hyper-V in desktop machine (core 2 Deo 2 GB Ram and 250 GB in HD)

scottalanmiller

All of the reasons that you give, except for Unitrends which was never described as a requirement, suggest that XenServer is the right choice. It's easier to use, better for a small business in general, has better licensing, is easier to understand, has more features, is more secure, backups are free, high availability is baked in, it's old, it is better suited to the software that you want to run on it (I'm not sure pfSence is even supported on HyperV), etc.

More or less all of your requirements push you to XenServer over HyperV.

DustinB3403

@IT-ADMIN said:

thank you Dear Scott for your interest to ask me about my decision, first of all i'm using Hyper-V server R2 the Hypervisor not the one included in windown server 2012 (for $$ reason) because it is totally free, concerning your second question why Hyper-V and not Xenserver, this is because MS solution are all the time easier than whatever else (i'm not ready to have headache especially i'm just an IT beginner)

XenServer is 100% free to run as well. And there is absolutely no cost to setup NAUBackup on it. They are all built on GNU Public license allowing you to do whatever you'd like with it.

For free, 100% not one penny.

@IT-ADMIN said:

i forget one important thing is unitrend offer free backup and restore solution for hyper-V while XenServer not

Restoring from NAUBackup is as simple as browsing to the network share, and Importing it into XenServer. Maybe 3 Clicks, also 100% free.

@IT-ADMIN said:

now i find it difficult to make my decision, i really like MS solution because there are plenty of documentation out there and almost the majority of companies use it, sometimes we choose what is spread out in what the majority of companies use it because we may change the job and find preexisting infrastructure that we are not familiar with
last time i ask one of my friend about virtualization what he know EXSI and hyper-V, i think XenServer is Known in US maybe but in our market most people use EXSI or Hyper-V

XenServer has a HUGE, Massive and great support community at http://discussions.citrix.com/forum/101-xenserver/

Of which, you guessed it, you don't have to pay anything for the community access or support they provide.

@IT-ADMIN said:

@scottalanmiller said:

You have lots of XenServer and HyperV users here in the community. You will have good community support for either. Those are definitely my two most often recommended options.

very good, hyper-V is one of the Hypervisore that you recommend so i will not be strange in this community

Running Hyper-V over XenServer would be strange, only for the reasons you propose against running XenServer.

IT-ADMIN

Ok since you all agreed that xenserver is suitable for my situation I will opt for it even if I already lost one dvd because I just burn the hyper-v iso.
But primise me if I have any trouble you will rescue me because I'm really fear to use it . Linux is scary
And also the fact that hyper-v may not sopport pfsense frighten me lol

JaredBusch

@IT-ADMIN said:

Ok since you all agreed that xenserver is suitable for my situation I will opt for it even if I already lost one dvd because I just burn the hyper-v iso.
But primise me if I have any trouble you will rescue me because I'm really fear to use it . Linux is scary
And also the fact that hyper-v may not sopport pfsense frighten me lol

Hyper-V server is 100% command line driven also unless you set up everything to allow you to use remote management tools.

IT-ADMIN

Yes you are right but I already learn how to allow remote connection by disabling firewall and you can manage it easily via hyper-v role from another machine (windows 8 for ex)

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

Yes you are right but I already learn how to allow remote connection by disabling firewall and you can manage it easily via hyper-v role from another machine (windows 8 for ex)

But you should NOT have learned that, that is very bad!!

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

Ok since you all agreed that xenserver is suitable for my situation I will opt for it even if I already lost one dvd because I just burn the hyper-v iso.
But primise me if I have any trouble you will rescue me because I'm really fear to use it . Linux is scary
And also the fact that hyper-v may not sopport pfsense frighten me lol

But you should not be doing anything with Linux. You are using XenServer. Xen is not Linux. Yes there is Linux in the Dom0 but you never need to go into that. That's under the hood. This is a virtualization appliance, that there is Linux is only a point of interest, not of relevance to your support or decision making here.

IT-ADMIN

Well. And also it look like hyper-v having some issue with freebsd
I think linux hypervisor is more compatible with pfsense than windows hypervisor? ?? Is it true?

DustinB3403

pfsense is a linux distro.

I haven't heard of any compatibility issues with it, and XenServer. I would expect more issues with Hyper-V and pfsense more than anything else.

But the Hypervisor shouldn't care what the ISO is. It just gets run as a machine, within another machine.

IT-ADMIN

Because I just check on pfsense forum and I find some people complaining about some issue when using pfsense in hyper-v

scottalanmiller

@IT-ADMIN said:

Well. And also it look like hyper-v having some issue with freebsd
I think linux hypervisor is more compatible with pfsense than windows hypervisor? ?? Is it true?

Yes, even Linux support is relatively new in HyperV. HyperV is good but it is not mature and has not had much time to get aware from the most basic or common support needs.