The hypervisor you may already be paying for
Hyper-V and Windows Server failover clustering designed, built and supported — often the cheapest correct answer for a Microsoft estate, because the licence is frequently already in the room.
Hyper-V, end to end
Host and cluster design
Host sizing, failover clustering, quorum and witness, with the networks separated properly for management, live migration, cluster and guest traffic.
Storage
Cluster Shared Volumes on SAN, or Storage Spaces Direct where hyperconverged makes sense. Sized to IOPS and growth, not to a shelf of disks.
Licensing done honestly
Datacenter versus Standard worked out against your host count and guest density. This is where most Hyper-V estates quietly overspend or quietly go non-compliant.
Migration
From VMware, from physical servers, or from an ageing Hyper-V estate, with a rollback point at every step.
Backup and replication
Veeam or the native tooling, with Hyper-V Replica for a second site where the recovery objectives justify it.
Windows Admin Center and monitoring
Central management, patching under a maintenance window, and alerting that reaches someone.
Assess, design, migrate, support
1. Assess
Existing hosts, guests, storage and licensing entitlements. The entitlement review alone often changes the plan.
2. Design
Cluster topology, networks, storage and backup, documented before anything is ordered.
3. Migrate
Staged cutover on agreed windows with the old platform kept live until the new one is proven.
4. Support
Patching, cluster health, backup verification and capacity review under a service agreement.
When Hyper-V is the right choice
We are partners for Microsoft, VMware and Proxmox, so we have no reason to push you either way.
- Hyper-V suits you when your estate is already Microsoft, when Windows Server Datacenter licensing is in place or is worth buying anyway, and when your team already administers Windows.
- It is not free. The hypervisor is included with a licence you may hold, but the cluster storage, the backup product and the operational discipline still cost real money.
- Guest licensing is the trap. Datacenter versus Standard is decided per host and per guest density. We work it out with you rather than guessing.
- Where it is genuinely wrong for the workload, we will say so and point you at VMware or Proxmox.
Common questions
Is Hyper-V really included in our licence?
The Hyper-V role is part of Windows Server. Whether your specific edition and CAL position covers what you intend to run is a separate question, and one we check rather than assume.
Can you migrate us from VMware to Hyper-V?
Yes, guest by guest, with drivers, boot mode and guest licensing handled and a rollback point at each step.
Does it cluster properly?
Yes. Failover clustering with live migration is mature. The failures we inherit are almost always network separation or witness configuration, not the hypervisor.
Who supports it afterwards?
We do, under a written service agreement, as part of managed IT.
Send us your host and guest inventory.
With your licensing position we will tell you whether Hyper-V is the cheapest correct answer, or whether it only looks like it.
02 3537 5791