After two days of frustration, I gave up on ESXi 4 and installed Win2008 R2 with HyperV

[dougclutter]

First off, I'm not posting this because I'm a Windows fanboy...nor am I trying to bash VMware. I have used Workstation since v5 (v4?) and Server v1 for years. I've always been very pleased with the power, elegance, and stability of the VMware products. However, I think VMware needs to hear this story, so they can adjust their product plans.

I was using an old Dell SC420 server for development work. It had Win2003 R2 on the bare metal and it ran 3 Win2003 R2 VMs. Not bad for a 486 HT chip with only 2.5 Gb of RAM! Since this rig is 5 years old, I decided it was time to upgrade.

I purchased a Dell T710 w/1 Quad core HT (E5520) cpu and 12 Gb RAM. Quite an upgrade to be sure.

I never even thought twice about how to configure this. It was going to be an ESXi 4 machine and I was going to just migrate 1 physical and 3 VM machines right over to it. I even considered paying Dell the $148 to have them send along the pre-installed flash version, but I cheaped out at the last minute.

The installation was a breeze. Migrating the machines was difficult only because I didn't know that the destination should be "Infrastructure machine". After about 8 hours, I had everything migrated over. All the machines were up and working, and I was a tired but happy guy.

The next day was not so good. I had two goals that morning: 1) Make sure I had a reasonable backup plan, and 2) Make sure the UPS did a graceful shutdown of the whole rig.

On the old server, I had a simple BAT script that ran a Windows backup job. The BAT script launched every night as a scheduled task. Every couple weeks, I'd rotate one of the three USB drives assigned to this task from my home and all was good.

Anybody who knows anything about ESXi knows where this is headed, so I'll just wrap up. Here's a summary of the troubles I faced:

• There is no easy way to backup the ESXi drive to a USB drive. I was faced with several poor options. The two most promising options were: buy NAS units (too expensive), or rewrite the backup scripts and run them inside the instances (too time consuming). This is an omission that seems simply bizzarre to me. Almost every electronic device we buy (cameras, PDAs, computers, flash drives, external drives), all come with a USB port. Why would ESXi not support USB?

• There isn't even the most rudimentary backup program included. I never thought I would miss the Windows backup program, but ESXi made me yearn for it!

• There is no easy way to get ESXi to shutdown when an APC Back UPS XS 1300 tells it to...via a USB cable. Once again, we've had UPS units for eons. They have all switched over to USB ports to let the computer know that the battery is nearly depleted. Then the computer can shutdown nice and clean so we don't lose anything.

• And finally, one of the reasons I bought the new server was so I could start getting a little more aggressive with testing. We need to automate the process of starting a virtual machine, running a bunch of tests, collecting the results, and shutting it down. If I'm reading things correctly, ESXi 4 has yanked away the APIs that would make this possible.

Ultimately, I decided that Win2008 R2 and Hyper-V made more sense for me. Within a few hours, I had the new server up and running and all my issues with backups, UPSs, and programmable APIs just went away. Perhaps I'm the exception in the world, but I was really disappointed to leave ESXi behind and I don't think I would have had to if VMware had really thought things out.

One final note, I was shocked that there was absolutely no way to purchase a "single" server license for ESX. Why force us to pay for an "Essentials" license for three physical servers when we only have one? And I won't even get started on the pricing...$995! You can't be serious.

[J1mbo]

> There is no easy way to backup the ESXi drive to a USB drive. I was faced with several poor options. The two most promising options were: buy NAS units (too expensive)...

You could have used OpenFiler or any other freeware NAS server on your old box.

> This is an omission that seems simply bizzarre to me. Almost every electronic device we buy (cameras, PDAs, computers, flash drives, external drives), all come with a USB port. Why would ESXi not support USB?

Because it would tie the VMs to a particular physical server - other vmware products do support it though. It does support network USB adapters.

> There isn't even the most rudimentary backup program included. I never thought I would miss the Windows backup program, but ESXi made me yearn for it!

vSphere Data Recovery - but it is a cost option. You can always manually or script replication of vmdk's to a NAS.

> There is no easy way to get ESXi to shutdown when an APC Back UPS XS 1300 tells it to...via a USB cable

Agree with this.

> One final note, I was shocked that there was absolutely no way to purchase a "single" server license for ESX.

You don't need to - it's FOC. You only need to start paying to use extra functionality - HA, DRS, vMotion, vCentreServer etc etc etc.

HTH

[RParker]

> First off, I'm not posting this because I'm a Windows fanboy...nor am I trying to bash VMware. I have used Workstation since v5 (v4?) and Server v1 for years

WOW! Where to start with this one... umm.. First. You didn't heed the manual OR hardware compabiility list.

That OLD computer as you put is probably not supported, but you did say installationw as a 'breeze'. So I am giong to assume you didn't read the manual about converter before you started since you 'didn't know it had to be a Virtual Infrastructure".

Then backup, ESXi has many EASY ways to backup, AGAIN you didn't read the manual (VCB manual on the VM Ware website). Several companies support it. Veeam, vizioncore, even VDR. But since you didn't READ the manual you missed this part.

And you didn't let anyone help BEFORE you made the switch to hypervisor, and maybe you aren't a Windows 'fan boy' but from your message, I am gatthering that's ALL you know, and you gave up on ESX much too easily.

Then you didn't do a comparison of the two products even, did you? I am going to assume no, because NOBODY switches to Hyper Visor once they use ESX, who does that? Anyone with any technical knowledge of ANY semblance wouldn't, but hey if thats what you want, great.

Don't go blaming VM Ware or ESX for your shortcoming. You could have posted this during that 8 hour tantrum (which this message is the result) and we probably could have giving you a simple easy explanation.

This whole thing COULD have been avoided, and since you downloaded ESXi INSTEAD of ESX (with the console) that would have gone a long way to help you as well.

I hope you learned a valuable lesson, because when Hyper Visor FAILS (and it will), and when you learn to read the instructions BEFORE you proceed and the white paper on what's supported and what's not, maybe then you will prepare yourself. Then there is always support, you chose to RANT about your experience rather than ASK for help. I am showing no sympathy for you, your message is an after thought, like you are going to get anyone to see your side, but in the end all we will see is that you are angry because why? You can't read a manual or ask for hep? Not our fault.

> There is no easy way to get ESXi to shutdown when an APC Back UPS XS 1300 tells it to...via a USB cable. Once again, we've had UPS units for eons. They have all switched over to USB ports to let the computer know that the battery is nearly depleted. Then the computer can shutdown nice and clean so we don't lose anything.

ESX is not a Windows box. It's a VM Server, you don't NEED to shut it down, you have 30 or 40 environments running on it. So you lose power, your APC can ALSO connect to a Windows domain controller, I don't suppose you took into account you can gracefully shut down your VM's with a remote command and you don't NEED to shut down the host, right? Nah.... Besides power outage, if you have good DR procedures there are OTHER ways to handle this other than APC.

> And finally, one of the reasons I bought the new server was so I could start getting a little more aggressive with testing. We need to automate the process of starting a virtual machine, running a bunch of tests, collecting the results, and shutting it down. If I'm reading things correctly, ESXi 4 has yanked away the APIs that would make this possible.

MANUAL! No scripts huh? You spend 30 seconds with a product and you magically figured out everything? I think not. Remote Command Line.. not going into details, since reading instructions apparently isn't your strong suit. Scripts / API's are there, they work fine.

>Ultimately, I decided that Win2008 R2 and Hyper-V made more sense for me. Within a few hours, I had the new server up and running and all my issues with backups, UPSs, and programmable APIs just went away.

you just took the CHEAP way out, just admit it....

Why force us to pay for an "Essentials" license for three physical servers when we only have one? And I won't even get started on the pricing...$995! You can't be serious

yup, thought so. Let me ask you something did you actually PURCHASE Hyper V or are you using MSDN subscription? you probably 'borrowed' your MSDN from work and now want to complain because ESX isn't something your company is prepared to pay for, because they rely on your uh... dare I say 'expertise' and since you missed like 90% of what ESX is ALL about, you ASSUME it doesn't work, but what is REALLY going on is you are using Datacenter (probably because you don't know any better) and you can have as many copies of Windows for free I bet.. yeah.. Just be REAL! ESX didn't work because you can't use it gratis...

You will get what you pay for...

[RParker]

> You don't need to - it's FOC. You only need to start paying to use extra functionality - HA, DRS, vMotion, vCentreServer etc etc etc.

Not to mention there is a FREE version of ESXi.. but why waste time on this guy, he isn't interested, he LOVES his Hyper-V! -cough-

[bulletprooffool]

Hyper V Forum :smileydevil:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/winserverhyperv/threads/

[AntonVZhbankov]

I don't believe that a guy who can write such story can not know that destination should be "Infrastructure VM" etc...

Hello Microsoft! Tell your marketing to look like a normal user.

---

VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[dougclutter]

You could have used OpenFiler or any other freeware NAS server on your old box.

I didn't consider this because the old machine has a fan that's starting to go. I did look into buying an Iomega NAS but they are quite a bit more expensive than a simple USB drive and I already have a set of USB drives.

Because it would tie the VMs to a particular physical server - other vmware products do support it though. It does support network USB adapters.

I guess I'm not following you here...I was just wanting to attach the USB drive to the server, run a script to backup all the VMs, and take the USB drive home. Of course, some kind of incremental backup would have been welcome too.

vSphere Data Recovery - but it is a cost option. You can always manually or script replication of vmdk's to a NAS.

Budget was an issue...that's why I was so delighted to find that VMware was offering ESXi for free. I'd used the free VMware server product for a few years and it worked great....ESXi seemed like the next natural step.

HTH

The best part about your reply was that you actually tried to help. Thank you. A number of the posters that came after you were less helpful but amusing in their own way.

[Rumple]

You do make some points about USB, etc but you do have to understand that you tried to use HyperV and esx exactly the same way, when in fact they are really aimed at different markets and are different technologies altogether.

If you ran VMWARE server on the box, it would act EXACTLY like Hyper-V.

Unfortunately, esx4i is free, but thats to help people start to migrate it into Enterprise environments...call it baby stepping your company into virtualization with the best potential of scalability. Most enterprise companies won't just put the free edition of anything into their environment, even for testing. They purchase the license and get the bells and whistles and get products like esXpress or vRanger to back things up (if they are not already backing it onto a SAN.)

The SMB market is not designed to run ESX4i, even though its free because frankly, SMB admin's on average do not have the skills or the environment required to manage a technology thats designed for the enterprise.

Thats why there is also VMWARE Server...do you can hook up USB drives and run backups, etc and still use Virtualization to try and get the ROI on those machines. Unfortunately, that scalability comes with a price...ie, decreased performance and other limitations like having the Windows host O/S crash and bring down the world

One comment though:

And finally, one of the

reasons I bought the new server was so I could start getting a little

more aggressive with testing. We need to automate the process of

starting a virtual machine, running a bunch of tests, collecting the

results, and shutting it down. If I'm reading things correctly, ESXi 4

has yanked away the APIs that would make this possible

I'm not sure i understand this part. you can use the console to spinup, snapshot, or shutdown VM's. You can also use the RCLI to do the same thing.

Unfortunately, most of the tasks are easier for the unix admin's to understand then most of us Windows Admins so thats why VMWARe Server and Hyper-V are easier to use...

[williambishop]

I'm going to have to agree with most of the other posters. If you're not a fudster from Microsoft (they're well known for the tactic of posting "it's so hard and doesn't work" stories on competitors websites), then you really should have asked for help...It's what we do. Most of us have helped build entire enterprise solutions from these forums, and a lot of people if they thought about it would realize that they can get the same or better help here than paying an over priced consultant to come in and design/deploy their environments. The knowledge base amongst the big posters here is unimaginable....and you didn't even give them a shot at helping you. Hell, a lot of these guys can be rented for several hundred dollars an hour, and they're free (and give freely) on these forums. You couldn't count the number of people who've saved thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars just by posting here instead of using 3rd party agents or vmware's own support teams.

If you want something similar to hyper-v, you should have just installed vmware server, it's the same class product (and still more stable than microsoft's product). You said you already knew the product, and it would have made sense to continue down the road. There is nothing you described that cannot easily be done with either server or ESX(but requires research).

Deploying an esx installation REALLY is geared more for enterprise admins. The previous poster is quite correct in that it's usually out of a regular "windows" admin's range of expertise unless they're willing to read the manuals and study the problem first. That's really all that separates enterprise admins from standard admins----the forethought piece of the equation. Had you done that, I have no doubt you would have had no issues, and your initial post wouldn't exist. Unless of course a couple of the other posters are correct, and you are turfing for Microsoft.

Lastly, I would encourage you to make very solid backup and business continuity plans for your setup. As the vast majority of us could have told you, had you asked, you WILL find yourself with a useless pile of computer that doesn't respond, doesn't handle workload, and can't be brought back to life easily. It was your choice to go this route, and we're all about choice (some of the people here run both environments). But take the warning seriously, we give it in good faith. It's not about anger, spite, or anything else...We have tested Hyper-v and found it wanting in several critical areas, as you will. Good luck.

[J1mbo]

FWIW I personally disagree with the above post about ESX(i) not being for SMB's - vmware have made huge strides with essentials (and plus) and the Go product. The difficulty for the SMB remains getting past the bull-***t a lot of IT "consultants" will spin as soon as the V word is mentioned. For example I was recently involved in a project, for a 60 seat office with three physical ESX hosts (proposed), Insight recommended a £35,000 budget for network switching, I mean come on!!

[sathishc]

ESX,ESXi are targetted to more of enterprise/SMB class of

servers/datacentres/requirements and it requires good knowledge of

various internal and external feature/vendor/product knowledge to

really understand the product. *Within 2-3 days no one can judge the

potential/qulaity of esx product.* I feel, you should have

experimented/read/googled more before coming into the conclusions.

Thanks

Satish

[Rumple]

Vmware has made lots of strides, but esx4i with no licensed features put into a typical smb environment (think single server, usb drives, unmanaged switches, linksys routers) and having the IT person ( usually intermediate level at best) and you are asking for a whole lot of disappointment and misunderstanding of the products skills.

[williambishop]

I think you are misunderstanding, it takes someone who can do datacenter work to fully implement it. Hell, my 10 year old can install it, doesn't mean she can configure everything and integrate it into the environment.

Definately the case you mentioned is far from advisable. If the poster had read even a modicum of documentation, they would not have had the issues they had, and if they had asked for help here when they hit the little hurdles, they would have been fine....That is the overall point.

here's the breakdown

hobbyist, smb > VMwareserver, anyone and their brother can install and configure.

standalone, smb >.ESXi, anyone can install it, most can configure it, some can integrate it

SMB, Enterprise >ESX, vsphere, most can install it, some can properly configure it, few can fully integrate it without proper planning.

hobbyist > hyper-v....same as vmware server....but you can't put a decent workload on it, and it's a bit of rubbish.

[dougclutter]

You do make some points about USB, etc but you do have to understand that you tried to use HyperV and esx exactly the same way, when in fact they are really aimed at different markets and are different technologies altogether.

If you ran VMWARE server on the box, it would act EXACTLY like Hyper-V.

Unfortunately, esx4i is free, but thats to help people start to migrate it into Enterprise environments...call it baby stepping your company into virtualization with the best potential of scalability. Most enterprise companies won't just put the free edition of anything into their environment, even for testing. They purchase the license and get the bells and whistles and get products like esXpress or vRanger to back things up (if they are not already backing it onto a SAN.)

The SMB market is not designed to run ESX4i, even though its free because frankly, SMB admin's on average do not have the skills or the environment required to manage a technology thats designed for the enterprise.

Thats why there is also VMWARE Server...do you can hook up USB drives and run backups, etc and still use Virtualization to try and get the ROI on those machines. Unfortunately, that scalability comes with a price...ie, decreased performance and other limitations like having the Windows host O/S crash and bring down the world

I think you're hitting the point I was trying to make. If you read the VMware web site, they make ESXi (free edition) sound like the "answer" for a person like me...specifically, someone with only one physical server. The way they tout ESXi, I thought that their venerable Server product was being phased out in favor of ESXi.

<br/><br/>

It just doesn't make any sense to me that they would promote ESXi in this way, when it is clearly not suited for the task. In fact, I'm hard pressed to see how ESXi (free edition) could be useful to anyone given the limitations I mentioned (no support of USB drives nor support for USB UPS units). If ESXi (free edition) is really meant to be an Evaluation Copy, then they should just say so.

I'm not sure i understand this part. you can use the console to spinup, snapshot, or shutdown VM's. You can also use the RCLI to do the same thing.

Unfortunately, most of the tasks are easier for the unix admin's to understand then most of us Windows Admins so thats why VMWARe Server and Hyper-V are easier to use...

Based on postings in these forums, I thought that VMware had removed support for RCLI in the ESXi (free edition). Please excuse me if I misunderstood this point.

<br/><br/>

You are absolutely correct in assuming that I am more comfortable in a Windows environment, and when I saw that I could control the Hyper-V stuff using PowerShell, I was quite pleased. While I could have figured out RCLI, I'm sure their *nix heritage would have taken me longer to figure out.

[dougclutter]

Deploying an esx installation REALLY is geared more for enterprise admins.

I learned that the hard way. Since I have long been a customer of VMware (workstation and server....NOT their enterprise/datacenter stuff), I was disappointed with how they presented ESXi (free edition). They should NOT, IMHO, be offering ESXi (free edition) and touting it as the better hypervisor, because it is not really usable as a standalone product. Backups and UPS protection are not "bells and whistles" even on a server that is more "mission important" than "mission critical".

[williambishop]

It IS a vastly better product. And it's not over complicated...It's a 3 out of 10 in difficulty at best. But if you don't read the manual, or are unwilling to work for the goal (meaning, it might take you longer than 8 hours), then it's certainly not the product for you, and you should stick with vmware server...which is definately geared more for the low level admin crowd. Personally, I imagine you also had a curve with vmware server, but it felt much more natural to you since it sits on top of another OS, windows in this case.

So again, why would you jump ship altogether, to a shoddy product, when you already understand vmware server? They're geared to the same crowd, and they're both running on top of windows. Difference is that you already know and are comfortable with server.

[J1mbo]

Personally I feel described Hyper-V as 'shoddy' is not really on (despite me being a VCP).

Also Hyper-V does not sit on Windows like vmware Server - MS's equivalent is Virtual Server. Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor just like ESX. It's management partition is a special VM, Windows in this case, which also provides device drivers. Some would argue that approach is better as it makes integration of new device drivers a lot easier than ESX.

[genestet]

I am posting here because I too was starting to feel that the learning curve was getting a little long and winding for the free ESXi. I am a SMB consultant and am trying to find the best "bang for the buck" for my clients. For me, the holy grail for vitualization would be a product to provide stability, reliability, functionality and affordability and would provide server consolidation, disaster recovery through the capability for incremental VM backups across a broadband WAN to either a running or non running VM or to a VM file, preferably in some manner that doesn't require additional server licensing.

As far as running ESXi, I never got past a video card compatibility problem on the 32 bit ESXi. I just get a screen full of random colors and letters after the ESXi boot selection screen. It must be a Linux thing and I guess I would need to find a driver or it may be the fact that my server is not even compatible. It looks as though I better learn a little Linux as it seems to be direction of things in the future. I was wondering why so may coroprate web sites, Dell for one, are getting so slow? Are they trying to virtualize more, and this is the results to be expected? I tried virtualizing a few servers several years ago using VMWare v1 and Virtual Server 2005. They both seemed equally slow when they were put under a small load using what I thought were ample server resources. Can I expect any better today?

You know you can buy a $50 Norton Ghost 14 product to make centrally managed, scheduled incremental image backups across a WAN with the ability to convert the image to a VM of choice. Where can you get an affordable product to do the same for the server VMs and the host?

[dougclutter]

williambishop wrote:

It IS a vastly better product. And it's not over complicated...It's a 3 out of 10 in difficulty at best. But if you don't read the manual, or are unwilling to work for the goal (meaning, it might take you longer than 8 hours), then it's certainly not the product for you, and you should stick with vmware server...which is definately geared more for the low level admin crowd. Personally, I imagine you also had a curve with vmware server, but it felt much more natural to you since it sits on top of another OS, windows in this case.

So again, why would you jump ship altogether, to a shoddy product, when you already understand vmware server? They're geared to the same crowd, and they're both running on top of windows. Difference is that you already know and are comfortable with server.

Are you suggesting that I CAN setup ESXi (free edition) to backup to my USB drives AND shutdown gracefully when my UPS with a USB interface asks it to? I think other posters have indicated that USB support is poor or non-existant in ESXi (free edition), but I want to be sure I understand completely.

As to why I made the switch from VMware server v1.x to Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V, it comes down to my perception of the products placement within its manufacturer's priorities. Clearly, Hyper-V is a priority for Microsoft so I expect there will be a base of expertise to draw from if I have troubles. Whereas, it appears that VMware Server v2.x is now an ugly stepchild to VMware....they seem to be more into/excited/pushy-about ESX and Infrastructure in general.

Let me also say, that your credibility with me takes an extreme nose-dive when you're quick to write-off Hyper-V as a "shoddy product". I just got done setting up three servers on it, and I'm not finding it shoddy at all. ESXi did seem a bit faster and the supporting tools like Converter and the Infrastructure Client are much more polished...also, I liked the ability to start-up ESX VMs in a specific order or with a delay. BUT, that does not mean that Hyper-V is shoddy.

I posted here BECAUSE I care about VMware, and I think they are misrepresenting ESXi (free edition). I'm not a technical zealot. I have a job to get done. If ESX helps me do that better than HV, I would use it. If VMware's documentation was so glorious....and I did read it folks....then this whole thread wouldn't have happened.

[DSTAVERT]

Yes ESXi is an Enterprise grade product, fast, stable etc. but it is not dificult for a one man shop to support. As it is an enterprise grade product, it is designed to run on enterprise grade equipment and many people stumble over the limited hardware support. It isn't hard to find a suitable SERVER platform. Dell, HP, IBM and others make affordable servers. Off lease servers are also available that can often have a warranty added. Very inexpensive. Make sure you have adequate RAM and CPU for the load you expect.

VMware offers free online training sessions. Make use of them. After all if you are providing paid for support you should at least understand what you are charging for.

http://www.vmware.com/go/vspherequickstart1

http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/201

http://www.vmware.com/a/webcasts/details/127

That $50 ghost product isn't for servers. I don't know how much data you have tried to move offsite but GBs across a wan connection takes a hefty connection and plenty of time on both ends.