Hyper-V and Sage?

[ThePaladinTech]

I am looking at going virtual for two reasons: save power, and be able to run virtual machines so I can pursue certifications. I have been running an ESXi server for the past 2+ years, so I am very comfortable with it.

Currently my sage PC is windows XP and runs 24x7. My ESXi Server is booted only when I am doing training. My ESXi box is a 2u Tyan behemoth: with dual quad core Opteron 2350's, 16gb RAM, Adaptec 5805 SAS and eight 1TB Drives. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to support PCI Pass-thru. My chipset has an IOMMU setting... but it just doesn't appear to work- if it would I'd stay with ESXi and do the pass-thru thing.

So this leads me to trying Hyper-V, I know very little about hyper-v. If I understand Hyper-V correctly I will not technically be running sage virtually. I'll be running sage on the Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V OS. and all of my certification OS's will be running virtually. If I can do this I'll be happy.

And I think I can run Windows 2008 R2 and run virtual machines on it - but my limited understanding of Hyper-V is there are three flavors:
1. 'free' Command line only interface hyper-V server
2. pay hyper-v server with windows interface
3. Windows Server running Hyper-V
Am I correct that there are three versions? I'll find out soon enough i guess.

Is anyone doing something similar? (hyper-v that is)

[King of Bayonne]

We need to be clear about exactly which OS you're discussing here...

If you mean "Hyper-V Server 2008 R2" (the free one), that is the version that most closely matches up with ESXi -- a dedicated hypervisor OS that does nothing more than act as a host for guest VMs. (It's basically the Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V feature code with just enough Windows OS stuff glued onto the outside so it will run standalone.) Hyper-V does not support PCI/PCI-X/PCI-e passthrough like ESXi does, so you will not be able to access your tuner cards from within a VM.

If you mean "Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role installed", what you have is a full-blown installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 which can *also* host VMs. You can install and run Sage normally in the "real OS" and host all of your other stuff in VMs running in Hyper-V.

So to do what you want to do, you would need to install "real" Windows Server 2008 R2. A Standard Edition license covers you for 4 CPU *sockets* and 32 GB RAM, so your 2 CPU / 8 core 16 GB system would be properly licensed. You install Sage on that box normally. You then add the Hyper-V role using Server Manager and create your VMs for your other stuff. You can probably use tools to migrate your existing virtual disk images.


tkarp

[ThePaladinTech]

Thanks for the clarification I will be (out of necessity) doing the Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V Role.

[will]

When I first got into SageTV I really wanted to Virtualize it. However, I discovered that too many stability issues exist with using HD-PVRs through USB on a virtual machine.

My solution was to virtualize everything else my server does except for SageTV. So I run 4 severs on one box. The host OS runs SageTV and the other three virtual machines (everything works great).

PCI pass through with most virtual setups was never intended for video or capture cards so you will probably encounter more problems that it is worth. I suggest you install SageTV to the Windows 2008 host and then virtualize the other OS.

[joematt]

I've been running 2008 R2 now for about 6 months with Hyper-V. I run Sage service (HDHomerun only) in a VM with no problems. I suggest you look into a a TechNet Pro subscription to save and to be legal.

[will]

Originally Posted by joematt

I suggest you look into a a TechNet Pro subscription to save and to be legal.

Technically, TechNet subscription is only for testing and the TOS forbids any production use what so ever (installing SageTV and using it daily is definitely production use). For example, you can't install Office then use Outlook to access your daily e-mails.

It seems like MS turns a blind eye to TechNet subscription use but there is always that possibility they could come after you...