Hyper-V v3 in Windows Server 8

Susantha Silva
Consulting Engineer
Email: susanthasilva@hotmail.com

Enhancement in Hyper-V v3.0

Memory
Storage
Network

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (v3.0)

MEMORY

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

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (v3.0)

STORAGE

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

Users using the application
Online Virtual Machine

No Down Time
while moving
VHDs

.BIN
.VSV
.XML
.VHD

Shared Storage
Host with Internal Storage

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

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V (v3.0)

NETWORK

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 NICs 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, HyperV 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.
With Hyper-V Replica, you can
replicate a virtual machine from
one location to another with
Hyper-V and a network
connection.
Unlimited VM replication in the box

Hyper-V Enhancement

Hyper-V Enhancement - SR-IOV

Host

Host
Root Partition
Hyper-V Switch

Virtual
Machine
Virtual NIC

Routing
VLAN Filtering
Data Copy

Physical NIC

Network I/O path without SRIOV

Root Partition

Virtual
Machine

Hyper-V Switch

Virtual Function

Routing
VLAN Filtering
Data Copy

SR-IOV Physical NIC

Network I/O path with SRIOV

Windows Server 8 supports direct device assignment to virtual machines

without compromising flexibility

Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue (D-VMQ)

Root Partition

CPU
0

CPU
1

CPU
2

CPU
3

Root Partition

CPU
0

CPU
1

CPU
2

Physical NIC

Physical NIC

No VMQ

Static VMQ

CPU
3

Root Partition

CPU
0

CPU
1

CPU
2

CPU
3

Physical NIC

Windows Server 8
Dynamic VMQ

VMQ = Reduces the overhead of routing packets

Adaptive network processing across CPU to provide optimal power and
performance across changing workloads

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
NIC teaming works either in the root or the guest.