Virtualization with Hyper-V: FAQ

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Virtual machine technology applies to both server and client hardware. Virtual machine technology enables multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single machine. In particular, Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008, enables one or more operating systems to run simultaneously on the same physical system. Today, many x86-based operating systems are supported by Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Server 2005, and Hyper-V.

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Virtual machine technology serves a variety of purposes. It enables hardware consolidation, because multiple operating systems can run on one computer. Key applications for virtual machine technology include cross-platform integration as well as the following:

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Our goal is to help customers make their IT systems more self-managing and dynamic so that they can gain more control of their IT systems, and enable their businesses to respond faster and stay ahead of the competition. We're doing this by:

We are making broad investments—in the areas of the platform, management, applications, interoperability, and licensing, and working to enable customers to take advantage of their existing platform investments, utilize their existing support skills and infrastructure, and to reduce costs associated with implementing virtualized environments.

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Hyper-V, previously codenamed Viridian, is a hypervisor-based technology that is a key feature of Windows Server 2008. It provides a scalable, reliable, and highly available virtualization platform. It is part of Microsoft's ongoing effort to provide our customers and partners with the best operating system platform for virtualization.

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A core component of Hyper-V, Windows hypervisor is a thin layer of software between the hardware and the OS that allows multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. It provides simple partitioning functionality and is responsible for maintaining strong isolation between partitions. It has an inherently secure architecture with minimal attack surface, as it does not contain any third-party device drivers.

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Hyper-V provides customers an ideal platform for key virtualization scenarios, such as production server consolidation, business continuity management, software test and development, and development of a dynamic datacenter.
Hyper-V provides key functionality, which an ideal virtualization platform should provide—scalability, high performance, reliability, security, flexibility, and manageability. It provides scalability and high performance by supporting features like guest multi-processing support and 64-bit guest and host support; reliability and security through its hypervisor architecture; flexibility and manageability by supporting features like quick migration of virtual machines from one physical host to another, and integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

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Yes, Microsoft will provide integration components and technical support for customers running select Linux distributions as guest operating systems within Hyper-V. Beta Linux integration components are now available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2 and SP1 x86 and x64 Editions. These integration components enable Xen-enabled Linux to take advantage of the VSP/VSC architecture and provide improved performance. Beta Linux Integration components are available for immediate download through http://connect.microsoft.com.

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We continue to listen to customer feedback and are working with the other Linux distributors. Please check the Supported Guest OS page for more information and updates.

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Some of the capabilities of Hyper-V will include x64 host and guest support, ability to run guest machines in a multi-processor environment, large memory allocation per virtual machine, integrated virtual switch support, and ability to migrate virtual machines across hosts with minimal downtime. The key new features that are in Hyper-V beta are support for quick migration and high availability, ability to run Hyper-V as a Server Core role and integration of Hyper-V into Server Manager. For a full list of features, refer to the key features in Hyper-V.

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Customers who invest in the .vhd file format—the format used by Virtual Server, as well as a multitude of vendor licensees—will have a clear path forward to Hyper-V. Customers can leverage V2V capabilities in System Center Virtual Machine Manager to conveniently migrate from Virtual Server or VMware to Hyper-V or work with Microsoft's partners who provide migration solutions.

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A beta version of Hyper-V was included with Windows Server 2008 RTM for x64 editions. The RTM update for Hyper-V is now available for download or from Windows Update (after July 8, 2008).

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Users can download and install the update for RTM from here or via Windows Update. Users can go to Server Manager and install the Hyper-V role. After the Hyper-V role is enabled, Hyper-V Manager will become available as a part of Administrative Tools. From the Hyper-V Manager users can easily create and configure virtual machines.

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The RTM version of Hyper-V is available for Windows Server 2008 x64 editions. Customers are encouraged to use this release to evaluate and deploy Hyper-V. Hyper-V is now ready for deployment in production environments and eligible for full support. For more information on support, please refer to the Windows Server 2008 Support page. For a full list of features, refer to the key features in Hyper-V.

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Customers will download Windows Server 2008 x64 editions, and they'll have to enable the virtualization role through Server Manager. The update for the RTM version is available as a separate download or via Windows Update. After the Hyper-V role is enabled, Hyper-V Manager will become available as a part of Administrative Tools. From the Hyper-V Manager users can easily create and configure virtual machines.

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Yes, technical support for Hyper-V is part of the support for Windows Server 2008. For more information on support, please refer to the Windows Server 2008 Support page.

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We are not publishing performance numbers currently. Based on independent reports and benchmarks from partners like QLogic, we believe that we have a competitive virtualization offering.

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Customers will be able to upgrade their current Hyper-V Beta systems running on Windows Server 2008 RTM with the Windows Update. It is recommended that customers backup their VHDs before installing the updates. Customer will be required to re-create the virtual machine settings and virtual switch settings on the host but can re-use their existing VHDs. Get detailed instructions for Hyper V migration.

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Microsoft supports a number of guest OS environments including Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Novell SUSE.  For the complete list of operating systems that will be supported with Hyper-V, please refer to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-supported-guest-os.aspx.

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Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is the current server virtualization solution from Microsoft and is based on a hosted virtualization platform. Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008, is a hypervisor-based virtualization platform that will enable customers to not only consolidate a vast array of workloads but also enable moving toward a dynamic IT environment. Core feature set differences include support for 64 guest virtual machines, SMP support, performance improvements, and other key features in Hyper-V.

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Hyper-V is now available in English and partially localized in German (Germany), Japanese (Japan), Czech (Czech Republic), Hungarian (Hungary), Korean (Korea), Polish (Poland), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian (Russia), Swedish (Sweden), Turkish (Turkey), Chinese (People's Republic of China), Chinese (Taiwan), and Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R.).

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It is important to understand your licensing rights and obligations when running Microsoft Windows Server and/or other Microsoft applications in a virtual machine environment. For details, see Microsoft Adapts Windows Server System Licensing to Virtualization Scenarios.
In addition, it's good to understand the licensing terms offered by independent software vendors (ISVs) for any software provided by those vendors. For more information on licensing considerations in these cases, you should consult with your ISV.

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No. While you may receive benefit from moving the applications from physical hardware to virtual machines, running applications in a virtual environment does not extend their support life cycles. For more information about the support life-cycle timeframes, please see the Microsoft Support Lifecycle page.

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In addition to the systems requirement for Windows Server 2008, the two key requirements for the Hyper-V platform are the need to ensure that the server is a 64-bit environment and supports hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) technology.

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The number of virtual machines running per host depends on many factors, including physical memory, processor, and workload running in the guest. With Hyper-V, you define the amount of memory available to a virtual machine, and that memory allocation can be altered to reflect the needs of the virtual machine.

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Hyper-V runs on a 64-bit (x64) server platform and requires support of either AMD64 or Intel IA-32e/EM64T (x64) processors with hardware-assisted virtualization support. Note that Hyper-V does not support Itanium (IA-64) processors. For the virtual machines, Hyper-V supports both 32-bit and 64-bit systems as guest OSes.

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Hyper-V supports both uniprocessor and multiprocessor configurations in the virtual machine environment.

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In addition to the system requirements for Windows Server 2008 as described in the release notes, a 64-bit system with hardware-assisted virtualization enabled and data execution prevention (DEP) is required. It is also recommended to ensure that you have a clean install of x64 edition of Windows Server 2008 to be able to use the Hyper-V technology.

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Prerequisites, installation steps, OS recommendations, and known issues can be found here.

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Yes. The virtual hard disk format is available without cost via the Open Specification Promise (OSP) here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/techinfo/vhdspec.mspx.

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Yes. The newsgroups are:

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Yes, you can access many of the Hyper-V webcasts here.

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Click here to access the Hyper-V team blog.