Datasheet

THE BUSINESS CASE

Active Directory users or groups can be added to self-service user roles. The permissions

granted to the user role apply to all members of the user group whether they are individuals or

groups.

Virtual machine owners can be individual users or groups. Under individual ownership, an

individual owns, operates, and manages its own virtual machines. Under group ownership, vir-

tual machines are owned, operated, and managed by the group.

You can set a virtual machine quota in a self-service user role to limit the number of virtual

machines that a user or group can deploy. Quota points are assigned to the virtual machine

template or templates that self-service users use to create their virtual machines.

Quota points apply only to virtual machines on a host. If a self-service user is allowed to

store virtual machines, the quota does not apply to virtual machines stored in the SCVMM

library. When the self-service user’s quota is reached, the user cannot create any new virtual

machines until an existing virtual machine is removed or stored.

Business Continuity Planning

Business continuity planning (BCP) is the ability to minimize scheduled and unscheduled

downtime, using the host-based failover features of the virtualization platform and guest-based

clustering.

Windows 2008 R2 and Hyper-V includes support for host-based clustering of virtual

machines. This allows an organization to meet the availability thresholds previously reserved

only for cluster-aware applications. Because virtualization clustering allows a guest machine

to be transferred across physical nodes with zero downtime, the number of machines that can

be targeted for virtualization dramatically increases. This is particularly compelling for appli-

cations that grow into mission-critical status but were never designed with high availability

in mind.

In addition to the beneﬁ ts of failover clustering, virtualization of target machines can greatly

enhance the business continuity and recovery processes. Because each virtual machine is a

collection of ﬁ les on a physical host, the ﬁ les (VHDs, AVHDs, and so on) can be moved to a

new location, including alternate datacenters, and be brought back online without requiring a

complete rebuild. Alternate datacenters can consist of far fewer physical machines, speciﬁ cally

designed to provide an emergency level of service. Windows 2008 R2 and Hyper-V also intro-

duces the feature of Live Migration, where running virtual machines can transfer from one clus-

tered host node to another with zero downtime. There are two options for using Live Migration:

u Planned

u Unplanned

Unplanned migrations occur when the active node (Hyper-V host) running the guests

becomes unexpectedly unavailable. In this case, the other nodes in the cluster recognize the

failure, cluster resources are moved, and the guest machines are brought back up on available

cluster nodes, reducing the overall downtime. Note that in an unplanned migration, the guest

machine state is lost and is restarted, just as if the “power cord” were pulled.

In a planned Live Migration, guests are transferred between nodes while they are running.

This process is carried out automatically by either the Failover Cluster Management tool, a

PowerShell script, or SCVMM. In the BCP scenario, the ﬂ exibility of moving machines between

c01.indd 7c01.indd 7 9/28/2010 1:42:06 PM9/28/2010 1:42:06 PM