Hyper-V vs. VMware Player 3.0

[GnatGoSplat]

I currently use a Windows 7 x64 guest VM via VMware Player 3.0. It’s nice… fast, supports Aero, basic 3D, VMware really did a nice job with the latest VMware Player.

However, I’ve been reading about Hyper-V, it seems it’s closer to the hardware. What would it buy me if I add the Hyper-V role to my 2008 R2 host and moved my VMware VM to a Hyper-V guest? Are there any real-world benchmarks of this? Some older benchmarks comparing VMware Workstation to 2008 (non-R2) Hyper-V found VMware was faster. Is this different with R2? Will I still be able to run the guest in windowed mode and easily switch between host and guest? Will use and functionality of the 2008 R2 host still be the same?

This is just one of the changes I’ve been thinking about doing, but I won’t bother if it won’t buy me anything over status quo.

[JonusC]

(1) Hyper-V is a Type-1 Hypervisor whereas VMWare is a Type-2 virtualization suite.
@Wikipedia wrote:

System virtual machines (sometimes called hardware virtual machines) allow the sharing of the underlying physical machine resources between different virtual machines, each running its own operating system. The software layer providing the virtualization is called a virtual machine monitor or hypervisor. A hypervisor can run on bare hardware (Type 1 or native VM) or on top of an operating system (Type 2 or hosted VM).

(2) Hyper-V has it’s drawbacks. As does VMWare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V#Limitations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#Known_issues

(3) VMWare is the only consideration for gaming. That and DOSBox for retr0 fans like me 😆

(4) My personal opinion is that Hyper-V is best suited for corporate sandboxing; virtualizing from a mega server for hundreds of clients to work on. It’s very low level, but as far as non-Microsoft and older software goes it is probably less compatible. VMWare however is a ‘hosted’ virtualizer that is further seperate from the core OS compared to Hyper-V, but is very mature and has great support for Intel instruction sets.

With that said, it would make sense that Hyper-V is better performing than VMWare, but everyone agrees VMWare is better for standard consumer-level applications (games, Photoshop, etc). Not to mention the latest VMWare beta (OSX only for now) can run Crysis @ ~10fps average [Shader Model 2.0 and lower is supported] and will apparently have 100% Direct3D9 < SM2.0 on Windows very soon. The way I see it, Hyper-V is good for doing it by the books. To do Microsoft and Technology Collage/class stuff, it’d be helpful there. Maybe also geek factor, it’s pretty hardcore. But let VMWare do everything else 😉 Player is freeware (registerware actually, signup = instant download) and it can create machines now so it can’t hurt to try 🙂

[Anonymous]

(1) Hyper-V is a Type-1 Hypervisor whereas VMWare is a Type-2 virtualization suite.
@Wikipedia wrote:

System virtual machines (sometimes called hardware virtual machines) allow the sharing of the underlying physical machine resources between different virtual machines, each running its own operating system. The software layer providing the virtualization is called a virtual machine monitor or hypervisor. A hypervisor can run on bare hardware (Type 1 or native VM) or on top of an operating system (Type 2 or hosted VM).

(2) Hyper-V has it’s drawbacks. As does VMWare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V#Limitations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#Known_issues

(3) VMWare is the only consideration for gaming. That and DOSBox for retr0 fans like me 😆

(4) My personal opinion is that Hyper-V is best suited for corporate sandboxing; virtualizing from a mega server for hundreds of clients to work on. It’s very low level, but as far as non-Microsoft and older software goes it is probably less compatible. VMWare however is a ‘hosted’ virtualizer that is further seperate from the core OS compared to Hyper-V, but is very mature and has great support for Intel instruction sets.

With that said, it would make sense that Hyper-V is better performing than VMWare, but everyone agrees VMWare is better for standard consumer-level applications (games, Photoshop, etc). Not to mention the latest VMWare beta (OSX only for now) can run Crysis @ ~10fps average [Shader Model 2.0 and lower is supported] and will apparently have 100% Direct3D9 < SM2.0 on Windows very soon. The way I see it, Hyper-V is good for doing it by the books. To do Microsoft and Technology Collage/class stuff, it’d be helpful there. Maybe also geek factor, it’s pretty hardcore. But let VMWare do everything else 😉 Player is freeware (registerware actually, signup = instant download) and it can create machines now so it can’t hurt to try 🙂

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