Windows Server “8” Hyper-V Features

Check out this summary on Hyper-V 3.0 features.

I don’t know about you, but if those features will actually get into the product as planned (fingers crossed ) I think the Hyper-V and Windows “8” dev teams can really be proud on a job well done.

• Updated virtual switch, providing multi-tenancy capabilities providing network isolation and network virtualization. Comparable to the VXLAN functionality introduced by VMware/Cisco and others. The virtual switch is also extensible providing capture, filter and forwarding extensions, using an API provided by Microsoft. Support for multiple concurrent Live Migrations
• Support for Storage Live Migration,without a requirement for a shared storage backend.
• New virtual disk format, called VHDX breaking the 2TB limit for the currently used VHD format, with a maximum of 16 TB. VHDX also provides better performance, support for large block sizes and is more resilient to corruption.
• Introduction of Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX), which enables Hyper-V to offload storage features to the backend storage subsystem, comparable with the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) functionality provided by VMware.
• Virtual Fibre Channel Support, where each VM can have up to 4 virtual Fibre Channel host adapters, and direct access to SAN LUNs using Multi-Path I/O (MPIO)
• VM boot support from fiber channel and iSCSI SANs
• SR-IOW for privileged access to PCI devices
• CPU metering
• Resource pools
• Support for Data de-duplication, providing compression of data stored on a Volume, with no significant performance implications. This also will reduce backup windows dramatically.
• Offloaded Data Transfer, providing direct data transfer between servers.
• Support for NIC Teaming, load balancing and failover in the OS, which until now was only supported by 3rd party vendors like Broadcom and Intel
• Build in support for JBODs, and Thin Provision on JBODs.
• Support for Bitlocker on Clustered disks.
• Cluster Shared Volume 2.0 with support for built-in replication and hardware snapshotting.
• IP address management UI (IPAM)
• Support for SMB storage using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks.
• Hyper-V replica providing asynchronous/consistent replication functionality
• Remote Desktop Session Host now fully supports RemoteFX and is enabled out of the box
• Template feature for Virtual Desktops from a gold master image on disk and instantiated in memory as a single VM. Individual sessions can be customized using roaming profiles, customized desktops and apps and personal storage using system policy.
• Windows Server 8 provides the ability to turn on and off the GUI, basically providing Server Core, with a GUI on demand when needed.
• Active Directory will be virtualization aware, providing snapshot support for VMs running Domain Controllers, and support for DC cloning.
• Support for up to 160 logical processors on Hyper-V hosts
• Support for up to 2TB RAM
• Support for 32 vCPUs with up to 512 GB RAM per VM
• Support for NUMA in the guest, so that the VM has processor and memory affinity with the host