Windows Server blog by Kurt Roggen [BE]

On September 8, 2008 Microsoft kicked off its Virtualization Launch wave with a major event in Bellevue, Washington that showcased the latest virtualization products and solutions from Microsoft and its partners, highlighted customer successes and demonstrated our vision for the future of virtualization.

If you missed the September 8th Launch event, you can still capture the experience by viewing and reading the information here.

Some sessions:

• Hyper-V Deployment and Best Practices
• High-Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Security and Virtualization Management

For more information: getVirtualnow

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the next version of the Windows Server operating system from Microsoft. Building on the features and capabilities of the current Windows Server 2008 release version, Windows Server 2008 R2 allows you to create solutions organization that are easier to plan, deploy, and manage than previous versions of Windows Server.

Building upon the increased security, reliability, and performance provided by Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 R2 extends connectivity and control to local and remote resources. This means your organizations can benefit from reduced costs and increased efficiencies gained through enhanced management and control over resources across the enterprise.

Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the first Windows OS platform to go 64-bit only…

For more detailed information: Windows Server 2008 R2 (Beta) Reviewers Guide

Some topics covered:

• Hyper-V Live Migration Support through Cluster Shared Volumes
• Improvements for All Active Directory Server Roles
• Improved Performance for Branch Offices
• Improved Security for Branch Offices
• Improved Compliance with Established Standards and Best Practices
• Improved Storage Solutions
• Improved Remote Administration
  

Related reading: Windows Server Division weblog announcement

When copying and pasting an existing Group Policy object with the GPMC, you might get the error: “There is a naming violation”.

Using the Group Policy Object GUID (GPMC – GPO - Details tab), at the GPC (Group Policy Container) level - under the container “DC=domain,DC=net;CN=System;CN=Policies” - using ADSIedit, look for a replication conflict object marked with <CNF:GUID>.

Once you remove that conflicting object, the copy operation no longer fails…

Integration Services (sometimes also referred to as ICs - Integration Components) is a term used to describe a collection of services that enable a virtual machine to use synthetic devices and to provide (better) integration between child and parent partitions. 

It is strongly recommended that Integration Services be installed on all Hyper-V virtual machines to get the best performance and enhanced feature functionality.

The components available with the Integration Services enable the following:

• Inter-partition communication (VSPVSC) through the use of the VMBus using Video, Storage and Networking VSCs (Virtual Services Consumers) (read:synthetic devices).
  • Installs device drivers for synthetic devices (Video, SCSI controller, Network Controller)
  • Installs fastpath filter driver that allows the emulated IDE controller to switch to synthetic mode (only when Windows is running)
• Mouse integration drivers
• VSS-based backup of virtual machines initiated from the parent partition
• Time synchronization between child and parent
• Guest OS shutdown initiated from the virtualization management consoles
• Guest OS heartbeats
• Guest OS Identification

Microsoft makes available Integration Services for all supported guest operating systems (Windows XP/Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008). Integration Components are natively installed as part of Windows Server 2008.

Integration Services are packaged into a CD ISO image and can be installed on guest operating systems by mounting the ISO image on the virtual machine. When using the Virtual Machine Connection window to connect to a virtual machine, this can be done via Action → Insert Integration Services Setup Disk on the Windows guest operating system.

The Integration Components for supported Linux operating systems are currently available for download on the Microsoft website.
For the latest information on integration services, refer to www.microsoft.com/hyper-v.

Once the ICs are installed onto your Guest OS/partition, the following services below will appear and provide inter-partition communications.

Related reading:

• Hyper-V Parent partition, VSP, VSC and VMBus
• VirtualizationAdmin.com: Hyper-V Integration Services Requires a Newer Version of Windows Vista
• Mike’s Blog:  Using the Hyper-V Integration Components in WinPE

With Hyper-V, the parent partition or the root partition runs on Windows Server 2008 x64 Server Core installation or Windows Server 2008 x64 Full installation with the Hyper-V role installed and sits on top of the hypervisor.
The parent partition (not the hypervisor) manages the I/O devices. To provide virtual machines with access to those devices, Hyper-V supports a high-speed interconnect referred to as the VMBus.  Virtual devices for each VM, such as network and storage adapters, can communicate with the parent partition through the VMBus. The parent partition receives those requests through the VSPs (Virtualisation Services Provider) and directs them to the underlying physical devices via the I/O stack of the parent partition. This model requires device drivers for the physical devices to be installed inside the parent partition.
Most device specific drivers and utilities created for Windows Server 2008 x64 work as-is and do not require any changes when Hyper-V is enabled.

So “virtual devices for VMs, can communicate with the parent partition through the VMBus”. But what criteria determines if communication passes through the VMBus?!

Guest operating systems require specialized drivers (VSCs – Virtualisation Services Consumers) provided by Microsoft in order to access the VMBus. The drivers are specific to the type of device that is presented to the guest operating system through the VM configuration (with the Hyper-V Manager) and are installed as a part of the Integration Services that are available for Hyper-V supported guest operating systems.

Related reading:

• Microsoft MSDN: Hyper-V Architecture

A lot of people are unclear of what physical and/or virtual hardware Hyper-V supports.
The elements below help you to plan, purchase and build your physical and virtual infrastructure.

Processor

• Supports up to quad-processors with six-core system providing 24 logical processors.

Memory

• For Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, the physical computer can be configured with up to 1 TB of physical memory, and virtual machines that run these editions can be configured with up to 64 GB of memory per virtual machine.
• For Windows Server 2008 Standard, the physical computer can be configured with up to 32 GB of physical memory, and virtual machines that run either of those editions can be configured with up to 31 GB of memory per virtual machine.

Networking

• Each virtual machine can be configured with up to 12 virtual network adapters - 8 can be the synthetic “network adapter” type and 4 can be the “legacy network adapter” type. The network adapter type provides better performance and requires a virtual machine driver that is included in the integration services packages.
• Each virtual network adapter can be configured with either a static or dynamic MAC address.
• Each virtual network adapter offers integrated virtual local area network (VLAN) support and can be assigned a unique VLAN channel.
• You can have an unlimited number of virtual networks with an unlimited number of virtual machines per virtual network.

Storage

• Hyper-V can use 4 storage options such as Fiber Channel attached, iSCSI attached, Direct attached (DAS), NAS, SMB/CIFS file share.
• Virtual hard disks of up to 2040 GB. You can use fixed virtual hard disks, dynamically expanding virtual hard disks, and differencing disks.
• Virtual IDE devices. Each virtual machine supports up to 4 IDE devices. The startup disk (sometimes referred to as the boot disk) must be attached to one of the IDE devices. The startup disk can be either a virtual hard disk or a physical disk.
• Virtual SCSI devices. Each virtual machine supports up to 4 virtual SCSI controllers, and each controller supports up to 64 disks. This means that each virtual machine can be configured with as many as 256 virtual SCSI disks.
• Physical disks. Physical disks attached directly to a virtual machine (sometimes referred to as pass-through disks) have no size limitation other than what is supported by the guest operating system.
• Virtual machine storage capacity. Using virtual hard disks, each virtual machine supports up to 512 TB of storage. Using physical disks, this number is even greater depending on what is supported by the guest operating system.
• Virtual machine snapshots. Hyper-V supports up to 50 snapshots per virtual machine.

Virtual Machines

• Hyper-V supports up to 192 virtual machines running simultaneous.
• Hyper-V supports up to 512 virtual machines.