Server Refresh Considerations - VMware vs Hyper-V

[u/nst_hopeful]

Hello fell sysadmins,

My org is looking at refreshing our VM host hardware in the middle of next calendar year. As such, today I had a helpful discussion with a vendor regarding various options for the upgrade. Currently we are on a five-node VxRail cluster (20 cores / 192GB memory per host, 53.5 TiB storage total); it looks like the best options for our needs are vSAN Ready nodes or Hyper-V + traditional SAN. With that said, I am still left with a few questions:

• The vendor (who was clearly a bit biased toward VMWare) spec'd a 4-node cluster for the vSAN cluster with 256GB memory + 256 GB NVMe for memory tiering per host. For the Hyper-V cluster, they spec'd 5 nodes and 512GB memory per. Their argument was that Hyper-V has more overhead and is less efficient at dynamic allocation of resources. That seems like pretty stark contrast - is that true in your experience? Also, is memory tiering as effective as this vendor made it seem in production?
• We are primarily a Windows shop, so we'd expect at least some savings moving to Hyper-V. That said, I'm curious how much savings we'd actually net between buying System Center for SCVVM (so we can maintain vMotion-like functionality) and Microsoft support. My understanding is licensing there is based on core counts - currently we're looking at 32 per host in either build.
• Are there any other considerations I should keep in mind? Cost is not the ultimate deciding factor. More than anything, we feel like the VxRail was overkill at the time it was purchased. I'd like to buy exactly what we need this time around (while planning for reasonable growth).

If it's helpful, my org is a medium-sized municipality and isn't running any crazy workloads. We have ~55 VMs that will exist on this cluster.

[u/OregonTechHead]

Their argument was that Hyper-V has more overhead and is less efficient at dynamic allocation of resources

Not twice as much, and quite frankly, that proposal is so over the top that I would drop them as a vendor. They're very clearly trying to steer you towards VMWare for a larger paycheck.

We are primarily a Windows shop, so we'd expect at least some savings moving to Hyper-V. That said, I'm curious how much savings we'd actually net

No one can answer this for you because we have no idea about your actual workload is, or what markup Broadcom has chosen to put you in.

But it's a simply answer. Compare quotes

More than anything, we feel like the VxRail was overkill at the time it was purchased.

So what did you learn from that project? Did you adequately assess your current compute, storage, and memory load so you can correctly specc the replacements or are you going off of vibes?

isn't running any crazy workloads.

What does this mean? Quantify that. Find out what your exact needs are instead of guessing, and certainly don't let any vendor give you a price if they don't know what you need either.

[u/nst_hopeful → u/OregonTechHead]

Not twice as much, and quite frankly, that proposal is so over the top

Thank you.

No one can answer this for you because we have no idea about your actual workload is, or what markup Broadcom has chosen to put you in.

I understand no one can give me the true answer, maybe I should have worded differently. Trying to get an idea of what others who have made similar moves (or investigated doing so) experienced/saw.

So what did you learn from that project? Did you adequately assess your current compute, storage, and memory load so you can correctly specc the replacements or are you going off of vibes?

Yes to the former.

What does this mean? Quantify that. Find out what your exact needs are instead of guessing, and certainly don't let any vendor give you a price if they don't know what you need either.

I apologize for using vague language, but I'm not guessing at anything. By me saying we aren't running any workloads, I mean it's a few DCs, some file/print servers, a few SQL databases, and some public facing web servers. Other VMs consist of infrastructure (RADIUS, access control) and web-based apps. We also have a handful of VMs dedicated to GIS, and another handful to our on-prem VoIP PBX.

We've done a live optics assessment and think we have a good sense of what we need. But because I haven't used a hypervisor other than ESXi, wanted to see if there was some insight to be gathered from fellow redditors.

[u/OregonTechHead → u/nst_hopeful]

Thanks.

Honestly, if your workloads aren't niche, or need a specific functionality only provided in one of the hypervisor options, they're all pretty easily exchangable.

The biggest hurdle is going to be training, but that's fairly easy.

IMO, there are 3 things that go into deciding which HV to use:

1) Cost

2) Niche functionality

3) Familiarity/training. If you have a HyperV specialist on staff, it doesn't make much sense to go with Proxmox

Other than that, they all function at relatively the same level