Hyper-V on 2012R2 HyperV Edition or 2008R2 Standard Edition?

StarWind vSAN runs under VMware just fine. You have VMware's own vSAN there also. Shouldn't be an issue to live migrate your VMs.


Ok.. it's been a while... I was hoping some has done some testing and can help me in this matter, but after last few days, I've been testing some configurations and benchmark them, trying to find and compensate myself. This may not be perfect config, but this is comfortable enough for me.

  1. I go with Windows 2012 HyperV + 2008 R2. StarWind running at windows 2012. 2012 hyperV is faster than 2008R2's HyperV. At least, I don't need it to leave overnight to finish an installation, unlike 2008 R2. Plus, I can NIC Teaming the server. Thus granting our iSCSI connection a full 3GBps bandwidth with 2 DLink plus one onboard. Our iSCSI running at around 2GB/s plus, close to 3GB. a very significant upgrade speed for our other servers, compared to old 20MB/s. Just lovely. More than that, Starwind can achieve much faster than that, read below.

  2. Ubuntu service was not good in 2008R2, but very good with 2012 R2 Gen2. another point in choosing 2012 R2 HyperV. Microsoft's Gen2 HyperV is a VERY significant update to old Gen1 one. Doesn't feel that different than those in VMWAre.

  3. I go with iSCSI starwind route, and minimal VHDX. The reason being, is that I can only achieve 50MB/s with VHDX, but I can achieve some 9 to 10GB/s with StarWind. Using 8GB RAM cache, plus 100GB L2 SSD Cache, Starwind is screaming FAST. And I really mean FAST. It also has server mirroring, so data integrity is covered there.

  4. Also as for migration, I don't really that care, since with iSCSI, I can simply disconnect the drive from VM 1, and connect it to another VM on another server or simply connect it to physical server, and resume operation at virtually no time lost. No migration needed, simply switch connection, and voila.. done.

So, after running benchmark testing, I decided to go with HyperV 2012 R2, 2008 guest, and all data in iSCSI.