Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Hyper-V

With Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualisation technology, as a role, plus flexible licensing policies, it's now easier than ever to take advantage of the cost savings of virtualisation through Windows Server 2008. This enables you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine and also efficiently run multiple different operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing.

Hyper-V comes in two flavours:

Windows 2008 Server with Hyper-V
Hyper-V Server 2008.

Windows 2008 Server with Hyper-V

New and Improved Architecture New 64-bit micro-kernelized hypervisor architecture enables Hyper-V to provide a broad array of device support methods and improved performance and security.

Broad OS Support Broad support for simultaneously running different types of operating systems, including 32-bit and 64-bit systems across different server platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and others.

SMP Support Ability to support up to four multiple processors in a virtual machine environment enables you to take full advantage of multi-threaded applications in a virtual machine.

Network Load Balancing Hyper-V includes new virtual switch capabilities. This means virtual machines can be easily configured to run with Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) Service to balance load across virtual machines on different servers.

Hardware Sharing Architecture With the new virtual service provider/virtual service client (VSP/VSC) architecture, Hyper-V provides improved access and utilisation of core resources, such as disk, networking, and video.

Quick Migration Hyper-V enables you to rapidly migrate a running virtual machine from one physical host system to another with minimal downtime, leveraging familiar high-availability capabilities of Windows Server and System Center management tools.

Virtual Machine Snapshot Hyper-V provides the ability to take snapshots of a running virtual machine so you can easily revert to a previous state, and improve the overall backup and recoverability solution.

Scalability With support for multiple processors and cores at the host level and improved memory access within virtual machines, you can now vertically scale your virtualisation environment to support a large number of virtual machines within a given host and continue to leverage quick migration for scalability across multiple hosts.

Extensible Standards-based Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces and APIs in Hyper-V enable independent software vendors and developers to quickly build custom tools, utilities, and enhancements for the virtualisation platform.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a comprehensive heterogeneous management solution for the virtualised datacenter. Virtual Machine Manager enables increased physical server utilisation, centralised management of virtual machine infrastructure, and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator and authorised end users. Virtual Machine Manager provides the best solution for leveraging existing IT administrative skills and processes for managing the virtual and physical environment.