I've been looking at the standalone Windows 2012 Hyper-V Server and was wondering if I could install that on my PC then install Server 2012 on top of it. There doesn't seem to be much info on the subject.
Hyper-V is Microsoft's type 1 hypervisor answer to ESX. I have never used it so I can't really say much other than that. Also I had a look around and you can install ESXi on a USB flash drive. If you have a couple of spares you could try them (as one may not be supported), make sure they are plugged in before you power it on if you do so the system sees it as a drive as POST.
The good news is I got the Hyper-V server installed and working. The bad news is that it doesn't detect any of my network adapters. I'm pretty sure drivers will need to be installed and I have no idea of how to do that from a DOS command line. I'll see what I can do with ESX and a USB stick but if that fails I'll just run an MS server direct from it's own drive or get crazy and run it on top of Windows 8.
Is there no hyper-v management GUI or is that where M$ start charging? If you get ESX working I suggest you download vCenter Converter, that way to can P2V your existing desktop so that you don't have to build another for the domain (as long as it is windows Pro). Our P2V server has gone tits up, it is our last physical stand alone server and it seems to be fault with the RAID controller. Spent all day trying to get it up but it wont even reinstall Server. It has been 2 years since it was last powered on. Wanted it to P2V our SQL server as our accounts provider finally support virtual SQL servers. Will free up another blade for ESX too. Didn't like the VMware P2V solution before so was using platespin migrate but might start testing the new version with a test server. For server P2V it doesn't give you as many options like stopping services so I am going to have to do that all manually. Managed to scavenge together 6 old 73GB 15K SCSI 320 drives and put them in another server that was waiting to be scrapped but I am going to have to start again me thinks. I could virtualise this server I know but I want it to be seperate from all of our ESX servers so it only acts as a passthrough. Fecking nuisance of a day!
The Hyper-V Server has a very basic menu system and a command line interface. Once the network is set up it's all managed by a remote client GUI. It's actually kind of cool when you think about it as it a small stripped down version of Windows. No need for Linux. As far as I know the client is also free.
Exactly how ESX works. The reason I asked if M$ charged for the management tools is that when I was looking for options for you I read a lot of posts that Hyper-V is free up until a point and then M$ start charging big $ if you want to use a certain feature.
What a pain. I actually managed to get the network adapter drivers installed for Hyper-V but it still doesn't work. I also tried the USB drive idea for ESX and that didn't work either. Now I have to get Hyper-V out of my boot manager.
Which version of Hyper-V are you using? From what I remember, the newest version has a free edition, plus the is a visual gui from the community (http://corefig.codeplex.com/).
Pretty sure it's the newest version. I might give that GUI a try but for right now I got Server 2012 running in vmware player. The mem usage is only at 48% so I think I could run another desktop.