Hyper-V 3.0 – What’s New in
Windows Server 2012?
Brien Posey
http://www.backupacademy.com
Twitter: @BckpAcademy
About Me
 Freelance technical author and industry analyst
 9 time Microsoft MVP for File Systems / Storage,
Exchange Server, Windows Server, and IIS
 Formerly a CIO for a national chain of hospitals
and healthcare facilities
 Network engineer for the Department of Defense
at Fort Knox
 Network administrator for some of the nation’s largest
insurance companies
Agenda
 A Brief History of Hyper-V
 What’s New in Hyper-V 3.0
Hyper-V Release History
 Windows Server 2008 – Hyper-V 1.0
● Basic functionality only
 Windows Server 2008 R2 – Hyper-V 2.0
● Live migration
● Memory over commitment
 Windows Server 2012 – Hyper-V 3.0
● Hundreds of new features
● The hypervisor becomes enterprise class
Standalone / Service
 Hyper-V is offered as a free, standalone
as a
that runs on Windows Server
 This presentation will focus solely on Hyper-V
as a service
OR
Microsoft Finally Got it Right!
 Enterprise class features that are comparable
to VMware vSphere 5
 The same simple interface
Hyper-V 2.0
Hyper-V 3.0
PowerShell Management
Memory Ballooning
 Hyper-V 2.0 introduced memory over commitment
 Memory over commitment increases virtual machine
density
 Minimum memory and startup memory were the same
things in Hyper-V 2.0. A VM always started with
the minimum memory
 An idle VM may use less memory than is required
at startup
 Hyper-V 3.0 differentiates between minimum memory
and startup memory
Memory Ballooning
Hyper-V 2.0
Hyper-V 3.0
Live Migration
 Live migration was first introduced in Hyper-V 2.0
 Live migration allowed a running virtual machine
to be moved to another host without being taken off line
 In Hyper-V 2.0, live migration was a serial operation.
Only one VM could be live migrated
 In Hyper-V 3.0 multiple virtual machines can be live
migrated simultaneously
 The administrator sets the concurrent live migration
threshold based on the available bandwidth,
but Hyper-V 3.0 supports an unlimited number
of concurrent live migrations
Live Migrations
Live Migrations Beyond the Cluster
 Previously it was only possible to live migrate a VM
to a cluster node
 Hyper-V 3.0 makes it possible to live migrate a VM
to a host that exists outside of the cluster. This is called
Shared Nothing Live Migration
 Shared Nothing Live Migration should not be used as
a long term replacement for traditional failover clustering
Shared Nothing Live Migration
 Requirements:
● At least 2 Hyper-V 3.0 hosts
● Each server requires adequate storage (local or remote SMB)
● Hosts must have the same family or type of processor if you
are using the processor compatibility feature
● Hosts must exist in the same AD domain
● The hosts must be connected by a gigabit or faster network link
● Hosts must have Client for Microsoft Networks and File and
Print Sharing for Microsoft Networks enabled
● Pass through storage cannot be used
● The same virtual switch configuration must exist on each host
No Shared Storage Requirement
 Live Migration in Hyper-V 2.0 required the use
of shared storage
 Shared storage is recommended, but not required
in Hyper-V 3.0
VM
VM
VM
Host 2
Host 1
Shared
Storage
Failover Clustering
 Microsoft has made numerous changes to failover
clustering in Hyper-V
 The most significant change is the ability to create
clusters without shared storage
 Microsoft has also made scalability improvements
(which will be discussed later)
Storage Migrations
 Live storage migration replaces Hyper-V 2.0 Quick
Storage Migration
 Storage migration is different from live migration. It is
designed to move a virtual machine from one storage
location to another, not from one host to another
 In Hyper-V 2.0 there was a brief outage that occurred
at the end of a storage migration
 In Hyper-V 3.0 storage migrations occur without
down time
Hyper-V Replica
 Replicate a running virtual machine to an alternate host
 Replication can occur near real time with an adjustable
schedule
 The Replica feature works well in high latency
environments or in environments where connectivity
is not always reliable
 Hyper-V replica is not a fail over clustering solution.
It is a disaster recovery solution
Virtual Fibre Channel
 Virtual Fibre Channel allows VMs to connect directly
to Fibre Channel storage through a virtual SAN
 Virtual Fibre Channel is based on N_Port ID
Virtualization (NPIV) mapping
 Physical Host Bus Adapters must support NPIV
and must be connected to an NPIV enabled SAN
 Each Host Bus Adapter must be assigned two World
Wide Names in order to facilitate Live Migration
Scalability Improvements
Hyper-V 3.0 is far more scalable than Hyper-V 2.0
Maximum Virtual CPUs per VM
Maximum memory per VM
Maximum Virtual Hard Disk Size
Hyper-V 2.0
Hyper-V 3.0
4
32
64 GB
512 GB
2 TB
16 TB
with VHDX
Cluster Scalability
There are also numerous improvements to cluster scalability
Hyper-V 2.0
Hyper-V 3.0
The maximum number of virtual machines
per host that can be powered on at any given
time
384
1024
Maximum number of virtual machines
in a cluster
1000
4000
Maximum number of hosts per cluster
16
64
1 TB
2 TB
Maximum RAM per host server
Snapshots
 Hyper-V has had snapshot capabilities since
the first version
 Accumulating snapshots can impact read performance
and can complicate backup / restoration operations
 In previous versions of Hyper-V, VMs had to be shut
down to remove snapshots that were no longer needed
 Hyper-V 3.0 can perform snapshot merges while the VM
is running
Hot Adding Resources
 Hot resource allocation is new to Hyper-V 3.0
 It allows additional hardware resources to be allocated
to a VM while it is running
 Hot resource allocation is available for memory
and disks
 CPU cores cannot be hot allocated
NIC Teaming
 Hyper-V 2.0 supported NIC teaming only at the hardware
level (Intel and Broadcom only)
 Hyper-V 3.0 has native support for NIC teaming
at the software level. This allows commodity NICs
to be teamed
 NIC teaming allows for high bandwidth and fault tolerant
connections
 Teams can include NICs from multiple vendors
Deduplication
 Deduplication is actually a Windows Server 2012
feature, not a Hyper-V feature
 It is possible to deduplicate VHD libraries, ISOs,
and live VHD volumes
 Deduplication reduces physical storage requirements
and can make using solid state storage more practical
SMB Support
 VMs can now be stored on SMB shares
 SMB storage is easier to configure than Fibre Channel
or iSCSI, but there are limits
● Legacy SMB is not supported
● Scaling is bandwidth dependent
● SMB storage is intended primarily for smaller environments,
although it will support larger workloads with the use of high
end hardware
Affinity and Anti-Affinity Rules
 Affinity and anti-affinity rules control virtual machine
failover
 Affinity rules can be used to ensure that certain virtual
machines always failover together
 Anti-affinity rules can prevent certain VMs from ever
failing over to a common host
 VM prioritization will prioritize VM startup when
a failover occurs to an overloaded host
Offload Data Transfer
 Virtual machine copy operations can be resource intensive
 In SAN environments Hyper-V 3.0 will support Offload
Data Transfer (ODX)
 This will allow the storage hardware to do the heavy lifting
 ODX support is built in. There is no “enable ODX” button
Extensible Virtual Switch
 In previous versions of Hyper-V the virtual switch was
nearly impossible to monitor or manage
 Management software saw the virtual switch as
a black box
 Vendors can extend the Hyper-V virtual switch to work
with their wares
Conclusion
With version 3.0 Hyper-V has finally arrived!
Enjoy and share this material
 Feel free to promote this material
 Recommend your peers to pass certification
 Blog, Tweet and share this material and your experience
on Facebook
 You’re an Expert? We will be happy to have you as
Backup Academy contributor. Apply here
Web: http://www.backupacademy.com
E-mail: feedback@backupacademy.com
Twitter: BckpAcademy
Facebook: backup.academy