The Ultimate Guide To Hyper-v: Part 2

Hyper – V -Part-2:

3: Creating Fixed size Virtual Hard Disk
4: Creating Dynamically expanding Virtual Hard Disk
5: Creating Differencing Virtual Hard Disk
6: Configuring Virtual Networks
7: Configuring Hyper-V Replica

Hyper-V:
• Hyper-V is the hardware virtualization role that is available in
Windows Server 2012-2022.

• Hardware virtualization provides virtual machines with direct access
to the virtualization server’s hardware.

• This is in contrast to software virtualization products such as
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, that use the virtualization server’s
operating system to provide indirect access to the server’s hardware.

Type-I Hypervisor:
• Also called as bare metal virtualization.
• Hypervisor is directly installed on hardware.
• Robust/Scalable
• Used in production environment.

Company Name Hypervisor Name
1.Microsoft Hyper-V
2.VM Ware vSphere
3.Citrix XenServer

Type-II Hypervisors:
• Hosted virtualization.
• Slow
• Testing and lab.

Company Name Hypervisor Name
Microsoft Virtual PC
VM Ware Workstation
Oracle Oracle Virtual Box

Hardware Requirements:
• The server must have an x64 platform that supports hardware
assisted virtualization and Data Execution Prevention.
• The server must have enough CPU capacity to meet the requirements of the guest virtual machines.
– A virtual machine hosted on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012-2022 can support up to 64 virtual processor
Hardware Requirements:
• The server must have enough memory to support all of the virtual
machines that must run concurrently, plus enough memory to run the host Windows Server 2012 operating system.
– The server must have at least 4 GB of RAM.
– A virtual machine hosted on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012-2022 can support a maximum of 1 terabytes (TB) of RAM

Virtual machines have the following simulated hardware by default:
• BIOS
• Memory
• Processor
• IDE Controller 0 and 1
• SCSI Controller
• Synthetic Network Adapter
• COM 1 and 2
• Diskette Drive

You can add the following hardware to a virtual machine:
• SCSI Controller (up to 4)
• Network Adapter
• Legacy Network Adapter
• Fibre Channel adapter
• RemoteFX 3D video adapter

What Is a VHD?
• A virtual hard disk is a file that represents a traditional hard disk drive
• VHDX format has the following benefits over the VHD format:
– The disks can be larger (64 TB versus 2 TB)
– The disk is less likely to become corrupted
– The format supports better alignment when deployed to a large sector disk
– The format supports larger block size for dynamic and differencing disks

What Is a VHDx?
Creating Virtual Disk Types:
• Dynamically expanding VHDs
• Fixed-size VHDs
• Differencing VHDs
• Pass Through Disks

Pass Through Disks:
• Hyper-V allows virtual machines to access storage mapped directly to
the Hyper-V server without requiring the volume be configured.
• The storage can either be a physical disk internal to the Hyper-V
server or it can be a Storage Area Network (SAN) Logical Unit (LUN)
mapped to the Hyper-V server.
• To ensure the Guest has exclusive access to the storage, it must be
placed in an Offline state from the Hyper-V server perspective.
Differencing VHDs:
• Differencing disks reduce space used by storage at the cost of performance
• You can link multiple differencing disks to a single parent disk
• You cannot modify parent disk
• You can use Inspect Disk tool to reconnect a differencing disk to a missing parent

Virtual Switch:
• External
Used to map a network to a specific network adapter or network
adapter team

• Internal
Used to communicate between the virtual machines on the host and
between the virtual machines and the host itself

• Private
Used to communicate between virtual machines, but not between the
virtual machines and the host itself

Hyper-V Replica:
• With Hyper-V Replica, administrators can replicate their Hyper-V
virtual machines from one Hyper-V host at a primary site to another
Hyper-V host at the Replica site.
• Additionally, administrators can use Hyper-V Replica to test the
Replica virtual machine without disrupting the ongoing replication. If
a failure occurs at the primary site, administrators can quickly restore
their business operations by bringing up the replicated virtual
machine at the Replica site.

Prerequisites for Hyper-V Replica:
• Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V role
– Hyper-V Replica is part of the Hyper-V role
– At least two servers, usually in different sites
• Sufficient storage to host virtual machines
– Local and replicated virtual machines
• Connectivity between primary and replica sites
• Windows firewall configured to allow replication
– Hyper-V Replica HTTP and Hyper-V Replica HTTPS
• X.509v3 certificate for mutual authentication
– If certificate authentication is used
– Otherwise, Hyper-V hosts must be in the same AD DS forest



source