What's New In 2008 R2 Hyper V and VMM 2008 R2 - Updated Oct 2009

What’s New with Hyper-V 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2
Aidan Finn
BSc, MCSE, MVP
http://joeelway.spaces.live.com
@joe_elway

Agenda

Editions
Cluster Shared Volumes
Live Migration
Core Parking
Second Level Address Translation
Virtual Machine Queue
Native VHD
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

About Aidan Finn

AKA Joe_Elway, e.g. @joe_elway
Working with large and complex IT since 1996
Systems and Infrastructure Manager with C Infinity (http://www.cinfinity.ie): cloud computing services
Specialised in servers and systems management
MVP:
2008: Configuration Manager
2009: Virtualisation – Systems Management
Member of MS Springboard STEP
Blog: http://joeelway.spaces.live.com
Windows User Group: http://www.mtug.ie

Versions

Max per host support increased:
64 logical processors (cores)
512 virtual processors (8 VP’s per LP)
384 running VM’s
64 VM’s per cluster node
Boot from Flash Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Clustering

Failover Clustering Pre R2

Uses Windows 2008 Failover Clustering for hardware fault tolerance
Easier than ever – honestly!
Virtual machine treated as cluster resource
Each VM should (not must) be on a dedicated LUN *
Quick Migration, not Live Migration (aka VMotion)

* Mandatory for VMM 2008

Quick Migration

Simple process:
VM saves its state
Disk fails over to destination host
VM restores its saved state
1GB RAM VM Takes 8 seconds on 4GB Fibre Channel SAN with 15K SCSI disks, e.g HP EVA SAN
Supported with Fibre Channel and iSCSI
Test labs will work with W2008 file shares
Live Migration coming in W2008 R2!

Clustered Shared Volumes

Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV) implements hybrid sharing for LUNs
One node owns the storage namespace (e.g. directory structure) and metadata
Other nodes can own the storage backing an individual file’s data (e.g. VHD)
Benefits of CSV:
Can store all VM VHDs on one LUN
High-performance access to VHDs from owning nodes
All nodes have read/write access to file data
Seamless VM movement between nodes
Any node can read from VHD, so no need to change LUN ownership
Seamless LUN ownership transition
Persistent handles allow cluster to move LUN without interruption to VM operation

All servers “see” the same storage

CSV Backup

CSV does not support non-Hyper-V created files
You need a CSV certified backup solution for host level “snapshot” backups
DPM 2007 SP1 does not have this
Wait for DPM v3
Until then use inside-VM backup agents

Talking of 2008 R2 Storage

Fixed sized VHD’s are near physical disk speed
Dynamic VHD’s are near fixed sized VHD speed

Live Migration

Live Migration
Create VM on target server
Copy memory pages from the source to the target via Ethernet
Final state transfer
Pause virtual machine
Move storage connectivity from source host to target host via Ethernet
Run new VM on target; Delete VM on source
Host 1
Host 2
Blue = Storage
Purple = Networking
Shared Storage

Live Migration State Transfer
Memory
Configuration
Configuration
State
State
Server 1
Server 2

Requirements

Good networking between hosts
The same family of processor – no mixing of Intel and AMD
You can mix generations of one family by disabling features via one tick box.

Core Parking

Kernel in parent performs core-parking control
Hypervisor maps processor usage data into the parent
Updates every 100ms
Parent tells hypervisor which cores to park
Hypervisor lets processors finish work, but stops including them in scheduling decisions
Will use them if necessary to meet child CPU guarantees

Core Parking Operation
Core 0
Core 1
Core 0
Core 1
Core 1
Core 0
Core 0
Core 1
Socket 0
Socket 1
Workload

Second Level Address Translation

VM Memory Management
Guest Virtual Address
Guest Virtual Address
Guest OS defines GVA-to-GPA mappings
Shadow page tables combine these mappings because the processor knows how to perform only one level of translation
Guest Physical Address
Hypervisor defines GPA-to-SPA mappings
System Physical Address
System Physical Address
Hyper-V R2
Hyper-V

Second Level Address Translation(SLAT)

Goes by several names
Intel: Extended Page Tables (EPT)
AMD: Nested Page Tables (NPT)/Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI)
Processor provides two levels of translation
Walks the guest OS page tables directly
No need to maintain Shadow Page Table
No hypervisor code for demand-fill or flush operations
Resource savings
Hypervisor CPU time drops from 10% to 2%
Roughly 1MB of memory saved per VM
Benefits Large Memory Workloads

Virtual Machine Queue

Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ)
Parent Partition
VM1
VM2
Virtual Machine Switch
Ethernet
TCP/IP
TCP/IP
Routing
VLAN Filtering
Data Copy
Port 1
Port 2
VM NIC 1
VM NIC 2
Miniport
Driver
NIC
VM BUS

VMQ Architecture
Parent Partition
VM1
VM2
Virtual Machine Switch
Ethernet
TCP/IP
TCP/IP
Routing
VLAN filtering
Data Copy
Port 1
Port 2
VM NIC 1
VM NIC 2
Miniport
Driver
Q1
Default
Queue
Q2
VM BUS
Switch/Routing unit
NIC

Overview of VMQ

Overview
TCP/IP traffic in a VM can be offloaded to a physical NIC on the host computer.
Benefits
Reduce CPU burden
Networking offload to improve performance
Live Migration is supported with Full TCP Offload
Major performance improvement on 10 Gb/E

Other Networking Improvements

Jumbo Frames

Jumbo Frame Support
Ethernet frames >1,500 bytes
Ad hoc standard is ~9k
Overview
Enables 6x larger payload per packet
Benefits
Reduce CPU utilization of large file transfers
Reduces TCP/IP overhead by up to 84%

Linux Support

What Is Supported in V2 IC’s?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 2 (x86 Edition or x64 Edition)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 1 (x86 Edition or x64 Edition)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86 Edition or x64 Edition)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 and 5.3 (x86 Edition or x64 Edition) (Emulated devices only) *
Mouse support via independent project

GPLv2 Integration Components

20,000 lines of code submitted for approval
Accepted
All future Linux kernels can be enlightened
This is not the same as “supported by Microsoft”

Native VHD

Image Types

WIM – Used by Windows Installer (Panther), WDS and ConfigMgr
VHD – Virtual Hard Disk used by virtualisation products and Windows backups
Data center strategy to use VHD to prevent image type explosion

Boot from VHD

“Surface” (AKA mount) a VHD file
Boot from a VHD file
W2008 R2 WDS able to deploy VHD files
Boot servers or desktops from VHD

Management

Microsoft’s strategy for differentiation
Basic management using Hyper-V and Failover Clustering MMC’s
Advanced virtualisation management using System Center Virtual Machine Manager
VMM 2008 integrates with OpsMgr 2007
System Center Enterprise CAL: includes 4 VM’s on the host
System Center DataCenter CAL: includes all VM’s on the host

VMM 2008

Based on PowerShell
Easier cluster management
Hardware templates
Library for VHD’s, PowerShell scripts, ISO
Self Service web console
Can manage Virtual Server 2005, ESX and many Virtual Center installations
Integrates with OpsMgr 2007 SP1
Use hardware OEM Pro Tips for hardware view of performance

VMM 2008 R2

Used to manage many Hyper-V R2, Hyper-V, Virtual Server R2 SP1, vSphere, ESX/Virtual Center installations
Integration with OpsMgr 2007 R2
Support for Live Migration
Allows many VM’s per LUN for CSV
Storage Quick Migration
SAN enhancements, e.g. cluster-cluster migration, rapid provisioning & snapshots
Network enhancements
Maintenance mode
Support for disjoint domains