Hyper-V Comparison – Windows Server 2008 R2 vs Windows Server 2012

Feature by feature comparisons of Hyper-V in both Windows Server 2008 R2 and 2012

I just went looking for a decent comparison of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.  I obviously found this excellent document on download.microsoft.com – but couldn’t find these high-level bullets anywhere.

Hence this post:

Processor and Memory Support

Processor/Memory Feature

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2012

Logical processors on hardware

64

320

Physical memory

1 TB

4 TB

Virtual processors per host

512

2,048

Virtual processors per virtual machine

4

64

Memory per virtual machine

64 GB

1 TB

Active virtual machines

384

1,024

Maximum cluster nodes

16

64

Maximum cluster virtual machines

1,000

8,000

 

Network

Network Feature

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2012

NIC Teaming

Yes, through partners

Yes, Windows NIC Teaming in box

VLAN Tagging

Yes

Yes

MAC spoofing protection

Yes, with R2 SP1

Yes

ARP spoofing protection

Yes, with R2 SP1

Yes

SR-IOV networking

No

Yes

Network QoS

No

Yes

Network metering

No

Yes

Network monitor modes

No

Yes

IPsec task offload

No

Yes

VM Trunk Mode

No

Yes

 

Storage

Storage Feature

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2012

Live storage migration

No, quick storage migration through System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Yes, with no limits (as many as the hardware will allow)

Virtual machines on file storage

No

Yes, Server Message Block 3.0 (SMB3)

Guest Fibre Channel

No

Yes

Virtual disk format

VHD up to 2 TB

VHD up to 2 TB

VHDX up to 64 TB

Virtual machine guest clustering

Yes, through iSCSI

Yes, through iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or Fibre Channel over

Ethernet (FCoE)

Native 4 KB disk support

No

Yes

Live virtual hard disk merge

No, offline

Yes

Live new parent

No

Yes

Secure offloaded data transfer

No

Yes

 

Manageability

Manageability Feature

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2012

Hyper-V PowerShell

No

Yes

Network PowerShell

No

Yes

Storage PowerShell

No

Yes

REST APIs

No

Yes

SCONFIG

Yes

Yes

Enable/Disable shell

No, server core at operating system setup

Yes

VMConnect support for RemoteFX

No

Yes

Hyper-V is available as both the FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 and as a role in Windows Server 2012.

If you are virtualising Windows Server workloads (and have licensed them correctly), Hyper-V is completely “free” – so save yourself a lot of money by NOT purchasing an additional virtualisation solution.

Dave