Hyper-V Virtual networks: A look at High Level
Posted by virtualized1970 on Oct 3, 2008
One of the worst documented area in Virtualization, most confusing, and most troubling to Virtualization newbies is networking in a Virtualized environment. Although network settings in a virtualized environment is quite simple it requires a good understanding of few concepts and terms discussed into this post.
While virtualization architectures and how the virtualization stack makes use of the network resources of the host & host teaming are different in Virtual Server and Hyper-V, the concepts are similar for Virtual Networks.
Hyper-V Live Migration vs. Quick Migration
Posted by virtualized1970 on Sep 29, 2008
As we find out more about Windows Server Virtualization, it is only natural to start having doubts about its features. One of the most famous is Live/Quick Migration.
I would therefore like to spend some time clarifying everything I can about this subject.
First of all, Quick and Live Migration are not the same thing. They are not synonymous or interchangeable terms. Quick Migration is completely different from Live Migration.
The WSV RTM will have Quick Migration available right away while Live Migration (which is the equivalent of VMware VMotion) will be ready in an update a few months after WSV RTM.
Hyper-V: Questions and Answers
Posted by mrjohn on Sep 28, 2008
Drivers and Synthetic Hardware
What is Synthetic Hardware?
How can I tell if the hardware in my virtual machine is emulated or synthetic?
An easy way is to look at the hardware administration console: emulated hardware appears with the name of the hardware manufacturer, while synthetic hardware appears with names like “Microsoft VMBus”.
Virtual networks
How do I set up virtual networks?
Backing up your virtual machine
Posted by mrjohn on Sep 26, 2008
When you’re making a recovery plan and back-up of your virtual environment, you should take into consideration the various factors that may interfere with your back-up such as: the state of the virtual machine at the time you made the back-up (system state, shut down, running) and the type of storage you use for these back-ups.
The integration of the support service with the Volume Shadow Copy service of Hyper-V allows you to make a back-up of both the virtual machine as well as the Hyper-V configuration. There are two basic methods you can use for this type of back-up:
1. Make a back-up copy from inside of the operating system of a virtual machine. This method is useful when you need to save data from a storage device that is not supported by Hyper-V VSS.
Videos on the new version of Hyper V and Hyper V Server
Posted by mrjohn on Sep 25, 2008
It seems as though virtualization never ceases to be in the news. Today, I have some videos on the new version of Windows 2008 Hyper V, which will be available with the launch of Windows Server 2008 R2, whose latest feature (and criticism) is changing cluster nodes without losing power. Also called “Live Migration”, this is a significant improvement of “Quick Migration”, which directed the virtual machine to the live node but restarted it. It’s quite interesting to see how an end user sees no interruption in service during the movement of virtual machines between nodes when using Live Migration which is going to be the replacement for quick migration. Check out the Video below to see Live migration in action & check out Hyper-V Live migration vs Quick migration post to find out more about the difference between them .
Microsoft vs. VMware: Companies lose the battle - Part 2
Posted by mrjohn on Aug 31, 2008
Signs of an immature market
But is it really necessary for hypervisors to be a proprietary technology? Efforts by Microsoft and VMware to differentiate their hypervisors remind us of the networking situation thirty years ago, when all power suppliers believed in different technologies (Token Ring, Ethernet, ARCNET, etc.). Gradually, however, manufacturers have accepted the idea that taking a common standard (TCP/IP over Ethernet) and concentrating their efforts on innovation in the upper levels of the software stack, stimulates the growth of the market as a whole and, consequently, the value of the manufacturer’s own share of the pie. It seems that in the case of virtualization, suppliers are not yet ready to see the situation from this perspective. Today, speeches still revolve around concepts such as speed and feeds, but probably the market itself will finish by imposing its own rules.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Companies lose the battle - Part 1
Posted by mrjohn on Aug 30, 2008
Microsoft has just released Hyper-V, its new hypervisor software that will be the foundation of virtualization on Windows Server 2008. This release will force VMware to finally confront a dangerous opponent in the market of virtualization of Windows servers. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided to follow in the footsteps of VMware by choosing their own unique way of doing things, and VMware also refuses to cooperate. The result: IT departments are faced with the need to choose between two mutually incompatible virtualization options.
Virtualization is based on a fine code, called hypervisor, which is located on the hardware and abstracted from the Windows virtual servers running on the upper level. The primary purpose of hypervisors is to redirect requests between multiple virtual machines and the original hardware, so that each VM believes that the hardware is its own.
Important information about Hyper-V!
Posted by mrjohn on Aug 14, 2008
1- Deploying & Discovering Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM (Posted by MSHyper-V at this blog earlier).
Intro: Introduction to Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM & Our Discovery Trip.
Part one: Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation
Part Two: MS Hyper-V Virtual Networks Configuration & Hyper-V Server settings.
Part Three: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Creation.
Part Four: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Settings.
2. Deploying Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-v RTM (slipstreamed)
Deploying Windows Server 2008 using “slipstreamed” Hyper-V RTM -Part1
Deploying Windows Server 2008 using “slipstreamed” Hyper-V RTM -Part2
The final version of Hyper-V (RTM) is ready and available to download
Posted by mrjohn on Aug 7, 2008
The development team has just announced the availability of the RTM version of Hyper-V much earlier than the scheduled date, which was set to be 180 days after the RTM of Windows Server 2008 (end of August).
It’s now possible for everyone to use in-production Hyper-V RTM and to download bits from here.
As of July 8, Hyper-V RTM will also be available on Windows Update.
More than 250 customers who participated in the early adoption programs have actively contributed to the development of Hyper-V.
Here are just a few of those reported in the press:
Land O’Lakes
HotSchedules
The SCOOTER Store
Hyper-V Version 1 has now been released and is available for download
Posted by mrjohn on Aug 6, 2008
The next step is Microsoft’s Hyper-V Server: This is a hypervisor-based technology included in the Windows Server 2008. This version, specifically designed to be distributed with the servers directly from the hardware vendor, will be very small in size, have a simple interface and will not be able to create clusters of virtualization hosts.
To date, there is no news of a second version of Hyper-V.
I have put together a short list of what I would like to see in the next version of Hyper-V:
Live Migration: Despite the fact that, in many cases, Quick Migration (VM transfer in Hyper-V) is sufficient to handle the needs of system administrators, I believe that the possibility of migrating “hot” VM is a function that cannot be left out of the next version if you want to capture the high of the virtualization market.
Hyper-V: A new breed of SID
Posted by mrjohn on Aug 6, 2008
If you already know what tokens, SIDs and DACLs are, skip ahead and go directly to the first image below.
Ever since Windows NT, the basic principle of Windows security, (i.e. Discretionary Access Control) uses SID and ACL (access control list). For a more detailed explanation, I recommend that you read Chapter 8 of the book “Windows Internals” by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon. Another good reference is the chapter on Authorization and Access Control Technologies of the Windows Server 2003 technical library.
Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation & Configuraiton Step By Step Tour (Intro).
Posted by mshyperv on Jul 12, 2008
As Hyper-V being the biggest fuzz in the Virtualization solutions today, thanks to the Microsoft marketing forces. They can generate the biggest noise about each product they produce. As a lot of people hearing the fuzz, but did not have the chance to discover Hyper-V, I have decided I will discover it and take every one with me in a Hyper-V Tour with explanation and snapshots. This discovery trip consist of 5 parts & Intro as below:
Intro: Introduction to Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM & Our Discovery Trip. <==
Part one: Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation
Part Two: MS Hyper-V Virtual Networks Configuration & Hyper-V Server settings.
Part Three: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Creation.
Part Four: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Settings.
Part Five: Microsoft Hyper-V Snapshots Technology.
Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation & Configuraiton step by step (Hyper-V Discovery Part 5).
Posted by mshyperv on Jul 10, 2008
As Hyper-V being the biggest fuzz in the Virtualization solutions today, thanks to the Microsoft marketing forces. They can generate the biggest noise about each product they produce. As a lot of people hearing the fuzz, but did not have the chance to discover Hyper-V, I have decided I will discover it and take every one with me in a Hyper-V Tour with explanation and snapshots. This discovery trip consist of 5 parts & Intro as below:
Intro: Introduction to Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM & Our Discovery Trip.
Part one: Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation
Part Two: MS Hyper-V Virtual Networks Configuration & Hyper-V Server settings.
Part Three: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Creation.
Part Four: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Settings.
Part Five: Microsoft Hyper-V Snapshots Technology.
<==
Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation & Configuraiton step by step (Hyper-V Discovery Part 4).
Posted by mshyperv on Jul 10, 2008
As Hyper-V being the biggest fuzz in the Virtualization solutions today, thanks to the Microsoft marketing forces. They can generate the biggest noise about each product they produce. As a lot of people hearing the fuzz, but did not have the chance to discover Hyper-V, I have decided I will discover it and take every one with me in a Hyper-V Tour with explanation and snapshots. This discovery trip consist of 5 parts & Intro as below:
Intro: Introduction to Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM & Our Discovery Trip.
Part one: Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation
Part Two: MS Hyper-V Virtual Networks Configuration & Hyper-V Server settings.
Part Three: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Creation.
Part Four: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Settings.
<==
Part Five: Microsoft Hyper-V Snapshots Technology.
Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation & Configuraiton step by step (Hyper-V Discovery Part 3).
Posted by mshyperv on Jul 9, 2008
As Hyper-V being the biggest fuzz in the Virtualization solutions today, thanks to the Microsoft marketing forces. They can generate the biggest noise about each product they produce. As a lot of people hearing the fuzz, but did not have the chance to discover Hyper-V, I have decided I will discover it and take every one with me in a Hyper-V Tour with explanation and snapshots. This discovery trip consist of 5 parts & Intro as below:
Intro: Introduction to Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM & Our Discovery Trip.
Part one: Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V RTM Installation
Part Two: MS Hyper-V Virtual Networks Configuration & Hyper-V Server settings.
Part Three: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Creation.
<==
Part Four: MS Hyper-V Virtual Machine Settings.
Part Five: Microsoft Hyper-V Snapshots Technology.