Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

Microsoft Corporation
Published: January 2008

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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 2
Hyper-V Overview................................................................................................................................... 2
Key Benefits........................................................................................................................................ 2
Reliability........................................................................................................................................ 2
Strong Isolation............................................................................................................................... 2
Security.......................................................................................................................................... 2
Performance................................................................................................................................... 2
New Microkernelized Hypervisor Architecture..................................................................................... 2
Leveraging Virtualization-Aware Hardware...................................................................................... 2
Simplified Management with Familiar Tools......................................................................................... 2
MMC Interface................................................................................................................................. 2
Microsoft System Center................................................................................................................. 2
System Center Virtual Machine Manager........................................................................................ 2
System Center Virtual Machine Manager Main Features..................................................................2
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager................................................................................ 2
Third party management solutions................................................................................................. 2
Integrated Virtualization..................................................................................................................... 2
System Requirements......................................................................................................................... 2
Host Operating Systems................................................................................................................. 2
Guest Operating Systems............................................................................................................... 2
Processors....................................................................................................................................... 2
Shared Storage for Quick Migration................................................................................................ 2
Usage Scenarios..................................................................................................................................... 2
Scenario: Consolidate Infrastructure, Application, and Remote Site Server Workloads...........................2
Key Consolidation Features................................................................................................................. 2
Scenario: Automate and Consolidate Software Test and Development Environments.............................2
Key Software Testing and Development Features................................................................................ 2
Scenario: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery............................................................................. 2
Key Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Features...................................................................2
Scenario: Enabling the Dynamic Data Center......................................................................................... 2
Microsoft System Center Integration and the Dynamic Systems Initiative..........................................2
Key Dynamic Data Center Features.................................................................................................... 2
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................. 2

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Introduction
Todays data center is a complex ecosystem where different kinds of servers,
operating systems, and applications interact with a wide variety of desktop
computers and mobile client computers. IT departments are under increasing
pressure to manage and support this assortment of mission-critical technologies,
while controlling costs and maintaining reliability and security. Deploying server
virtualization technologymoving disparate servers to virtual machines (VMs) in a
centrally managed environmentis an increasingly popular option for facing these
challenges.
With its built-in server and presentation virtualization technologies, Microsoft
Windows Server 2008 enables you to reduce costs and increase hardware
utilization, as well as accelerate and extend application deployment and access,
while improving server and application availability.
Windows Server 2008 includes Hyper-V , a powerful virtualization technology that
enables businesses to take advantage of virtualizations benefits Hyper-V reduces
costs, increases hardware utilization, optimizes business infrastructure, and
improves server availability. Microsoft Hyper-V Server offers Hyper-V functionality
in a standalone package for dedicated virtualization hosts.
This white paper introduces Hyper-V as an important component of the Microsoft
desktop-to-data-center virtualization strategy and the Dynamic Systems Initiative
(DSI), moving network and service management toward self-managing, self-healing
systems. New and enhanced features in Hyper-V help relieve enterprise customer
pain points in common scenarios: server consolidation, business continuity/disaster
recovery management, testing and development, and the dynamic data center.

Hyper-V Overview
Virtualization is a widely adopted solution. Around 75 percent of organizations are
using or evaluating virtualization and seeing its advantages for server consolidation,
centralized management, and cost-reduction due to reduced hardware, power and
cooling requirements. . As these benefits drive profit, companies want to virtualize
more demanding workloads. They want more powerful and flexible virtualization
solutions that are better integrated with their management tools. Wide adoption of
64-bit, multi-processor, multi-core servers spurs demand for virtual machines that
are better able to take advantage of more scalable server hardware.
In light of these developments, Microsoft created Hyper-V, a next-generation,
hypervisor-based virtualization technology that provides a reliable virtualization
platform and and integrated management that enable customers to virtualize their
infrastructure and reduce costs.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview
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Key Benefits
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V technology simplifies the interaction between
hardware, operating systems, and virtual machines, while simultaneously
strengthening the core virtualization components.
Reliability
Hyper-V provides better reliability and greater scalability that allows you to
virtualize your infrastructure. It has a thin micro-kernelized hypervisor architecture
with minimal attack surface. This hypervisor does not include any third party device
drivers. It leverages the vast majority of device drivers that have already been built
for Windows. Hyper-V is also available as a Server Core role.
Strong Isolation
Server virtualization enables potentially resource- and control-intensive applications
to coexist on the same server. Virtual servers must be able to do their work with as
much flexibility as possible, leveraging as much hardware capacity as they need,
without conflicting with other virtual servers.
Hyper-V works with virtualization-aware hardware to tightly control the resources
available to each virtual machine. For example, virtual machines are isolated in a
way that gives them very limited exposure to other VMs on the network or on the
same computer.
Security
Security is a central challenge in every server solution. Virtual servers are at least
as exposed as their stand-alone counterparts and, in many ways, more exposed. For
example, multiple server functions on one computer can mean more administrators
have access to that computer. Third-party software and drivers can present security
risks as well, so its important to make sure that, if a virtual machine is
compromised, it has limited exposure to other virtual machines on the same
physical server.
Virtualization provides an opportunity to increase security for all server platforms.
Features that
Hyper-V uses to enhance security include:

Enabling VMs to take advantage of hardware-level security features, such as

execute disable bit (preventing execution of the most prevalent viruses and
worms), available in newer server hardware.
Providing strong role-based security to prevent exposure of secure VMs
through shared servers.
Integrating network security features that enable automatic Network Address
Translation (NAT), firewall, and Network Access Policy protection (quarantine).
Reducing the attack surface through a streamlined, lightweight architecture.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Performance
Performance advances and integration with virtualization-aware hardware enable
Hyper-V to virtualize much more demanding workloads than previous virtualization
solutions and to give them more resources for greater scalability.
Performance advancements include:

Speed enhancements through lightweight, low-overhead virtualization

hypervisor architecture.
Multi-core support, giving each VM access to as many as four logical
processors.
Enhanced 64-bit support, enabling VMs to run 64-bit operating systems and
to access very large amounts of memory (up to 64 GB per VM), enabling
more resource-intensive workloads and helping avoid slowdowns due to
paging.
Microkernelized hypervisor architecture, enabling VMs to cut out layers of
emulation and drivers, working more closely with virtualization-aware
hardware.
A high-performance, hardware-sharing architecture that optimizes data
transfer between physical hardware and virtual machines.

New Microkernelized Hypervisor Architecture

Hyper-V uses 64-bit hypervisor-based technology to give VMs running Windows
Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, specific Linux distributions, or Xen-enabled
Linux the ability to work as closely with CPUs and memory as possible in a shared
environment, vastly increasing performance.
Hypervisor-based virtualization is the latest stage in virtualization technologys
evolution, from emulated environments, which began more than 30 years ago, to
todays hardware-enhanced, close-to-bare-metal virtualization.
Basic virtualization (Type 2 virtual machine) places a thick, relatively slow layer of
abstraction between hardware and guest operating systems. This approach is called
hosted virtualization. The virtual machine monitor (VMM) runs as an application on
an operating system, and each VM runs on top of the VMM. As a simplified example
of the overhead involved in this type of virtualization, a hardware call from a guest
operating systems device drivers:
1. Goes first to emulated virtual hardware managed by the VMM.
2. The VMM routes it to the operating system.
3. The operating system routes it to the hardwares device driver.
4. The hardwares device driver routes it to the hardware.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview
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The process happens in reverse for any responses from the hardware.
Newer, Hybrid virtualization architectures, including that used in Virtual Server, run
side by side with server operating systems.
In Type 1 virtual machine monitors, the hypervisor sits at the level closest to the
hardware, sometimes called the bare-metal level.
There are two kinds of hypervisor architectures monolithic hypervisors and microkernelized hypervisors (see graphic below). The monolithic hypervisor model still
places large amounts of code between hardware resources and virtual machines,
because the virtual machine monitor emulates hardware for its VMs. When a guest
operating system makes a hardware call through its device drivers:
1. The VMMs emulated hardware intercepts the call.
2. The VMM routes it to the device drivers, necessitating numerous expensive
context switches.
3. The device drivers route it to the physical hardware.
This approach, called a monolithic hypervisor, includes hardware drivers in the
hypervisor. Examples of monolithic hypervisors include VMwares ESX Server.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V uses a micro-kernelized hypervisor model. In a microkernelized hypervisor, the only layer between a guest operating system and the
hardware is a streamlined hypervisor with simple partitioning functionality. The
hypervisor has no third-party device drivers. In addition to improved performance, it
has an inherently more secure architecture with a minimal attack surface. The
drivers required for hardware sharing reside in the host operating system, which
provides access to the rich set of drivers already built for Windows.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Figure 1. Approaches to Hypervisors: Monolithic Hypervisors contain its own driver stack as a part of the
hypervisor; Microkernelized Hypervisors has a minimal hypervisor layer and leverages the parent
partition and provides an inherently more secure architecture with minimal attack surface

Leveraging Virtualization-Aware Hardware

The new generation of 64-bit server hardware includes virtualization-aware
processors.
Intel Virtualization Technology and AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) are able to manage
some memory- and hardware-sharing functions that would otherwise be left to the
servers virtualization management software.
Hyper-V requires a processor with hardware-assisted virtualization functionality,
enabling a much more compact virtualization codebase and associated performance
improvements.
With the availability of these new processors and a new, hypervisor-based
virtualization architecture, Hyper-V is able to put virtualized applications as close to
bare metal as possible. This enables virtualized applications to take advantage of
features like multi-core processing that would be available on a standalone, physical
server but havent up to this point been available inside a virtual machine.
Benefits of the new approach include previous solutions single-processor/singlecore VM being supplanted by support of up to four cores per VM with Hyper-V.
Table 1
Virtual Server

Hyper-V

Processor Support
1 processor/core per VM

Processor Support
Up to 4 logical processors per VM
Up to 16 processing cores in the
physical machine.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Type of Virtual Machines Supported

32-bit VMs

Maximum Memory per Virtual Machine

3.6 GB

Types of Virtual Machines Supported

32-bit VMs
64-bit VMs
32-bit and 64-bit VMs running
simultaneously
Maximum Memory per Virtual Machine
Up to 64 GB

Simplified Management with Familiar Tools

Microsoft has added functions to Hyper-V that enhance management capabilities:

Simplifying management by replacing product-specific tools (browser

interface) with industry-standard tools (Microsoft Management Console [MMC]
interface)
Automating tasks and event response to minimize human interaction
wherever possible
Performing extensive monitoring to keep administrators aware of issues
before the issues become problems

From a network management standpoint, virtual machines should be easier to

manage than physical computers. To this end, Hyper-V includes many management
features designed to make managing virtual machines simple and familiar, while
enabling easy access to powerful VM-specific management functions.
Hyper-V can be managed in three ways:
1) MMC interface
2) Microsoft System Center
3) Third party management tools
MMC Interface
Hyper-V moves from the browser-based remote management used in Virtual Server
to a standard
MMC 3.0 interface. With Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, VMs and servers are
configured through a familiar and widely used management interface. Benefits of
this standardized approach include:

Broad industry support, reducing the learning curve experienced when

moving from managing physical computers to managing VMs.
Enabling VM management with enhancements from third-party management
console plug-ins.
Ability to enhance the MMC with user-created Windows PowerShell
commandlets.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Microsoft System Center

Microsoft System Center, a suite of system and server management tools, manages
all of the Microsoft virtualization offerings as well as networks physical resources.
System Center provides a single set of integrated tools to manage both physical
and virtual environments. System Center is designed to help businesses create selfmanaging dynamic systems, where the management and monitoring tools are able
to diagnose and address problems with as little human interaction as possible.
System Center includes a virtualization-specific management tool, System Center
Virtual Machine Manager, as well as virtualization functions in its other tools.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) provides centralized and powerful
management, monitoring, and self-service provisioning for virtual machines.
SCVMM host groups are a way to apply policies and to check for problems across
several VMs at once. Groups can be organized by owner, operating system, or by
custom names (such as Development or Production).
In the SCVMM interface, selecting a virtualization host server results in a displayed
list of its VMs. Select a specific VM to show its CPU and memory usage, as well as a
live-updating thumbnail. The interface also incorporates Remote Desktop Protocol
(RDP); double-click a VM to bring up the console for that VMlive and accessible
from the management console.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager Main Features
Feature

Description

Host configuration

Host setup and configuration can be automated, including global

settings, such as storage, like Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) paths and VM
Additions.

Virtual machine
creation

A wizard-based user interface creates VMs, enabling rapid VM creation,

including physical-to-virtual conversion (P2V) and templates.
The virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion in SCVMM can convert VMware
ESX VMs (VMDK format) to Hyper-V VMs (VHD format).
SCVMM includes the ability to save VM definitions as templates for
rapid deployment.

Library management

SCVMM can store and manage offline VMs, templates, and ISO
images, enabling rapid VM deployment. It can create, update, delete,
and store objects in the library without launching the associated VMs.

Virtual machine
placement and

SCVMM can provide recommendations for where to place VMs, based

on host capacity and utilization, facilitating movement (including Quick

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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deployment

Migration) of VM files over a local area network (LAN) or storage area

network (SAN).

Monitoring and
reporting

SCVMM provides a centralized view of all VMs in the environment and

their status. The view can be customized by host and VM groupings,
scalable to thousands of VMs.
Integrated tools provide for complete reporting and health monitoring,
including VMs and physical machines. Standard reports include
consolidation candidates, utilization trending, and optimization
opportunities.

Rapid recovery

VM snapshots and live backup help departments quickly recover from

outages.

Self-service
provisioning user
interface

Instead of requiring an administrator to create and configure VMs, the

SCVMM self-service interface enables users to create and delete VMs
themselves. Administrators set the rules, boundaries, and permissions
for self-service provisioning.

Automation

SCVMM contains a completely scriptable user model based on

Windows PowerShell and includes the ability to view the
Windows PowerShell script for each actionenabling administrators to
develop scripts for complex actions.

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 monitors the health and
performance of physical and virtual workloads. Administrators have powerful tools,
such as at-a-glance status, highly customizable alerts, and integrated configuration
management, to respond to issues immediately and can enable automated
response without administrator involvement. For example, when a virtual machine
shows network saturation, SCOM might respond with a script to add a network
adapter and restart the VM with more available bandwidth. A virtual machine
overloading its processor or paging excessively could get additional logical
processors or memory.
Third party management solutions
In addition to the above options, Hyper-V provides APIs that can be used by third
party management solutions. This enables customers to use third party
management solutions to manage Hyper-V.

Integrated Virtualization
Microsoft offers customers a complete set of virtualization products, from the data
center to the desktop. As discussed, all assets both virtual and physical can be
managed with our System Center management platform.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview
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Hyper-V is a key component of Microsoftscomplete virtualization solution

suite.Virtualization is a key pillar to the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI),
embedding operational knowledge in the management tools, and enabling the
system to manage and even heal itself. (See Microsoft System Center Integration
and the Dynamic Systems Initiative, below.)

Figure 2. The Microsoft end-to-end virtualization strategy enables centralized management for virtual and
physical assets through Microsoft System Center.

Presentation virtualization through Microsoft Terminal Services enables remote users

to access applications and operating systems hosted from remote locations. A
common usage model is accessing the corporate data from home or while traveling,
giving the remote user the ability to manipulate files, log in to applications that
require hardware locks on the desktop PC, and use other resources that wouldnt
otherwise be available. Presentation virtualization has the added benefit of enabling
resource-intensive applications to be used through lower-power portable computers
or other computers that would otherwise be incompatible, even those running
different operating systems.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Application virtualization with Microsoft SoftGrid insulates applications running on

the same operating system, helping to eliminate potential conflicts and enabling
rapid provisioning. An application that would normally update the registry, for
example, updates a virtual registry, so the system is able to meet the applications
requirements without impinging on other applications. Applications are not
installed in the traditional sense, so they can be set up and removed more quickly
than through typical setup and uninstall procedures, including custom options that
would otherwise have to be configured manually.
Desktop virtualization with Microsoft Virtual PC enables users to run guest operating
systems. It is commonly used for vertical applications that require different
operating systems and testing.

System Requirements
Host Operating Systems
Hyper-V is an available feature of Windows Server 2008 Standard x64, Windows
Server 2008 Enterprise x64, or Windows Server 2008 Datacenter x64 editions. The
Server Core installation option for these editions of Windows Server 2008 can also
install the Hyper-V role.
Clustering features, including Quick Migration, require Windows Server 2008
Enterprise or
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter x64 editions in the parent partition.
Guest Operating Systems
Hyper-V supports Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and specific Linux
distributions running as guest operatring systems. For a complete list and
configurations of supported guest operating systems running Hyper-V please refer
to the datasheet.
Processors
Hyper-V requires processors with hardware-assists from AMD and Intel.: AMD-V or
Intel VT processors.
Hardware Data Execution Protection (DEP) must be enabled. Hyper-V requires that
hardware data protection is enabled: Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit
(no execute bit).
Shared Storage for Quick Migration
Quick Migration requires shared storage in the form of either a SAN (Internet Small
Computer System Interface [iSCSI] or Fibre Channel) or Serial Attached SCSI.
Windows Server 2008 clustering is no longer supported by means of parallel SCSI.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview

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Usage Scenarios
There are four key usage scenarios for Hyper-V. They are:
Server consolidation
Dev/Test environments
Business Continuity
Dynamic Datacenter

Scenario: Consolidate Infrastructure,

Application, and Remote Site Server
Workloads
The biggest driver for adopting virtualization technology is server consolidation.
Businesses are under pressure to automate management and reduce costs, while
retaining and enhancing competitive advantages, such as reliability, scalability, and
security.
Hyper-V is ideal for server consolidation in both the data center and remote sites,
enabling organizations to make more efficient use of their hardware resources. It
also enables IT organizations to enhance their administrative productivity and to
rapidly deploy new servers to address changing business needs.

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Key Consolidation Features

Table 2
Feature

Description

Broad guest
operating system
support

Guest operating systems supported include Windows, specific Linux distributions,

and Xen-enabled Linux.
In addition to supporting the operating systems above with synthetic hardware, VMs
in Hyper-V can run many other operating systems with hardware emulation,
including all versions of DOS, Windows, and Windows Server.

Hardware
virtualization and
older-version
hardware
emulation

VMs based on specific virtualization-aware operating systems (Windows Server

2008, Windows Server 2003, and specific Xen-enabled Linux distributions) interact
with high-performance synthetic devices that have no physical counterpart (for
example, Windows Display Adapter). Other operating systems interact with
emulated hardware that acts like specific devices (for example, S3 Trio64 SVGA
adapter).

P2V: Physical-tovirtual conversion

(SCVMM)

P2V enables running physical servers to be converted to virtual machines, with

minimal downtime.

V2V: Virtual-tovirtual conversion

(SCVMM)

The virtual-to-virtual conversion in Hyper-V can convert VMware ESX VMs (VMDK
format) to Hyper-V VMs (VHD format).

Quick Migration
(SCVMM)

The Quick Migration feature in SCVMM enables running virtual machines to be

moved from one server to another, with minimal downtime.

CPU resource
allocation

CPU resource allocation supports both weighting and constraint methods for finegrained control.
Multithreaded for highly scalable performance.
Number of cores in a VM:
Each virtual machine can use up to 100 percent of a single host processor
(up to 16 total processing cores per system).
On hyper-threaded systems, the single host processor is a logical
processor.
Multiple virtual machines can execute concurrently to make use of multiple host
processors.
The number of virtual machines that can be hosted on any server depends on
the:
Combined processor, memory, and I/O load the virtual machines put on
the host.
Processor, memory, and I/O capacity available on the host system.
Virtual processor resources can be changed using industry-standard tools, the
Hyper-V MMC management interface, or WMI scripting (processor change
requires restarting the VM).
Hyper-V supports both weight-based and constraint-based CPU resource
allocation for balanced workload management.

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Memory resource
allocation

Hyper-V enables flexible memory configuration on a per-virtual machine basis.

PXE Boot

The relative weight given to the resource needs of this virtual machine is based
on comparisons with the needs for all other virtual machines. A virtual machine
with a higher relative weight is dynamically allocated additional resources as
needed from other virtual machines that have lower relative weights. By default,
all virtual machines have a relative weight of 100, so that their resource
requirements are equal, and none is given preference.
Capacity and weight algorithms operate concurrently:
Contention can occur for the maximum system capacities.
Relative weights indicate how to allocate resources during contention.

Support is included for non-uniform memory access-aware (NUMA-aware)

scheduling and memory allocation, reducing memory bus contention on multiprocessor systems.
On non-NUMA systems, Hyper-V relies on the host operating system
scheduler.

Virtual network cards in Hyper-V support Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE).

This network boot allows customers to provision their virtual machines in the same
ways that they do their physical servers.
Note: To take advantage of this feature, the PXE infrastructure needs to be
installed on the host network.

Active Directory
integration

Active Directory directory service allows the same directory management features
to be used for virtual machines as are used for physical machines, by providing a
centralized repository for hierarchical information about users and computers on the
network. Active Directory incorporates significant improvements in management
and performance in Windows Server 2008, which can be leveraged through virtual
machines hosted by Hyper-V.
Integration with Active Directory enables delegated administration and
authenticated guest access. Hyper-V enables fine-grained administrative control
over virtual machines with per-virtual machine Access Control Lists (ACLs) that can
be managed from within the Active Directory Group Policy Management Console.
Event logs are integrated with Active Directory and Microsoft Management
Consoles.

Windows Server
Core option

Hyper-V is available as a Windows Server 2008 Server Core role, facilitating higher
uptime due to fewer mandatory reboots for OS patches. Hyper-V can also achieve
higher VM density when consolidating core infrastructure workloads by using
Windows Server Core as a guest OS. The reduced disk and memory footprint of
Server Core can help achieve higher VM densities on consolidated servers.

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Scenario: Automate and Consolidate

Software Test and Development
Environments
Hyper-V enables businesses to consolidate their test and development servers and
to automate the provisioning of virtual machines.
Customers across all business segments are looking for ways to decrease their costs
and to accelerate application and infrastructure installations and upgrades, while
delivering comprehensive quality assurance. To achieve testing coverage goals prior
to going into production, multiple challenges must be overcome:

Network operations: A test network that is incorrectly configured could

endanger production networks.

Developer productivity: Developer productivity should not be wasted on timeconsuming administrative tasks, such as configuring test environments and
installing operating systems.

Server operational and capital costs: High-quality application test coverage

requires replicating production computing environments, which in turn need
costly hardware and human resources. This extra resource demand can pose
risks to budgets and schedules

Virtual machine technology was developed more than 30 years ago to address some
of the challenges first encountered during the mainframe era, enabling side-by-side
testing and production partitions on the same system. Now, Hyper-V enables better
test coverage, developer productivity, and user experience. The memory and
processor scalability inherent in Hyper-V 64-bit architecture supports enterprise test
scenarios.
Developers can also leverage Hyper-V as an efficient tool to simulate distributed
applications on a single physical server. Deploying and testing distributed server
applications typically requires quantities of available hardware resources and a
great deal of time to configure the hardware and software systems in a lab
environment, to simulate a desired scenario.
Hyper-V is a powerful time- and resource-saving solution that optimizes hardware
and human resource utilization in distributed server application development
scenarios. Hyper-V enables individual developers to easily deploy and test a
distributed server application using multiple virtual machines on one physical
server. Combining the robust features in Hyper-V, such as disk hierarchy and virtual
networking, with the value of machine consolidation gives developers a powerful
and efficient way to simulate complex network environments. The result is a
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Technical Overview
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development environment solution that is very time and cost effective because less
hardware, less real estate, and less time are required for build-out.

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Key Software Testing and Development Features

Table 3
Feature

Description

Broad guest
operating system
support

Guest operating systems supported include Windows Server 2008, Windows

Server 2003, and specific Xen-enabled Linux distributions.
In addition to supporting the operating systems above with synthetic hardware, VMs
in Hyper-V can run many other operating systems with hardware emulation,
including all versions of DOS, Windows, and Windows Server.

Self-service portals System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables developers and testers to create
and destroy VMs from a configuration library instead of requiring administrator
intervention.
Flexible resource
control

VMs can also take advantage of flexible resource control, enabling testers to assign
memory and processor resources that best fit the test or development scenario.

VM Snapshots

With the Snapshot feature of Hyper-V, a VM can be reset to a previous state.

Scenario: Business Continuity and Disaster

Recovery
Hyper-V can be part of a disaster recovery plan that requires application portability
and flexibility across hardware platforms. Consolidating physical servers onto fewer
physical computers running virtual machines decreases the number of physical
assets that can be damaged or compromised in event of a disaster. During
recovery, virtual machines can be hosted anywhere, on host machines other than
those affected by a disaster, speeding up recovery times and maximizing
organization flexibility.

Key Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Features

Table 4
Feature

Description

High availability
through host and

Hyper-V enables clustering of guest operating systems and host computers,

enabling a variety of high-availability scenarios. Clustering host computers offers a

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guest clustering

cost-effective means of increasing server availability, enabling failover of virtual

machines among the Hyper-V hosts in the cluster. Using Hyper-V, organizations
can create a high-availability virtual machine environment that can effectively
accommodate both planned and unplanned downtime scenarios, without requiring
the purchase of additional software tools.
For example, IT administrators can effectively anticipate host server restarts if
required by system updates. With a properly configured Hyper-V host cluster,
running virtual machines can be migrated to another host in the cluster with minimal
downtime.
In unplanned downtime scenarios, such as hardware failure, the virtual machines
running on the host can be automatically migrated to the next available Hyper-V
host.
Guest clustering allows cluster-aware applications to be clustered within virtual
machines across Hyper-V host computers.

Live backup

Hyper-V virtual machines and their data can be automatically backed up without
experiencing downtime (if the guest OS supports Volume Shadow Copy Service). If
a server stops responding, its VMs can be restored and started on any other host
server, minimizing service interruptions.
Tape backup processes take advantage of virtual tape drive functionality in
Hyper-V. For example, if a server incorporates a script to automatically back up its
data to a tape drive, that process can still be used when the server is converted to a
virtual machine.

Health monitoring

Hyper-V leverages comprehensive integration with monitoring tools, like Microsoft

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), to spot and respond to issues before
they become larger problems.

Quick Migration

Quick Migration enables VMs to be moved to other servers, automatically or

manually, with minimal downtime. Note: Quick Migration is available only in the
Enterprise and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2008.
When monitoring tools like SCOM identify important but non-urgent problems with
serversa system reaching its maximum capacity, for exampleintegrated
management tools can automatically move that server to another physical
computer, even at another location.

Windows Server
Core option

Hyper-V is available as a Windows Server 2008 Server Core role. Windows Server
Core as a guest OS helps facilitate high availability for core infrastructure roles. The
reduced disk and memory footprint of Windows Server Core will facilitate faster
Quick Migrations and faster cluster failovers of VMs based on Windows Server
Core.

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Scenario: Enabling the Dynamic Data Center

Data centers face increased pressure to optimize hardware and facilities utilization,
while increasing performance and leveraging business intelligence. Hyper-V gives
data centers the agility to respond to changing needs, and the power and flexibility
to design for the future.
Core features, such as dynamic hardware management, Quick Migration of running
VMs with minimal downtime, and 64-bit, multi-processor support, enable data
centers to rely on virtual machines for even the most resource-intensive workloads.
Hyper-V helps realize the dynamic data center vision of providing self-managing
dynamic systems and operational agility. Combining business processes with
System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables a data center to rapidly provision
new applications and dynamically load balance virtual workloads across different
physical machines in their infrastructure and to progress toward self-managing
dynamic systems.

Microsoft System Center Integration and the Dynamic Systems

Initiative
Hyper-V integrates with Microsoft System Center (MSC), a new generation of
dynamic management tools designed to support the Dynamic Systems Initiative
(DSI). MSC provides IT Professionals with the tools and knowledge to help manage
their IT infrastructure, embedding operational knowledge in the management tools,
and enabling the system to manage and even heal itself.
The essence of Microsoft DSI strategy is to develop and deliver technologies that
enable businesses and people be more productive, and to better adapt to dynamic
business demands. There are three architectural elements of the dynamic systems
technology strategy:
1. Design for Operations to capture the diverse knowledge of people, such as
business architects, application developers, IT Professionals, and industry
partners, by embedding it within the IT infrastructure itself, using system
models.
2. Knowledge-Driven Management enables systems to capture desired states of
configuration and health in models, and to use this inherent knowledge to
provide a level of self-management to systems.
3. Virtualized Infrastructure helps achieve greater agility and leverage existing
infrastructure by consolidating system resources into a virtual service pool.
Virtualized infrastructure makes it easier for a system to quickly add,
subtract, move, or change the resources it draws upon to do its work, based
on business priorities and demands.
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These three elements are the foundation for building dynamic systems. Virtualized
Infrastructure mobilizes the resources of the infrastructure, Knowledge-Driven
Management is the mechanism for putting those resources to work to meet dynamic
business demands, and Design for Operations ensures that systems are built with
operational excellence in mind.
For more information about DSI, see: www.microsoft.com/dsi.

Key Dynamic Data Center Features

Table 5
Feature

Description

Broad guest
operating system
support

Guest operating systems supported include Windows Server 2008, Windows

Server 2003, and specific Xen-enabled Linux distributions.
In addition to supporting the operating systems above with synthetic hardware, VMs
in Hyper-V can run many other operating systems with hardware emulation,
including all versions of DOS, Windows, and Windows Server.

Automated VM
reconfiguration

The VM configuration capabilities in Hyper-V enable advanced management tools

to reconfigure VMs with additional storage, memory, processor cores, and
networking (minimal downtime required to restart the VM). A dynamic data center
uses this technology not only to respond to problems, but also to anticipate
increased demands.
The dynamic data center can give a Web server additional processing power in
anticipation of a Web-based promotion, for example. If the payroll system always
slows down during the last few days of the month, the system can automatically
add capacity for that period and free up those resources for other VMs after payroll
processing is done.

Quick Migration

The Hyper-V Quick Migration feature enables running VMs to be moved to other
servers, with minimal downtime. Dynamic data centers leverage Quick Migration to
move workloads to servers with applicable capabilities for their current needs. A
server providing application updates, for example, could migrate to a more powerful
server in anticipation of a company-wide software update.

Utilization
counters

Hyper-V utilization counters provide server administrators with detailed server load
and performance information to facilitate planning and analysis, as well as chargeback metrics.

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Conclusion
Hyper-V is a reliable and cost-effective server virtualization technology for the
Windows Server 2008 platform.
The move by Microsoft to hypervisor-based, hardware-assisted virtualization vastly
improves reliability and scalability for virtual servers, enabling even the most
demanding workloads to be run in dynamic virtual machines.
The industry-standard management tools in Hyper-V enable system administrators
to manage virtual servers and physical servers in the same familiar, widely
supported interface.
IT departments use Hyper-V to:

Consolidate infrastructure, application, and remote site server

workloads. Hyper-V is ideal for server consolidation in both the data center and
remote sites, allowing organizations to make more efficient use of their hardware
resources. It also helps IT organizations to enhance their administrative
productivity and to rapidly deploy new servers to address changing business
needs.

Automate and consolidate software test and development

environments. Hyper-V enables businesses to consolidate their test and
development server farm and to automate the provisioning of virtual machines.

Provide for business continuity and disaster recovery. Hyper-V can be

used as part of a disaster recovery plan that requires application portability and
flexibility across hardware platforms.

Support the drive to create dynamic, self-managing systems. Hyper-V

gives data centers the agility to respond to changing needs and the power and
flexibility to design for the future.

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