Hyper-V

In Windows Server 2012 R2, you can create a new type of VMs called Generation 2 VMs. Gen 2 VMs will give you several benefits including: Emulated devices have been removed Allows for boots from virtual SCSI You can boot from synthetic network adapters Boot from UEFI instead of BIOS UEFI secure boot is enable You can run Gen1 and Gen2 VMs side by side Enable Enhanced Session Mode Why Gen 2 VMs? Historically OSs didn’t natively understand virtualization, and in the case of Hyper-V, could not just use the VMbus. This is why there are emulated IDE controllers, legacy network adapters, emulated BIOS, COM & LPT ports, keyboard or mouse PS/2 connections, floppy drives, and other system devices such as PCI to ISA bridge. All of these emulated type devices include the requirement to boot from an IDE controller, because the assumption was that OSs weren’t natively virtual aware. Today, even Linux now are natively virtualization aware. Therefore in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, a new Gen 2 VM is available that removes all the legacy, emulated hardware and provides a UEFI environment that supports 64-bit OSs that are Windows 8 and Windows 2012 or later. Generation 2 VMs can boot from the SCSI bus and from the synthetic network device. ...

This is a total geek experiment done by few Microsoft Redmond guys. They got 4 Surface Pro devices and built a server farm in about one hour. After that, they were just having fun and moving VM across the 4 Surface Pro devices. The key feature in Windows Server 2012 is Share Nothing Live Migration, which allows you to live migrate VMs without Cluster or share storage. If you want to try it out, here is the configuration guide. This is CRAZY, so sit back and enjoy the cool video! [youtube]http://youtu.be/4Uw7EDt86ss[/youtube]

The New version of WIM2VHD is now available for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Download the tool from here What is WIM2VHD? It is a tool that allows you to create sysprepped VHD and VHDX images from any official build of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012. This new release is completed rewritten in PowerShell. Support for creating VHD and VHDX images from .ISO files has been added! One more thing for those who prefer UI, A new (and completely optional) graphical user interface has been added, making the creation of VHD and VHDX images as simple as a few mouse clicks! Here is how it works 1. Run PowerShell as Administrator on your Windows Client or Windows Server. Run the following commands to allow PowerShell Scripts to run on your PC: set-executionpolicy unrestricted 2. Go to the directory where the WIM2VHD script is stored. Run the following PowerShell commands: .\convert-WindowsImage.ps1 -ShowUI 3. The UI tool will be loaded. Choose the .WIM file. For Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, you can find the file at .\Sources\install.wim You can choose different parameters like VHD or VHDx Format, Fixed or Dynamic disk. 4. Just wait for the PowerShell Commands to be fully executed and you will have a VHD or VHDx file ready

Past couple of weeks, I shared at our community meetup and also partner briefings about some new fantastic features about Windows Server 2012 (formerly known as Windows Server “8”). SR-IOV is one of them. SR-IOV stands for Single-Root Input/Output (I/O) Virtualization. It’s is a standard defined by the PCI Special Interest Group. If you work for one of the member companies who have access, and are after some light bedtime reading, the specs are available on their website. To learn more, I want to point you to this outstanding 8 part blog series written by John Howard, a senior program manager on the Hyper-V team at Microsoft Here are the posts for you reading pleasure: Part 1: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/12/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-1.aspx Part 1 discusses emulated versus software devices, the pros and cons and constraints of each and why Microsoft is investing in SR-IOV. —————————————————————————————————– Part 2: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/13/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-2.aspx Part 2 discusses the SR-IOV standard, physical functions (PFs) virtual functions (VFs) and the hardware requirements to make SR-IOV even possible. —————————————————————————————————– Part 3: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/14/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-3.aspx Part 3 discusses device drivers and how they function in an SR-IOV environment as well as screenshots of an SR-IOV NIC within a Hyper-V VM. —————————————————————————————————– Part 4: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/15/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-4.aspx Part 4 discusses some of the low level necessary firmware and motherboard changes to make SR-IOV function and provides a pointer to an interesting presentation given 4 years ago at WinHEC 2008 by Jake Oshins that provides further insight into SR-IOV. —————————————————————————————————– Part 5: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/16/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-5.aspx Part 5 explains the IO path with SR-IOV enabled, covers SR-IOV configuration via the UI and a deeper dive into PowerShell. —————————————————————————————————– Part 6: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/19/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-6.aspx Part 6 discusses SR-IOV and Live Migration in detail. It covers the engineering challenge of making SR-IOV work with Live Migration (not trivial folks) and even includes a video that demonstrates a virtual machine with an SR-IOV NIC under load being Live Migrated. There’s even a link to a WinHEC 2006 presentation —————————————————————————————————– Part 7: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/20/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-7.aspx Part 7 discusses SR-IOV and how it works with the new inbox Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming. Yes folks, you can team SR-IOV NICs in the guest. —————————————————————————————————– Part 8: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jhoward/archive/2012/03/21/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-sr-iov-in-hyper-v-part-8.aspx Part 8 discusses debugging SR-IOV and includes examples in PowerShell and covers troubleshooting through the Event Viewer.

MMS2012 at Vegas last week was awesome. If you followed the keynotes, both keynotes were very good. You can watch Keynote and Breakout sessions at http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms. Same excitments are shared by medias too. I saw some good articles on some popular sites. eweek: Windows Server 8 is Now Officially Windows Server 2012 Meanwhile, at MMS, Microsoft’s Anderson said IT organizations that use System Center 2012 and Windows Server with Hyper-V for cloud computing are helping their companies move faster, save money and compete better. For example, EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services, a luxury car service headquartered in New Jersey, has used a Microsoft private cloud to reduce data center costs by 50 percent, amid 30 percent company growth during the past 18 months. With more than 1,000 employees, EmpireCLS relies on the Microsoft private cloud to deliver a reliable reservation system to customers in more than 700 cities around the world. Using System Center 2012, EmpireCLS also used its cloud environment to create a new business with its BeTransported software as a service (SaaS) offering. The application is now in use broadly within the car service industry. Network world: Your move, VMware:Windows Server ‘8’ Becomes Windows Server 2012 BetaNews: Meet Windows Server 2012 Windows IT Pro: MMS 2012: The Evolution of Data Center Computing The Register: Microsoft goes global with System Center 2012 at MMC Windows IT Pro: MMS 2012: System Center 2012 Released, Windows Server ‘8’ Now Windows Server 2012 Network World: Hyper-V: Hyper Adoption TechTarget: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 released – and new Windows Intune is on the way ZDNet: Windows Server 8 officially dubbed Windows Server 2012 Windows IT Pro: It’s Official: Windows Server 2012 ...

Recently we asked few times if should company virtualize Windows 7 Guest OS or stay on Windows XP. The answer is straight forward, go for Win7. Reason being - better VM/logical processor support. If you have Hyper-V with Win7 as guest OS, the VM/logical processor ratio is 12:1. With other guest OS, the ratio is only 8:1. You can scale out more and have better density. Most people are familiar with VMs/core concept. VMs/core implies only physical core support. Logical processors can be either physical or multi threaded cores. As an example, Intels Westmere processors support 6 cores. With multi threading support, you actually have 12 logical processors. This means that on just one of these Westmere processors, we can scale up to 144 VMs! Then comes the licensing question. What is the best general licensing model to virtualize so many VMs. The best way to go for most cases is to purchase Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter edition. The Datacenter edition gives unlimited VMs per processor licensing. It is a very cost effective way for most cases. Let’s be honest that density and VM/logical processor will always increase, you want to have the flexibility to scale up. To know more about licensing on Microsoft Products, the best place to get the information is to visit http://www.microsoft.com/singapore/licensing/

Recently I was asked few times what is the difference between virtualization and private cloud. There are distinct differences between virtualization and private cloud. They are not the same thing. Virtualization is just the first step towards private cloud. According to NIST defination, a private or public cloud should have following characteristics. These are the fundamental differences between private cloud and virtualization. On-demand self-service: the ability for a user to obtain computing resources (compute, network, storage) as needed and automatically, without interaction with other people Broad network access: the computing resources are accessible over the network and using tools widely used as thin clients and thick clients (phones, laptops, desktops, slate) Resource pooling: the computing resources are pooled together to serve different customers using a multi-tenant model. The different physical and virtual resources are assigned dynamically, based on the needs of users. This allows you to get a sense of independence from the location of resources as the end user does not have an exact idea of ??where you actually reside the resources it uses, but may indicate a high level of preferential locations Rapid elasticity: the resources can be quickly modified, often automatically, so you can quickly adapt to the waxing and waning of necessity. From an end user’s point of view, this can lead to the feeling of having unlimited resources to buy the necessary amount for the time. Measured Service: The cloud systems automatically monitor and optimize resources by exploiting the capabilities measure implemented at different levels of abstraction depending on the type of service provided. The use of resources can be controlled, measured and reported enabling the end user and service provider access to information transparently use Virtualization alone does not achieve these characteristics and does not enable efficiency. Let’s look how these cloud functionalities can be through Microsoft technologies. Base Virtualization Infrastructure The base infrastructure for private cloud is virtualization. One important thing everyone tends to take for granted is Active Directory. Active Directory provides the base for identify and security management. In the base infrastructure, there are ...