Opinion: Hyper-V
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 came with Microsoft’s stab at virtualization – Hyper-V. VMWare more or less popularised the now widely adopted technology of in essence using one server to run many servers. In today’s ever more difficult economic climate, the unfortunate reality is that for many businesses, expense on IT is among the first costs seen to be reduced. To an accountant, this makes sense – however to those who know the value of IT, this is a chokehold manoeuvre that can very often lead to stifled growth, sweating of older assets and inevitably greater long-term expense due to rising maintenance levels. The solution? Virtualization. Replacing 3 old ageing servers sporting out-of-warranty hardware with 1 new server without any real downtime seems an appealing sell. However the reality in small business isn’t so true.
Virtualization, for those who’ve not taken the leap yet, is one of the most stressful IT projects that can be undertaken. Which technology to use? Which backup solution is right for the business? What hidden pitfalls are present in the current system? All of these lead to more planning and testing than the average project. There is no clear path one should adopt. The general rule in IT is that no two problems are ever the same and no two devices are ever the same. A job in IT which puts you at the coalface of managing and maintaining systems can vary from very stressful, to “oh shit, is that the time?”. Virtualization just makes that worse – but does return a better payoff.
For my part, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Hyper-V for almost 3 months. In that time, I’ve virtualized 3 customers whose hardware had reached the outer limits of its capability and sustainability. Again, each one was different, but to the uninitiated, the same result was reached – one server running inside another. Hyper-V is still, as a technology, in its infancy. Released in 2009 as part of the Windows Server 2008 R2 product launch, it went through a fairly testing beta programme. The finished product is far from polished, and as a result, is a nightmare to work with on small low-cost IT projects. To start with, Hyper-V has no concept of USB. That’s not strictly true, but to be more precise, it has no way of performing USB pass-through. So where you may once have used a 56K USB modem or a 1TB USB hard disk in the past, you may no longer do this in the Hyper-V world. These are all considerations needing attention when looking to virtualize with Hyper-V. This is Hyper-V’s achilles heel. USB whether we like it or hate it (and I’d have preferred if FireWire won that battle) is the basis for a lot of products these days, and for Microsoft to say “No, we haven’t got it quite ready yet, so you can do without it for now” just isn’t good enough.
Beyond that, Hyper-V works well. Yeah it has problems dealing with dynamic disks, hates to see a former RAID file coming its way, and loves to kick and scream at you when it’s 2am in the morning and you’re wondering how you’re gonna back it up properly. I’ve found that if I overcome the legacy USB hardware interfaces and an acceptable backup strategy (because it doesn’t do USB remember!) then it works OK. My usual strategy of ‘image > convert > mount > clean > test > run’ seems to work for most of the projects I’ve done and am doing. But Hyper-V is far from a complete product. Faced with massively increased competition from VMWare and even Oracle, Microsoft got on this band wagon late in the day, and the result is an unfinished product. In some ways, Microsoft should have held Hyper-V back until the USB issue at least was resolved, but that’s their way- look at Vista.
For what it’s worth, Hyper-V does work. And I can attest to 3 working examples in small businesses here that took little more than a few late nights, some grey hairs and a great sense of relief that it worked. Getting around the hazards is all part of the IT job, but Hyper-V seems to throw some really nasty curveballs at times. My advice? Test your ideas thoroughly. And make sure you can get around the USB thing. And be prepared to pay – the licensing on this is some of the most complex I’ve seen from the Redmond giant in many years. But give it a go – I did and it does work.
diarmy
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