Owner's manual

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
The newest release of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V delivers a
high-performance VM chassis harnessing the new I/O
capabilies of Gen 5 Fibre Channel storage networking and
10GbE data networking. Several new features of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V are highlighted below:
 vCPU—VMs can now have up to 64 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 1TB of virtual RAM (vRAM) allowing Tier-1
applicaons to be virtualized and new levels of VM density to be reached.
 Virtual Fibre Channel (Virtual FC)—Hyper-V now enables VM workloads to access Fibre Channel SANs by
provisioning virtual Fibre Channel ports with a standard Worldwide Name (WWN) within the guest OS.
 Live Migraon—Virtual FC also enables Live Migraon of VMs across Hyper-V hosts while maintaining Fibre
Channel connecvity. Two WWNs are congured and maintained for each virtual Fibre Channel Adapter.
 Live Storage Migraon—A VM’s Virtual Hard Disk (VHDX) storage can now be migrated without shung down the
VM. The operaon copies data from source storage device to a target via a Fibre Channel or similar interconnect.
 Mulpath I/O (MPIO)—Hyper-V now extends MPIO capability to VMs, ensuring fault-tolerant Fibre Channel
connecvity for delivering high availability and resiliency to virtualized workloads.
 Gen 5 Fibre Channel—To help maximize eciency of Live Migraon and Storage Moon, Hyper-V includes support
for 16Gb Fibre Channel, the fastest storage interconnect available today.
 10GbE and SR-IOV—Allows 10GbE NICs to appear as mulple virtual devices that can opmize I/O performance by
providing direct I/O for individual VMs.
From a storage planning perspecve, when comparing Windows Server 2012 to previous versions, there are
two specicaons which stand-out: the amount of memory/VM (1TB) and the amount of acve VMs per
machine (1,024).
With today’s storage usage, a petabyte of storage could be needed to support 1,024 VMs. While this
scenario is unlikely for at least a few years, running 100 VMs with 512GB of virtual memory each on a single
server (which would require 52TB of storage for the memory contents alone) is very foreseeable.
The ability to provide high-performance storage is crical for a high-density or Tier-1 virtualizaon strategy.
The new storage tools in Hyper-V that we will cover later in this paper (virtual Fibre Channel, ooaded data
transfer, and the new virtual hard disk format) can posively impact performance in these environments.
A New VM Chassis
In Hyper-V, Virtual Fibre Channel enables SAN connecvity
on a per VM basis.
Virtual
Fibre Channel