The only thing which is not constant is change; change provides new ideologies and methodologies for getting things done in more efficient and cost-effective ways. We all have been seeing a drastic shift of industry where every single product and IT system being supported is migrated to a virtualized server platform also known as a virtual machine. This new virtualized platform or virtual machine provides a handy way of maximizing the usage of underlying infrastructure and getting the most out of your investment.
Hyper-V is a hypervisor and a Microsoft implementation of a server virtualization and consolidation product, where Hyper-V is a native server role available in the Windows Server operating system. At the time of writing this book, the current version is Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, which is the most robust and extremely well-equipped hypervisor product for server virtualization platforms.
This book is built upon the building-blocks strategy, where we start with introducing Hyper-V, and then we move along with adding necessary blocks of knowledge that provide the base platform for upcoming chapters and feature sets. This book covers all features and functionalities of Hyper-V as a hypervisor and discusses them in detail to ensure that readers get the information they need to set up the same technology in the real world. In addition to all this, each chapter of this book contains specific best practices, tips, and recommendations from a real-world standpoint and experience.
We hope after reading this book, you will become experienced in deploying and managing Hyper-V for enterprise-wide server virtualization and consolidation.
Chapter 1, Getting to Know Microsoft Hyper-V, introduces Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, and provides deep information about Hyper-V deployment scenarios, architecture, requirements, VMMS, and last but not least, feature set comparison.
Chapter 2, Planning, Designing, and Implementing Microsoft Hyper-V, provides Hyper-V planning and designing guidelines, and instruction steps for upgrading legacy Hyper-V servers and installing new Hyper-V server for GUI and core server installations. It also covers basic Hyper-V server settings and new virtual machine creation.
Chapter 3, Setting Up Hyper-V Replication, introduces the Hyper-V Replica feature, explains deployment scenarios for Hyper-V Replica along with a technical overview, and also covers monitoring best practices and step-by-step configuration of Hyper-V Replica.
Chapter 4, Understanding Hyper-V Networking, covers a technical overview Hyper-V virtual switch, and gathers new features of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V extensible virtual switch. It also provides guidelines for configuring various types of Hyper-V virtual switch configuration, and discusses best practices and configuration settings for the built-in NIC teaming feature.
Chapter 5, A New World of Hyper-V Automation with PowerShell, digs inside of PowerShell 3.0, discusses PowerShell's innate capabilities for managing Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, and also provides examples for accomplishing common Hyper-V management tasks with PowerShell 3.0.
Chapter 6, Insight into Hyper-V Storage, delivers knowledge about all types of Hyper-V storage implementation scenarios, and goes deeper into discussing each type of storage in detail. It also covers virtual machine storage settings and last but not least concludes with Hyper-V storage best practices.
Chapter 7, Managing Hyper-V with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, gives an SCVMM overview and describes what's new in SCVMM 2012, provides step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring SCVMM for managing the Hyper-V environment, and covers virtual machine management and automation.
Chapter 8, Building Hyper-V High Availability and Virtual Machine Mobility, provides an overview of Hyper-V high availability and what's new in Windows Server 2012 for Hyper-V HA. It discusses Hyper-V HA and failover clustering core components, and delivers step-by-step instructions for preparing, creating, and configuring Hyper-V failover clusters. Finally, this chapter provides knowledge about virtual machine mobility and migrations.
Chapter 9, Hyper-V Security Hardening – Best Practices, covers Hyper-V and virtualization security pillars, and also delivers security hardening best practices for Hyper-V base operating systems, Hyper-V virtual network switch, Hyper-V management, Hyper-V storage, and most importantly safeguarding of guest virtual machines.
Chapter 10, Performing Hyper-V Backup and Recovery, discusses Hyper-V backup methodologies, and provides Hyper-V backup considerations and best practices. It also provides deep understanding of Hyper-V backup and recovery implementation for Windows Server Backup Feature and System Center Data Protection Manager 2012.
Appendix A, SCVMM 2012 New Features and Enhancements, covers all new features and enhancements added into System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 for Hyper-V and virtual machine management and automation.
Appendix B, SCVMM Management Console Configuration Settings, sums up all the configuration settings for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 to configure it for basic and advanced settings.
This book discusses and provides knowledge about various Microsoft server systems technology around the virtualization domain. For an example, if you want to try out scenario and configuration steps provided in this book in a real-world deployment scenario or in the lab, you will need the following software:
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, SP1
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, SP1
This book is for all types of audience from a new system engineer who is exploring the native virtualization capabilities of Windows Server to an expert Hyper-V and virtualization engineer, and also for IT management personnel who want to get insight into Hyper-V capabilities as an enterprise-wide hypervisor for server virtualization and consolidation projects. This book expects that you should be familiar with the Microsoft Windows Server operating system but not necessarily be an expert in it. This book is an ideal choice for both Hyper-V beginners and experts, because it takes you from the basic level to the advanced level with the help of step-by-step processes, and discusses all aspects of Hyper-V virtualization.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text 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 don't change the default path, the Hyper-V Manager on this server will present the default path, which is C:\Users\Public\Document\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks, whenever you create a new VHD/VHDX file."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: " On the New Virtual Machine Wizard window, click on Next."
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