Category: Virtualization

Hyper-V Network Virtualization Packet Flow

Microsoft is providing free for download presentation on Hyper-V Network Virtualization Packet Flow. You can use that presentation to understand the topic. Download it from here.

VHDX Format Specification

For those who want to go deep in Hyper-V technologies they can do it by reading VHDX Format Specifications.

Free Whitepaper from Veeam on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012

Veeam is providing a free for download whitepaper on Hyper-V 3.0. The whitepaper is written by Greg Shields a Microsoft MVP and gives answers to 7 questions:

  • Must your storage strategy evolve to meet Hyper-V’s new capabilities?
  • Will VHDX impact your datacenter operations?
  • Will SMB 3.0 and SOFS impact where you capture backups?
  • Will your Hyper-V backups support deduplication?
  • Is now the time to implement disaster recovery?
  • Which is right for me: Multisite Clustering or VM replication?
  • Is your site-to-site network sufficient?

Find out the answer to these questions by downloading the whitepaper from here.

Several new downloads after System Center 2012 SP1 beta was released

A couple of hours after beta of SP1 for System Center 2012 was released some additional related downloads were released:

System Center 2012 SP1 BETA is now available

Great news we now have beta version that we can test and provide feedback. From what I hear is that RTM could be available before end of the year or early next year. The downloads are located here. Some of the new features are:

  • Virtual Machine Manager
    • Improved Support for Network Virtualization
    • Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
    • Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
    • Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image
  • Configuration Manager
    • Deployment and management of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
    • Distribution point for Windows Azure to help reduce infrastructure costs
    • Automation of administrative tasks through PowerShell support
    • Management of Mac OS X clients and Linux and UNIX servers
    • Real-time administrative actions for Endpoint Protection related tasks
  • Data Protection Manager
    • Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
    • Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
    • Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
    • Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration
  • App Controller
    • Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
    • Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center
  • Operations Manager
    • Support for IIS 8
    • Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
    • Azure SDK support
  • Orchestrator
    • Support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
    • Manage VMM self-service User Roles
    • Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
    • Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds
  • Service Manager
    • Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
    • Create chargeback reports
    • Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets
  • Server App-V
    • Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
    • Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server