Susantha Silva

Consulting Engineer

Email: susanthasilva@hotmail.com

Hyper-V v3 in Windows Server 8

Enhancement in Hyper-V v3.0

• Memory

• Storage

• Network

MEMORY

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (v3.0)

Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA)

• Adds support for WHEA

• Detects errors in memory, and handles

them to ensure that applications continue

running.

• Memory fault won't take down an entire

server, just the one affected VM

How it works

• When there is a memory problem

– suspend all the VMs

– determine if the error can be isolated to a

single VM

– terminate that VM, mark the memory page as

bad

– restart the affected VM while resuming the

paused VMs

Others Memory Enhancements

• No longer need to

shutdown the Virtual

Machine when you want

to configure Min and

Max Memory (Dynamic

Memory)

• Memory with Dynamic

Memory is 2TB

STORAGE

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (v3.0)

Welcome VHDX !

• Beyond 2TB limit in VHD

• New limit at 16TB

• Only usable in Windows Server 8

• Improvement in term of:

– performance

– larger block size

– more resilient to corruption

Playing Around with VHD(X)

Mounting a VHD(X)

- Access your VM data easily

Ejecting a VHD(X)

- Eject VHD(X) just like DVD

Boot from a VHD(X)

- Boot from anywhere

Live Storage Migration

• Eliminate “Quick Storage Migration” in

SCVMM 2008 R2 downtime requirement.

• Moving VHD(X) while your users still using

it.

Live Storage Migration

Host with Internal Storage

.BIN .VSV .XML

.VHD

Online Virtual Machine

Users using the application

Shared Storage

No Down Time

while moving

VHDs

Others Storage Enhancements

• Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) – similar to VAAI

• Virtual Fibre Channel Support (4 vHBA, direct access to

SAN LUNs using MPIO)

• Data deduplication

• BitLocker volume encryption for clustered disks,

• Built-in replication

• Hardware snapshotting

• Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks for

SMB storage

NETWORK

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (v3.0)

Wireless Network Support

• Creating an external network switch is

simple in current Hyper-V

• Same steps but different ways

Networking

between VM

and external

machine using

wired

connection

The Solution

• Microsoft Bridging solution

– ARP proxying (for IPv4)

– Neighbor Discovery proxying (for IPv6)

• The bridge maintains an internal mapping

between the virtual NIC’s IP address and its

MAC address to ensure that the packets coming

from the external world are sent to the

appropriate virtual NIC.

The Solution …cont.

• Hyper-V integrates the bridge as part of creating

the virtual switch such that when you create an

external virtual switch using a WiFi adapter, Hyper-

V will:

– Create a single adapter bridge connected to the WiFi

adapter

– Create the external virtual switch

– Bind the external virtual switch to use the bridge,

instead of the WiFi adapter directly

Networking

between

VM and

external

machine

using WiFi

connection

Bandwidth Network Management

• Manage the Network Bandwidth with a

Maximum and a Minimum value

• SLAs for hosted Virtual Machines

• Control per VMs and not per HOST

Others Network Enhancements

• SR-IOV

• Native NIC teaming

• Cisco VXLAN – Nexus

HYPER-V enhancement with CISCO

Q & A

Thank you!

Hyper-V Manager Enhancement

Scalability:

- Support 160 logical processors per host

- 512GB of memory per virtual machine

- New virtual disk format (VHDX)

Storage:

- Virtual Fibre Channel for virtual guests

- Clusters can connect to SAN fabrics through HBAs on the physical host, support 4

virtual HBAs per virtual machine

- New Storage Live Migration feature: move virtual disks between different types of

storage (NAS, DAS, and SAN) - No downtime

Networking:

- Extensible Virtual Switch that allows third-party switches to work with the Windows 8

Server network

Hyper-V Manager Enhancement

Virtual migration:

- Move a virtual machine from one server to another without using shared storage; use local storage of each

system (design for planned migration, not a replacement for HA)

- Known as Share-Nothing Live Migration

Multiple Concurrent Live Migration:

- No limit to the number of concurrent migrations

Performance Improvements:

- Hyper-V ODX (offload data transfer) engine can utilize back-end shared storage subsystem that supports

ODX

- Reduce the CPU usage during data transfers (processing power handle by the storage)

- Allow mapping of a virtual machine to specific CPU cores (ensure dedicated resources always available)

Virtual Machine Copy Recovery:

- Hyper-V Replica feature allows replicate VMs to another Hyper-V host (good for DR site setup)

Virtual Hard Disk Enhancement (VHDX)

• VHD = max 2TB (for > 2TB, need to use pass-through disk)

• VHDX = max 16TB (may increase the limit at later time)

• Conversion between

• VDH to VHDX format

• VHDX to VHD format

• VHDX have great improvement in term of performance, larger block size and is more resilient

to file corruption.

Hyper-V Replica

• Hyper-V Replica is asynchronous, application consistent, virtual machine

replication built-in to Windows Server 8.

• Unlimited VM replication in the box

• With Hyper-V Replica, you can

replicate a virtual machine from

one location to another with

Hyper-V and a network

connection.

Hyper-V Enhancement

Hyper-V Enhancement - SR-IOV

Host

Windows Server 8 supports direct device assignment to virtual machines

without compromising flexibility

Network I/O path without SRIOV Network I/O path with SRIOV

Root Partition

Hyper-V Switch

Physical NIC

Virtual

Machine

Virtual NIC

Routing

VLAN Filtering

Data Copy

Host

Root Partition

Hyper-V Switch

SR-IOV Physical NIC

Virtual

Machine

Virtual Function

Routing

VLAN Filtering

Data Copy

Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue (D-VMQ)

No VMQ

Adaptive network processing across CPU to provide optimal power and

performance across changing workloads

Root Partition

Physical NIC

CPU

0

CPU

1CPU

2

CPU

3

Static VMQ

Root Partition

Physical NIC

CPU

0

CPU

1CPU

2

CPU

3

Windows Server 8

Dynamic VMQ

Root Partition

Physical NIC

CPU

0

CPU

1CPU

2

CPU

3

Root Partition

Physical NIC

CPU

0

CPU

1CPU

2

CPU

3

VMQ = Reduces the overhead of routing packets

NIC Teaming

• For performance and redundancy, we install multiple

network card and configure with NIC Teaming utility.

• Different brand and model of NIC often cannot be

mixed.

Windows 8 Enhancement

• Windows Server 8 NIC teaming provides reliability

against hardware failures

• Can mix different brand and model of network cards

• No need for 3rd-party

utilities and driver kits to do

this.

• NIC teaming works either in the root or the guest.

NIC Teaming