Will Hyper-V Change the
Virtualization Game?
Microsoft’s First High Quality
Foray Into Virtualization
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Will Hyper-V Change the
Virtualization Game?
Nelson Ruest
Technology Futurist and Author
Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Web: www.Reso-Net.com
Email: nelson@reso-net.com
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Agenda
• Best of breed virtualization scenarios
• Hyper-V Features
• Hyper-V versus market leaders
• Hyper-V workarounds
• Top Hyper-V deployment scenarios
• Final thoughts
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Best of Breed
Virtualization Scenarios
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Architect Virtualization
Most
organizations
rely on a
Seven-Layer
Virtual
Architecture
Achieving Best Of Breed Infrastructures
• VMware has been at work in the virtualization
realm for over 10 years
•
They have offered a firmware-based hypervisor
for more than one year and it is now free
•
Their virtualization management and
administration toolkit is ripe and complete
•
They pretty well invented x86 virtualization
 With a 10-year lag behind, can Microsoft
really make an impact?
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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“Missing” Elements In Hyper-V
• Much of the industry claims Microsoft’s Hyper-V is
missing key features
•
VMware offers VMotion — a technology that moves
Virtual Machines (VMs) from host to host while they
deliver services to end users
•
VMware offers Distributed Resource Scheduling —
policy-based resource allocation to VMs
•
VMware offers special RAM management features
• Microsoft Hyper-V does not offer any of these
features
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Features
Just what does Hyper-V offer?
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Hyper-V Features
• Built on Windows Server 2008
•
Enables Hyper-V to support a multitude of devices
and server configurations
• Guest OS Support
•
Supports different types of 32- or 64-bit operating
systems that run simultaneously (Windows and
Linux)
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Features (Continued)
• SMP Support
•
Supports up to four processors in a virtual
environment
• Virtual Networking
•
Includes a new virtual switch — VMs can be
configured to run Windows NLB or Failover
Clustering
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Features (Continued)
• Hardware Sharing Architecture
•
Provides access and utilization of core resources
(disk, networking and video) using the virtual
service provider/virtual service client (VSP/VSC)
architecture
• Quick Migration
•
Can move a running VM from one system to another
with minimal downtime with Windows Server and
System Center management tools
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Features (Continued)
• Virtual Machine Snapshot
•
Can take up to 512 snapshots of a running VM
• Scalability
•
•
Can support several VMs within a given host
Runs exclusively on x64 platform
• Extensible
•
Includes WMI and APIs that allow ISVs to build
custom tools or utilities
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Features (Continued)
• Come in two flavors:
•
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
• Standard edition supports one virtual machine
• Enterprise and Datacenter editions support failover
clustering and therefore high availability for all virtual
machines
•
Windows Hyper-V Server
• Free version (download from Microsoft Web site)
• Based on standard edition
• Does not support high availability (HA)
• Must run a host re-installation to obtain HA
(replace with complete Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V version)
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Windows
Server
Hyper-V
Structure
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Hyper-V versus
Market Leaders
How does Hyper-V rate?
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Metric
VMware
Microsoft
Citrix
Negligible
1 CPU Core
1 CPU Core
32 MB+**
512 MB +***
256 to 512 MB +
Maximum CPU Sockets (Host)
32 cores
24 cores
Unlimited****
Maximum CPU Sockets (Guest)
4
4*****
8
Required Management NIC(s)
1
1
1
Maximum number of servers in a pool or cluster
32
16
16
Number of VMs per CPU Core
8 to 11
8
2 to 8
Maximum Memory (Guest)
64 GB
64 GB
32 GB
192
184
Unlimited****
Hypervisor Operation Overhead
Market Leader Hypervisor
256 GB
32 GB Metrics
to 2 TB*
128 GB
Maximum Memory (Host)
RAM for Hypervisor
Simultaneous Active Guests/Host
*
**
***
****
32 MB for Standard edition, 1 TB for Enterprise and Datacenter Editions
32 MB plus 30 MB plus 15% of allocated RAM per VM plus VM memory
512 MB Server Core plus 32 MB for each VM plus the VM memory
License does not limit number of sockets or number of running guests.
However, physical resources will limit these numbers to 32 cores and 50 VMs.
***** Only for Windows Server 2008
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Market Leader Hypervisor Metrics
Metric
Guest OS Support
VMware
•Microsoft Windows
3.1/3.11/95/98/Me/NT/2000/
2003/2008/XP/Vista x86 or x64
•MS-DOS 6.x
•Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1/3/4/5
•Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1
Microsoft
Citrix
•Microsoft Windows
2000/2003/ 2008/XP
Pro/Vista x86 and
x64
•SUSE Enterprise Linux
Server 10 SP1
•Microsoft Windows 2003 SP2 x64
•Microsoft Windows 2000
SP4/2003/SBS 2003/2008/XP
SP2/Vista x86
•CentOS 4.1/4.2/4.3/4.4/4.5/5.0/5.1
x86 and 5.0/5.1 x64
•Red Hat Linux 7.2/7.3/8.0/9.0
•SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8/9/10
•SUSE Linux 8.2/9.0/9.1/9.2/9.3
•FreeBSD 4.9/4.10/4.11/5.0
•TurboLinux 7.0, Enterprise
Server/Workstation 8
•Novell Linux Desktop 9
•Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.0/5.1 x86
and x64
•Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3.5/3.6/3.7/4.1/4.2/4.3/4.4/5 x86
and 5.0/5.1 x64
•SUSE Enterprise Linux Server 9
SP2/9 SP3/10 SP1 32-bit
•Sun Java Desktop System 2
•NetWare 6.5/6.0/5.1
•Solaris 9/10 for x86
•Debian Sarge 3.1/Etch 4.0 32-bit
64-bit Guest
Support
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Most x64 OSes
Windows 64-bit OSes
Windows 64-bit OSes
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Memory Management
• VMware supports key memory management features
•
RAM Over-Commitment lets you allocate more memory
to VMs than exists on a host
• Relies on policy-based VM management to move machines
if they need it
•
Transparent Page Sharing stores only one copy of a
duplicate file in host RAM
•
Min/Max Memory Settings on VMs let you assign a
minimum and a maximum memory setting to a VM
•
Memory Ballooning lets you recover memory from VMs
that are not using it and allocate it to others
• Hyper-V does not support any of these features
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Configurations
• Typical Host
•
•
Two CPUs with four cores each (eight cores)
32 GB RAM
• With VMware, this host can run up to 64 virtual
machines running a single virtual processor core
each; more if they are virtual desktops
• Each VMware machine can be assigned amounts of
RAM that total more than the physical RAM in the
host server because of ESX’s memory features
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Configurations (Continued)
• With Hyper-V, this host can potentially run up to 56
virtual machines, but because the VMs cannot use
memory over-commitment, the actual number will be
limited by the host RAM and the amount of RAM allocated
to each VM
• To run 56 VMs on this configuration, each VM could only
have access to 512 MB of RAM
•
However, Windows Server is certified on thousands of server
configurations and hosts can potentially have up to 2 TB of
RAM
•
VMware is only certified on hundreds of server configurations
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Market Leader Management Tools
Feature
VMware
Microsoft
Citrix
VM/Host Management
VirtualCenter
Hyper-V Console
SC Virtual Machine Manager
XenCenter
Market Leader Management Tools
VM Provisioning
Lifecycle Manager
SC Virtual Machine Manager
Third-party
Live VM Migration
VMotion
Quick Migration
XenMotion
LAN High Availability:
VMs
High Availability
Failover Clustering
Resource Pool
LAN High Availability:
Storage
Storage VMotion plus thirdparty
Windows Server Simple SAN plus third-party
XenMotion plus third-party
Backup
Consolidated Backup plus
Windows Server Backup
XenCenter plus third-party
third-party
SC Data Protection Manager
VM Placement
Distributed Resource
SC Operations Manager
XenCenter with dynamic
Management
Scheduler
SC Virtual Machine Manager
provisioning
Policy-based Resource
Allocation
Distributed Resource
Scheduler
SC Operations Manager
Third-party
Security
VMsafe plus third-party
Windows Server Integration and third-party
Third-party
Patching and Updates
Update Manager
Windows Server Update Services
XenCenter for hosts
SC Configuration Manager
WSUS for VMs
Host Power
Management
Distributed Power
Management
SC Operations Manager at host level
Third-party
WAN BCM
Site Recovery Manager
Failover Clustering, Geoclusters
XenCenter
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Market Leader Lab Management Tools
Feature
VMware
Microsoft
Citrix
P2V, V2V, V2P
Converter
SC VMM
XenConvert
Single VM Staging for
Testing or Development
Lab Manager
SCVMM Self-serve Web
Portal
Third-party
Entire VM Environment for
Testing or Development
Lab Manager
Third-party or custom
scripts
Third-party
Lab Environment
Graduation Management
Stage Manager
Third-party or custom
scripts
Third-party
System Automation
VI Toolkit for Windows
(PowerShell )
PowerShell in WS08
Third-party
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Management
• Microsoft offers almost as many virtualization
management tools as VMware
• However, Microsoft’s interfaces are all different —
Hyper-V Manager, SCVMM, SCOM, SCCM and so on —
and even some terminology is different
•
Administrators must relearn each tool and interface
• VMware uses one single interface for all tools:
VirtualCenter (now vCenter)
•
Each new added function simply adds more functionality
to the tool
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Hyper-V Workarounds
Can Hyper-V meet high availability
requirements?
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Achieving HA With Hyper-V
• High availability is a must for any hypervisor
• VMware’s HA function relies on two key tools:
•
The HA feature links host servers together into a
cluster-like formation
•
The Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) creates a
sharable virtual machine file system
• Note that the Network File System (NFS) can also provide
sharable VM file storage
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Achieving HA With Hyper-V (Cont’d)
• Windows Server 2008 — even Server Core —
includes Failover Clustering
•
Can create both single site and multi-site clusters to
link hosts together for high availability
•
Must use a third-party replication technology for
multi-site clusters
•
Note that the free Hyper-V Server does not include
the Failover Clustering feature
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Products Supported In An HA Configuration
Product
BizTalk Server
WSFCAware
WSFCIndependent
X
X
Commerce Server
WSFCIncompatible
NLBCompatible
X
X
SC Configuration Manager
X
Exchange 2000 and later
X
IIS
X
X
ISA Server
X
X
X
X
X
Office SharePoint Portal Server
X
X
Operations Manager
X
Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager
X
Office Communications Server (OCS)
Office Project Server
SQL Server 2000 and later
X
X
Services Supported In An HA Configuration
Product or Service
WSFCAware
COM +
WSFCIncompatible
X
DHCP-WINS
X
X
File sharing
X
Microsoft Message Queuing
X
Print services
X
Terminal Services
Windows Deployment Services
NLB-Compatible
X
DFS
Distributed Transaction
Coordinator
WSFCIndependent
X
X
Windows Server Update
Services
X
Windows SharePoint Services
X
X
Windows Streaming Media
X
X
Rely On Shared Storage For Single Site HA
• Store all VMs on shared storage subsystem
• Supports high availability through ‘clustering’ — one system
can hand off VM workload to another without moving files
• Provides site-level redundancy
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Host Server Configurations
• The very best host server configuration is:
•
64-bit server (up to 2 TB of RAM and 16 TB of virtual
memory)
•
•
•
•
Minimum two quad-core CPUs
Minimum 32 GB of RAM (64 GB or more preferred)
Minimum four 1 Gbit/s NICs, two for iSCSI, two for VMs
No DAS, boot from SAN or firmware
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Server Configurations For Multi-Site HA
SAN
SAN
Replication
Site A
Site B
• Hyper-V can provide multi-site HA through its built-in
Failover Clustering feature, however a third-party
replication tool is required
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Configure For High Availability
• Make sure you configure your host systems to support high
availability and virtual workload mobility
• This means having spare host servers in each pool
• Each host should be a backup for another host
(active-active clusters)
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Achieve VMotion With Hyper-V
• VMware achieves VM mobility through VMotion
•
VMotion offers zero downtime
• Hyper-V uses Quick Motion which saves the state of a
VM and then restarts it
•
Quick Motion offers minimal downtime when moving
machines (less than 4 seconds in some host
configurations)
• However, virtual machines running Windows Server
can rely on Failover Clustering or Network Load
Balancing to provide VMotion-like machine mobility
•
Host each VM cluster node on a different host server for
maximum availability
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Dynamic Machine Movement With Hyper-V
VMA is hosted on
ServerA
SAN
Workload from
VM A is failed over
to VMB on
ServerB
SAN
Virtual workloads
are highly
available because
of Windows
features
SAN
Clustering at the Virtual Layer lets you move workloads without
impact to end users while running in any hypervisor!
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Policy-Based Resource Management
•
Management
through
policies is also
highly useful
when you need
to patch or
update host
servers
•
Given the right
tools, you can
even turn off
the secondary
host server
once the job is
finished
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Policy-Based VM Management
• VMware uses Distributed Resource Scheduler
along with VMotion to move VMs and
reallocate resources as needed
•
All you need to do is create the policy
• Windows Server 2008 relies on SC Operations
Manager and SC Virtual Machine Manager
together to perform a similar activity
•
But, since it does not support memory overcommitment, there is little point in moving VMs
except for host maintenance purposes
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Top Hyper-V
Deployment Scenarios
Does Hyper-V fit in the Dynamic
Datacenter?
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Best Uses For Hyper-V
• VMware is a more dynamic solution than Hyper-V since it
supports resource over-commitment
•
After all, low resource usage is the reason you transform physical
servers into virtual machines
•
VMware hosts can run more machines on any given host than other
hypervisors because of this feature
•
But you must have additional hosts with spare resources to support
machine movements during peak loads
•
Because of this, VMware supports Variable Resource VMs
• Both XenServer and Hyper-V are limited to Fixed
Resource VMs
•
Because of this, host RAM is a hard limit for the supported number
of VMs per host
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Understand OS Licensing
•
Windows Server R2 Enterprise
Edition includes 4 Virtual
•
OS and up to 4 guests
Instances
Windows
Windows
Windows
Windows
•
Hardware
•
Old License Model
•
•
•
•
Valid on any hypervisor
•
Use the Microsoft
Virtualization Calculator at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsser
ver2003/howtobuy/licensing/calculator.
Total: 1 License + $28
Windows Vista Desktop
•
Windows Vista Enterprise
Centralized Desktop
•
4 running instances per user
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Windows Server Datacenter
Edition allows unlimited guests
Windows Server R2 and 2008
•
•
Total: 5 Windows Licenses
Each additional license gives
you up to 4 more guests
Virtualization Layer
‘Any’ Hypervisor
License includes physical host
mspx
•
Learn about VECD at:
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualizatio
n/solution-product-vecd.mspx
Hyper-V Virtualization Scenarios
Production Server Consolidation
Business Continuity Management
Test and Development
Despite its higher hardware overhead, Hyper-V
supports every virtualization scenario
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
Dynamic Datacenter
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Potential And Real Hyper-V Cost Savings
Category
Potential Savings
Power Savings
$300 to $600 per virtualized server
Cooling Savings
Up to $400 per virtualized server
Hardware Savings
From $2,500 to $$$ per virtualized server
License Savings (Microsoft)
75% of Enterprise license per virtualized server
Server Utilization Ratio
Up from ~10% to ~80%
Power Rebates
Up to 50% total cost of the project
(Selected Utility Firms)
Government Rebates
Variable reduction rates on income tax
(Selected States)
Space Savings
50+% space reduction (based on an average of 7 VMs per
physical host)
Complete Management Suite
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
70% lower with Microsoft than with VMware
The Bottom Line
• Small and medium businesses will be very attracted to
Hyper-V
•
•
•
•
•
No relearning; built into Windows
Integrated license
Can run on Server Core or Full Install
Can run on thousands of low-cost hardware configurations
Can even rely on DAS to create HA configurations
• Remote offices can also rely on Hyper-V to keep costs down
• Datacenters that are serious about VM mobility will
continue to rely on VMware, not the first version of Hyper-V
•
This is one reason why large organizations will most likely run
at least two, if not more, hypervisors
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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QUESTIONS?
Nelson Ruest
Email: nelson@reso-net.com
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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Speaker Background
• Senior enterprise consultant with over 20 years experience in migration,
planning and network, PC and server design,
MVP Failover Clustering, MCSE + Security, MCT
• Free eBook:
The Definitive Guide to Vista Migration
Free Chapters are available at: http://www.realtime-nexus.com/DGVM.htm
• New book: “Virtualization: A Beginner’s Guide”
• Also co-author of several other books
• Passionate Advocate for doing things right with information technologies!
© 2008, Resolutions Enterprises Ltd.
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