ESX Cluster for free? without HA

C

cyr0n_k0r

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Mar 30, 2001
Messages
5,360
So we are a Hyper-V shop and I already have 50-60 VM's running on a 3 node 2012 Hyper-V cluster connect to an EQ SAN.

We have a few appliances that the vendors offer a "virtual appliance" but only for ESX.
I'd like to setup an ESX cluster and from what I've read you can do this for free without having to buy any licensing. The only thing you lose is HA. What I'm not understanding though is what HA does specifically?

If I have an ESX cluster without HA what does that limit me to? If an ESX node goes down in a cluster and I don't have HA do my VM's not live migrate over to another node?
 
HA means that if you lose a node your VMs are still able to run from a second node and are restarted automatically

You also get no form of VMotion in the free version.
 
I don't know what VMotion is. I am a Hyper-V person.

Hyper-V has live migration. If a node is put into maintenance mode or I manually move a VM from one node to another the VM is "live migrated" and stays online during the move.
If a node fails then VM's are migrated over to another node and automatically brought back on the new node. (via a restart of the VM)

I am looking to replicate this same feature set with ESX. What do I need?
If I don't have HA on the ESX cluster and a node fails and as you say they are not restarted automatically, what happens to them? Do they move to another node and just sit there and stay turned off? That sounds dumb.
 
If it's dumb to have a feature that is disabled in the free version, I guess it's dumb, yes.
 
danswartz said:
If it's dumb to have a feature that is disabled in the free version, I guess it's dumb, yes.
Click to expand...
spare me your ESX/Hyper-V fanboy BS. :rolleyes:
I'm trying to accomplish a business objective with the least cost. Thread crap somewhere else.
 
vmotion and smotion are the ability to move live VMs between hosts and datastores

no HA means they don't get moved to another host, they just stay offline.
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
spare me your ESX/Hyper-V fanboy BS. :rolleyes:
I'm trying to accomplish a business objective with the least cost. Thread crap somewhere else.
Click to expand...

I could probably have been less flip, but abusing the term fanboy (with no justification whatsoever) doesn't help things.
 
Fair enough. That said, I saw a post about ESXi 5.2, but I haven't seen any references to that?:
 
In a thread over on servethehome.com. I think the OP may have fat-fingered since '2' is right next to '1' on the keyboard. I've seen nothing else implying the existence of 5.2?
 
Microsoft gives stuff away for free Hyper-V but technically it doesn't you still license Microsoft OS for each host.

VMWare all they do is sell the hypervisor in different flavors. They do have free ESXi Free called Vsphere. You are able to do use that without paying but it has no clustering abilities all it is a hypervisor. Its kinda like free hyperv from MS (download) but inorder to cluster you need to caugh up for hypervmanager. etc.
 
Wrench00 said:
Its kinda like free hyperv from MS (download) but inorder to cluster you need to caugh up for hypervmanager. etc.
Click to expand...

No, you just install the Failover cluster feature on the Hyper-V 2012 hosts remotely via Powershell or Server Manager from Windows 8 or Server 2012. Then launch the Failover Cluster Manager, cluster the Hyper-V 2012 hosts, and you've got HA, Live Migration, and Live Storage Migration for free.
 
Child of Wonder said:
No, you just install the Failover cluster feature on the Hyper-V 2012 hosts remotely via Powershell or Server Manager from Windows 8 or Server 2012. Then launch the Failover Cluster Manager, cluster the Hyper-V 2012 hosts, and you've got HA, Live Migration, and Live Storage Migration for free.
Click to expand...

So you don't need to purchase a Licensed copy of windows server?

Edit
I guess you don't.
Too bad there is no NFS boot, no nested hypervisor, nor support for non linux, or windows servers. I guess if your a windows shop its ok.


Edit 2
You need AD to make a cluster. <- this is not free You need to license windows server.

Ewww.
You can only manage from a Win8 RSAT no 7. Only command line in 7. Thanks but no thanks.

The whole FREE thing has a lot of Gotchas doesn't it.

I'm a vcp so I have NFR so I don't really care. :D
 
Last edited:
Wrench00 said:
So you don't need to purchase a Licensed copy of windows server?

Edit
I guess you don't.
Too bad there is no NFS boot, no nested hypervisor, nor support for non linux, or windows servers. I guess if your a windows shop its ok.


Edit 2
You need AD to make a cluster. <- this is not free You need to license windows server.

Ewww.
You can only manage from a Win8 RSAT no 7. Only command line in 7. Thanks but no thanks.

The whole FREE thing has a lot of Gotchas doesn't it.

I'm a vcp so I have NFR so I don't really care. :D
Click to expand...

NFS boot? Who the hell is booting from NFS?

Nested Hypervisor? Who needs that in a production environment?

There's support for Linux guests, just not BSD.

Who doesn't have AD?

Add back the Start button with a $5 program called Start8 and Windows 8 is just as good if not better than Windows 7.

I'm a VCP, VCAP, and aspiring to become a VCDX and I'm learning Hyper-V. Better get used to Hyper-V because they're going to eat a good amount of market share in the next year or two.
 
Child of Wonder said:
NFS boot? Who the hell is booting from NFS?

Nested Hypervisor? Who needs that in a production environment?

There's support for Linux guests, just not BSD.

Who doesn't have AD?

Add back the Start button with a $5 program called Start8 and Windows 8 is just as good if not better than Windows 7.

I'm a VCP, VCAP, and aspiring to become a VCDX and I'm learning Hyper-V. Better get used to Hyper-V because they're going to eat a good amount of market share in the next year or two.
Click to expand...

Well I run SCO, Solaris, BSD, in VMs. So hyperV is out.*try to configure zfs*

I keep my clusters independent of AD. What happens if AD has a meltdown. Where is your cluster then? On large deployments its ok I suppose but on small ones vcenter appliance is what I prefer.

I use NFS to boot. Works very well in smaller deployments.*sarcasm on* Why would I use SMB to boot?*sarcasm off*
NFS is also support by 100000's of devices low cost and high cost NAS, unified storage devices, SMB on the other hand is MS only, with hacked Samba. Since SMB 3 came out it will take a long time before advantages of SMB 3 can be had on shared storage devices through Samba. I think its great that they are utilizing DAS better but I have had not so great experiences with DAS, still prefer shared storage.

I also do use FT, I still don't see FT with HyperV
I still don't see autodeploy. Just some WDS trickery.
No DRS either.

Nested hypervisor is great, I don't have to have separate server for HyperV and Vmware and storage and etc.. Save a great amount of time and money for a testing environment. If you were self employed like I am you would appreciate that feature.

Your opinion on 8 not mine.

I'm sure VMWare will release more features as they will need to start competing with MS more and more. I think its a win win, situation. I think eventually KVM and linux hyper visors will take over. Its already happening. The amount of stuff that got added to 5.1 is great. I am sad tho because they will most likely kill vmware like they killed novell. Oh well, Google android and Linux will kill the Windows Desktop OS( I wonder if MS will start giving out windows phone to compete with android). Its a dog eat dog world.

I don't disagree with you so don't start a flame war vsphere vs hyperv.
 
Last edited:
Wrench00 said:
Well I run SCO, Solaris, BSD, in VMs. So hyperV is out.*try to configure zfs*
Click to expand...

Sure, but a small percentage of businesses run those operating systems. The vast majority runs Windows with a little Linux thrown in. That's what Hyper-V is targeting.

Wrench00 said:
I keep my clusters independent of AD. What happens if AD has a meltdown. Where is your cluster then? On large deployments its ok I suppose but on small ones vcenter appliance is what I prefer.
Click to expand...

Nothing. In Windows 2012 you can even boot a cluster with AD being down. You only need AD up to create the cluster.

If the entire cluster goes down then you're likely looking at a datacenter down scenario which would be a problem no matter what hypervisor is in use.

vCenter appliance is nice but you still have to run a Windows server for Update Manager. When they roll that into the vCenter Appliance then I'll recommend using it to clients.

Wrench00 said:
I use NFS to boot. Works very well in smaller deployments.*sarcasm on* Why would I use SMB to boot?*sarcasm off*
NFS is also support by 100000's of devices low cost and high cost NAS, unified storage devices, SMB on the other hand is MS only, with hacked Samba. Since SMB 3 came out it will take a long time before advantages of SMB 3 can be had on shared storage devices through Samba. I think its great that they are utilizing DAS better but I have had not so great experiences with DAS, still prefer shared storage.
Click to expand...

No need to use SMB to boot. Maybe that'll come someday, but right now I tend to avoid booting from SAN because of the extra layer of complexity and failure it adds. It's cool to boot from SAN but what problems does it really solve vs. the added headache? The hypervisor nodes are just disposable containers of CPU, RAM, and networking anyway. If one fails due to disk failure, HA will make the VMs come up elsewhere and I just replace the disks in the failed node.

SMB 3 is available now on the EMC VNX and coming soon from Netapp.

Wrench00 said:
I also do use FT, I still don't see FT with HyperV
I still don't see autodeploy. Just some WDS trickery.
No DRS either.
Click to expand...

Nothing in Hyper-V right now to compete with FT. However, FT is so restrictive few use it. Definitely a point in VMware' favor.

Autodeploy is great in principle but sucks in practice. Way too much headache save for the biggest enterprise shops and cloud providers. Most clients prefer to install via PXE boot then config with Host Profiles. VMware will improve auto deploy, however, and it will become more widely adopted.

Microsoft has comparable products to Autodeploy but few people know how to use them yet. I'm running MDT at home and can have a fully patched and configured host up in about 90 minutes on my shitty hardware and network. We'll be trying it via 10Gb networking and UCS at the lab in the office soon.

No DRS with the free Hyper-V and no DRS without paying for it with VMware either.

Wrench00 said:
Nested hypervisor is great, I don't have to have separate server for HyperV and Vmware and storage and etc.. Save a great amount of time and money for a testing environment. If you were self employed like I am you would appreciate that feature.
Click to expand...

Sure, I play around with nested hypervisors, too. But businesses rarely do.

ESXi can be nested within Hyper-V so long as you put the Hyper-V legacy NIC drivers in the ESXi install image.

Wrench00 said:
Your opinion on 8 not mine.
Click to expand...

Yep. But there's a lot of FUD flying around about Windows 8. I gave it a try and like it.

Wrench00 said:
I'm sure VMWare will release more features as they will need to start competing with MS more and more. I think its a win win, situation. I think eventually KVM and linux hyper visors will take over. Its already happening. The amount of stuff that got added to 5.1 is great. I am sad tho because they will most likely kill vmware like they killed novell. Oh well, Google android and Linux will kill the Windows Desktop OS( I wonder if MS will start giving out windows phone to compete with android). Its a dog eat dog world.

I don't disagree with you so don't start a flame war vsphere vs hyperv.
Click to expand...

Completely agree! VMware vs Hyper-V greatly benefits their customers! Competition drives innovation!

And I'm not trying to start a flame war. Just trying to correct inaccuracies. I like and run both hypervisors! For years I've worked only with VMware and am now recognizing the importance of being a Virtualization Engineer rather than solely VMware.

VMware's not going to go the way of the dodo like Novell did. They have the superior product overall and they're not stupid. They'll find ways to modify pricing to ensure customers stick with them. Hyper-V is still voodoo to most people.
 
I have scada monitoring systems that run on solaris and bsd for certain clients that monitor utilties for municipalities. If you could give the client the option to do this with Hyper V that be great. People get pissed when they have no running water or lights :p People also get pissed when an oil pipeline blows in their backyard. Lots of monitoring system don't run on windows, why because its windows. Legacy system support (non windows) is really not that great compared to VMWare..

Yeah I wish vmware did something about patching with vcenter appliance that be awesome. Now I am stuck manually patching.

The other disadvantage of HyperV is that its still windows and is still far more prone to malicious code then Vmware.

Its about using the right tools for the right job that's all. Lots of my environment are mixed mode so I don't even think about messing that shit up with something that doesn't even have a service pack out yet. Plus customers are not really willing to pay for it either.

HyperV does have some cool features tho.

I hope VMware give vmotion in the lower tiers. That would be sweet.
 
Last edited:
Child of Wonder said:
Sure, but a small percentage of businesses run those operating systems. The vast majority runs Windows with a little Linux thrown in. That's what Hyper-V is targeting.



Nothing. In Windows 2012 you can even boot a cluster with AD being down. You only need AD up to create the cluster.

If the entire cluster goes down then you're likely looking at a datacenter down scenario which would be a problem no matter what hypervisor is in use.

vCenter appliance is nice but you still have to run a Windows server for Update Manager. When they roll that into the vCenter Appliance then I'll recommend using it to clients.



No need to use SMB to boot. Maybe that'll come someday, but right now I tend to avoid booting from SAN because of the extra layer of complexity and failure it adds. It's cool to boot from SAN but what problems does it really solve vs. the added headache? The hypervisor nodes are just disposable containers of CPU, RAM, and networking anyway. If one fails due to disk failure, HA will make the VMs come up elsewhere and I just replace the disks in the failed node.

SMB 3 is available now on the EMC VNX and coming soon from Netapp.



Nothing in Hyper-V right now to compete with FT. However, FT is so restrictive few use it. Definitely a point in VMware' favor.

Autodeploy is great in principle but sucks in practice. Way too much headache save for the biggest enterprise shops and cloud providers. Most clients prefer to install via PXE boot then config with Host Profiles. VMware will improve auto deploy, however, and it will become more widely adopted.

Microsoft has comparable products to Autodeploy but few people know how to use them yet. I'm running MDT at home and can have a fully patched and configured host up in about 90 minutes on my shitty hardware and network. We'll be trying it via 10Gb networking and UCS at the lab in the office soon.

No DRS with the free Hyper-V and no DRS without paying for it with VMware either.



Sure, I play around with nested hypervisors, too. But businesses rarely do.

ESXi can be nested within Hyper-V so long as you put the Hyper-V legacy NIC drivers in the ESXi install image.



Yep. But there's a lot of FUD flying around about Windows 8. I gave it a try and like it.



Completely agree! VMware vs Hyper-V greatly benefits their customers! Competition drives innovation!

And I'm not trying to start a flame war. Just trying to correct inaccuracies. I like and run both hypervisors! For years I've worked only with VMware and am now recognizing the importance of being a Virtualization Engineer rather than solely VMware.

VMware's not going to go the way of the dodo like Novell did. They have the superior product overall and they're not stupid. They'll find ways to modify pricing to ensure customers stick with them. Hyper-V is still voodoo to most people.
Click to expand...

And don't forget - VMware isn't just sitting there not making new innovations either - Hyper-V may be advancing, but the target isn't sitting still either ;) We've got more than a FEW things up our sleeves.

edit: And I'll second the "learn both - or all". I know almost every guest OS out there now (I intentionally forgot SCO once I learned it, and only scratched netware), and that includes Hyper-V these days (We DO have a management tool for it :))
 
vmotion would be nice for free though. I think that should be your next innovation! :D
 
Last edited:
lopoetve said:
And don't forget - VMware isn't just sitting there not making new innovations either - Hyper-V may be advancing, but the target isn't sitting still either ;) We've got more than a FEW things up our sleeves.

edit: And I'll second the "learn both - or all". I know almost every guest OS out there now (I intentionally forgot SCO once I learned it, and only scratched netware), and that includes Hyper-V these days (We DO have a management tool for it :))
Click to expand...

Oh I don't doubt it. That's why when I hear people try to compare VMware to Novell I just roll my eyes. You guys aren't stupid and are going to find ways to push the envelope even further.

That being said, I'm glad there is some competition in the hypervisor space rather than years past of "VMware vs. other garbage." It pushes innovation and can make products better which benefits everyone who uses them.

When I'm in Denver in May we shall consume beers and discuss this very thing! :D
 
OP

There are trial periods of 60 days on vmware products that you can test it out before forking over money.
 
Child of Wonder said:
Oh I don't doubt it. That's why when I hear people try to compare VMware to Novell I just roll my eyes. You guys aren't stupid and are going to find ways to push the envelope even further.

That being said, I'm glad there is some competition in the hypervisor space rather than years past of "VMware vs. other garbage." It pushes innovation and can make products better which benefits everyone who uses them.

When I'm in Denver in May we shall consume beers and discuss this very thing! :D
Click to expand...

Hope it's early may ;) I'm taking a long vacation for the latter 2/3 of the month :)
 
If I don't have HA, can I still manually failover VM's to another node in a free ESXi cluster without having downtime? (assuming both nodes are up)
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
If I don't have HA, can I still manually failover VM's to another node in a free ESXi cluster without having downtime? (assuming both nodes are up)
Click to expand...

Nope. Need vCenter for HA or VMotion (Live Migration).

You can move with downtime, but you need vCenter to move without downtime.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top