There’s been quite a lot of talk about 5nine’s Hyper-V Manager recently. In light of this I thought I’d put the spotlight on another tool I discovered a couple of weeks ago; vtCommander.
The problem is that they’re the same product.
Understandably confused I shot an e-mail to the 5nine support. Here’s the reply:
5nine Software has OEM-ed ( licensed) VT Commander Management components, while Hyper-V Monitoring was developed, and proprietary to 5nine Software ( VT Technology cross-licensed our Monitor ).
This from Hyper-V Management standpoint current versions of vtCommander and 5nine Manager are basically identical, and this is the reason you get ‘Registration Failed’ message. We control licensing to ensure that you do not get 2 instances of basically the same product on yoru environment.
The difference also is that 5nine has a ‘Free’ version of Hyper-V Manager, while vtCommander does not. Going forward 5nine Software will have another component that are about tobe released – such as Enhanced V2V, Anhanced Monitoring, and other.
If you are buying 5nine Manager -you will need to remove trial version of vtcommander, and install ‘Paid’ of’Free’ version of 5nine Manager, while registering under different e-mail.
At this time though – there is no need, as products are co-branded, unless you want to install Free version of the Manager, and for some reason prefer not to get ‘Full’ version of either product ( which have more features ).
With this in mind I can heartily endorse both the 5nine Manager and vtCommander as they/it saved my bacon during the installation of a rather tricky Hyper-V cluster.
If there is one thing that divides the Hyper-V community it has to be how much VMware sucks; “a lot” or “a whole lot”. Also; if a Server Core or a Full installation is the best way to go for your Hyper-V hosts.
In a majority of these blog posts I’ll sound as if I and I alone hold the unquestionable truth in any and all matters pertinent to Hyper-V but don’t let that stop you from questioning me in the comments and I’ll do my best to use simpler words and speak slowly.
Let me start by stating that Server Core can be quite useful, not just as a Hyper-V host. Let me follow up by explaining why I think Server Core is a bad choice for a Hyper-V host.
First of all, if you really need a slimmed down version of Windows to run Hyper-V on, why not go with Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 instead? It’s free, it scales up to 16 nodes and you manage it the same way you manage a Server Core installation. Yes, the Hyper-V Server allows for “only” 1 TB of RAM and only 8 CPU but that should be enough for most of your needs.
That you can’t use it for more than Hyper-V is a moot point as you really shouldn’t be running anything else but Hyper-V on a Hyper-V host anyway, at least not in production.
The only argument for a Server Core installation that holds water is that it requires a lot less updates and patches. Still not enough to warrant a Server Core though in my opinion. If you follow Microsofts best practice for securing a Hyper-V host and use common sense when managing it then it should be just as secure as the rest of your servers (and some of these both could and should be run on Server Core).
That you need less resources to run a Server Core installation compared to a Full installation is also not enough to convince me. You still need space on your system drive no matter what and that extra gig of RAM that you might save with a Server Core installation is not worth the hassle of managing a Server Core installation.
Because this is where my main beef with running Hyper-V on a Server Core installation lies; management.
When reading other posts on the subject you hear that you have a lot of tools at your disposal that alleviate the need of a GUI; the entire RSAT suite, sconfig, netsh and other included CLI-based tools as well as third-party tools such as CoreConfig.
When scrutinized, these tools don’t hold water though.
RSAT is extremely handy and I use it daily for managing DNS, AD, Group Policy, DHCP, and so on but on the whole it’s not all that useful for managing a Hyper-V host. Hyper-V Manager does a great job managing a working Hyper-V host and Failover Cluster Manager handles clustered hosts quite nicely. If the cluster is operational, that is.
Allowing for Server Manager to connect to a Server Core is a breeze (“winrm quickconfig”) but Server Manager is very limited to what it can modify on a remote server so you still need to remote desktop to the Hyper-V host and get your hands dirty.
Sconfig, netsh and so on are very useful and can do a whole lot but again mostly for a functional server.
CoreConfig is a great tool put together by some very talented people but why install a CLI-based server only to use a GUI developed by a third-party developer for managing the server? If you go with the Full installation – which you already paid for – you get the GUI as well, one developed by Microsoft no less.
Configuring a single server Hyper-V host based on Server Core won’t give you an ulcer but when you need to juggle four or more hosts in a cluster with multiple VLANs, iSCSI-based storage and a couple of other networks on top of this you quickly grow tired of the limitations of Server Core. Not to mention if you need to do some serious troubleshooting in this cluster (which I, by the way, have done for the past couple of weeks).
There’s just so much overhead when it comes to getting all the components to fit together when all you have to work with is a limited subset of the whole toolbox.
Please use Server Core where the security policy of your company dictates it or for Domain Controllers, DNS, DHCP and similar single purpose servers that require a minimum of work to manage or troubleshoot and where RSAT does a great job.
A Hyper-V host though can (and most often will) require complicated maintenance that’s made even more complicated by using the blunt tools that Server Core provides.
At least according to me.
Hyper-V according to me 