Hyper-V is gaining market share over its competitors, and is already the leader in some markets. With the release of Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V is positioned not only as a low cost alternative, but also as a featured virtualization platform. Therefore, every day, an increasing number of administrators take the first step to acquiring Microsoft virtualization technologies. As a step-by-step guide, this book will take you through a journey that involves learning about the Hyper-V platform from scratch. This will prepare you to become a more versatile Hyper-V admin.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Hyper-V Architecture and Components, covers the Hyper-V architecture and takes a deep dive into how its basic components, such as the processor and memory, can influence a host's performance and utilization.
Chapter 2, Deploying Hyper-V Hosts, covers multiple Hyper-V deployment options and provides you with the pros and cons of each option.
Chapter 3, Licensing a Virtualization Environment with Hyper-V, provides an overview of licensing a virtualization environment with Hyper-V for Windows Server, Windows Client, and Linux VMs. You will also be given tips and tricks regarding licensing Microsoft virtualization environments.
Chapter 4, Managing Networking, focuses on networking configuration for hosts and Virtual Machines (VMs), allowing you to understand how to configure physical and virtual networks for better performance.
Chapter 5, Managing Storage, covers storage and its influence on a host and VM performance, and presents you with techniques to optimize storage.
Chapter 6, Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Templates, covers multiple components of a VM and its templates to optimize creation of a VM with Hyper-V.
Chapter 7, Implementing High Availability, provides an overview of Microsoft failover clusters that are used to support Hyper-V with High Availability (HA).
Chapter 8, Implementing Live Migration and Replica, covers how to prepare a virtualization environment for scheduled maintenance and Site Disaster Recovery.
Chapter 9, Virtualizing Active Directory Domain Controllers, covers the best practices used to virtualize Domain Controllers, avoid replication problems, and get around configuration mistakes.
Chapter 10, Implementing a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, covers the basics involved in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Remote Desktop Services (RDS), and how Hyper-V can support them.
Chapter 11, Protecting Your Virtualization Environment, gives an overview of the protection used for hosts and VMs in a virtualized environment. The chapter will also provide an overview of other tools that are used for backup and restore.
This book is based on the Hyper-V and Windows Server technology. If you want to reproduce the labs in this book, you will need a computer (a server, workstation, or laptop) that meets the Hyper-V requirements described in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Hyper-V Architecture and Components, and a Windows Server trial license or a Hyper-V Server to install on the computer you will be using.
This book focuses on readers starting their journey with Hyper-V, assuming they have minimal or no knowledge of virtualization. You are given your first steps into Microsoft virtualization technology, and you will need to install, configure, and maintain Hyper-V Hosts and VMs to prepare their environments for next-generation technologies.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "If you do not wish to restart the server right away, you can remove the -Restart option and run the Restart-Computer later."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
Install-WindowsFeature –Name Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra –Restart
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "From Server Manager, select Hyper-V group, right-click the server you want to manage, and select Hyper-V Manager."
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