Hyper-V: Questions and Answers

After the Hyper-V conference, I was asked some questions which I would now like to share with you.

Drivers and Synthetic Hardware

 

What is Synthetic Hardware?

Synthetic Hardware uses the VMBus to send requests from the virtual machine device to the physical device. This type of hardware is available only to VMs that have Integration Services installed.

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?

Why does the VM network card say that it is connected to 100 MBps when in fact I have a Gigabit network?
“Legacy” network cards emulate an NIC Fast Ethernet (100 MBps).

Why does the VM network card say it is to be connected to 10 GBps when the network is actually only 1 GBps?
Synthetic network cards do not emulate any NIC, but connect directly to the virtual BUS of the hypervisor. This synthetic network card will run at the highest possible speed.

SCVMM

 

Can I manage Virtual Server with SCVMM 2008?

Yes.

Can I manage Hyper-V with SCVMM 2007?
No. You can only do this with the 2008 version of SCVMM.

When will the final version of SCVMM 2008 be available?
In mid-October 2008, or sooner.

Can Fast Migration (Quick Migration) with SCVMM 2008?
Yes.

Can I do Live Migration with SCVMM 2008?
Yes, (but not yet).


Live Migration


What is the difference between Quick Migration and Live Migration?

Is Live Migration the same thing as VMotion?
Uh … “yes”.

When will Live Migration be available?
This is not yet certain.


Licensing


Could you explain what the licensing is for virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise?
When you run Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise you can run up to 4 virtual machines without needing to buy extra licenses. The same is true if you have Virtual Server running on Windows 2003 server Enterprise.

 

Certification


Is there any certification for Hyper-V?
Yes. The certification is called MCTS: Windows Server Virtualizaton, Configuring, and the exam that you must pass is 70-652. For more information, click HERE.

 

More questions are welcome 😉

Thank you Gonzalo for inspiring the content of this article.

Comments

  1. Good morning,

    I’m trying to run a VM from an external hard drive and it does not work. I connected an external hard drive to my laptop and I copied all the files from the VM (.vhdx disk included of course) to my external hard drive. Then I set the new location of the files on the VM in HyperV but it does not work.

    Is there something to do ?

    Thanks.

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