Image Credit [http://wonderfulengineering.com/]
Do you need massive Virtual Machines with 240VPs, 16TB of RAM to run databases for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining and Analytics?
Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V is your right choice!
After the big announcement of the new VMware Migration Offer for Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V, Microsoft raised the bar one more time with the announcement of the new massive scalability for Windows Server 2016.
| Windows Server 2012/2012 R2
Standard & Datacenter |
Windows Server 2016 Standard & Datacenter | |
| Physical (Host) Memory Support | Up to 4 TB per physical server | Up to 24 TB per physical server (6x) |
| Physical (Host) Logical Processor Support | Up to 320 LPs | Up to 512 LPs |
| Virtual Machine Memory Support | Up to 1 TB per VM | Up to 12 TB per VM (12x) |
| Virtual Machine Virtual Processor Support | Up to 64 VPs per VM | Up to 240 VPs per VM (3.75x) |
So, based on the feedback throughout the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, Microsoft had numerous requests to push Hyper-V scalability to new heights to embrace interesting new scenarios around huge databases and machine learning.
You can read about this big announcement here: Windows Server scalability and more!
With Windows Server 2016, Microsoft is delivering new industry-leading scalability to virtualize any and every workload without exception.
Now let’s compare Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V with VMware vSphere 6.0. However, this is mostly only about scale and a lot of people will not hit any limit in both products, but it is interesting to see how they compare:
| Feature | Windows Server 2012 R2 | Windows Server 2016 | VMware vSphere 6.0 | VMware vSphere 6.0 Ent. Plus |
| Logical Processors | 320 | 512 | 480 | 480 |
| Physical Memory | 4TB | 24TB | 6TB | 6TB/12TB |
| Virtual CPU per Host | 2,048 | 2,048 | 4,096 | 4,096 |
| Virtual CPU per VM | 64 | 240 | 8 | 128 |
| Memory per VM | 1TB | 12TB | 4TB | 4TB |
| Active VMs per Host | 1,024 | 1,024 | 1,024 | 1,024 |
| Guest NUMA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Maximum Nodes | 64 | 64 | N/A | 64 |
| Maximum VMs per Cluster | 8,000 | 8,000 | N/A | 8,000 |
| VM Live Migration | Yes | Yes | N/A | Yes |
| VM Live Migration with Compression | Yes | Yes | N/A | No |
| VM Live Migration using RDMA | Yes | Yes | N/A | No |
| Simultaneous Live Migrations | Unlimited | Unlimited | N/A | 4/8 |
| Live Storage Migration | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Shared Nothing Live Migration | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cluster Rolling Upgrades | Yes | Yes | N/A | Yes |
| VM Replica Hot/Add virtual Disk | Yes | Yes | N/A | No |
| Native 4-KB Disk Support | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Maximum Virtual Disk Size | 64TB | 64TB | 2TB | 62TB |
| Maximum Pass Through Disk Size | 256TB+ | 256TB+ | 64TB | 64TB |
| VM NIC Device Naming | No | Yes | N/A | No |
| Guest Clustering with Live Migration | Yes | Yes | N/A | No |
| Guest Clustering with Dynamic Memory | Yes | Yes | N/A | No |
| Shielded VMs | No | Yes | N/A | No |
| Virtual NICs per VM | 12 | 12 | 10 | 10 |
One thing you have to remember is that Hyper-V is free and comes as role in Windows Server or as a standalone product which can be downloaded and used for free.
And with the recent VMware Migration Offer for Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V, you have all the Bells and Whistles to move to a new era of security and scalability.
Check out my blog post about What’s new in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V to get an overview about the new features!
Stay tuned for additional announcements at Microsoft Ignite 2016!
Cheers,
-Ch@rbel
