Running desktop OS VMs in corporate Hyper-V?

Question

Hello All,
The company I work for currently has a number of server-OS virtual machines running on Hyper-V.
We also have a number of server-OS virtual machines in VMWare on ESX.
We are now facing a situation where other teams in our area have virtual machines, like a VM of the Desktop Support Windows 7 environment, where we could potential migrate those into our Hyper-V or ESX environment.  Currently these VMs run locally on
laptops running VMWare Player.
Does anyone know of any technical issues that would prevent administrators from migrating desktop-OS VMs into a corporate VM solution?  As far as I can see, it would only be advantageous for the people using these VMs - better snapshot ability, leveraging
the better performance of an enterprise-class VM hosting solution.

Answer 1

Firstly just a quick one on your servers.  Depending on how Vital you deem ESX to be for you servers it should be more cost effective for you to look at
migrating your Server OS on the ESX host or hosts to Hyper-V.
This is because of licensing at the moment having to license Windows Server and ESX.  If you where to migrate your virtual machines on the ESX hosts over
to Hyper-V, you can leverage the fact Hyper-V comes with Windows Server and you do not have to pay for aNn additional Hypervisor.  Licensing on Windows server 2012 has been simplified for the best, WinSrv2012 has two versions you can purchase now Standard
or Datacentre.  They both have exactly the same functionality; the difference is the virtualisation rights.  With standard one license covers two physical processors and supports two virtual machines, if you need more virtual machines then you would
have to buy another standard license and giving the right to four virtual machines for example.  Then for datacentre one license covers two physical processors and covers you for an unlimited amount of virtual operating systems.
Meaning if you are already purchasing Windows Server 2012 and especially in the datacentre edition you can utilise your investment in to Microsoft technology
save you money, entering a more virtualised environment.
As for what would prevent Desktop-OS VMs being converted, this should not be a technical issue Microsoft and other 3rd party companies have tools for converting
VMware Virtual machines in to VHD files to use on a Hyper-V server. A Microsoft tool for example would be:
Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Solution Accelerator
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34591
Although that being said it would be much more advantageous for us to know what you are trying to achieve with your Desktop VMs and what they are currently being
used for at the moment to best suggest your next plan of action.
This is because if you end up scrapping the personal VMs on laptops you might start looking at the enhanced Remote desktop services function within Windows Server
2012.  You could end up looking at using RDS and creating an environment where most of your users remote in to a session based environment.   
With that though I am going off in a tangent when you start looking at RDS/VDI solutions and what not for a successful project you really need to look at the
types of user profiles in your environment for example task workers or power users
Before a waffle on more what I am trying to say is:
You might want look at your infrastructure as a whole and look at maybe migrating over as much as you can to Hyper-V
Then from a Desktop point of view it is technically possible to convert VMWare Files to VHD files suitable for Hyper-V
Although before you jump in with both feet you need to be clear with what you are trying to achieve and what capabilities you want/need.
hope something in there helps
Cheers,
Harry