Specifications

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Reviewer’s Guide 2
downtime and reduces the planned downtime associated with routine system maintenance. When Live
Migration is coupled with VMM’s Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) feature you can create a
dynamic IT environment, automatically reallocating virtual machine workloads based on resource
utilization and available capacity. In addition, VMM 2008 R2 supports queuing live migrations; this
improvement allows you to now define multiple live migrations and run them one after another in
sequence without waiting for the current live migration to complete.
Support for Clustered Shared Volumes and Third Party CFS
Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 that provides
support for live migration. CSV enhances the virtual infrastructure by allowing multiple Hyper-V hosts to
access multiple VMs on a single LUN simultaneously. CSV support also enhances Live Migration by
allowing individual virtual machines to be moved to different hosts without affecting the other VMs
running on that host. With CSV, there is no need to move the virtual machine’s virtual hard disk files to
another LUN.
In addition, unlike the earlier storage model that required one VM per LUN, the new CSV storage
permits multiple virtual machine files to be stored on the same LUN, making storage management
much easier. VMM 2008 R2 can also detect and support third-party Clustered File Systems such as
Sanbolic.
Quick Storage Migration
Quick storage migration enables an administrator to move a virtual machine’s storage to a different
LUN or even to a different host while the VM is running, both with a minimum of downtime. Typically,
the amount of downtime required for quick storage migration is less than 2 minutes, though the actual
amount of downtime depends on the virtual machine’s activity level during the move. In addition, VMM
2008 R2 can now take advantage of VMware’s Storage VMotion
TM
feature for moving VMware virtual
machines to different storage locations with no downtime. Quick storage migration is especially useful
for customers taking advantage of the new CSV feature in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Hot-Add and Removal of Storage
Hot-add and removal of storage reduces planned downtime associated with adding disk storage to your
virtual infrastructure to accommodate increased storage requirements. The new Hot-Add and Removal
of Storage feature in VMM 2008 R2 allows an administrator to dynamically add and remove VHDs from
a running virtual machine with no interruption of service.