Comments on Hyper-V
So I’m a regular over at Community.spiceworks.com and the debate often starts on the relative merits of the different virtualization hosts.
Inevitably Microsoft’s Hyper-V comes up and is compared to the others and voted just as good. I’m a big fan of VMware’s ESXi product and I’ve never seen nor read anything that would make me too interested to check out Microsoft’s Hyper-V.
But, the arguments continue (healthy ones, though). And then, one of the proponents for Hyper-V posts this: Killing/Ending a Hyper-V Virtual Machine that is Stuck.
The author, ChristopherO, is a great guy and wicked smart but sometimes people make arguments for me without me even trying!
The problem I have with this How-To is not the information in it (which is great) but the problem it implies. So, you’re saying that VM’s in Hyper-V sometimes LOCK UP?! What?! One of the attractions of virtualization is that the VM’s are actually more stable than physical machines.
I’ve been working with ESX for about 3 years now and have NEVER seen one get stuck. At PC Connection we had over 100 VM’s running on 4 hosts (that’s over a 20 to 1 ratio!) and never had a performance problem, let alone any of them locking up!
So if you’re evaluating a virtualization platform, which one would you pick? One where VM’s randomly (hopefully infrequently!) lock up, or one that is so rock solid you completely forget it’s even there?
I know which one I’m picking!
Oh, and if you’re interested in Spiceworks (highly recommended) then click on the badge to the right so I can get credit for referring you!! š
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Well, I’m not entirely sure what the cause of that lockup actually was, but it’s the first time I’ve ran into a VM that I was unable to reset or just turn off. However it was a Win2008 VM that had just restarted after installed SP2 for 2008, so I’m assuming that had something to do with it. I’ve been running Hyper-V for roughly a year now and haven’t had that happen yet (though not nearly as widespread as 100 VM’s…I only have about 10 on Hyper-V, and another 10 on Virtual Server).
I don’t think it’s something that happens often at all – wasn’t easy finding a way to kill it other than restarting the host. Looking around myself I was able to find the process that needed killed, but I couldn’t find a way to link the process with the correct VM, and I didn’t want to just start killing them randomly, so I finally found another blog post that told the link in the GUIDs.
So, I find Hyper-V easy to diagnose for issues that occur like this, though it’s primarily because I have a lot of experience with Microsoft’s virtualization products – Virtual Server and Virtual PC before Hyper-V’s release.
If I had another box that I could install VMware and play with on I would, but I only have 2 boxes capable of VMware right now, and they are both production units running Hyper-V or Virtual Server!
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It will hopefully also been streamed so you maybe able to watch it where ever you are in the world.
There will be memebers of the Spiceworks team as well as lots of members of the community.
It will be a great day followed by hopefully a great afterparty.