Chrispy_ wrote:I don't like being accused of being pedantic when you're the one who's wrong whilst inferring that the fault is mine.
I could see where there would be some confusion in how you worded it though, which is what prompted my original reply. You stated that you can run 2 VMs per
copy of Windows Server 2012, while not stating that you were referring to Standard Edition or per license. "Copy" in this instance should be referenced as "license". You can have a Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition host running more than 2 VMs, you just need another license for every 2 VMs running.
On to the subject of Enterprise Edition. When Server 2012 was released and they did away with Enterprise Edition, your license partner should have worked with you on one of two options for your Enterprise Edition licenses. You had the option of either having each Enterprise license upgraded to Datacenter Edition, or if you didn't do that it would be automatically converted to
two Standard Edition licenses per Enterprise Edition license.
Chrispy_ wrote:some EE features of S2008 were added to Standard Edition, whilst others were rolled into Datacenter."
This, however, is incorrect. Literally the only difference between Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 Standard Edition and Datacenter Edition is the virtualization rights per license. They both contain exactly the same feature set.
Flying Fox is also correct about the requirements for Hyper-V. You can install Hyper-V without VT-d support. There are a TON of hardware related features geared towards enhancing virtualization support, but only the basic subset is required to enable virtualization. Most of the newer features coming out now are geared towards network I/O as that's where most of the usage is whether it be pure file server traffic, iSCSI, FCOE, or otherwise. If you're doing anything more than a handful of VMs you'll definitely want to take note if your hardware supports some of these features (such as a NIC that supports VMDQ and SR-IOV).
