One of my peers just purchased a very impressive server class machine. He's really proud of it, and he should be! He has 2 quad core CPUs, 16GB RAM, and 2 TB of Disk space. He built this machine to be a virtualization monster, so once he got it up and running, he created an EBS configuration, all in...

What is BitLocker? BitLocker lets you encrypt the hard drive(s) on your Windows 7 and Vista Enterprise, Windows 7 and Vista Ultimate or Windows Server 2008 and R2. BitLocker will not encrypt hard drives for Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows 2003. Only Windows 7, Vista and Server 2008 include BitLocker...

I received the following question: Thanks for the article. What do you do about your host system's pagefile? I'm thinking more about size. Do you leave the default? I have a 16GB system and 12GB of that is allocated to VMs. Do I size the host pagefile for the whole 16GB or just for the 3 or 4GB not used...

I have a series of screen casts ( here ) that talk about setting up Hyper-V, but I wanted to let you know that we just released a new Hyper-V: Live Migration Network Configuration Guide here . I wish I would have had this when I was building out my demos. This guide does a good job of detailing the different...

I received another really good question, so I want to share it. My servers will be running Windows Enterprise running HyperV with 4 VM's each. The third server will run Windows Standard 2008 with Microsoft SCVMM. Is there a way for SCVMM to be installed and manage the Windows Enterprise HyperV hosts...

I received the following question: Hi, I have been following your video on setting up Hyper-V server with the Equallogic SAN which we have. It has been really helpful however I am having a problem getting the CSV to work. After creating the cluster the disk we are planning to use is only shown in "Disk...

I’ve seen a lot of back and forth on the NIC teaming discussion and I decided to check it first hand. We have this stated policy here , but seeing is believing so I decided to take a look. I have two dual port Intel NICs so I slapped them both into the same machine, installed the driver and gave it a...

As you’ve read, I’ve been using SCVMM for a while and I still learn new things about it. I mentioned templates in my first screen cast and told you that I would talk more about them, so here they are. Templates let you create a standard virtual machine image and store it in your SCVMM library. The cool...

I wanted to continue my discussion on Hyper-V so I decided to show you some of the additional tools that will help with your Hyper-V deployments. First up is my overview of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 ( SCVMM R2 ). This session is one part of a series of screen casts around Hyper-V...

So I’ve finally done it! Here’s a short screen cast on Live Migration. This one is only 5 minutes, so I won’t keep you too long, but you’ll be able to see it in action! I recorded this session at the Irvine, CA MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) on their Dell Servers and the Equalogic SAN. Here’s the...

As I mentioned in my prior post, I split the screen cast into two parts and here’s the second part. I pick right up where I left off, so be sure to check out Part 1 first. My next post will be a demonstration of Live Migration. This session is one part of a whole series of screen casts around Hyper-V...

I’ve upgraded to the Release Candidate of Windows Server 2008 R2 and I wanted to share a little bit of what I learned. My intent was to do two R2 sessions, one to show you everything but Live Migration and the second one to show Live Migration. As I was working through all the new features, I found that...

A look at Quick Migration Now that we have our cluster set up, let’s take a look at how we can move a virtual machine from one host to another. In the current version of Hyper-V, if you want to move a virtual machine from one host to another while it’s running, we use quick migration. Quick migration...

Setting up a Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Cluster I spent some time in one of our Microsoft Technology Centers and was able to setup a Hyper-V cluster on some pretty impressive hardware. I had access to a Domain Controller and three servers that were running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. They...

Placing Virtual Machines into a Hyper-V Cluster This screencast discusses the do’s and don’ts of adding virtual machines to a Hyper-V cluster. Just because you create a virtual machine on a host machine that is also part of a Hyper-V cluster does not mean that the virtual machine will be highly available...

I was talking to one of my partners that has spent a lot of time with VMWare and I was showing him some of the capabilities Hyper-V had to offer. When I showed him how easy it was to setup a virtual machine in Hyper-V and he was impressed. He told me that setting up virtual machines in VMWare was much...

Setting up a Virtual Machine Network I’ve already created one screencast to talk about setting up a Virtual Machine on Hyper-V here , so I’m going to spend this session on Hyper-V networking. There have been a lot of questions around the networking in Hyper-V and I’m going to talk time to walk through...

Installing the Hyper-V Role This is part 2 of our discussion on setting up the Hyper-V role on your Server 2008 server. Keep in mind that Hyper-V shipped after after Server 2008 RTM’d, so you need to install the Hyper-V RTM update. I recommend you let Windows Update bring your server up to date on security...

Configuring the BIOS for Hyper-V How many times have you said “I’d love to learn how to use Hyper-V, but where do I start?” Start here! I’ve started a series on Hyper-V that begins with how to configure your server , and then moves step by step all the way through how you can setup a High Availability...

I’ve talked to a lot of partners about Hyper-V, and the same question always comes up. Which version of Hyper-V should I choose? We have a page that lays out the differences between the different versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Microsoft Hyper-V Server. I’ve included the chart below, if you...

I’ve talked before about the fact that we cannot Live Migrate from an AMD CPU to an Intel CPU or vice-versa, but what about Live Migrating from an older Intel CPU to a newer Intel CPU? I’m going to show you a Live Migration from a three year old Intel Xeon 5050 CPU to a new Intel Xeon 3440 CPU. Below...

I’ve been honored to work in Intel lately on some of their technical trainings they present to their partners. Part of these events involve ongoing training where Intel provides an afternoon of partner technical training that walks them through building out a newer generation server. To me, the education...

I’ve mentioned this before, but I wanted to show you the error you receive when you try to Live Migrate from an Intel CPU to an AMD CPU. Of course, it isn’t any better if you try to Live Migrate from an AMD CPU to an Intel CPU. Here’s that error message: As I have more time I’m going to talk more about...

As you saw from my earlier post , I've been loaned some new hardware and I have a plan for it as follows: I can now demonstrate a cluster larger than three servers. In fact, I’ve already created a five node cluster and it’s pretty cool! The only downside to my five node cluster is that three of the nodes...

I’ve spent a lot of time with Hyper-V. I’ve put together a lot of blogs, screen casts and demonstrations of Hyper-V. While Microsoft is a software company, Hyper-V and our products run on hardware. I office from home and I’ve put together a pretty good lab, but it hasn’t been easy for me to keep up with...