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Introduction
8 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices | CML1009
1.4 Best practices overview
Best practices are derived from the collective wisdom and experience of developers and end users over time,
and this knowledge is built into the design of next-generation products. With mature technologies such as
Hyper-V and Dell EMC storage arrays, default configurations typically incorporate best practices.
As a result, tuning is often unnecessary (and therefore discouraged) unless a specific design, situation, or
workload is known to benefit from a different configuration. One of the purposes of a best-practices document
is to call attention to situations where default settings or configurations may not be optimal.
Some common best practice objectives include the following:
• Minimize complexity and administrative overhead
• Optimize performance
• Maximize security
• Ensure resiliency and recoverability
• Ensure a scalable design that can grow with the business
• Maximize return on investment over the life of the hardware
It is important to remember that best practices are baselines that may not be ideal for every environment.
Some notable exceptions include the following:
• Legacy systems that are performing well and have not reached their life expectancy may not adhere
to current best practices. Dell EMC recommends upgrading to the latest technologies and adopting
current best practices at key opportunities such as upgrading or replacing infrastructure.
• A test or development environment that is not business critical may use a less-resilient design or
lower-tier hardware to reduce cost and complexity.
Note: Following the best practices in this document is strongly recommended by Dell EMC. However, some
recommendations may not apply to all environments. If questions arise, contact your Dell EMC
representative.
1.5 General best practices for Hyper-V
There are many general best practices for Hyper-V not specific to storage that are not discussed in detail in
this document. See resources such as the
Microsoft Documentation Library for guidance on general Hyper-V
best practices.
Common best practices tuning steps for Hyper-V include the following:
• Minimize or disable unnecessary hardware devices and services to free up host CPU cycles that can
be used by other VMs (this also helps to reduce power consumption).
• Schedule tasks such as periodic maintenance, backups, malware scans, and patching to run after
hours, and stagger start times when such operations overlap and are CPU or I/O intensive.
• Tune application workloads to reduce or eliminate unnecessary processes or activity.
• Leverage Microsoft PowerShell or other scripting tools to automate step-intensive repeatable tasks to
ensure consistency and avoid mistakes due to human error. This can also reduce administration time.