I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile VMware vSphere is based on 1 socket CPU. With Windows 2012R2 Datacenter, you will eligible to have unlimited Guest OS licenses.
Also System Center 2012R2 licenses based on 2 socket CPU.
Enjoy it, and let me know if I missed something or need some updated.
Requirements | Hyper-V 2012R2 | VMware vSphere 5.5 |
Host Server Hardware Requirements • 32 Logical CPUs minimum • 128GB RAM or more |
Support: • 320 Logical Processor • 4TB RAM |
Support: • 320 Logical Processor • 4TB RAM |
VM Guest Hardware Specification • Up to 16vCPUs • Up to 64GB RAM • At least support for 2 vNICs • Virtual CPU per Host • Virtual Hard disk support for up to 10TB |
Support: • 64vCPUs • 1TB RAM • 12 vNIC supported • 2048 vCPU per Host • 64TB Virtual Disk |
Support: • 64vCPUs • 1TB RAM • 10 vNIC supported • 512 vCPU per Host • 62TB Virtual Disk |
Host clustering Support: • Support for at least 8 nodes • Support for at least 90 running VMs or more • VM Replication technology to enable DR scenarios |
Support: • 64 nodes per Cluster • 8,000 VMs per Cluster • Hyper-V Replica |
Support: • 32 nodes per Cluster • 4,000 VMs per Cluster • vSphere Replication |
• VM Failover priority and startup priority | • YES | • YES |
• Concurrent based migration without downtime of VMs | Live Migration with unlimited VMs | vMotion, 4VM (1GbE) and 10VM (10GbE) per Host |
• Storage migration without downtime of VMs | Live Storage Migration | Storage vMotion |
• No shared storage based migration without downtime of VMs | Shared Nothing Live Migration | vMotion |
• High Availability of VMs | Windows Server Failover Cluster | VMware HA |
• Dynamic Workload balancing across host cluster | • Hyper-V High Availability | • VMware DRS |
• Live merge of VM snapshots | • Intelligent Placement with System Center VMM | • Center Snapshot Manager |
• Supported with Hyper-V Backup | • Supported with vSphere Data Protection | |
Support for VM workload migration without downtime, VM workload storage migration without downtime and host clustering features | Intelligent Placement (VMM) for VM workload without downtime. And Storage Tiering by Windows Server 2012R2 for Storage Workload. | DRS and Storage DRS |
Support for VM Templates and automated VM creation of Windows Server OS workloads | YES | YES |
Support for managing multi Hypervisors – preferably VMware and Hyper-V | System Center 2012R2 support for managing multi hypervisor (Hyper-V, VMware and XenServer) | vCenter vCAC |
Granular administration model | Supported with Windows Server 2012R2 Active Directory | Supported with Windows Server 2012R2 Active Directory |
Monitoring and alerting of virtual infrastructure coving all components from the hardware level to the Hypervisor to the running VMs, VM OS health and Applications monitoring | Supported with System Center 2012R2 | vCenter Operations Manager |