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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

One of the hot utilization of virtualization is Server virtualization. It is also known as hardware virtualization. It is very important to the IT industry because of the high potential of several benefits. Server virtualization enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine as virtual machines (VMs). With server virtualization, workloads of underutilized server machines can be consolidated onto a smaller number of fully utilized machines. These reduced numbers of physical machines could achieve reduced costs by less hardware, decrease in energy use, and management overhead. On top of it will create a more dynamic IT infrastructure. Being said so, Hyper-V is significant development.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows to make the best use of server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, IT can efficiently run multiple different operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing.

Microsoft has reached another key milestone in the development of Hyper-V, with a feature-complete version now available for download as a release candidate (RC).

You can download the update for Hyper-V RC here :Knowledge Base (KB) Articles:KB949219 Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB949219)

The release notes for Hyper-V can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3ED582F0-F844-40BA-B692-230845AF1149&displaylang=en.

There is step by step how to document on how to install windows 2008 Hyper-V release candidate (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-install.aspx). Apart from this Microsoft has provided Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with Hyper-V here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bcaa9707-0228-4860-b088-dd261ca0c80d&DisplayLang=en).



Once you install Windows 2008 Hyper-V and enable Hyper-V role, if you plan to install Ubuntu 7.10 (either server or desktop) on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, I would suggest to read Sriram Krishnan's blog http://www.sriramkrishnan.com/blog/2008/03/running-ubuntu-on-windows-server-2008.html. Sriram has discovered a bug around emulation of real mode instructions and the graphics instructions that ISOLinux uses to boot and has described a solution to patch .iso file in this blog.



You may ask the question about how this cool technology for hot usage in IT world works.I personally found couple of resourcs Keith Combs' Blahg : Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V 10 Minute Tour - Redux with Screencast, computerworld article "Windows Server 2008 Revealed: Hyper-V virtualization" by Jonathan Hassell, Ruben Spruijt blog on Hyper-V solution overview etc very helpful and quick to learn things on Hyper-V

Keith Comb's blog has Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V 10 Minute Tour - Redux (http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2008/02/16/windows-server-2008-hyper-v-10-minute-tour-redux.aspx) Windows streaming media screen cast mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/inetpub/keithcombs/ws2008/WSvTour.wmv

Also Dec'20th,2007 issue of computerworld does a great job of explaining the things.

The article "Windows Server 2008 Revealed: Hyper-V virtualization" by Jonathan Hassell (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=operating_systems&articleId=9053781&taxonomyId=89&intsrc=kc_feat) covers

"how it works?

To understand Hyper-V, consider its three main components: the hypervisor, the virtualization stack and the new virtualized I/O model. The Windows hypervisor basically acts to create the different "partitions" that each virtualized instance of code will run within. The virtualization stack and the I/O components provide interactivity with Windows itself and with the various partitions that are created.

All three of these components work in tandem. Using servers with processors equipped with Intel VT- or AMD-V-enabled technology, Hyper-V interacts with the hypervisor, which is a very small layer of software that is present directly on the processor. This software hooks into threads on the processor that the host operating system can use to efficiently manage multiple virtual machines, and multiple virtual operating systems, running on a single physical processor. "

Another good informative blog on Hyper - V solution overview Written by:Ruben Spruijt Publication Date:March 11, 2008 (http://www.brianmadden.com/content/article/Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008--Hyper-V-solution-overview ). It covers "an overview of the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V solution".

Enjoy...




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