This document provides a summary of a presentation on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V best practices. It covers topics such as assessing existing infrastructure, designing virtual machines and hosts, deploying Hyper-V and VMM, integrating with OpsMgr, and backing up with DPM 2010. The presentation emphasizes the importance of requirements gathering, server sizing, storage design, and following application vendor guidance. It also promotes clustered hosting and the use of tools like MAP, VMM, and OpsMgr for management.

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Best Practices Aidan Finn BSc, MCSE, MVP @joe_elway http://www.aidanfinn.com

3. MCSE & MVP (Virtual Machine: System Administration).

4. Have worked with both ESX and Hyper-V.

5. Using VMM 2008 R2 and W2008 R2 Hyper-V.

6. Currently in the hosting business – moving into the consulting business.

7. Blog: http://www.aidanfinn.com.

9. Available November 19th

13. Assessing existing infrastructure

14. Designing and planning hardware

15. Deploying Hyper-V

16. Deploying VMM

17. Designing virtual machines

18. Integrating with OpsMgr

20. One Rule:

21. No ESX VS XenServer VS Hyper-V, etc

22. That can be taken outside

23. Let’s make it interesting for everyone.

25. An Alternative Project Plan

27. Too many ways a virtualization project can be taken.

28. Involve board level, IT steering committee, IT managers, application owners, and IT staff.

29. Beware company politics.

31. Consolidate space utilization

32. Reduce electrical consumption

33. Reduce overall carbon footprint

34. Facilitate disaster recovery

35. Enable self-service server provisioning

36. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

38. Identify specifications

39. Use this to target machines for performance analysis

41. Free tool to assess for various projects including Hyper-V.

42. Can assess Windows Servers (WMI), Linux, and VMware virtual machines.

43. Perform performance metric collection over a short time frame.

44. Identify candidates and size hosts.

45. Perform Return on Investment analysis.

47. Does not gather true requirements over time.

48. Does not consider application VM requirements, e.g. SharePoint, Exchange, etc.

49. Host sizing recommendations do not add cluster failover nodes.

51. Use the existing OpsMgr data warehouse for year-long and/or month-long performance analysis.

53. Memory Utilization: Correct VM sizing.

54. Storage: IOPS

55. Storage: Utilization.

57. High memory utilization

58. Heavy IOPS

59. Fully utilized NICIt depends!

61. A physical machine requiring 50% of 4 * 2.8GHz cores

62. Still requires 100% of 2 * 2.8GHz cores

63. Cores in newer CPU’s are more powerful than predecessors

64. Consult application vendors best practice and support policies:

65. Normally have 8:1 vCPU: CPU core ratio

67. NUMA node boundary size:

68. Total RAM / Total CPU cores

69. E.G. 64 GB RAM & 2 * Quad Core CPU

70. = 64 / 8

71. = 8GB

73. Internal storage or external storage?

74. Emphasis on fewer, bigger servers?

75. Using OpsMgr?

76. Hardware management packs

77. PRO management packs

79. Page file? 4GB disk

80. 2GB RAM for the parent partition

81. Virtual Machine RAM:

82. 1GB + 32MB for the 1st GB RAM per VM

83. 1GB + 8MB for each additional GB RAM per VM

84. Virtual Machine Disk:

85. X GB for the storage in the VM

86. Y GB = GB RAM in the VM

88. If you can have 1 * 10GB Ethernet connection

89. Use it for Live Migration?

90. Use it for virtual machines?

91. NIC teaming:

93. VHD should be on RAID5/RAID10

94. Use fastest disks you can afford

95. External storage required for clustering

96. Disable write caching on the controller

99. Cluster File System

100. No-owner, multi-tenant.

101. No redirected I/O

102. Granular control over file type prioritization

104. iSCSI:

105. Cheaper.

106. Guest iSCSI initiations are possible.

107. Can implement W2008/W2008 R2 guest failover clustering.

108. Per LUN replication – no current support for multi-site clustering with CSV.

109. SAN multi-site striping – support for multi-site CSV.

111. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and Server Core.

112. Full Installation.

113. Do not install anything except for management agents on parent partition.

114. Anti-virus:

115. Not recommended.

116. Ensure W2008 R2 Hyper-V support.

117. Prevent scanning of VM files.

119. Despite what a certain non-MS expert claims

120. Maximum VM’s per CSV is a balancing act:

121. IOPS of CSV physical LUN should be greater than total sum of IOPS of VM’s (assessment)

122. Measure performance of running CSV’s and VM’s

123. Balance CSV complexity, manageability & risk

124. You can have many CSV’s

126. Supported OS’s: SLES and RHEL

127. What does “Supported” mean?

129. Deploy it as soon as possible.

130. Manage more complexity with less effort.

131. Automate with PowerShell.

132. Enable self-service provisioning.

134. $869 + $40/host

135. Workgroup Edition – 5 Hosts Max

136. $505

137. System Center Management Suite (incl SA)

138. Enterprise $1,198

139. Datacenter $749/CPU, minimum 2 CPU

140. System Center Essentials 2010

142. Should not be used for anything else

143. Should have local admin rights on:

144. Hyper-V hosts

145. OpsMgr management servers:

146. PRO

148. Company politics boundary.

149. 400 managed hosts

150. 8,000 managed virtual machines

151. VMM server cannot be clustered

152. SQL 2005/2008 can be clustered

153. At least one library close to managed hosts

154. Can be W2008/W2008 R2 clustered file share

156. Administrators (1 user role only): Limit membership

157. Delegated Administrators

158. Self-Service Users

159. Build templates and assign ownership for self-service.

160. Create library folders for self-service users

161. Plan host groups for host access

163. VMware Virtual Center 2.5:

164. VMware ESX(i) Server 3.5

165. VMware ESX Server 3.0 or above

166. VMware vSphere 4 (VI3 features only):

167. VMware ESX(i) Server 4.0

168. ESX(i) Server 3.5

170. Can do V2V from VMware to Hyper-V directly or via Library

171. V2V or Virtual to Virtual Conversion:

172. Uninstall VMware tools

173. Power down the VM

174. Convert the VM (do not autostart)

175. SCSI boot disk moved to IDE

177. Can even be auto-deployed on W2003

178. Useful for non-Hyper-V supported applications, e.g. Exchange 2003

179. Make some use of older W2003 servers

180. V2V Migration:

181. The VMM job takes care of all of the work

183. MS Support solution is VMM 2008 R2

184. Disk2VHD uses VSS but not supported

185. One-way journey

186. W2K SP4 and later

187. No Linux support

189. Remove any hardware specific software

190. Online migration:

191. Uses VMM agent on running machine

192. Not recommended with running databases

193. Offline Migration:

194. Uses WinPE

195. Add drivers via Use storage and network drivers from the following location

197. Dynamic VHD supported but comes with costs

198. Snapshots/Checkpoints not supported by many critical applications: Exchange/SQL

199. Exchange 2010 DAG member not supported on a Hyper-V cluster/Live Migration

201. Simple installation of VMM integration for PRO.

202. PRO = Performance & Resource Optimization:

203. 2 MS management packs for VM and hosts.

204. Third party hardware management packs.

205. OpsMgr detects and issue and VMM reacts.

208. Recently RTM

209. It adds support for CSV

210. Adds item level recovery from VHD

211. Must be installed on physical server with Hyper-V role enabled

212. Can use 3rd party alternatives. Ensure:

213. Storage VSS support

214. CSV support

215. Can be run as a VM

217. Will initiate redirected I/O mode

218. Will cause unusual errors in the logs (expected)

219. Not recommended

220. Host level backup fine for non-clustered hosts.

223. There’s much more in here

224. Available in all good book stores and a few crap ones too