Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 appears to be a no-gui virtualization host (hypervisor). There's a feature chart here that alludes to an unclear licensing issue with "guest virtualization rights". [1]
Note: you must use Intel VT or AMD-V enabled CPUs for this. Opterons that have only 3 digits in their model number won't work (such as 275, 880, etc), those with 4 digits (2220, 8218, etc) will.
(edit: looks like non-Windows guest OSes can only be allocated 1 virtual CPU; for me that is a deal-killer.)
If you were a 99% Windows shop but wanted a linux-based DNS, mediawiki, subversion or similar server would be one case. (Host mostly Windows guests, but a small number of non-Windows.)
First time I stumbled upon this version of Windows about half a year ago. I actually installed it on one of my laptops. When it's BOOTed, the "GUI" is pretty much like in Safe-Mode, only in full display resolution, i.e. a blue background and a console window. I don't remember exactly, but it was missing a lot of libraries.. so I couldn't actually install much software. Though, I'm sure it's possible to install all the missing libraries via Microsoft's website.
I immediately close any site that does this - don't care what they are offering/selling - if they behave this way, I guarantee their wares aren't worth bothering with.
It's almost like looking at code, I generally only have
to look at the formatting. You don't see a lot of
lame code that's impeccably formatted (nor a lot of
useful websites that do that in-your-face
type of advertising).
I run a Linux desktop but would like to be able to run Windows apps in a Windows guest. I'm going to try to run this as a Windows guest and see if it works (using VirtualBox).
This isn't a guest environment of windows - this is a hypervisor - it runs on the bare metal (using virtualization features on new CPUs), hosting other operating systems.
I have no idea. Microsoft lost this former "solutions provider" (used to get the monthly crate-o-CDs) in the mid-90s with the anti-developer trifecta of:
- Executable registry entries
- Baking-In IE into the O.S. w/o any native ability (pre hypervisors) to concurrently run multiple versions for testing purposes
- Re-Authorization/Re-Licensing for trivial hardware changes (the whole WGA bullshit)
If you have no interest in virtualizing Windows then this won't be of much use to you. First class support for Linux is limited to Suse and RedHat Enterprise.
However, if you're a Microsoft shop and want to virtualize Windows (be it for production, testing, or development), it's a huge boon. Hyper-V even supports some awesome features like live migration (moving a VM from one host to another) with mere seconds of downtime. Similar features in VMWare cost thousands of dollars.
At Loopt we're going to be using this extensively for development.
Hyper-V is a bit of a pain as it doesn't let you over-commit on memory.
VMWare ESXi looks like a much better bet - I'm currently thinking about moving 40+ VMs in a development environment from Hyper-V to ESX so we can run more of them at the same time.
Actually, with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 it will add dynamic memory which is the same as VMware's memory overcommit as well as RemoteFX for 3D graphics display for virtualized desktops.
30 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 75.6 ms ] threadThe downloadable image is 1.5 GB.
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx
(edit: looks like non-Windows guest OSes can only be allocated 1 virtual CPU; for me that is a deal-killer.)
The only 'point' of this article is that you can distribute a free windows base image.
Thank you for posting this, as this is news to me.
<shrugs>
It's almost like looking at code, I generally only have to look at the formatting. You don't see a lot of lame code that's impeccably formatted (nor a lot of useful websites that do that in-your-face type of advertising).
This can't run windows apps as a windows guest.
- Executable registry entries
- Baking-In IE into the O.S. w/o any native ability (pre hypervisors) to concurrently run multiple versions for testing purposes
- Re-Authorization/Re-Licensing for trivial hardware changes (the whole WGA bullshit)
However, if you're a Microsoft shop and want to virtualize Windows (be it for production, testing, or development), it's a huge boon. Hyper-V even supports some awesome features like live migration (moving a VM from one host to another) with mere seconds of downtime. Similar features in VMWare cost thousands of dollars.
At Loopt we're going to be using this extensively for development.
VMWare ESXi looks like a much better bet - I'm currently thinking about moving 40+ VMs in a development environment from Hyper-V to ESX so we can run more of them at the same time.
You will appreciate the fact that your hosting provider cannot oversell the servers. Xen also works like this.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/198736.asp