- The document provides virtualization best practices for planning, deployment, and management of virtual machines. It includes 10 tips and tricks such as understanding applications before virtualizing, selecting proper hardware, deciding between stand-alone or clustered Hyper-V, using Server Core to reduce attacks, and monitoring VM performance. The document also recommends some free tools for analyzing virtualization configurations.

2. Virtualization Best Practices
- Tips and Tricks from Expert
Lai Yoong Seng | Technical Consultant
MVP Virtual Machine
www.ms4u.info | laiys@redynamics.com

3. Session Objective and Takeaways
• Objectives:
• Virtualization Best Practice in term of
• Planning , Deployment ,Management
• 10 awesome Tip & Tricks
• Some free tools to use..
• Key Takeaways:
Slid
• Tip & Trick for a successful virtualization deployment

4. Evolution of the Datacenter

5. Planning

6. Q1:- Physical or Virtual?
Running application in physical or virtual?
or

7. Q2:-Virtualize or Not Virtualize ?
Suitable candidate
VM 4- 4 GB
 Low processor
 Low Memory VM 1- VM 3- 4 GB
14 GB VM 2- 4 GB
Unsuitable candidate VS VM 1- 2 GB
High processor
High memory Parent Parent
partition partition
High network use (2 GB) (2 GB)
External peripheral Physical Server (16 GB RAM)
Physical Server (16 GB RAM)

8. Understand Your Application #1
Don’t virtualize everything !
Not ALL Applications are Inventory
suitable to be Virtualized
External Hardware (USB,
dongle, etc)
High Resource & Utilization Reporting Assessment
Check Microsoft Support
Policy
Use Microsoft Assessment
and Planning Toolkit (MAP)
6.0

9. Microsoft Assessment &
Planning Toolkit

10. MAP Sample Result

11. Workload Migration
Guest Operating System Virtual Server 2005 Hyper-V
Windows NT * √
Windows 2000 * √
Windows 2003 √
Windows 2008 / √
2008 R2
Linux Distribution √
 Suse Linux 10+
 Red Hat 5.2+
 Centos

12. Hardware Selection #2
CPU Memory Hard Disk Network
 Hardware  More  High RPM  More NIC
assisted RAM the (15K rpm) the better
Virtualization better  SAS  1Gbps/10Gb
 Hardware DEP  RAID 10 ps
 X64 Bit
 SLAT

13. Shared Storage Selection
NAS DAS iSCSI SAN FC SAN
 Not  Small  Small /  High
Supported scale Medium Performance
 2–4 scale  Expensive
nodes  Cheaper
than FC
SAN

14. Securable
Determine processor suitability for
virtualization
http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

15. Coreinfo
Check processor suitability for virtualization.
New ! Windows 8 SLAT requirement
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc835722

16. Stand-Alone or Cluster Hyper-V #3
Up to you to decide. But recommended, Cluster
Hyper-V
Stand alone
Hyper-V
Cluster Hyper-V

17. Deployment

18. Host Setup Consideration
RAID ?
Antivirus?
Windows ?
Teaming / MPIO?

19. Windows Server 2008 R2 EE,
Microsoft Microsoft
Capabilities DC
Hyper-V Server 2008 Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
(Hyper-V)
Number of Logical
24 64 64
processors supported
Number of Sockets
Up to 4 Up to 8 Up to 8 = EE | Up to 64 = DC
(Licensing)
Memory Up to 32 GB Up to 1 TB Up to 1TB
VM Migration None Quick and Live migration Quick and Live Migration
Number of VM’s per node 32 (server workloads) 32 (server workloads)
Not applicable
in a cluster 64 (VDI workloads) 64 (VDI workloads)
Virtualization Rights for
EE = 4 VM
Windows Server 2008 0 0
DC = unlimited VM’s
guests
Number of running VM Up to 192, or as many as Up to 384 or as many as physical resources Up to 384, or as many as physical
Guests physical resources allow allow resources allow
Windows Server 2008 CALs
Required for Guest Server No No Yes
OS
Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 & SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server, SLES
Guest OS support
10, SLES 11, Red Hat Enterprise 5.2/5.3, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1, SP2 & Windows XP SP3/SP2

20. Use Server Core #4
Reduce surface attack, less patch
Not Recommended Recommended

21. Core Configurator
GUI to manage in
Server Core.
Mainly on system
settings on
Windows.
http://coreconfig.codeplex.com/

22. Server Core &
Core Configurator

23. Avoid using the Root Partition #5
Avoid running services on the root partition
(host machine)
X
Just Hyper-V Roles…
DHCP
DNS
IIS
Directory
Services
…

24. Leave Memory for the Root #6
Leave at *least* 512MBs of RAM to the
root partition. 2GB or more
recommended. DM: 4 GB
VM 4- 4 GB
DM: 4 GB
VM 3- 4 GB
Hyper-V (0 GB)
Physical Server (16 GB RAM)
Hyper-V Host 1

25. Different Types of Virtual Machine Disk

26. Use Fixed Disk- Virtual Machine #7
Good: Dynamic and Fixed Size VHDs perform about
the same now.
Still Best: Pass-Through is best for performance.
The following charts are from WS08 R2:
Lower is better Higher is better

27. Antivirus
Configure exclusion
Virtual Machine Configuration Directory
Virtual Machine VHD Directory
Snapshot Directory
VMMS.EXE
VMWP.EXE
Cluster Storage Volume (CSV)

28. Management

29. Close the Window on Managers #8
Hyper-V Manager, VMConnect, Wallpaper & screen Saver
sessions consume resources.
Close or minimize the Hyper-V Manager & VM Connect.
No Wallpaper & Screen Saver on Virtual Machine
Hyper-V Manager VMConnect Wallpaper/ScreenSaver

30. Disable Removable Media #9
Disable the removable media drives (floppy,
optical drive, etc.) when not in use.
Removable media is polled periodically.

31. Monitor VM CPU MEM
#10
Performance DISK NET
Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor(*)
% Total Run Time For Physical Processors
Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor(*)
% Guest Run Time For Virtual Processors
Healthy: less than 75%
Warning: greater than 75%
Critical: greater than 85%
Avoid Task Manager!
Avoid % Processor Time!

32. Dynamic Memory Performance
Monitor
Counter:-
Hyper-V Dynamic
Memory
BalancerAverage
Pressure
Health:- less than 80%
Warning: 80 –100%
Critical:- more than 100% .
Indicated running out of
memory on Hyper-V host and
virtual machine start to use
virtual paging
32

33. Hyper-V Best Practice Analyzer
Download:-
BPA:- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977238
BPA Update: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2485986

34. Best Practice Analyzer

35. VMM 2012 Management Tools
 


36. Service Designer Template
(VMM)

37. Let’s Recap
Checklist Tip & Tricks
 Planning Understand Your Application
 MAP Hardware Selection
 Deployment Stand Alone or Cluster?
 Management Server Core
Avoid using Root Partition
 BPA Leave Memory for Root
 VMM Use Fixed Disk
Close Windows
Disable Removable Media
Monitor VM Performance

38. Questions & Answers

39. Resources
Lai Blog’s – Virtualization & System Center
www.ms4u.info
Join Malaysia Virtualization User Group
Go Facebook & Search “MVUG”
Microsoft Server Software and Supported Virtualization Environment
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP)
http://blogs.technet.com/b/configurationmgr/archive/2011/07/21/microsoft-
assessment-and-planning-toolkit-6-0-now-available.aspx
Microsoft Virtualization Hyper-V Best Practice
http://blogs.technet.com/b/iftekhar/archive/2010/05/25/microsoft-
virtualization-hyper-v-best-practices.aspx

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