Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

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Fri, 16 May 2008 16:25:46 GMT

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re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

Sam — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:48:41 GMT

Matt, 600Kb hypervisor is great....But aren't all of the VM's reliant upon VM1 being available? E.g. if the kernel on VM1 TRAPS then VM1 crashes along with all of the other VMs on the machine?

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

mattmcspirit — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:44:55 GMT

Hi Sam,

You're dead right - VM1, being the parent, is a single point of failure, so it's a good job that the team have built a Server OS, i.e. the parent, to be as stable as possible.

The recommendations will be to run Hyper-V as a role on it's own, so don't have the server doing a load of other roles, such as being a web server, and a domain controller and so on. The other recommendation, and this is what we see as the main recommendation, will be to use the Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008, and enable Hyper-V in this environment. This way, you have a very small footprint, low attack surface, reduced overhead, and reduced patching. We then envisage people managing the system remotely, from another machine or a centralised management platform like Virtual Machine Manager.

So, in summary, the parent partition is the single point of failure (at least for now), but the Windows team have created a very stable OS, already on SP1 code, and using the Server Core install will ensure that the parent partition is doing the exact job you want it to do, in a secure, reliable and scalable way.

Hope that helps,

Matt

Long Time no Blog....

Exchange and UC — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:01:03 GMT

It has been a busy time over the last couple months. Microsoft are in the last quarter of their financial

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

Virt Noobie — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:35:58 GMT

600K for server core + hypervisor? That would be amazing. Please tell me its true..

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

mattmcspirit — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:34:28 GMT

Hi,

Unfortunately not - it's 600k for just the Hypervisor. The Parent Partition will vary in size depending on whether you choose to deploy Server Core or Full Windows Server 2008. Server Core will ensure a minimal footprint, and you can even strip out the other roles that you aren't using on the Server Core box to reduce size still further.

Cheers,

Matt

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

Hari — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:11:34 GMT

Hi,

Your blog is very explanatory. Appreciate your time.

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

Hari — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:17:09 GMT

In VSC/VSP world, VSP writes in to the hardware directly. What is the hypervisor role in that scenario?

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

Tejas — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:55:58 GMT

Awesome job.....now thing are much clear

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

mattmcspirit — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:54:38 GMT

Hi Hari,

My understanding of the VSP/VSC Hypervisor relationship in the scenario you describe is that the VSC (Virtual Service Consumer) communicated with the VSP (Virtual Service Provider) in the Parent Partition over VMbus, and i believe that VMbus does not provide a mechanism for partitions to directly communicate with the hypervisor but it does rely on the hypervisor to establish the communication channels between partitions. Once communication has been established, I believe that the VSP communicates directly with hardware, rather than with the Hypervisor itself.

You may find this video very useful: http://edge.technet.com/Media/Hyper-V-how-it-works-Interview-with-PMs-Part-1/?tapm=A89S35A08 - look at about 4mins on the video.

Thanks,

Matt

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

Atul — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:36:09 GMT

Hi,

Interesting Article.

Can an IHV provide both VSP/VSC components to optimize performance? Can IHVs take advantage of this knowledge when desiging the hardware?

Thanks,

Atul.

re: Getting my head around the Hyper-V architecture...

mattmcspirit — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:32:15 GMT

Hi Atul,

That's a great question, and in all honesty, I'm not 100% sure. For definate, the closest we come around an IHV tuning components for Virtualisation is Intel-VT, or AMD-V, where they are building specific hypervisor awareness and capability into the chipsets. This is now moving forward into memory, with Extended and Nested Page Tables.

I'm sure this is something that vendors are onboard with now, and going forward into the future, where I'm sure we'll see even more native performance for a VM.

Thanks,

Matt