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I have Vmware ESXi 5.5 Update 1 with two disks, called RAID0 (3.6 TB) and RAID5 (10.9 TB).

I am tired of having to rebuild ESXi every sixty days for home use so I am planning on moving to Hyper-V, but I'm a little nervous. I don't have swing kit, so will have to repurpose my existing 1 year old quite powerful machine (Intel i7 32 Gb RAM two sets of RAID storage internal), 3 NICs. Features I need from VMware are:

  1. Ability to snapshot and revert to snapshot (running and stopped VM)
  2. Ability to move VMs between my different storage areas (RAID0 and RAID5)
  3. Ability to set up internal networks to the Hyper-V host so I can set up virtual labs on their own virtual networks
  4. USB pass through to the VM
  5. Auto start VMs with the host.
  6. Auto shut down VMs with the host.
  7. Templating of OSs - mainly Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2, but also Centos 7. Can I convert my ESXi templates to Hyper-V?
  8. Good performance from both Windows and Linux machines
  9. Easy management from a workstation on the network.
  10. Install Hyper-V to USB flash drive plugged in to the server.

Can Hyper-V do all that?

Also, I have a migration plan. Will this work?

  1. In ESXi move all machines for migration from RAID5 to RAID0 storage.
  2. Install Hyper-V on the host to USB flash drive (16 GB)
  3. Format RAID5 storage so it can take vhds. (NTFS?)
  4. Set up networks - have three NICs on the host.
  5. Install management software on my workstation
  6. Convert VMware vmx machines on RAID0 storage to vhd based machines on RAID5 storage. How to do this? My machines vary from v8,9 to vmx10.
  7. Power on VMs and perform checks.

Any comments? I'm particularly concerned about the conversion process from VMware to Hyper-V and the reliability of it. Total size of VMs to convert is just under 3 TB.

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  • Windows cannot run from USB drives. Only Windows PE and Windows To Go can do that.
    – Daniel B
    Dec 20, 2014 at 16:31
  • OK, I guess I could partition the RAID5 storage to boot from that, or put in an extra 40 GB disk or something as boot. Dec 20, 2014 at 17:48
  • But anyway, I’m more interested in your ESXi problems because they can probably be solved. HyperV is simply inferior in just about every way. The free Hyper-V Server is basically worthless without a DC, because it relies on Integrated Authentication for management access.
    – Daniel B
    Dec 20, 2014 at 23:47
  • I'm using it at home but I have to reinstall every 60 days and I'm getting bored of it. Dec 21, 2014 at 1:01
  • What's keeping you from registering it? It's free, after all.
    – Daniel B
    Dec 21, 2014 at 11:01

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