VMware vs Hyper V

[Paul Kinyanjui]

Hi guys,
I have recently used the hyper V role to setup VMs at one of my servers and its working perfectly and was wondering if and how I can replicate this seamlessly on another server I have set up VMs using VMware. I would like to share my frustrations with using VMware (they are only two but still worth sharing)
1. I cannot seem to clearly use the VMs easily because the mouse is always getting stuck in another(host) window
2. The licensing of the VMware means you cannot operate it without a subscription.

The concern is that there are existing VMs on one server and I have a preference with Hyper V. Is there a way to quickly/easily migrate the VMS and manage using hyper V?
Anyone care to share their experiences with the two, please feel free.

 

[root]

To change from using VMware to using Hyper-V (assuming you mean VMware player/vmware workstation).
you will need to start by adding the Hyper-V role, then using a conversion tools to change the VMDK files into VHDX files. Or your can use V2V conversion tools... (Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter) (MVMC) is good, but you need to find it (as MS stopped supporting it! and now only have migrate to Azure tools)
if you have bare metal ESX, same conversion process, but you need a different server to put them on once converted, then you can rebuild youre ESX box as a windows server.


in terms of licensing, you know that you need to license windows VMs on Hyper-V too right?
Windows standard ships with 2 OSE licenses, that enables you to either use the server ONLY as a hyper-visor, and run 2 VMs, or to use the hyper-visor as a server and run 1 VM.
Windows Datacenter has unlimited OSE, (run as many VMs as you like.)
you can also use the free Hyper-V core version, but then you must license all your VMs separately (like you have to with VMWare.)

 

[PP Mguire]

in terms of licensing, you know that you need to license windows VMs on Hyper-V too right?
Windows standard ships with 2 OSE licenses, that enables you to either use the server ONLY as a hyper-visor, and run 2 VMs, or to use the hyper-visor as a server and run 1 VM.
Windows Datacenter has unlimited OSE, (run as many VMs as you like.)
you can also use the free Hyper-V core version, but then you must license all your VMs separately (like you have to with VMWare.)

As far as I was aware, licensing is per core only for SQL environments. Either that, or it's broken for me because I'm running the Server 2022 Standard license under desktop experience with 7 VMs without a hitch. CALs, environment license, etc I believe is based off your type of production environment whether it's RDS or SQL based (CALs for RDS, cores for SQL). I've never once been prompted for licensing per user, per core, or by OSE. Although be it Microsoft they probably assume the audit and legal team are going off the EULA rather than prompting. When I deployed my own Microsoft RDS environment the licensing server (RDS) was asking for my package ID etc, which would include their OSE and CALs but never for VMs specifically. I bypassed this by using Thincast RDS Webaccess which is only 200 bucks for 10 connections indefinitely. Honestly their gateway and webaccess setup is a lot better and easier than Microsoft's system and cheaper. No independent CAL for user and device, only user limit based off your license package.