Introduction To Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Rc1; Terminology; Applicable Environments - HP BL680c - ProLiant - G5 Configuration

Introduction to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC1

Administrators want flexibility in allocating computing resources for specific tasks. Virtualization
technologies provide this flexibility by decoupling the hardware from the workload being performed.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC1 offers a robust, scalable hypervisor-based virtualization platform
allowing enterprises to provision and manage virtual server workloads.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC1 offers the following benefits over Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
R2:
• Full integration with Windows Server 2008 (installed as server role).
• Support for both 64-bit and 32-bit guest OSs.
• Ability to assign up to four virtual CPUs and 32 GB RAM to each guest OS.
• Improved management interface.
• Extensible VMBus architecture that improves performance by lowering the overhead of guest OS
I/O.

Terminology

Administrators should become familiar with the following terms in relation to virtualization
technologies:
• Host operating system: The OS on the physical computer running the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-
V RC1 software.
• Guest operating system: The OS running on a virtual machine.
• Parent virtual machine: The physical computer that hosts one or more child virtual machines.
• Child virtual machine: The guest OSs running in separate partitions on the host OS.
• Partition: A virtual machine.
• Virtual hard disk: The VHD file, which provides storage for the virtual machines.
• Windows hypervisor: The layer of software that leverages the Windows Server driver support and
hardware assisted virtualization technology.

Applicable environments

Microsoft defines the following scenarios as target environments for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
RC1:
• Production Server Consolidation: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC1 can be beneficial for
organizations wanting to consolidate servers to better utilize hardware resources or reduce power
and space constraints in their data centers.
• Business Continuity Management: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC1 can minimize the impact of
unscheduled downtime for an efficient and flexible disaster recovery solution.
• Software Test and Development: Administrators can allocate a child partition to development
resources to reduce the amount of server hardware required in the data center.
• Dynamic Data center: Administrators will have the capability to dynamically add resources to virtual
machines and move them across physical machines without affecting users.
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