Hyper-v vs Virtualbox

hyper-v-server-2008-r2virtualboxwindows-server-2008

I am using Oracle VirtualBox for ubuntu guest virtual servers on windows server 2008 R2. I'm in a plan to migrate(stop using virtualbox) from VirtualBox to Hyper-V. I guess many are using hyper-v virtualization and have good control over it and could help me here in clarifying few things. The reason I use Virtualbox is it's open source and the reason for migrating is that if hyper-v support any additional feature which virtualbox doesn't(and I couldn't migrate VBox vms along with all the snapshots). I have following questions to get it clarified.

  1. Does hyper-v require any licence or is limited to running particular number of virtual machines?.
  2. Is hyper-v capable to export/import VMs along with all the snapshots?
  3. Is it possible to run HeadLess VMs like it's done with VirtualBox?
  4. Does hyper-v recognize VDI/VMDK?

Anybody can suggest me anything?. Thanks!

Best Answer

  1. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 has no licensing requirements for itself, you have to license the guest operating systems just like normal. If i'm not mistaken the limit on Hyper-V R2 is 384 Virtual machines per server.

  2. Yes.

  3. I'm not familiar with virtualbox, but after googling around a bit I think the answer is yes.

  4. No, I'm fairly sure its not compatible.

One additional caveat, it likely wont matter for you as linux in general is pretty resource light, but Ubuntu isn't listed as one of the supported guest operating systems so you wont be able to load the integration components. The ICs enable the synthetic NIC and VM storage adapters, general performance enhancers. That being said I'm running Ubuntu as a hyper-v guest and it works great, its a test server and not production but I'd be willing to bet it would do fine in production.