In what circumstances would you choose each of the following deployment options:
- Hyper-V installed as the bare bones Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
- Hyper-V role installed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core installation
- Hyper-V role installed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Full Installation
For example, I know there are licensing considerations for each option:
- With Hyper-V on top of a full installation of Enterprise or Data Center edition, you can use Windows Server as a guest OS without needing additional licenses (4 for Enterprise, unlimited for Data Center)
- With "Windows Hyper-V Server" you have to obtain licenses for each guest OS.
But my real question is, are there technical considerations as well?
I understand that the Full Installation doesn't perform as well as the other two options, but is there a significant difference between Server Core and "Windows Hyper-V Server"? What are the pros and cons of Hyper-V on Server Core vs "Windows Hyper-V Server" and when would you choose each?
Best Answer
A couple thoughts before you write off using the Full version of R2. I was a die-hard fan of Server Core (Still am actually) but after a year of running Hyper-V cluster on Server Core, I have some new thoughts on Core vs Full.
With R2, we now have Cluster Shared Volumes and Live Migration so you can move VM's between nodes without any downtime. It's essentially the equivalent of V-Motion from VMWare. Now that I don't have to pause/resume VM's to fail them over, the patching of physical nodes is not such a big deal anymore.
Secondly, as much as I love command lines, half of my ops do not like them as much. I ended up being the top resource because of the steep learning curve when all you have to work with is the command line. So, depending on the skill of the group that will be managing the servers day to day, this might be a factor.
Also, for networking, if you ever get into teaming NIC's, good luck doing that in Server Core. To configure teaming on Intel and Broadcom, you'll need to use their software that only installs on Full.
Considering the HA you get with live migration and the ease of managemmet with the GUI for our operations team, I am encouraing our team to move to the Full version of Server 2008 R2.
Minor Update
After reading this whitepaper, it looks like CSV is recommended but not required for Live Migration. In my earlier post, I had inferred that you needed CSV for Live Migration. This is not necessarily the case.