Amit Pawar - Infrastructure blog

Hyper-V performance some thoughts

There is quite a lot of documentation (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794762.aspx) and blogs on how to get the best peformance from Hyper-V. Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Disk:  allow separate disks for the parent partition (ie 2008/Hyper-V)
For the VM’s, if you can spread them across multiple disks you will have less contention per VM – something like 4 pairs of RAID1 (1 for OS and 3 partitions for VM’s) might give you better performance than 2 disks in RAID1 (for OS) and 6 disks in RAID5 (for VM’s)

2. Fix Disk (not the default) will give the VM better performance than dynamic as there will be less operations and fragmentation when expanding the disks as they grow.

3. Memory: Ensure the parent partition has sufficient RAM to cope with the workload. Recommend minimum is 500MB, but if you perfmon it’s usage you can see if this is sufficient. Keep perfmon running on the parent partition from the first day, gathering stats every 5 minutes and fixed at 500MB. This will give you a baseline of the server over a 1 to 2 week period. As you grow the VM numbers you can see how the load is impacting the hardware.

4. Processor: ensure you look up the correct logical to virtual processor ratios, also ensure the guest VM’s run with the correct maximum virtual processors

5. Network: Again, it is best to allow the Parent Partition to have its own dedicated NIC, then have another NIC for every 4 VM’s, again perform counters can help determine this ratio of VM's to NIC.

Use the perfmon counters that come with the Vital Signs course, plus add in the Hyper-V counters as stated here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768535.aspx

Some of the other resources that will assist with getting the most from your Hyper-V server

HW Sizing Help

To find the list of supported server configs:
Go to http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/ .
Select the Certified Servers on the right hand side.
Select Windows Server 2008 (x64) on the left hand side.
Select Hyper-V on the left hand side.

The Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 has been updated to include perf guidelines for virtualization servers: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv.mspx

Joeelway's blog links to a handy Hyper-V RAM Calculator you can use to plan your Hyper-V deployment: http://cid-2095eac3772c41db.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Hyper-V%20RAM%20Calculator.xls

Storage Resources

Webcast:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032364834&CountryCode=US

Whitepaper:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/B/5/3B51A025-7522-4686-AA16-8AE2E536034D/WS2008%20Multi%20Site%20Clustering.doc

Jose Barreto's blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/02/14/storage-options-for-windows-server-2008-s-hyper-v.aspx

Hyper-V How To: Shrink a VHD File

Jeremy Hagen's blog post describes some implementation workarounds for shrinking VHD sizes.

http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/10/09/hyper-v-how-to-shrink-a-vhd-file.aspx

Hyper-V How To: Plan HA VMs

Jeremy Hagen's blog post details some planning considerations for high availability VMs.

http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/10/10/hyper-v-how-to-plan-ha-vms.aspx

Running SQL Server 2008 in a Hyper-V Environment - Best Practices and Performance Recomme...

This white paper describes a series of test results, configurations represented a variety of possible scenarios involving SQL Server running in Hyper-V. It also presents best practice recommendations for configuration.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/9/4/d948f981-926e-40fa-a026-5bfcf076d9b9/SQL2008inHyperV2008.docx

Planning considerations for AD on Hyper-V

Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environ...

KB 888794 is from 2006, but discusses considerations when a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server-based domain controller, a Windows Server 2003-based domain controller, or a Windows Server 2008-based controller runs in a virtual hosting environment. Virtual hosting environments include the following, among others: Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, EMC VMware.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794/en-us

Hyper-V and VHD Performance - Dynamic vs. Fixed

If you are in the midst of testing and deploying Virtual machines using the VHD file format on Hyper-V and want the best performance from a I/O performance check out this post by Tim Litton http://blogs.technet.com/winserverperformance/archive/2008/09/19/hyper-v-and-vhd-performance-dynamic-vs-fixed.aspx

Professional Developer Conference content for Virtualisation

Enabling Test Automation Using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

With Hyper-V, you can decrease your software test cycles, improve your test coverage, and provide testers and developers a safe, scalable test bed for applications. In this session we introduce the concepts that can assist you in development of an automation framework that can take advantage of Hyper-V.

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/ES09/

Resources: Powerpoint Deck

Extending Terminal Services and Hyper-V VDI in Windows 7

Come learn about advanced topics in the Windows Graphics remoting architecture (RDP 7).This talk introduces new Windows 7 remoting features, discusses how they are going to be leveraged in Microsoft's Windows 7 client and server products. Finally, this presentation covers how you can integrate well with core remoting infrastructure services to enhance your applications to run from anywhere, so that your applications will be available to end-users when they are on-the-go.

Resources: Powerpoint Deck

Developing Solutions for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Using WMI

Hyper-V provides new capabilities through its WMI APIs. Learn how to apply these APIs while creating your own solutions.

Resources: Powerpoint Deck

Can I run Hyper-V on my machine ?

There is a lot of confusion regards what hardware is required to run Hyper-V

1. Official Hyper-V system requirements are:

Hyper-V requires specific hardware. You can identify systems that support the x64 architecture and Hyper-V by searching the Windows Server catalog for Hyper-V as an additional qualification (see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111228).

To install and use the Hyper-V role, you will need the following:

· An x64-based processor.Hyper-V is available in 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008—specifically, the 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter. Hyper-V is not available for 32-bit (x86) editions or Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems. However, the Hyper-V management tools are available for 32-bit editions. For more information about the tools, see Installing Hyper-V.

· Hardware-assisted virtualization. This is available in processors that include a virtualization option—specifically processors with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology.

· Hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) must be available and enabled. Specifically, you must enable Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit).

The settings for hardware-assisted virtualization and hardware-enforced DEP are available in the BIOS. However, the names of the settings may differ from the names identified above. For more information about whether a specific processor model supports Hyper-V, check with the manufacturer of the computer. If you modify the settings for hardware-assisted virtualization or hardware-enforced DEP, you may need to turn off the power to the computer and then turn it back on. Restarting the computer may not apply the changes to the settings.

There are few tools that will help you assess your machine for it's suitability to run Hyper-V

• For AMD

AMD Virtualization™ Technology and Microsoft® Hyper-V™ System Compatibility Check Utility - This utility checks your system’s capabilities to facilitate testing of Microsoft Hyper-V on platforms with AMD microprocessors. To use this utility: Download and unzip AMD-V_Hyper-V_Compatibility_Check_Utility.zip. Change to the directory where the files were extracted to and click on amdhyperv.exe. On Windows Vista™ or Windows Server® 2008, you need to run the application with elevated privilege, so right click the .exe and select run as administrator. Note: the .sys files must be in the same directory as the .exe file.
Download Now!

• For Intel Processors

The Intel® Processor Identification Utility was developed by Intel Corporation to identify the processor inside a system, assuring the processor contains intended technologies and is operating at the tested and rated frequency intended by Intel Corporation.
Refer to http://www.intel.com/support/processors/tools/piu/

• SecurAble probes the system's processor to determine the presence, absence and operational status of three modern processor features:
• 64-bit instruction extensions,
• Hardware support for detecting and preventing
  the execution of code in program data areas, ... and
• Hardware support for system resource “virtualization.”

Refer to http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

Install and uninstall VMM agent on Windows 2008 Server Core

Refer to http://blogs.technet.com/chengw/archive/2008/09/08/install-and-uninstall-vmm-agent-on-windows-2008-server-core.aspx 

Measuring Performance on Hyper-V

1. Measuring Performance on Hyper-V

While most of the principles of analysing performance of a guest operating system installed on a Hyper-V virtual machine performance are the same as analysing the performance of an operating system installed on a physical machine, many of the collection methods are different. The following considerations are significant when evaluating performance of your BizTalk Server solution running on a guest operating system installed on a Hyper-V virtual machine.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768535.aspx

2. Hyper-V Performance Counters – Part one of many - The overview

3. Hyper-V Performance Counters – Part two of many – “Hyper-V Hypervisor” counter set

4. Hyper-V Performance Counters – Part three of many – “Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processors” counter set

5. Hyper-V Performance Counters – Part four of many – “Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor” and “Hyper-V Hypervisor Root Virtual Processor” counter set

6. How to get Processor Utilization for Hyper-V via WMI

Hyper-V market share

Online publications

Hyper-V's low cost helps Microsoft weaken VMware's grip on server virtualization:

Microsoft has aggressively discounted Hyper-V to grab market share

Microsoft narrows gap with VMware

Hyper-V makes good showing in first months availability, IDC says

Microsoft gains against VMware

Via Microsoft's Server and Tools Business News Blog, the company said, "IDC's findings reflect the strong customer and partner adoption we're seeing of Microsoft's datacenter and desktop virtualization software." "Customers now have choice in market. VMware is no longer the dominant server virtualization vendor (<50%)."

X64 server virtualization maturing already

The box counters at IDC did say that VMware was the shipment leader on x64 boxes, with a 44 per cent share. But that in the second quarter, if you added Virtual Server 2005 and Hyper-V together, Microsoft had 23 per cent of shipments. And it won't be long, is my guess, before VMware and Microsoft are at shipment parity on x64 machines.

Interestingly, Waldman said that the hypervisor attach rate on new server sales was about 15 per cent. At that rate, against just under nine million server shipments per year, we're talking about 1.4 million hypervisors

Blogs:

http://www.virtualization.info/2008/10/microsoft-already-took-23-of.html

· one thing is for sure: the Microsoft gain is remarkable (and its growing case studies library confirms it) even if VMware still leads with 78% revenue share.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/34131

Far be it for me to call the race over but I still stand by my prediction that Hyper-V, along with other winners like Xen and Parallels, will enjoy the spoils from knocking VMware off it's industry leader pedestal.

http://virtualization.com/news/2008/10/16/idc-confirms-virtualization-still-on-the-rise/

http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=8956

http://blogs.msdn.com/taylorb/archive/2008/10/16/virtualization-sales-strong-hyper-v-strong-first-quarter.aspx

http://vmblog.com/archive/2008/10/17/virtualization-continues-to-see-strong-growth-in-second-quarter-according-to-idc.aspx

http://www.techmeme.com/081017/p36#a081017p36

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/virtualization-continues-see-strong-growth/story.aspx?guid=%7BBE6C4F00-EDFB-478E-921A-D2B7763D04DB%7D&dist=hppr

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21190/53/

http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/archive/2008/10/16/idc-announces-q2-worldwide-server-virtualization-license-shipments.aspx [Server & Tools Business news blog]

Twitter

http://twitter.com/Virtualpath

http://twitter.com/govirtual

http://twitter.com/STBNewsBytes

http://twitter.com/latelier

http://twitter.com/TechmemeFH

http://twitter.com/MacReeg

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is now available

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 provides a management solution for the virtualized data center that helps enable centralized management of IT infrastructure, increased server utilization, and dynamic resource optimization across multiple virtualization platforms.

Support for VMs Running on Windows Server 2008

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 was designed to fully utilize the foundational features and services of Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Hyper-V™ Server. This includes Hyper-V’s 64-bit architecture, attack hardened security model, fail-over cluster support (see below) and others.
• Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) supports the management of hosts running Hyper-V and VMM can actually enable Hyper-V remotely from the VMM 2008 console.
• VMM 2008 integrates with new clustering support in Windows Server 2008 to allow for fault-tolerant and cluster aware virtual machines to be created
• VMM 2008 supports all Hyper-V functionality while providing VMM-specific functions, such as Intelligent Placement, the Self-Service Portal, and the integrated Library.

Multi-Vendor Virtualization Platform Support

• In addition to support for Hyper-V, VMM 2008 integrates multi-hypervisor management into one tool with its support for virtual machines running on VMware ESX infrastructure and Microsoft Virtual Server.
• VMM 2008 provides comprehensive support for VMware VI3 including moving virtual machines among virtual hosts with no downtime via VMotion, through integration with VMware’s Virtual Center.
• VMM 2008 specific features such as Intelligent Placement, consolidation candidate recommendations and others can be run against virtualized infrastructure on any supported platform.
• Windows PowerShell™ scripts for customization or automation are also supported across Hyper-V, VMware ESX or Virtual Server implementations

Host Cluster Support for “High Availability” Virtual Machines

• With greatly expanded support for failover clusters, VMM 2008 improves its “high availability” capabilities for managing mission-critical virtual machines. VMM 2008 is now fully cluster-aware meaning that it can detect and manage Hyper-V host clusters as a single unit.
• New in this version of VMM is automatic detection of virtual hosts that are added or removed from the cluster – thus easing the burden on the administrator to manage this function.
• In VMM 2008, creating a high availability virtual machine (HA VM) has never been easier. Gone are the complex multi-step manual processes from before – now, an administrator clicks a simple checkbox which designates a VM as highly available. Behinds the scenes, VMM orchestrates the creation of that HA VA which includes instructing the Intelligent Placement feature of VMM 2008 to recommend only hosts that are part of a host cluster for the newly minted HA VM.
• Improved HA VM management features of VMM 2008 include the Failover Cluster Management Console for various cluster-related tasks such as designation and management of cluster reserves, letter-less disk drives, guest clusters, among others.
• VMM 2008 also supports VMware host clusters in which the nodes of the cluster are VMware ESX Servers.

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=ED012990-6E86-4B43-9842-DA5C02FF1C83&displaylang=en

Hyper-V and Storage

There is a lot of information regards Hyper-V and storage options that is scattred in blog post. I aim to find this information and collect it here in this post

1. Storage options for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/02/14/storage-options-for-windows-server-2008-s-hyper-v.aspx
2. More on Storage Options for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/03/06/more-on-storage-options-for-windows-server-2008-s-hyper-v.aspx
3. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Storage http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/dario/archive/2008/08/26/windows-server-2008-hyper-v-sto rage.aspx
4. Hyper-V How To: Plan HA VMs http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/10/10/hyper-v-how-to-plan-ha-vms.aspx

Is VMware costing you way too much

Head over to http://www.vmwarecostswaytoomuch.com/ to find out how you and your organisation could save with Microsoft's virtualisation solutions.

Use the ROI tool to find out how much you could be saving.

Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Releases/Hosting for App-V

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5 has been released. Formerly known as SoftGrid, App-V 4.5 is the first Microsoft-branded release of the product. It includes new capabilities designed to help IT support large-scale virtualisation implementations across many sites and provides multiple delivery options including over-the-Internet application availability to meet your business needs. 

Additionally, Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services has also been updated to the same standards and now supports Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services.

Click the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack and Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services on the Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5.  Please visit the Application Virtualization Blog  or the MDOP Blog for more information and go to TechNet to download App-V Guidance Documents.

Exchange on Hyper-V

Microsoft supports Exchange Server 2007 in production on hardware virtualisation software only when all the following conditions are true:

• The hardware virtualisation software is Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology, Microsoft Hyper-V Server, or any third-party hypervisor that has been validated under the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program.
• The Exchange Server guest virtual machine:
  • Is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later.
  • Is deployed on the Windows Server 2008 operating system.
  • Does not have the Unified Messaging server role installed. All Exchange 2007 server roles, except for the Unified Messaging role, are supported in a virtualisation environment.
• The storage used by the Exchange Server guest machine can be virtual storage of a fixed size (for example, fixed virtual hard drives (VHDs) in a Hyper-V environment), SCSI pass-through storage, or Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage. Pass-through storage is storage that is configured at the host level and dedicated to one guest machine.

  Note:

  In a Hyper-V environment, each fixed VHD must be less than 2,040 gigabytes (GB). For supported third-party hypervisors, check with the manufacturer to see if any disk size limitations exist.

  • Virtual disks that dynamically expand are not supported by Exchange.
  • Virtual disks that use differencing or delta mechanisms (such as Hyper-V's differencing VHDs or snapshots) are not supported.
• No other server-based applications, other than management software (for example, antivirus software, backup software, virtual machine management software, etc.) can be deployed on the physical root machine. The root machine should be dedicated to running guest virtual machines.
• Microsoft does not support combining Exchange clustering solutions (namely, cluster continuous replication (CCR) and single copy clusters (SCC)) with hypervisor-based availability or migration solutions (for example, Hyper-V's quick migration). Both CCR and SCC are supported in hardware virtualisation environments provided that the virtualisation environment does not employ clustered virtualisation servers.
• Some hypervisors include features for taking snapshots of virtual machines. Virtual machine snapshots capture the state of a virtual machine while it is running. This feature enables you to take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine and then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a snapshot to the virtual machine. However, virtual machine snapshots are not application-aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as Exchange Server. As a result, making virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest virtual machine is not supported.
• Many hardware virtualisation products allow you to specify the number of virtual processors that should be allocated to each guest virtual machine. The virtual processors located in the guest virtual machine share a fixed number of logical processors in the physical system. Exchange supports a virtual processor-to-logical processor ratio no greater than 2:1. For example, a dual processor system using quad core processors contains a total of 8 logical processors in the host system. On a system with this configuration, do not allocate more than a total of 16 virtual processors to all guest virtual machines combined.

To read more go to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548.aspx

Australian customers using Hyper-V

Now that Hyper-V and SCVMM have officially launched (www.getvirtualnow.com) the case studies are coming in for Australian customers

Click on this link to see a list of the Australian case studies for Hyper-V http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?Keywords=Hyper-V&CouTaxID=1326.

How to use Failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 with SCVMM 2008

Want to know how to make your Virtual Machines highly available with the built in Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 and see how easy it is to make a Virtual Machine highly available with SCVMM 2008.

Head on over to http://blogs.technet.com/chengw/archive/2008/06/10/clustered-hosts-and-ha-vms-in-scvmm-2008.aspx

Introducing SCVMM 2008 Performance & Resource Optimization (PRO)

Refer to http://blogs.technet.com/chengw/archive/2008/05/21/scvmm-2008-performance-resource-optimization-pro.aspx

This is a great introduction to SCVMM 2008 PRO by Cheng Wei.