How Good is Hyper-V based Virtual Servers?

It has been over two years since the initial release of Hyper-V. Many minor enhancements have been made to Hyper-V while the core remained the same. The initial Marketing push of Hyper-V seem to have slowed down on Microsoft's part, now that Windows Server 2008 is fairly old and most people in the industry would be familiar with Hyper-V.

I wonder what type of systems are being used on Hyper-V based Virtual Servers. Is it still primarily for test, development and prototyping?

While some large scale applications like SQL Server may not be most suitable for Virtual Server Instances, it is perfectly possible for Hyper-V based Virtual Machines to carry out production level work.

We know it because we have had a Virtual Server Instance hosting over 275 Websites!

As far as CPU and Memory utilzation goes, Hyper-V Machines are almost as good as a real server. The memory is dedicated to the server, and CPU is real. However, as the number of guest instances grow, it can put a strain on the storage sub system. The overall performance of the guest machines will be limited by the performance of the storage system.

If the storage system can keep up with the demands of all guest machines, all Hyper-V based Virtual Servers will perform like stand alone servers.

We have run performace tests on both the Hyper-V Host and Guest Machines to verify this. There is negligible difference between the physical and virtual server.

If you are considering deployment of production Sites on a Hyper-V based Virtual Server, it is perfectly viable.