Implementing Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™ and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

• Basic server or branch office consolidation

• Hosted desktops by using virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI)

Obtaining Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is available as a free download from the Microsoft web site at

www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=48359dd2-1c3d-4506-ae0a-

232d0314ccf6&displaylang=en.

Overview of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V will install as a server role on Standard, Enterprise, and

Datacenter edition installations (both full and server core installations).

The following editions of Windows Server 2008 R2 do not support the Hyper-V server role:

• Microsoft Windows Web Server 2008 R2 Foundation

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-Based Systems

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is a robust, scalable hypervisor-based virtualization platform for

provisioning and managing virtual server workloads. It includes the following features:

• Live Migration: Support for transparently moving running virtual machines from one node of a

failover cluster to another node in the same cluster without a dropped network connection or

downtime. Installation of failover clustering role and Cluster Shared Volumes for storage is required.

• Dynamic Virtual Machine Storage: Support for the following:

– Hot removal and hot pluggable storage for Virtual Machines

– Dynamic (automatic) reallocation of storage resources, which provides administrators flexibility

in storage configurations

– Adding (removing) virtual or physical hard disks to (from) the shared storage

• Boot from .VHD support: Allows a physical instance of Windows to boot from a virtual hard drive.

• Enhanced Processor Support: Support for 32 physical processor cores (64 logical processor cores),

second-Level Address Translation (SLAT), and CPU core parking as follows:

– Second-Level Address Translation (SLAT): SLAT uses a processor capability of newer

processors (EPT or NPT) to optimize the second-level address translation that is necessary in a

virtual environment; therefore, improving system performance.

– CPU Core Parking: Enables Windows and Hyper-V to consolidate processing on to the fewest

number of possible processor cores, suspending inactive processor cores.

NOTE

Support for a maximum of 64 logical processors in the host processor pool

and can be any combination of processors and processor cores.

• Enhanced Networking Support:

– Support for jumbo frames within a virtual environment. This feature enables virtual machines to

use jumbo frames up to 9,014 bytes in size if the underlying physical network supports it.

– Support for VM Chimney (TCP Offloading) is available with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-

V providing overall network throughput performance.

• Linux Integration Components: Support for VM configured with one virtual processor and Red Hat

Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 or 5.3 (x86/x64) for emulated devices only, SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server (SLES) 10 (x86/x64) with service pack 1 or 2 and SLES 11 (x86/x64). The Linux Integration