We have 4-5 people in a software development environment with access to 4 servers, each with 2 quad-core or dual-core cpu's (core-based, before nehalem), and 8gb or 16gb RAM, so I think we have a good amount of power for virtualization. Total, we have a team foundation server, oracle server, web server, 2 virtualization servers, and multiple workstations, some virtualized, some not.
When we started virtualizing about a year ago, for whatever reason, and although everyone has an MSDN sub, we started using VirtualBox instead of Hyper-V. I'm no expert (and that's why I'm here) but I think they operate at different levels of interaction with the hardware, and that VirtualBox is a bad idea for this environment.
Can someone give some good reasons why we should be using Hyper-V? Also is it possible to convert the virtual machines?
And then I would like to know if it's okay to also be virtualizing our web server and oracle server, etc. We have only been virtualizing workstations. I think we really need to make good use of virtualization if we are going to be doing it at all.
Advice welcome also for virtualization best practices, backups, management, infrastructure design, etc. I would like to start with a domain controller, and maybe a Lync server so we can share desktops, etc. Thanks for all input!