is it limited?
Have you looked into the Starwind V2V converter? It's another option you might want to consider for your migration to Hyper-V.
Definitely look into SCVMM if your budget allows for it. Managing a deployment of this size without it can turn into a nightmare, as setting up new VMs becomes pretty manual. For backend storage, stick with iSCSI; it's what Microsoft recommends and offers better performance than SMB for your needs.
SCVMM is already on my radar. We actually found some unused licenses during our enterprise license renewals that I plan to repurpose. Thanks for the advice!
We’re currently doing a proof of concept to ensure everything meets our requirements. So far, things are looking good, though we did hit a hiccup with Morpheus detecting VNets incorrectly. Lots of learning involved, especially regarding Linux VM migrations!