Updating environments with Hyper-V can be more of a challenge compared to updating an environment that consists of mere physical servers. Not only the workloads need regular updating, but also the Windows servers and Hyper-V servers underneath them. The challenges Hyper-V relies on a Parent Partition, whether you're using a Full installation of ...

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Edition offers the ability to make virtual machines highly available by leveraging failover clustering. This however is not a good idea in the case of Active Directory Domain Controllers. In this post I’ll explain why Hyper-V High Availability for Domain Controllers is not a good idea and ...

For both x86 architectures (64bit and 32bit) and editions (Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter) there’s a “Without Hyper-V” Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) and a SKU that includes the Hyper-V technology. What’s the difference between these versions? Microsoft describes Windows Server 2008 without Hyper-V as: For customers that do not need ...

Hyper-V Server 2008 is Microsoft's free server hardware virtualization product. You can  deploy this Microsoft product  like a Windows product with your favorite deployment suite. When you use Windows Deployment Services (WDS) or Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)to deploy Microsoft's Hyper-V Server 2008 however, you are prompted to ...

Microsoft released a new server hardware virtualization product yesterday: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. I've already discussed this product in full detail a while ago, so today I'll show you how to install this free and optimized Hyper-V product in five easy steps: Step 1 Choose a good box to use. The processor should be a recent x86-64 one, ...

Setting the Record Straight One Post at a Time ... That's the tagline of the Virtual Reality VMWare blog, but I don't think Eric Horschman did a good job in his blogpost where he compared VMWare's ESXi 3.5 and a Hyper-V enabled installation of Windows Server 2008 Server Core. His conclusions were: Server Core is not "the Windows you ...

Microsoft announced the much anticipated Hyper-V Server Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) last week and they intend to launch the product in the coming thirty days. This Microsoft virtualization product is targeted at customers who want to benefit from Hyper-V, but want to keep their server environment a strict Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server or ...

Server Core is an important piece of technology advancement for Microsoft. Although people tend to look at MinWin, Singularity and Midori for future versions of Windows, it's actually Server Core that will play an important role in Microsoft's infrastructure products for the coming couple of years. Server Core and MinWin There is a relationship ...

In an anticipated PressPass release Microsoft yesterday announced new licensing rules, virtualization readiness events and extended support policies, targeted at its new Hyper-V virtualization family of products and its dreams of the 'dynamic data center'.     Licensing flexibility Quoting from the release: Beginning Sept. ...

Designing and implementing a virtual environment on top of Hyper-V can be challenging. Placement of Active Directory Domain Controllers require additional consideration, especially in some Hyper-V scenario's where Active Directory membership is strictly needed. In the scenarios below the Hyper-V parent partitions ("Virtual Hosts") need ...