Hyper-V migration to VMware ESXi 6

[KSL28]

Hello,

I have a private testing enviroment with 2x Custom build servers, currently running Hyper-V 2012 R2.

The hosts are running some standard Windows VMs (2vCPUs, 4-8GB mem, etc...), but 2 of the VMs have each attached 9TB .vhdx for storage.

If im correct there was a limitation in the previous ESXi versions, only being able to attach a maximum of 4TB volumes to a guest VM - is this correct?

In ESXi 6 it looks like the maximum disk size on VMFS5 is 62TB, which is more than enough hosting the servers

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere6/r60/vsphere-60-configuration-maximums.pdf

My question is:

I might want to migrate all the VMs on the Hyper-V hosts, to 2x standalone VMware ESXi 6 hosts.

I currently dont have a Hyper-V cluster, so i dont need any redundancy that the V-Center might provide.

What limitations (if any) will i get, migrating the VMs to 2x standalone VMware hosts?

Also what license will be best for my needs?

Thanks in advance

[iHumster]

If you don't need redundancy you can choose Free vSphere Hypervisor.

From limitations: maximum 8 vCPU per VM. But for testing environment is important.

[KSL28]

Hello,

Thanks for your answer

So i will be able to create theoretically 62TB vmdk files, for each VM - no regard of the licens?

Any other downsides in switching from Hyper-V to VMware?

[BrianNorth8]

You can have up to 64 vmdks each up to 62 TB each attached to each VM on a host.

While that is possible, I don't recommend that approach.  Keeping your vmdks down to a reasonable size will benefit you in multiple ways including options of migrating vmdks to other storage and working with snapshots if needed.

Also on your license needs you might consider looking at some of the essentials kits that are designed for a maximum of 3 hosts and include vcenter.

Virtualization for Small Businesses - vSphere Essentials Kit