Top 5 Reasons to Run Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2

If IT professionals want to learn more about Windows
8.1, and your virtualization platform is Hyper-V, then there is good news, that is, Windows
8.1 It is very compatible with the Hyper-V platform. The best way to test it is to install Windows
8.1 on a virtual machine.

Whether running Windows 8.1 on a physical computer or a Hyper-V virtual machine, or deploying a Windows 8.1 virtual desktop pool on a back-end Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V The best combination with Microsoft's latest operating system
, the following are five reasons.

1. Second-generation virtual machine

One of the design goals of Windows 8.1 is to run as Microsoft's "2nd generation virtual machine", which is the only one in Hyper- A new virtual machine working under V. This virtual machine removes all of its analog interfaces when it is virtualized. The second generation of virtual machines is based on UEFI, not on the BIOS, and without any analog devices. Once the virtual machine is powered on, it can be booted directly from the virtual SCSI and network adapters and supports secure boot. The preferred boot method is to ensure that only the signed kernel is allowed to boot in the virtual machine.

The only supported guest operating systems are the 64-bit versions of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 and higher. But in this scope, Windows 8.1 is easier to create because it contains the necessary second-generation keyboard drivers, which of course requires a product key to be entered during the installation. Otherwise, you can only get crazy about the computer
.

What are the reasons for choosing a second-generation virtual machine compared to existing virtual machine standards? First, it gets rid of everything and makes the virtual machine look more like a physical computer. Unlike the late 1990s, the first thing people do in most environments is virtualization. For Windows 8.1, it's very clear how it should work in a virtual machine, so there is no need to spend a lot of performance overhead in simulating a virtual machine as a physical machine.

2. Deduplication in VDI deployments

If you want to deploy Windows 8.1 in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment, a large number of hosts are running on the daily work of users. Windows 8.1 virtual machine, then Windows Server 2012 R2 deduplication can save you a lot of space, but also improve system performance.

Windows Server 2012 R2 supports deduplication. With this feature, you can save multiple disk space by storing multiple copies of virtual machines on the host hard disk. When Windows Server 2012 R2 reads a file, it stores a unique copy on the storage volume, and the other identical copies simply point to the unique copy by "pointer".

Deduplication supports open VHD or VHDX file formats. It can support virtual machine online deduplication, so you don't have to downgrade the entire VDI cluster for deduplication. Although this feature was first introduced in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 optimized its algorithms and improved performance over the previous version.

When the deduplication process is complete, Windows can read these optimized files more quickly. Compared to a typical file server, VDI deployment can save up to 90% of disk space with minimal performance impact.

3. QoS for Storage

Network Quality of Service (QoS) allows administrators to define bandwidth limits for certain types of network traffic to ensure adequate bandwidth for other network applications This prevents any type of traffic from occupying the traffic bandwidth of the entire network. Similarly, Hyper-V in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 can support Storage Quality of Service (QoS). This feature limits the disk throughput of overactive and destructive virtual machines. If there is a process in a virtual machine that needs to run for a long time, and you don't want your host's overall I/O performance to be dragged, this feature Will be able to help you. This feature is dynamically provisioned, and even if the virtual machine is running, you can adjust the QoS settings without affecting the workload of a given virtual machine.

4. VHDX online expansion

Have you ever encountered a problem with virtual machine disk space exhaustion? If you set the virtual machine's disk type to a fixed size instead of dynamically expanding, then running out of disk space will be a big problem. However, Hyper-V in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 can increase and shrink the size of virtual disks online for running virtual machines. This is online expansion. A virtual machine with disk space issues can run any guest operating system, so no matter whether the virtual machine is running Windows XP or Linux, there is no limit to using this feature. The only guarantee is that the virtual disk file must be in the latest VHDX format, not the VHD format used previously.

5. Enhanced Mode for Virtual Machine Connections

Hyper-V for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 provides a feature that Microsoft calls "Virtual Machine Connection Enhancement Mode". It can connect to virtual machines using the Remote Desktop Protocol, even when the network in the virtual machine is unavailable. Hyper-V uses the virtualization layer's internal communication channel VMBus to communicate with the virtual machine. It then transmits RDP data over this independent network connection (VMBus). As part of this enhanced mode, you can drag and drop files between the virtual machine and the host, or use the clipboard sharing feature. You can even use VMBus connections for local resource redirection, such as smart cards, printers, and USB devices. This makes troubleshooting and management easier. By default, this enhanced mode is enabled on Hyper-V on Windows 8.1, but is disabled in Windows Server 2012 R2.