ESXi 6.7 vs Hyper-V 2012/2016 vs XEN 7.6

Recently I was about to change my Home lab. I wasn’t changed since 2013. I works stable, everything what were able to virtualize were virtualized. Things like my CCTV, webmail, NAS are running on dedicated separate server. Another dedicated server is my firewall, sorry, but security is vital priority. But my third server is virtualization station for tasks like web servers, remote sandboxes, development environments and various sets of VPN channels. Everything run quite smoothly on Windows Server 2012 R2 under Hyper-V. The 16 GB ram with 8 cores and several SSD and HDD drive are enough to separate all the tasks.

So why I decided to make some changes if everything is up and running ?

  • Windows Server 2019 here. Means EOL of Server 2012 R2 is the matter of time.
  • Too many adired screaming around KVM, ESXi and XEN
  • I had huge experience with ESXi versions 3.3 till 5
  • I wish to make hardware upgrade for this virtualization system and this is perfect opportunity to try something new
  • KVM, ESXi and XEN are free (the Windows Server 2012 R2 was obtained almost for free £400 with outdated dell server on Ebay). Means after EOL Windows Server 2012 R2 I’ll have to pay to Microsoft crazy price.

Early Saturday in the morning I found that my total night backup was completed and I’ve started my efforts to test and implement following solutions: Continue reading