Microsoft offers sneak peak of Hyper-V containers with Win 10 nested virtualisation Microsoft has added nested virtualisation to Windows 10 as a prelude to revealing its Hyper-V Containers technology. As we've previously explored, Hyper-V containers will be deployable by Docker. The technology will sit alongside Windows Server Containers, which will offer a more Microsoft-centric containerisation approach. …
Who in their right mind would put a bunch of virtual machines on a windows server? Windows Oses need patches every couple of days and unless Microsoft has figured out a way to install them without rebooting I think I'll pass. Who wants to fail-over to a backup server every week because your host OS is a Windows server when a thin ESXi install is available and needs to be updated a sixth as often.
"You don't really seems to have any idea about what you a talking about."
If you're concerned with the tone of the message, I agree it is perhaps too informal for a business environment, but in context such these forums, I find it perfectly ok. As for the assertion itself, it would be enough for you to point to some evidence that proves that the Windows hypervisor has less patches than ESXi, rather than a general statement about the OP ignorance.
I too want to know if Hyper-V needs more or less patching than the competition, by the way.
"If you're concerned with the tone of the message"
I suspect he was more concerned over the fact that the OP is talking absolute shash, tbh. Hyper-V is used in thousands of production environments successfully, and if you know Powershell then deployment and administration are considerably easier than Vsphere (tho if you don't know PS, then stick to VMware). You don't even need to have it as part of a windows install, it can run as a standalone hypervisor.
Even if you do run it as part of full-fat Windows, MS have recognized that their patch-heavy approach is unpopular, and have been going out of their way to cut down on reboots for 2016 - and to reduce downtime generally. MS are currently claiming that uptime on a win 2016 box is going to be higher than an equivalent RHEL box; 1 reboot a month with 40 seconds boot time. Whether that's a realistic metric for production boxes is debatable, but still shows that things have moved on a bit since Server 2003/XP environments (which appears to be about the level of Windows knowledge that the OP is running with).
Besides, modern DC environments with clustering, HCI etc kinda makes the uptime/downtime thing a bit irrelevant, no? I can happily shunt VMs around between boxes, shut down random hosts, and even knock my filers over without end users even noticing. We're using VMware, but I use hyper-v for my test environment because really, there ain't much difference between the two in terms of day-to-day features and being able to just rattle off instructions in PS to a dozen boxes at once is more convenient that mucking about in the horrible VSphere web app.
Chances are that if you're running a large scale level of virtualisation then you're running your metal in a failover cluster anyway. Having to reboot the host OS to install patches isn't really an issue when you can live migrate the VMs off that node to in order to do so.
Also I'm fairly sure that ESXi, along with pretty much any other platform will at some point (ok, maybe less often than MS, but still occasionally) have an update that either requires a reboot or at least essential services to be restarted, meaning VM downtime if you're not running a clustered environment. It's pretty hard to update the core files of a service while they're being actively used.
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Ignoring other solutions for now, ESXi and Hyper-V both have their benefits and disadvantages. A lot of more advanced VMware functionality is tied to expencive licences, and needs a certain amount of additional infrastructure to make it work. Patching, especially hardware firmware patching is easier with a Windows hypervisor. ESXi has less regular patching, but is more invasive to perform it. ESXi is the more mature product, but Hyper-V brings new features. Swings and roundabouts people.
My personal preference is ESXi, but not a fan of the latest vsphere versions.
"Who in their right mind would put a bunch of virtual machines on a windows server?"
Over 30% of the hypervisor market is Hyper-V. For which by the way running Windows is optional - Hyper-V Server is a standalone hypervisor.
"Windows OSs need patches every couple of days"
Hyper-V Server has so far every year since release required fewer patches than VMware's ESXi - which has an abysmal security record. Have you patched this week's critical hole yet? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/01/vmware_patches/
"unless Microsoft has figured out a way to install them without rebooting I think I'll pass."
Last time I checked Hypervisor updates to ESXi also required a reboot. Maybe that's gone in the latest version, but I long since left ESXi and it's substantial ownership costs behind us...
It's a neat trick if you can do it, but I wait to be convinced on the rationale. The point about containers is that they're (relatively) light weight. Giving them their own VM (and then running that inside another VM) does sound a little excessive for whatever modest gains in (perceived) security or convenience of packaging that may accrue. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
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