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John Savill

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Build a seamless, flexible, full-service datacenter solution Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V is the IT administrator's guide to this rising datacenter solution. Hyper-V has already surpassed VMWare in datacenter management, identity service for multiple devices, and more; this book shows you how to harness the power of this hypervisor to simplify the infrastructure, reduce costs, improve productivity, and better manage system resources. From a tour of the technology through architecture, deployment, and integration of System Center, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Azure Stack, the discussion illustrates the skills you need to create a complete solution for optimum enterprise management. Coverage includes Windows Azure capabilities for virtual machines, managing a hybrid cloud, IaaS, storage capabilities, PowerShell, and more, with practical real-world guidance from a leading authority in the field. Hyper-V has recently undergone improvements in scalability and features that have positioned it as an ideal solution in the Small/Medium Business and Enterprise markets. This book shows you how to exploit these new capabilities to build a robust data solution for your organization. * Discover the capabilities of Microsoft Hyper-V * Architect a Hyper-V datacenter solution * Plan and manage a deployment or migration * Integrate complementary technologies for full scalability Data is everywhere--on desktops, laptops, phones, and multiple operating systems, accessed through email, text messages, web searches, online services, and more. All of this data must be stored, accessible, updated, backed up, secured, managed, sorted, and analyzed--sometimes instantly. Hyper-V is the rising star in the virtualization space, and Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V shows you how to turn greater capabilities into better datacenter solutions.

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Mastering Windows Server®

2016 Hyper- V®

John Savill

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Kenyon Brown

Development Editor: Gary Schwartz

Production Editor: Christine O’Connor

Copy Editor: Sharon Wilkey

Editorial Manager: Mary Beth Wakefield

Production Manager: Kathleen Wisor

Executive Editor: Jim Minatel

Book Designers: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama and Judy Fung

Proofreader: Nancy Carrasco

Indexer: Ted Laux

Project Coordinator, Cover: Brent Savage

Cover Designer: Wiley

Cover Image: dotshock/Shutterstock

Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-119-28618-9 ISBN: 978-1-119-28621-9 (ebk.) ISBN: 978-1-119-28620-2 (ebk.)

Manufactured in the United States of America

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

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Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

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TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Windows Server and Hyper-V are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

For my wife, Julie, and my children, Abby, Ben, and Kevin. My everythings.

Acknowledgments

I could not have written this book without the help and support of many people. First I need to thank my wife, Julie, for putting up with me for being busier than usual the last six months and for picking up the slack as always—and for always supporting the crazy things I want to do. My children, Abby, Ben, and Kevin, always make all the work worthwhile; they can turn the worst, most tiring day into a good one with a smile and a laugh.

Of course, the book wouldn’t be possible at all without the Wiley team: senior acquisitions editor Kenyon Brown, development editor Gary Schwartz, production editor Christine O’Connor, copy editor Sharon Wilkey, and proofreader Nancy Carrasco.

Many people have helped me over the years with encouragement and technical knowledge, and this book is the sum of that. The following people helped out on specific aspects of this book, and I want to thank them and give them the credit they deserve for helping make this book as good as possible (if I’ve missed anyone, I’m truly sorry): Theo Thompson, Mathew John, Jake Oshins, Chris Huybregts, Neil Peterson, Jim Wooldridge, Steven Ekren, Michael Gray, Darren Moss, Claus Joergensen, Dean Wells, Nir Ben Zvi, Andrew Mason, Jian Yan, Simon Gurevich, Shivam Garg, Elden Christensen, Jason Messer, Taylor Brown, Manish Jha, Shon Shah, Pradeep Reddy, Don Stanwyck, Greg Cusanza, Paul Kimbel, Scott Willwerth, and Tim Aranki.

About the Author

John Savill is a technical specialist who focuses on Microsoft core infrastructure technologies including Windows, Hyper‐V, System Center, and anything that does something cool. He has been working with Microsoft technologies for 20 years. He is the creator of the highly popular NTFAQ.com website and a senior contributing editor for Windows IT Pro magazine. He has written seven previous books covering Windows, Azure, Hyper‐V, and advanced Active Directory architecture. When he is not writing books, he writes magazine articles and white papers; creates many technology videos, which are available on his YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/ntfaqguy; and presents online and at industry‐leading events, including TechEd, Ignite, and Windows Connections. When he was writing this book, he had just completed running his annual series of Master Classes, which include classes on Azure, Hyper‐V, PowerShell, and the complete Microsoft stack. John also has online courses on Pluralsight and O’Reilly.

Outside technology, John enjoys cardio and weight training. In fact, while writing this book, he was training for his third full Ironman triathlon in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

John tries to update his blog at www.savilltech.com/blog with the latest news of what he is working on and also tweets at @NTFAQGuy.

Contents

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

Chapter 1 Introduction to Virtualization and Microsoft Solutions

The Evolution of the Datacenter

History of Hyper-V

Licensing of Hyper-V

The Role of System Center with Hyper-V

Clouds and Services

The Bottom Line

Chapter 2 Virtual Machine Resource Fundamentals

Understanding VMBus

The Anatomy of a Virtual Machine

Processor Resources

Memory Resources

Virtual Storage

The Bottom Line

Chapter 3 Virtual Networking

Virtual Switch Fundamentals

Extensible Switch

VLANs and PVLANS

How SCVMM Simplifies Networking with Hyper-V

Network Virtualization

VMQ, RSS, and SR-IOV

NIC Teaming

Host Virtual Adapters and Types of Networks Needed in a Hyper-V Host

Types of Guest Network Adapters

Monitoring Virtual Traffic

The Bottom Line

Chapter 4 Storage Configurations

Storage Fundamentals and VHDX

Storage Spaces and Windows as a Storage Solution

Server Message Block Usage

iSCSI with Hyper-V

Understanding Virtual Fibre Channel

Leveraging Shared VHDX and VHD Sets

Data Deduplication and Hyper-V

Storage Quality of Service

SAN Storage and SCVMM

The Bottom Line

Chapter 5 Managing Hyper-V

Installing Hyper-V

Hyper-V Management Tools

Securing the Hyper-V Server

Creating and Managing a Virtual Machine

Shielded VMs and Host Guardian Service

Creating and Using Hyper-V Templates

Hyper-V Integration Services and Supported Operating Systems

Migrating Physical Servers and Virtual Machines to Hyper-V Virtual Machines

Upgrading and Migrating from Previous Versions

The Bottom Line

Chapter 6 Maintaining a Hyper-V Environment

Patch Planning and Implementation

Malware Configurations

Backup Planning

Defragmentation with Hyper-V

Using Checkpoints

Using Service Templates

Performance Tuning and Monitoring with Hyper-V

The Bottom Line

Chapter 7 Failover Clustering and Migration Technologies

Failover Clustering Basics

Understanding Quorum and Why It’s Important

Quorum Basics

Why Use Clustering with Hyper-V?

Configuring a Hyper-V Cluster

Creating Clusters with SCVMM

Using Cluster Shared Volumes

Making a Virtual Machine a Clustered Virtual Machine

Live Migration

Dynamic Optimization and Resource Balancing

The Bottom Line

Chapter 8 Hyper-V Replica and Cloud Orchestration

The Need for Disaster Recovery and DR Basics

Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Replication

Introduction to Hyper-V Replica

Enabling Hyper-V Replica

Configuring Hyper-V Replica

Using Hyper-V Replica Broker

Performing Hyper-V Replica Failover

Sizing a Hyper-V Replica Solution

Using Hyper-V Replica Cloud Orchestration for Automated Failover with Azure Site Recovery

Architecting the Right Disaster-Recovery Solution

The Bottom Line

Chapter 9 Implementing the Private Cloud, SCVMM, and Microsoft Azure Stack

The Benefits of the Private Cloud

Private Cloud Components

SCVMM Fundamentals

Creating a Private Cloud by Using System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Granting Users Access to the Private Cloud

How the Rest of System Center Fits into Your Private Cloud Architecture

Understanding Microsoft Azure Stack

The Bottom Line

Chapter 10 Containers and Docker

Challenge of Application Deployment

Hyper-V Nested Virtualization

Windows Container Fundamentals

Windows Server Containers vs. Hyper-V Containers

Docker

Installing the Container Feature

Creating and Managing Containers

Using Containers in Your Organization

The Bottom Line

Chapter 11 Remote Desktop Services

Remote Desktop Services and Bring Your Own Device

Microsoft Desktop and Session Virtualization Technologies

Requirements for a Complete Desktop Virtualization Solution

Creating the VDI Template

Deploying a New VDI Collection Using Scenario-Based Deployment

Using RemoteFX

Remote Desktop Protocol Capabilities

Using Multipoint Services

Choosing the Right Desktop Virtualization Technology

The Bottom Line

Chapter 12 Microsoft Azure IaaS, Storage, and Networking

Understanding Public Cloud “as a Service”

When Are Public Cloud Services the Best Solution?

Microsoft Azure 101

Capabilities of Azure IaaS and How It Is Purchased

Creating Virtual Machines in Azure IaaS

Migrating Virtual Machines Between Hyper-V and Azure IaaS

The Bottom Line

Chapter 13 Bringing It All Together with a  Best-of-Breed Cloud Solution

Which Is the Right Technology to Choose?

Enabling Single-Pane-of-Glass Management

The Bottom Line

Appendix The Bottom Line

Chapter 1: Introduction to Virtualization and Microsoft Solutions

Chapter 2: Virtual Machine Resource Fundamentals

Chapter 3: Virtual Networking

Chapter 4: Storage Configurations

Chapter 5: Managing Hyper-V

Chapter 6: Maintaining a Hyper-V Environment

Chapter 7: Failover Clustering and Migration Technologies

Chapter 8: Hyper-V Replica and Cloud Orchestration

Chapter 9: Implementing the Private Cloud, SCVMM, and Microsoft Azure Stack

Chapter 10: Containers and Docker

Chapter 11: Remote Desktop Services

Chapter 12: Microsoft Azure IaaS, Storage, and Networking

Chapter 13: Bringing It All Together with a Best-of-Breed Cloud Solution

EULA

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Table 1.1

Table 1.2

Table 1.3

Chapter 2

Table 2.1

Table 2.2

Table 2.3

Table 2.1

Chapter 3

Table 3.1

Table 3.2

Chapter 4

Table 4.1

Chapter 5

Table 5.1

Table 5.2

Chapter 7

Table 7.1

Table 7.2

Chapter 10

Table 10.1

Chapter 12

Table 12.1

Table 12.2

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1

The Device Manager view of a typical physical server, with Task Manager showing some of its available resources

Figure 1.2

A high-level view of a virtualization host and resources assigned to virtual machines

Figure 1.3

A virtual machine running on a physical server

Figure 1.4

Hyper-V architecture

Figure 1.5

A high-level view of the Live Migration process

Figure 1.6

Linux virtual machine running on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V with 64 vCPUs

Figure 1.7

The major new features of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

Figure 1.8

Extended Hyper-V Replica allows different replication intervals between the replicas

Figure 1.9

Using stacked Standard licenses for virtual machines

Figure 1.10

Moving Standard licenses to enable licensed virtual machine migrations

Figure 1.11

Required Standard licensing to enable virtual machine mobility

Figure 1.12

Using Datacenter to enable an unlimited number of virtual machines on the hosts for full mobility

Figure 1.13

Components of System Center

Figure 1.14

The key types of management and how they are owned for the types of cloud service

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1

The monolithic and microkernelized hypervisors

Figure 2.2

Task Manager showing a single

vmms.exe

instance and many

vmwp.exe

instances

Figure 2.3

Hyper-V VMBus architecture

Figure 2.4

The BIOS configurations possible for a generation 1 virtual machine. The boot order can be changed using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

Figure 2.5

Adding a SCSI controller to a generation 1 virtual machine

Figure 2.6

Generation 1 compared to generation 2 hardware

Figure 2.7

VM configuration upgrade using Hyper-V Manager

Figure 2.8

Task Manager in Logical Processor view showing the physical processors and logical processor details

Figure 2.9

A view of logical processor to virtual processor mapping

Figure 2.10

A virtual processor from a single-processor VM assigned to a logical processor on the host

Figure 2.11

A virtual machine with multiple virtual processors being scheduled to the available logical processors

Figure 2.12

Configuration options for the NUMA configuration of a virtual machine

Figure 2.13

Changing the NUMA spanning option for a Hyper-V server

Figure 2.14

Configuring Dynamic Memory settings for a virtual machine

Figure 2.15

An operating system with only 4MB of free memory but still plenty of available memory

Figure 2.16

The inflation of the balloon driver to allow Hyper-V to reclaim memory from a virtual machine

Figure 2.17

Error message when a memory change can be only partially completed

Figure 2.18

The key types of VHD disks

Figure 2.19

Selecting the size or source content for a new virtual hard disk

Figure 2.20

The basic information about a virtual hard disk shown by the Inspect Disk option

Figure 2.21

Memory resources for a graphical device

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1

The three types of virtual switches available in Hyper-V

Figure 3.2

Primary configuration page for a new virtual switch

Figure 3.3

How traffic flows through the extensible switch and registered extensions for the inbound path

Figure 3.4

Enabling extensions for a virtual switch in Hyper-V

Figure 3.5

The VFP place with the VMSwitch

Figure 3.6

The flow-caching hash lookup used in the VFP

Figure 3.7

Three VLANs in a two-rack configuration. For redundancy, each ToR has a connection to two separate aggregation switches.

Figure 3.8

New VM in VLAN 20 added to the host in the second rack, and the changes to the switch VLAN configuration required

Figure 3.9

Setting the VLAN ID for a virtual machine's network adapter

Figure 3.10

PVLAN overview and the three types

Figure 3.11

Enabling a PVLAN by using SCVMM on a new logical network

Figure 3.12

Using SCVMM to create multiple isolated PVLANs that use the same secondary VLAN ID

Figure 3.13

Common networks seen in a datacenter with virtualization

Figure 3.14

High-level view of logical networks

Figure 3.15

Viewing the security settings for the built-in Guest Dynamic IP virtual port profile

Figure 3.16

The steps for SCVMM network configuration

Figure 3.17

Disabling the automatic creation of logical networks in SCVMM 2016

Figure 3.18

Creating a logical network that represents a connected collection of sites

Figure 3.19

Adding a single site to a logical network

Figure 3.20

Creating a VLAN-based logical network

Figure 3.21

Choose the site for a new IP pool or create a new one.

Figure 3.22

Configuring the IP address range for the IP pool

Figure 3.23

The complete logical network and VM network configuration

Figure 3.24

Setting the options for a new uplink port profile and NIC Teaming options

Figure 3.25

Selecting the network sites that can be connected to by using the uplink port profile

Figure 3.26

Selecting the type of uplink to be used in the switch

Figure 3.27

Selecting the adapters to be used for the logical switch deployment

Figure 3.28

Viewing the status of logical switch deployment

Figure 3.29

Viewing the status of logical switch modification to SET mode

Figure 3.30

High-level overview of network virtualization

Figure 3.31

High-level overview of network virtualization using NVGRE

Figure 3.32

The three planes that enable network virtualization for HNVv1

Figure 3.33

The three planes that enable network virtualization for HNVv2

Figure 3.34

The SLB implementation of HNVv2

Figure 3.35

Security layers with SDNv2

Figure 3.36

Example use of the datacenter firewall restricting traffic flow

Figure 3.37

Understanding the VMQ and SR-IOV network technologies compared to regular networking

Figure 3.38

Enabling SR-IOV on a virtual switch at creation time

Figure 3.39

Ensuring that VMQ is enabled for a virtual machine

Figure 3.40

Network performance without vRSS enabled

Figure 3.41

Network performance with vRSS enabled

Figure 3.42

A nonconverged Hyper-V host configuration with separate 1Gbps NIC teams for each type of traffic

Figure 3.43

A converged Hyper-V host configuration with a shared NIC team used

Figure 3.44

A converged Hyper-V host configuration with separate NICs for SMB (RDMA) traffic

Figure 3.45

A converged Hyper-V host configuration with shared NICs for SMB (RDMA) traffic

Figure 3.46

Breakdown of features and offloads by type of networking

Figure 3.47

Primary properties for a network adapter

Figure 3.48

VMSwitch network speed shown inside the guest

Figure 3.49

Configuring the remote traffic to capture by using Message Analyzer

Figure 3.50

Example view of captured traffic

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1

An error occurs as the administrator tries to disable write caching within a virtual machine. Applications would receive a similar error condition.

Figure 4.2

A virtual machine with 20GB of space unallocated

Figure 4.3

Creating a new virtual disk within a storage space

Figure 4.4

Storage Spaces architecture showing a hot block moving from the HDD tier to the SSD tier

Figure 4.5

Selecting the resiliency for a 2016 virtual disk

Figure 4.6

High-level view of Storage Spaces Direct utilizing SMB 3 to aggregate local storage for nodes in a cluster

Figure 4.7

The two types of deployment model for Storage Spaces Direct

Figure 4.8

Storage Spaces Direct workings under the hood

Figure 4.9

Storage Replica use scenarios

Figure 4.10

Storage Replica placement in the filesystem stack

Figure 4.11

Storage Replica synchronous replication workings

Figure 4.12

Storage Replica working with Storage Spaces Direct

Figure 4.13

Enabling active-active through the selection of Scale-Out File Server For Application Data

Figure 4.14

Using a Scale-Out File Server in front of a SAN

Figure 4.15

Using a Scale-Out File Server and a clustered storage space

Figure 4.16

A virtual machine using SMB for its storage

Figure 4.17

Selecting the options for the new iSCSI VHDX target

Figure 4.18

Connecting to a new iSCSI target using the built-in iSCSI Initiator

Figure 4.19

Using virtual Fibre Channel with Hyper-V

Figure 4.20

Problem with the ports that will block using in a virtual SAN

Figure 4.21

Enabling NPIV using the OneCommand Manager tool

Figure 4.22

A virtual SAN using one of the available HBA ports

Figure 4.23

A virtual Fibre Channel adapter for a virtual machine

Figure 4.24

The A set of WWPNs being used

Figure 4.25

The B set of WWPNs being used

Figure 4.26

A view of a single disk without MPIO

Figure 4.27

A view of a single disk with MPIO

Figure 4.28

Setting a VHDX file as shared

Figure 4.29

VHD Set files on disk

Figure 4.30

Creating a VHD Set

Figure 4.31

Adding a VHD Set to a VM

Figure 4.32

Using differencing disks in a VDI environment

Figure 4.33

Configuring QoS for a disk

Figure 4.34

A view of storage managed by SCVMM 2012 R2

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1

Configuration levels available in Windows Server 2012 R2

Figure 5.2

Nano Server Recovery Console

Figure 5.3

Windows Server 2016 installation choices

Figure 5.4

Windows Server 2016 configuration levels

Figure 5.5

Adding the Hyper-V Management Tools to Windows 10

Figure 5.6

Using Server Management Tools with on-premises OS instances

Figure 5.7

Gateway deployment guidance for Server Management Tools

Figure 5.8

Server Management Tools instance in Azure with tools available

Figure 5.9

Local management tools are not wanted on a Hyper-V server that should be at the Server Core configuration level.

Figure 5.10

Selecting the protocol to be used for the new server to be provisioned

Figure 5.11

Selecting to install only the VMM console on a client operating system

Figure 5.12

All key Hyper-V management environments running on a Windows 10 client

Figure 5.13

The Hyper-V Manager interface

Figure 5.14

Specifying alternate credentials to manage a remote Hyper-V server

Figure 5.15

A virtual machine running at 100 percent processor utilization showing only 3 percent usage of a 24-core Hyper-V host

Figure 5.16

Detail tabs for a virtual machine

Figure 5.17

Changing the keyboard behavior when the keyboard is connected to a virtual machine

Figure 5.18

Configuring actions for a specific new user role

Figure 5.19

Viewing the PowerShell used by SCVMM

Figure 5.20

Selecting the method to install the operating system into the virtual machine

Figure 5.21

Manually launching

vmconnect.exe

allows you to select the host and virtual machine.

Figure 5.22

The connection dialog box when connecting using Enhanced Session Mode

Figure 5.23

Conditional forwarder for HGS DNS zone

Figure 5.24

Properties for a shielded VM

Figure 5.25

Console access and PowerShell Direct blocked for shielded VM

Figure 5.26

The full detail of a template creation using SCVMM

Figure 5.27

Modifying a template within SCVMM

Figure 5.28

Selecting a template as the source for a new virtual machine

Figure 5.29

Setting a virtual machine to be highly available and therefore requiring deployment to a cluster

Figure 5.30

The ratings for possible hosts

Figure 5.31

A complete SCVMM VM deployment from a template

Figure 5.32

Registry within a virtual machine showing information about the host

Figure 5.33

Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 cluster rolling upgrade

Figure 5.34

Continued Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 cluster rolling upgrade

Chapter 6

Figure 6.1

Adding a WSUS server to SCVMM

Figure 6.2

Viewing the compliance details for a noncompliant node

Figure 6.3

Cluster maintenance configuration in Configuration Manager

Figure 6.4

Example view of protection using DPM

Figure 6.5

Checkpoint configuration for a VM

Figure 6.6

A VM with two checkpoints

Figure 6.7

Example of a checkpoint life cycle

Figure 6.8

Update sequence number problems when applying a snapshot to a domain controller.

Figure 6.9

The default tiering options for a new service template. You’ll see that a three-tier application is also available if you scroll down.

Figure 6.10

The Service Designer

Figure 6.11

Only 64 processors are visible on the Hyper-V host of an 80-processor system.

Figure 6.12

A nice view of the key resources for my Hyper-V host using the report display output type

Figure 6.13

Viewing resource pools in Hyper-V Manager

Figure 6.14

Operations Manager view of virtual machines

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1

The components of a failover cluster

Figure 7.2

Quorum in a failover cluster

Figure 7.3

Viewing the block blobs used in an Azure storage account for the cloud witness

Figure 7.4

Dynamic quorum in action

Figure 7.5

Changing the votes for nodes in a cluster

Figure 7.6

Viewing the current voting state of a cluster

Figure 7.7

Two remaining nodes in a cluster

Figure 7.8

Force Quorum resiliency in action

Figure 7.9

Service retry actions

Figure 7.10

Enabling monitoring of a service

Figure 7.11

Configuring a protected network on a virtual machine network adapter

Figure 7.12

Cluster operations settings in Configuration Manager 2016

Figure 7.13

Setting affinity by using SCVMM

Figure 7.14

Guest cluster running within a Hyper-V host cluster

Figure 7.15

Binding for network adapters used for cluster communications

Figure 7.16

Disabling NetBIOS for the IPv4 protocol

Figure 7.17

Setting the network adapter binding order

Figure 7.18

Cluster network properties

Figure 7.19

Cluster network properties

Figure 7.20

Cluster network properties

Figure 7.21

The empty Failover Cluster Manager interface

Figure 7.22

Cluster tests available

Figure 7.23

Cluster validation in progress

Figure 7.24

Shared volumes

Figure 7.25

Viewing the networking available for a cluster

Figure 7.26

Making a cluster disk a CSV

Figure 7.27

Viewing cluster shared volumes in Explorer

Figure 7.28

Cluster Shared Volume normal operation

Figure 7.29

Cluster Shared Volume in redirected mode

Figure 7.30

Creating a new clustered virtual machine using Failover Cluster Manager

Figure 7.31

Selecting the virtual machines to be made clustered resources

Figure 7.32

Setting the high availability option for a virtual machine

Figure 7.33

The complete Live Migration process

Figure 7.34

Setting the Live Migration network for a cluster

Figure 7.35

Enabling Live Migration for a stand-alone Hyper-V host

Figure 7.36

The different storage objects for a virtual machine

Figure 7.37

The storage objects for a virtual machine

Figure 7.38

Setting the advanced configurations for Live Migration

Figure 7.39

Dynamic Optimization options for a host group

Figure 7.40

Power Optimization options for a host group

Figure 7.41

Setting a placement rule for a host group

Figure 7.42

Configuring node fairness using Failover Cluster Manager

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1

Enabling inbound replication for a Hyper-V server

Figure 8.2

Recovery-point configuration

Figure 8.3

Configuring an alternate IP configuration to be used during failover

Figure 8.4

Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V extended replication

Figure 8.5

Enabling inbound replication for the Hyper-V Replica Broker role

Figure 8.6

Viewing the health of replication

Figure 8.7

Selecting the point in time for the test failover

Figure 8.8

Performing a planned failover

Figure 8.9

Selecting the VHDs to use for the planner

Figure 8.10

Example of the capacity planner tool in action

Figure 8.11

ASR architectural overview for Hyper-V to Hyper-V replication

Figure 8.12

ASR architectural overview for replication from Hyper-V to Azure

Figure 8.13

View of Azure storage account containing Hyper-V Replica target VM

Figure 8.14

Creating a new Recovery Services vault

Figure 8.15

Getting started with replication to Azure

Chapter 9

Figure 9.1

Traditional process for requesting virtual machines that is hands-on for the administrator

Figure 9.2

Provisioning process when using private cloud

Figure 9.3

All elements of the SCVMM console change based on the current workspace and selected element of the workspace.

Figure 9.4

On the left is the view for a normal SCVMM administrator, while on the right is the view for a Replicated Cloud tenant administrator.

Figure 9.5

Specifying the library server for a specific host group

Figure 9.6

Attaching an ISO by using SCVMM from the library

Figure 9.7

Selecting the host group that is available for utilization by the cloud

Figure 9.8

Selecting the logical networks available to the cloud

Figure 9.9

Selecting the storage classifications available to the cloud

Figure 9.10

Configuring the capacity for the cloud

Figure 9.11

Custom capability profile

Figure 9.12

Setting the quotas for a specific tenant

Figure 9.13

A basic Orchestrator runbook

Figure 9.14

Service catalog view in Service Manager of request offerings that call Orchestrator runbooks

Figure 9.15

Creating a new VM by using Windows Azure Pack's web interface

Figure 9.16

A view of a distributed service and its various services visible through Operations Manager

Figure 9.17

The Fabric Health dashboard for a SCVMM cloud

Figure 9.18

The core VMs used by Azure Stack in a single-box deployment with TP1 at top and TP2 at bottom

Figure 9.19

The Azure Stack portal experience

Chapter 10

Figure 10.1

Traditional virtualization-hosting applications vs. applications running in containers

Figure 10.2

Windows Server containers vs. Hyper-V containers

Figure 10.3

Windows Server 2016 container architecture with Docker

Figure 10.4

Container networking with NAT mode

Figure 10.5

Container networking with Transparent mode

Figure 10.6

Container layers

Figure 10.7

Two options for updating images

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1

Session virtualization using Remote Desktop Session Host

Figure 11.2

VDI solution in action

Figure 11.3

The full VDI implementation has many components to give a rich capability set while being invisible to the end user.

Figure 11.4

Adding a new connection

Figure 11.5

How RD Gateway works

Figure 11.6

Providing the complete user experience

Figure 11.7

User profile disk configuration options

Figure 11.8

Selecting the virtual machine to be the reference image for the VDI collection

Figure 11.9

Configuring the options for the VDI VM instances

Figure 11.10

The deployed VDI collection

Figure 11.11

The deployed VDI collection filesystem content for the virtual hard disks

Figure 11.12

Seeing the VDI collection in RD Web Access

Figure 11.13

A RemoteFX vGPU-enabled virtual machine

Figure 11.14

Enabling a GPU for use with RemoteFX

Figure 11.15

RemoteFX 3D video adapter options for a virtual machine

Figure 11.16

Showing the supported version of RDP

Figure 11.17

A view of published applications on an iOS device using the Microsoft client

Figure 11.18

MultiPoint Services RDS deployment type

Figure 11.19

Session-based virtualization and VDI high-level overview

Chapter 12

Figure 12.1

The key types of public cloud services

Figure 12.2

The key types of highly variable workloads that are a great fit for consumption-based pricing

Figure 12.3

The four main building blocks of the Microsoft Azure platform

Figure 12.4

Basic credit status of your Microsoft Azure account

Figure 12.5

A connection to my Minecraft server running in Microsoft Azure

Figure 12.7

Disk view within a Microsoft Azure IaaS virtual machine

Figure 12.8

Sample of the Microsoft Azure pricing calculator

Figure 12.9

Viewing the recently completed and currently running operations in Microsoft Azure

Figure 12.10

Properties of a new availability set

Figure 12.11

Viewing the fault domain and update domains for an availability set

Figure 12.12

Interacting with Azure Storage by using Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer

Figure 12.13

Options for a new data disk attached to a virtual machine

Figure 12.14

Typical organizational data volume over time

Figure 12.15

Connectivity when using virtual networks

Figure 12.16

Viewing available IP addresses within a virtual subnet

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Introduction

The book you are holding is the result of 20 years of experience in the IT world and over 15 years of virtualization experience that started with VMware and includes Virtual PC and now Hyper‐V. My goal for this book is simple: to help you become knowledgeable and effective when it comes to architecting and managing a Hyper‐V‐based virtual environment. This means not only understanding how Hyper‐V works and its capabilities, but also knowing when to leverage other technologies to provide the most complete and optimal solution. That means leveraging System Center and Microsoft Azure, which I also cover because they relate to Hyper‐V. I also dive into some key technologies of Windows Server that bring benefits to Hyper‐V.

Hyper‐V is now a mature and widely adopted virtualization solution. It is one of only two x86 server virtualization solutions in Gartner’s leader quadrant. In addition to being used by many of the largest companies in the world, Hyper‐V powers Microsoft Azure, which is one of the largest cloud services in the world.

Hyper‐V is a role of Windows Server. If you are a Windows administrator, you will find Hyper‐V management fairly intuitive, but there are still many key areas that require attention. I have structured this book to cover the key principles of virtualization and the resources that you will manage with Hyper‐V before I cover installing and configuring Hyper‐V itself and then move on to advanced topics such as high availability, replication, private cloud, and more.

I am a strong believer in learning by doing, and therefore I highly encourage you to try out all of the technologies and principles I cover in this book. You don’t need a huge lab environment. For most topics, you could use a single machine with Windows Server installed and 8GB of memory to enable a few virtual machines to run concurrently. Ideally, though, having at least two servers will help with the replication and high‐availability concepts. In this book, sometimes you’ll see step‐by‐step instructions to guide you through a process, sometimes I link to an external source that already has a good step‐by‐step guide, and sometimes I link to videos that I have posted to ensure maximum understanding. With Windows 10, Hyper‐V is included in the box, so even without any kind of server, it is possible to explore many of the Hyper‐V technologies.

I have created an application that is available for various platforms: Mastering Hyper‐V 2016. It provides easy access to the external links, videos, and code samples that I use in this book. As you read each chapter, check out the application to find related content. The application can be downloaded from www.savilltech.com/mhv. Using the various platform stores also allows me to update it over time as required. Please get this application, as I will use it to add videos based on reader feedback that are not referenced in the main text and include additional information where required.

Who Should Read This Book

I am making certain assumptions regarding the reader:

You have basic Windows Server knowledge and can install Windows Server.

You have basic knowledge of PowerShell.

You have access to a Hyper‐V server to enable a test implementation of the many covered technologies.

This book is intended for anyone who wants to learn Hyper‐V. If you have a basic knowledge of virtualization or a competing technology, such as VMware, that will help, but it is not a requirement. I start off with a foundational understanding of each technology and then build on that to cover more‐advanced topics and configurations. If you are an architect, a consultant, an administrator, or really anyone who just wants better knowledge of Hyper‐V, this book is for you.

At times I go into advanced topics that may seem over your head. In those cases, don’t worry. Focus on the preceding elements that you understand, and implement and test them to solidify your understanding. Then, when you feel comfortable, come back to the more advanced topics. They will seem far simpler once your understanding of the foundational principles is solidified.

What’s Inside

Here is a glance at what’s in each chapter:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Virtualization and Microsoft Solutions This chapter focuses on the core value proposition of virtualization and how the datacenter has evolved. It covers the key changes and capabilities of Hyper‐V in addition to the role System Center plays in a Hyper‐V environment. I cover the types of cloud services available and how Hyper‐V forms the foundation of private cloud solutions.

Chapter 2: Virtual Machine Resource Fundamentals This chapter covers the core resources of a virtual machine, specifically architecture (generation 1 and generation 2 virtual machines), processor, and memory. You will learn about advanced configurations to enable many types of operating system support along with best practices for resource planning.

Chapter 3: Virtual Networking This chapter covers one of the most complicated aspects of virtualization, especially when using the new network virtualization capabilities in Hyper‐V. This chapter covers the key networking concepts, how to architect virtual networks, and how to configure them. I also cover networking using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and how to design and implement network virtualization v2 that is introduced in Windows Server 2016.

Chapter 4: Storage Configurations This chapter covers the storage options for Hyper‐V environments, including the VHD and VHDX formats, plus capabilities in Windows Server 2016 that help manage direct attached storage, including Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Replica. You will learn about storage technologies for virtual machines such as iSCSI, Virtual Fibre Channel, and shared VHDX; their relative advantages; as well as the storage migration and resize functions.

Chapter 5: Managing Hyper‐V This chapter walks you through the installation of and best practices for managing Hyper‐V. The basics of configuring virtual machines, installing operating systems, and using the Hyper‐V Integration Services are all covered. Strategies for migrating from other hypervisors, physical servers, and other versions of Hyper‐V are explored.

Chapter 6: Maintaining a Hyper‐V Environment This chapter focuses on the tasks required to keep Hyper‐V healthy after you’ve installed it, which includes patching, malware protection, backup, and monitoring. Key actions, such as taking checkpoints of virtual machines, setting up service templates, and performance tuning are covered.

Chapter 7: Failover Clustering and Migration Technologies This chapter covers making Hyper‐V highly available by using Failover Clustering, and it includes a deep dive into exactly what makes a cluster tick, specifically when running Hyper‐V. Key migration technologies such as Live Migration, Shared Nothing Live Migration, and Storage Migration are explored in addition to configurations related to mobility outside a cluster and placement optimization for virtual machines.

Chapter 8: Hyper‐V Replica and Cloud Orchestration This chapter shifts from high availability to a requirement of many organizations today: providing disaster‐recovery protection in the event of losing an entire site. This chapter looks at the options for disaster recovery, including leveraging Hyper‐V Replica, orchestrating failovers with Microsoft Azure in the event of a disaster, and using Azure as the DR target location.

Chapter 9: Implementing the Private Cloud, SCVMM, and Microsoft Azure Stack This chapter shows the many benefits of the Microsoft stack to organizations, beyond just virtualization. This chapter explores the key benefits of a private cloud and describes what a private cloud using Microsoft technologies looks like. Key components and functional areas, including the actual end‐user experience and how you can leverage all of System Center for different levels of private cloud capability, are all covered. The Microsoft Azure Stack solution is introduced and its key capabilities explored.

Chapter 10: Containers and Docker This chapter focuses on the new Windows and Hyper‐V container technologies available in Windows Server 2016. This chapter dives into the architectural components and management with Docker.

Chapter 11: Remote Desktop Services This chapter shifts the focus to another type of virtualization, virtualizing the end‐user experience, which is a critical capability for most organizations. Virtual desktop infrastructure is becoming a bigger component of the user environment. This chapter looks at the types of desktop virtualization available with Remote Desktop Services, with a focus on capabilities that are enabled by Hyper‐V, such as advanced graphical capabilities with RemoteFX.

Chapter 12: Microsoft Azure IaaS, Storage, and Networking This chapter explores the capabilities of one of the biggest public cloud services in the world, which is powered by Hyper‐V. This chapter covers the fundamentals of Microsoft Azure and how to create virtual machines in Microsoft Azure. The chapter also covers the networking options available both within Microsoft Azure and to connect to your on‐premises network. I examine the migration of virtual machines and how to leverage Azure Storage. Ways to provide a seamless management experience are also explored.

Chapter 13: Bringing It All Together with a Best‐of‐Breed Cloud Solution This chapter brings together all of the technologies and options to help architect a best‐of‐breed virtualization and cloud solution.

Don’t forget to download the companion Windows Store application, Mastering Hyper‐V, from www.savilltech.com/mhv.

The Mastering Series

The Mastering series from Sybex provides outstanding instruction for readers with intermediate and advanced skills in the form of top‐notch training and development for those already working in their field and clear, serious education for those aspiring to become pros. Every Mastering book includes the following elements:

Skill‐based instruction, with chapters organized around real tasks rather than abstract concepts or subjects

Self‐review test questions, so you can be certain that you’re equipped to do the job right

How to Contact the Author

I welcome feedback from you about this book or about books you’d like to see from me in the future. You can reach me by writing to [email protected]. For more information about my work, visit my website at www.savilltech.com and follow me on Twitter at @NTFAQGuy.

Sybex strives to keep you supplied with the latest tools and information that you need for your work. Please check the Sybex website at www.sybex.com/go/masteringhyperv2016, where we’ll post additional content and updates that supplement this book should the need arise.

Chapter 1Introduction to Virtualization and Microsoft Solutions

This chapter lays the foundation for the core fabric concepts and technologies discussed throughout not just this first part of this book, but the entire book. Virtualization has radically changed the layout and operation of the datacenter, and this datacenter evolution and its benefits are explored.

Microsoft’s solution for virtualization is its Hyper-V technology, which is a core part of Windows Server, and it is also available in the form of a free, stand-alone hypervisor. The virtualization layer is only part of the solution. Management is just as critical, and in today’s world, the public cloud is also a consideration. Thus a seamless management story with compatibility between your on- and off-premises resources provides the model implementation.

In this chapter, you will learn to:

Articulate the key value propositions of virtualization.

Understand the differences in functionality between the various versions of Hyper-V.

Differentiate between the types of cloud services and when each type is best utilized.

The Evolution of the Datacenter

Many books are available that go into a great amount of detail about the history of datacenters, but that is not the goal of the following sections. Instead, I am going to take you through the key changes that I have seen in my 20 years of working in and consulting about datacenter infrastructure. This brief look at the evolution of datacenters will help you understand the challenges of the past, why virtualization has become such a key component of every modern datacenter, and why there is still room for improvement.

One Box, One Operating System

As recent as 10 years ago, datacenters were all architected in a similar way. These huge rooms with very expensive cabling and air conditioning were home to hundreds, if not thousands, of servers. Some of these servers were mainframes, but the majority were regular servers (although today the difference between a mainframe and a powerful regular server is blurring). Although the processor architecture running in these servers may have been different—for example, some were x86 based, some Alpha, some MIPS, some SPARC—each server ran an operating system (OS) such as Windows, Linux, or OpenVMS. Some OSs supported different processor architectures, while others were limited to a specific architecture. Likewise, some processor architectures would dictate which OS had to be used. The servers themselves may have been freestanding, but as technology advanced, servers got smaller and became rack mountable, enabling greater compression of the datacenter.

UNDERSTANDING X86

Often, the term x86 is used when talking about processor architecture, but its use has been generalized beyond just the original Intel processors that built on the 8086. x86 does not refer only to Intel processors, but it is used more generally to refer to 32-bit operating systems running on any processor leveraging x86 instruction sets, including processors from AMD. x64 represents a 64-bit instruction set extension processor (primarily from Intel and AMD), although you may also see amd64 to denote 64-bit. What can be confusing is that a 64-bit processor is still technically x86, and it has become more common today simply to use x86 to identify anything based on x86 architecture, which could be 32-bit or 64-bit from other types of processor architecture. Therefore, if you see x86 within this book, or in other media, it does not mean 32-bit only.

Even with all this variation in types of server and operating systems, there was something they had in common. Each server ran a single OS, and that OS interacted directly with the hardware in the server and had to use hardware-specific drivers to utilize the available capabilities. In the rest of this book, I focus primarily on x86 Windows; however, many of the challenges and solutions apply to other OSs as well.

Every server comprises a number of resources, including processor, memory, network, and storage (although some modern servers do not have local storage such as blade systems, and instead rely completely on external storage subsystems). The amount of each resource can vary drastically, as shown in the following sections.

PROCESSOR

A server can have one or more processors, and it’s common to see servers with two, four, or eight processors (although it is certainly possible to have servers with more). Modern processors use a core architecture that allows a single processor to have multiple cores. Each core consists of a discrete central processing unit (CPU) and L1 cache (very fast memory used for temporary storage of information related to computations) able to perform its own computations. Those multiple cores can then share a common L2 cache (bigger but not as fast as L1) and bus interface. This allows a single physical processor to perform multiple parallel computations and actually act like many separate processors. The first multicore processors had two cores (dual-core), and this continues to increase with eight-core (octo-core) processors available and a new “many-core” generation on the horizon, which will have tens of processor cores. It is common to see a physical processor referred to as a socket, and each processor core referred to as a logical processor. For example, a dual-socket system with quad-core processors would have eight logical processors (four on each physical processor, and there are two processors). In addition to the number of sockets and cores, variations exist in the speed of the processors and the exact instruction sets supported. (It is because of limitations in the continued increase of clock speed that moving to multicore became the best way to improve overall computational performance, especially as modern operating systems are multithreaded and can take advantage of parallel computation.) Some processors also support hyperthreading, which is a means to split certain parts of a processor core into two parallel computational streams to avoid wasted processing. Hyperthreading does not double computational capability, but it generally gives a 10 to 15 percent performance boost. Typically with hyperthreading, this would therefore double the number of logical processors in a system. However, for virtualization, I prefer not to do this doubling, but this does not mean that I turn off hyperthreading. Hyperthreading may sometimes help, but it certainly won’t hurt.

IS THERE A BIG AND A LITTLE THREAD WITH HYPERTHREADING?

Hyperthreading enables two streams of execution on a single processor core, and you often hear numbers such as a 15 percent performance improvement. This leads to the belief that there is the main thread on the core and then a little “mini-me” thread that has a smaller capability. This is not true. With hyperthreading, a single core has some components duplicated, enabling two sets of logical state per core. Typically, during a thread of execution, the core is not fully utilized for various reasons, such as when a particular instruction stream uses only specific types of ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit), leaving others unused, and more commonly when a cache miss occurs that causes the thread execution to stall while data is fetched. With hyperthreading and the two sets of logical state, if one thread is stalled because of a cache miss, the chances are good that the other thread can execute. This, therefore, keeps the core better utilized and improves the overall performance, and this is where the 15 percent performance gain comes from. Notice that both threads are equal and which one does more work just depends on how busy they are kept, the type of computations, the frequency of cache misses, and so on.

Earlier versions of Windows supported different processor architectures, including MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, and more recently Itanium. However, as of Windows Server 2012, the only supported processor architecture is x86 and specifically only 64-bit from Windows Server 2008 R2 and above. (There are still 32-bit versions of the Windows 8/8.1 client operating system.)

Prior to Windows Server 2008, there were separate versions of the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), depending on whether you had a uniprocessor or multiprocessor system. However, given the negligible performance savings on modern, faster processors that were specific to the uniprocessor HAL on single-processor systems (synchronization code for multiple processors was not present in the uniprocessor HAL), this was removed, enabling a single unified HAL that eases some of the pain caused by moving from uni- to multiprocessor systems.

MEMORY

The memory resource is generally far simpler, with fewer variations. Some memory supports error-correcting code (ECC), which provides resiliency against the most common types of internal corruption, and memory has different speeds. However, for most environments, the memory consideration is simply how much there is! Generally, the more memory, the better, and with only 64-bit versions of Windows Server, there are no longer considerations around the maximum amount of memory that can be used by an operating system (a 4GB limit exists for 32-bit operating systems).

STORAGE

Storage falls into one of two buckets: internal or external. If the storage is internal (direct-attached storage, or DAS), the disks are local to the server and attached via a technology such as SCSI, SATA, or SAS. (Even if the storage is in an external storage enclosure but is connected via one of these means, it is still considered direct-attached.) Alternatively, the storage is external, such as storage that is hosted on another server or on a storage area network (SAN) or on network-attached storage (NAS). Various protocols may be used for external storage access that offer either file-level or block-level access to the storage.

File-level access enables the requesting server to access files on the server, but this is offered over a protocol that hides the underlying filesystem and actual blocks of the file on disk. Examples of file-level protocols are Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File System (NFS), typically offered by NAS devices.

Block-level access enables the requesting server to see the blocks on the disk and effectively mount the disk, format the mounted disk with a filesystem, and then directly manipulate blocks on the disk. Block-level access is typically offered by SANs using protocols such as iSCSI (which leverages the TCP/IP network) and Fibre Channel (which requires dedicated hardware and cabling). Typically, block-level protocols have offered higher performance, and the SANs providing the block-level storage offer advanced features, which means that SANs are typically preferred over NAS devices for enterprise storage. However, there is a big price difference between a SAN and potentially the dedicated storage hardware and cabling (referred to as storage fabric), and an SMB device that leverages the existing IP network connectivity.

The line between types of storage is also blurring greatly, especially with modern hyperconverged systems that contain both compute and the storage for workloads. Windows Server 2016 includes Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), which enables direct-attached storage in cluster nodes to be aggregated together and utilized as cluster storage. This is commonly referred to as a VSAN technology in the industry. When combined with other Windows Server storage features, using direct-attached storage no longer means compromising features and performance.