Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2

The Windows Server 2008 R2 beta is here! (keep an eye here for details on how to get it)  This is a significant release for Hyper-V and this beta contains a number of new features and capabilities.

First and foremost – Live Migration is here!  You can now move virtual machines inside a cluster without experiencing any downtime or connectivity loss.  Along with Live Migration we also have the Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV) feature – that allows you to store multiple virtual machines on a single storage device.

Other changes include:

  • Support for 32 core physical computers
  • Support for CPU Core Parking
    • Core Parking allows Windows and Hyper-V to consolidate processing onto the fewest number of possible processor cores, and suspends inactive processor cores.
  • Support for Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) in CPUs
    • On Intel processors this is called “EPT” while AMD calls it “NPT”. SLAT adds a second level of paging below the architectural x86/x64 paging tables in x86/x64 processors, providing an indirection layer from virtual machine memory access to the physical memory access.  In many virtualization scenarios, hardware based SLAT support can offer performance improvements.
  • Support for Jumbo Frames on networking
  • The ability to hot add / remove SCSI virtual hard disks

So please get involved in the beta and let us know what you think of it.

Cheers,

Ben