Microsoft's new server virtualization hypervisor - Hyper-V - is a role for Windows Server 2008. This chat will focus on the capabilites and functionality of Hyper-V and have an open discussion around ways that Hyper-V can be used.

Technical Community - Background Reading and Listening

Hyper-V on DellTechCenter
Hyper-V Clone with SCVMM Demo
Testing with Unreleased Multi-Core Processors

Hyper-V Theme Song

Chat Transcript

	Paul_Shadwell	How's life?
	DELL-ToddM	I would say that life is very good—having as much fun as possible
	Paul_Shadwell	Sounds like it—having some fun with some heavy gear I hear
	DELL-ToddM	Yes, it still amazes me how much RAM we can affordably put in a server these days
	Paul_Shadwell	I'm so jealous
	DELL-ToddM	My 128GB R900 lists for not too much
	DELL-ToddM	All things considered
	Paul_Shadwell	My life surrounds a PowerEdge 1800 at the moment with ESX running on it. Does it very nicely though.
	DELL-ToddM	PowerEdge 1800 is good. We are still using quite a few 2850s in our lab. Same age as yours
	Paul_Shadwell	And a home-built server that ESX refused to install on but runs 64-bit Hyper-V no problem
	DELL-ToddM	Support for Hyper-V will be broader because it uses all the Windows drivers
	DELL-ToddM	ESX is basically another OS that has to have drivers at least tweaked
	Paul_Shadwell	I also have 64-bit Hyper-V running in a VMware Fusion 2.0 beta 2 virtual machine on my Mac Pro!
	DELL-ToddM	Lol
	DELL-ScottH	Why don't you just point two mirrors at each other :-)
	DELL-ToddM	How's the performance of that after stacking all of that on top of each other?
	Paul_Shadwell	Good, editing videos in Final Cut while running five VMs, the Hyper-V, Vista 64 bit, XP 32 bit, and two OS X server VMs
	DELL-ToddM	It's cool that it works
		MichaelSainz joined.
	Paul_Shadwell	I'm planning on doing some screencasts showing all of this stuff running
	DELL-ScottH	Hello, Michael
	MichaelSainz	Hey!
	DELL-ScottH	I would definitely watch that!
	Paul_Shadwell	Hi Michael
	Paul_Shadwell	Good, so I'll have an audience of at least one :-)
	MichaelSainz	Snicker
	DELL-ToddM	I want to see it too
	Paul_Shadwell	%%%% now I have to do it :-)
	DELL-ToddM	We have a similar setup described on one of our wiki pages about running ESX on top of VMware workstation on a laptop: www.delltechcenter.com/page/VMware+virtual+infrastructure+test+environment
	DELL-ToddM	We usually wait for a few minutes as people usually connect in a bit after the "official" start time
	Paul_Shadwell	I've been trying to get ESX running on Fusion but so far haven't managed it
	DELL-ToddM	In the meantime we usually just chat about the type of stuff that we have been chatting about—so we are right on topic!
	Paul_Shadwell	I'll retweet for you, Todd
	DELL-ToddM	I haven't had a chance to really work with VMware Fusion :)
	DELL-ScottH	I'd like to see you try to walk in here with a Mac!
	DELL-ToddM	Today's topic, which is our starting point, is Hyper-V features and function
	MichaelSainz	Bah, wireless...
	MichaelSainz	You guys thought I left didn’t ya ;)
	DELL-ToddM	The intent is to have a discussion around the features of Hyper-V as it exists Today, giving everybody a chance to ask questions
	DELL-ScottH	Thought you clicked on a link...that's how they usually drop
	DELL-ToddM	And talk about what they like and don't like with Hyper-V features
	DELL-ToddM	If we come up with any really great ideas, maybe I can get them into the Microsoft team that we work with as suggestion for future versions
	DELL-ScottH	Hyper-w?
	MichaelSainz	Must be the next version
	DELL-ToddM	I was thinking Superhyper-V
	MichaelSainz	Heh
	DELL-ToddM	I am currently working on some performance tests with Hyper-V which has forced me to get up close and personal with Hyper-V
	DELL-ScottH	I hear they have a new Active Directory driver for it (ADD), makes it really spastic
	MichaelSainz	Tell us about the performance tests?
	DELL-ToddM	While the tests aren't finished I can tell you in general what I have seen
	Paul_Shadwell	How do they compare to ESX?
	DELL-ToddM	I'm using four-socket servers with quad-core processors running Windows 2008 and Hyper-V RTM
	DELL-ToddM	I haven't done a compare against ESX, and the tests that I am running are a bit different than the ones that I've done with ESX
	DELL-ToddM	So a direct comparison isn't possible, but
	Paul_Shadwell	Could send me over the same set up so I can also do some testing? ;-)
	Paul_Shadwell	How, why different?
	DELL-ScottH	Tests are run with the DVD Store application that Todd and Dave wrote: www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps3q05-20050217-jaffe-oe.pdf
	DELL-ToddM	In general, it seems that Hyper-V performs in the same general range as I would expect ESX to with these tests
	DELL-ToddM	Well there are two main reasons for the changes in the test
	DELL-ToddM	The first is that Hyper-V only has "enlightened" drivers for Windows Server 2008 VMs
	DELL-ToddM	All of my previous testing with ESX was with Windows 2003 VMs
	DELL-ToddM	It didn't seem fair to run a performance test with Hyper-V and not use the best scenario; so I created a set of Windows 2008 VMs with SQL 2005 running the DVD store
	MichaelSainz	Pros/cons to "enlightened" drivers as opposed to others?
	Paul_Shadwell	Ah! so you are creating 2008 guests?
	DELL-ToddM	So the difference is the OS for the guest VMs—yes
	DELL-ToddM	The enlightened drivers are basically very thin drivers that get installed in the guest
	DELL-ScottH	Scott Lowe has a good write up on the subject from being at Teched: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/06/12/vir358-hyper-v-architecture-scenarios-and-networking/
	DELL-ToddM	They just pass everything over to the real device drivers in the Parent partition, which makes things more efficient
	MichaelSainz	Nods
	DELL-ToddM	The other thing that changed for this test was the baseline
	DELL-ToddM	The previous baseline that I had been using for all the DVD store on ESX VMs was based on a white paper we did with 2850s and 6850s several years ago
	DELL-ToddM	I had run a tests and found that with certain settings for load, I could get 16 VMs on a single 6850
	DELL-ToddM	I then used these same settings for load and just increased the number of VMs on other servers to get comparative results
	DELL-ToddM	Things were getting a bit out of control when I was able to get 44 VMs on a single 2950 a little over a year ago
	MichaelSainz	heh...i could imagine
	DELL-ToddM	Using the same load settings for the R900 I would probably have been able to run somewhere around 100 VMs - which isn't practical or very reasonable
	DELL-ToddM	So in this test each Vm is running more load
	DELL-ScottH	You'd probably get 120 on that new box with those same settings today...talk about VM sprawl
	DELL-ScottH	But it would be a good test bed for systems management :-)
	DELL-ToddM	So now that you guys have fallen asleep reading about testing details, what questions might you have?
	Paul_Shadwell	Do you have the specs for the guests? Are all the guests identical?
	DELL-ToddM	All the guests are identical: 2 GB RAM, 18 GB disk
	MichaelSainz	Maybe I missed something, what is the load the VMs are doing? Or are they just stock OS and no applications?
	Paul_Shadwell	I had eight VMs on a 2950 including Microsoft Exchange 2007 and SQL Server and only 5 percent of processor. Forty four VMs should be easily possible.
	DELL-ToddM	I'm running the DVD Store test application that I developed and open sourced a few years ago with my colleague here, Dave Jaffe. Link is coming: www.delltechcenter.com/page/dvd+store
	MichaelSainz	Ahhh...
	DELL-ToddM	DVD Store is an OLTP database application that simulates an online store selling DVDs—kinda like a very simple Amazon.com
	DELL-ToddM	Paul, this is one of the very hard things about testing VMs—creating a profile that is reasonable and somewhat like what is actually being run in the real world
	DELL-ToddM	While it is possible for me to create different types of VMs and put them under load all at the same time, it is almost impossible to measure the performance because they all have different metrics
	Paul_Shadwell	Yes, it depends on your definition of "real world"
	MichaelSainz	Nods
	DELL-ToddM	So by using VMs that are all the same, you can get a result that is easy to analyze
	DELL-ScottH	It is similar to the "tiles" concept in the VMmark score
	DELL-ToddM	VMware has done a reasonable job with their benchmark—VMmark—which is actually why I haven't done any VMware ESX testing recently
	Paul_Shadwell	I have a project to build a test environment for HMC 4.5 all on one VMware server
	DELL-ToddM	Hyper-V as yet doesn't have a benchmark; so I thought this was a good opportunity to do some testing:
	DELL-ScottH	www.VMware.com/products/vmmark/results.html
	DELL-ScottH	HMC?
		depping joined.
	Paul_Shadwell	So that could be interesting
	DELL-ScottH	Hello, depping. Use Action, Recent Room History to catch up
	Paul_Shadwell	Hosted Messaging and Collaboration.
	Paul_Shadwell	Microsoft
	DELL-ToddM	Welcome depping - action, recent room history will catch you up on our Hyper-V discussion so far
	DELL-ToddM	I haven't heard of HMC before, sounds interesting
	Paul_Shadwell	It's hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, Active Directory, self-service perposing etc.
	Paul_Shadwell	Minimum of 12 servers required to set it up
	DELL-ScottH	Wooooah... that's why you got the MAC set up with Fusion :-) Right?
	DELL-ToddM	Twelve! Sounds like a great opportunity for virtualization; I would bet that it works pretty well in VMs
	Paul_Shadwell	I love pushing hardware to its limits :-)
	DELL-ToddM	You are going to test it out on ESX/ESXi?
	Paul_Shadwell	That's what we will find out; surprisingly, Microsoft doesn't support it so the production has to be physical servers. But for test and development I am proposing VMs
	Paul_Shadwell	ESX
	DELL-ScottH	Microsoft is a good Dell partner :-)
	MichaelSainz	Heh
	DELL-ToddM	Microsoft has been increasing their support for virtual—even Exchange! So they may support this as well in time
	Paul_Shadwell	The system scales semi-automatically.
	Paul_Shadwell	Haha! Good point :-)
	depping	They will support everything virtual in time
	DELL-ScottH	Can't stop it
	Paul_Shadwell	I'm sure now that they have their own platform virtualization will be much easier and supported
	depping	They need to, otherwise they will get sued again I guess :)
	depping	Indeed
	DELL-ToddM	Given enough time I think that you are right :)
	DELL-ToddM	One feature that Hyper-V currently lacks is live migration, known as VMotion for the VMware world
	depping	And with VMware joining the SVVP
	depping	Well, they've got "quick" migration
	DELL-ToddM	They do have what they call quick migration, which is basically a pause and restart on another server
	depping	For the record, I work for VMware
	depping	Suspend and Resume indeed
	Paul_Shadwell	VMotion is so useful I have a hard time not having something similar on Hyper-V
	depping	Which can take up to several minutes depending on the amount of memory they need to transfer
	DELL-ToddM	Depping, no problem we will keep you honest :)
	DELL-ToddM	Quick migration is really a failover cluster for individual VMs
	Paul_Shadwell	Hey depping, you’re my new best friend ;-)
	depping	:-D
	DELL-ToddM	The big limitation that I don't like is one VM per LUN with quick migration
	DELL-ToddM	This is because there isn't a cluster file system like VMFS in place
	Paul_Shadwell	Oh! that is a huge limitation
	depping	Well, that's for the clustering
	Paul_Shadwell	What about when Microsoft releases the new Fs…forget what it's called
	DELL-ToddM	So if you failover or quick migrate a VM its LUN has to failover to the new server as well
	DELL-ToddM	I don't know what their plans are for future
	depping	You bet they are working on it, but just need the time to catch up
	depping	Same goes for a decent live migration
	DELL-ToddM	They did recently release a hot fix that allows you to put more than one VM in a failover cluster group, but they have to all failover together to the new server
	Paul_Shadwell	Can we ask depping what VMware is planning to stay ahead of Microsoft?
	DELL-ToddM	Good question!
	depping	You can ask, but you know I can't tell because of NDA
	DELL-ToddM	It was worth a try
	MichaelSainz	Hehe...always the NDA
	depping	But there's a couple of features they already talked about
	DELL-ScottH	Oh, we all signed them—wink
	depping	Which is continuous, availability—aka constant VMotion
	depping	In other other words, two VMs synchronized on two hosts; when the primary fails the secondary takes over without the user noticing it
	DELL-ToddM	All that said, if you only had a few VMs, quick migration would be fine. It's just with lots of VMs it would be a problem to manage all those LUNs
	DELL-ScottH	Saw that at VMworld last year—early, early
	Paul_Shadwell	%%%%!
	depping	Indeed
	depping	Cool stuff
	DELL-ToddM	I don't know anything, but I was hoping that the continuous availability would be talked about at VMworld in a few weeks
	depping	I guess it will be
	DELL-ScottH	Any sessions you can recommend to attend this year?
	depping	I don't know but that's what people are expecting
	depping	To be honest I haven't had the time to look into the upcoming VMworld
	depping	But I always attend every deep dive session
	DELL-ScottH	That's okay, Todd is griping about you hijacking the Hyper-V chat!
	depping	Just be sure I'm not missing out :)
	DELL-ToddM	I started to fill out my schedule a few days ago, but haven't finished it yet
	Paul_Shadwell	I saw something about it at VMworld Europe
	Paul_Shadwell	I also love Site Recovery Manager
	depping	Same here, and SRM is great for companies like Dell
	depping	Sell storage!
	DELL-ToddM	SRM is very cool—I agree
	DELL-ToddM	Yes, our EqualLogic guys have been all over SRM
	depping	But will you guys be comparing Hyper-V with ESX and XenServer?
	depping	That would be nice to see—benchmarks
	Paul_Shadwell	Oops! Sorry, Todd.
	DELL-ToddM	Well, I try to not put our partners against each other in head-to-head tests :)
	DELL-ToddM	I was saying earlier that the performance of Hyper-V VMs seems to be pretty good
	depping	Yeah, it is
	depping	But it also depends on the amount of VMs you are running
	DELL-ToddM	But I don't have a way to directly compare the results in my current test with earlier ESX tests
	Paul_Shadwell	No, would be a shame to show the customers the useful stuff right? ;-) Sarcasm mode=off
	DELL-ScottH	Nods
	depping	Well, you are kinda right, Paul, but I can imagine why Dell wouldn't want to do this
	DELL-ToddM	I think that the management and features are going to be where customers make their decisions
	depping	I hope so :)
	DELL-ToddM	And at a certain point price
	Paul_Shadwell	I do understand it; maybe I could do it as an independent—hmmm...could be an interesting project
	DELL-ScottH	And we would welcome you to share your thoughts on our site
	DELL-ScottH	And findings
	DELL-ToddM	With the release of ESXi as a free download VMware has an alternative to Hyper-V that in many ways is similar in terms of features—but is quite different in many others
	Paul_Shadwell	Could Dell supply me with hardware to do the test?
	depping	Well, I always found the comparison of Hyper-V and ESX unfair, but Microsoft has a nice way to market a product
	depping	Same here, Paul :)
	MichaelSainz	As long as you can supply Dell with some cash ;)
	DELL-ToddM	In terms of features, one of the key pieces for Hyper-V is still in beta: SCVMM 2008
	DELL-ToddM	If you are just comparing ESXi to Hyper-V the comparison isn't too off
	DELL-ToddM	Neither have VMotion or centralized management
	Paul_Shadwell	SCVMM is nice, but nowhere near as useful or as easy to use as Virtual Center.
	depping	Well, the big difference is the OS that Hyper-V needs
	DELL-ToddM	Both provide good performance
	depping	And that's a huge difference in terms of security
	Paul_Shadwell	Depping, is there any plans for Virtual Center to be able to manage Hyper-V?
	DELL-ToddM	That OS is the difference. With Microsoft you can use Windows 2008 Core, which makes it closer to E SXi
	Paul_Shadwell	VMotion supporting Hyper-V could be a cool product
	depping	Well, Todd, there's still a 2 GB difference :)
	DELL-ToddM	I didn't say it’s the same, just closer.You are right
	depping	It's a shame there's still some sort of GUI
	depping	I've been a Microsoft administrator all my life...and hoped they would get rid of they GUI
	DELL-ToddM	Some would view the GUI of Windows as an advantage over no GUI with ESXi
	DELL-ScottH	Some call it the Wimp interface
	DELL-ScottH	Windows-icons-mouse-pointer
	depping	I would like to have a choice. I love the GUI for my workstation, but for the server, and especially Hyper-V I don't need it
	MichaelSainz	I gotta go, guys; thanks for the convo
	DELL-ToddM	The Virtual Infrastructure client is actually the GUI for ESX; it's just not on the box
	DELL-ScottH	Thanks for joining, Michael!
	DELL-ToddM	Thanks, Michael!
	MichaelSainz	Oh yeah, keep twittering, good stuff ;)
		MichaelSainz left.
	depping	Well, the Twitter is what got me here!
	Paul_Shadwell	There is a Web interface on the ESX
	depping	So that stuff actually works
	depping	Web interface is something different than a GUI
	DELL-ScottH	Is depping your Twitter UD?
	DELL-ToddM	Cool, Twitter has been fun so far; planning to do lots while at VMworld
	depping	Yes
	DELL-ScottH	We following you?
	depping	No clue
	depping	I'm also depping on the VMTN forum
	DELL-ScottH	I see you play poker from your Twitter stream
	DELL-ScottH	Bad topic to get me started on!
	DELL-ToddM	Depping, thanks for engaging in a fun discussion
	depping	Yeah, poker is cool...but takes up too much time lately
	DELL-ToddM	Next week we will be talking about Hyper-V again—this time I hope to be able to talk details on the performance testing that I have done with it
	DELL-ScottH	Agreed
	depping	Cool, I will try to join again.
	DELL-ScottH	To do it right takes mucho time; thanks for joining
	depping	And while you're at it, check my blog: www.yellow-bricks.com
	Paul_Shadwell	Sorry for hijacking your chat, Todd
	DELL-ToddM	I will check it out. Thanks for mentioning it
	depping	:)
	DELL-ScottH	Okay, you have to hit mine too: www.prettypokerboy.com
	DELL-ScottH	:-)
	DELL-ToddM	Paul, I'm glad you did. Much better to have an engaging session like this
	DELL-ScottH	It's 4:01, Todd. We can talk off topic :-)
	depping	It's 23:06 here
	DELL-ToddM	Cool, I've gotta run. I bet Scott starts telling you about the time he got Quads over Quads
	DELL-ScottH	And I was on the good end of that one!
	DELL-ToddM	Later
	DELL-ScottH	Later
	depping	Later!
		DELL-ToddM left.
	Paul_Shadwell	Same here, depping, where are you?
	Paul_Shadwell	I'm in Zurich, Switzerland.
	depping	Netherlands
	depping	That's around the corner
	Paul_Shadwell	Ah ha! Yes...ish.
	Paul_Shadwell	:-)
	Paul_Shadwell	Are you on Twitter?
	Paul_Shadwell	My ID is www.twitter.com/paulshadwell
	depping	http://twitter.com/depping
	depping	Any Dell guys still around?
	Paul_Shadwell	Cool, following you now
	DELL-ScottH	I'm still here
	Dell-RogerF	Yes
	depping	Gotta question about the R805 AMD
	DELL-ScottH	Shoot
	depping	I've got a customer buying 35 R805s with 48 GB of RAM with AMD processors. The R805 has got 16 memory slots?
	DELL-ScottH	Yes
	DELL-ScottH	Eight on each processor
	depping	This would mean that in some slots there's more memory than there's in others
	DELL-ScottH	Yes
	depping	Smartest thing to do would be to divide it evenly? For NUMA?
	DELL-ScottH	Each matching DIMM slot should be equal...on each processor
	depping	Okay, so not all, only matching
	DELL-ScottH	Yes
	DELL-ScottH	12 x 4 GB would be best
	depping	That's what I said indeed
	DELL-ScottH	But what does the build sheet show?
	depping	I'm afraid this will cause the "memory incorrectly balanced" messages on ESX
	depping	I haven't seen the build sheet yet
	DELL-ScottH	If you have 12 x 4 GB, six on each processor, it will be balanced
	Paul_Shadwell	You're okay with AMD processors in a production environment?
	depping	Yeah, why not?
	Paul_Shadwell	Sounds like a silly question, I'm just so used to Intel
	depping	AMD has shown some great benchmarks combined with ESX
	depping	Tops everything I've seen so far
	depping	But I'm also used to Intel
	Paul_Shadwell	I did see that at a Dell Tech tour last year—the prices look good too
	depping	Okay, thanks, Scott; I will have the customer phone Dell again!
	DELL-ScottH	Prices are very good
	depping	But what about that Dell EEE killer?
	depping	When will that be launched? I can't wait for it
	DELL-ScottH	Cool, 35 servers, what is their business?
	DELL-ScottH	Hmm, NDA and all that stuff :-)
	depping	Dutch Railway
	depping	%%%%... :)
	depping	E-mail me of the record :)
	Paul_Shadwell	Yes, yes, good question, Depping, when Dell, when?
	DELL-ScottH	Rumor was last week, but soon...I want several
	depping	Same here
	DELL-ScottH	My wife wants the hybrid, just because of the looks
	depping	I wanted to buy an Asus EEE, but when I saw the news about Dell and Lenovo
	Paul_Shadwell	Mind you, after the extremely disappointing tablet launch I don't hold up much hope
	DELL-ScottH	Yeah, just wait a little longer
	DELL-ScottH	At the worst, it will put price pressure on Asus for you
	depping	Indeed
	depping	And Acer has also got a nice product, the One
	depping	But it's about time I get some sleep. Thanks for the chat and maybe talk to you guys next week!
	DELL-ScottH	Nice chatting with you. We're following you now...tweet away
	Dell-RogerF	Catch you next time
	Paul_Shadwell	Yes, likewise. Thanks, guys, it was fun. I'll Twitter when I have the screencasts published.