THE IMPORTANCE OF A HYPER-V SERVER BACKUP TOOL - 20 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD USE ONE

Using Hyper-V Server virtualization technology, you can virtualize your physical environment to reduce the cost of physical hardware. As part of IT best practices, you implement monitoring solutions to monitor the Hyper-V Servers and virtual machines running on them. You also take necessary actions to provide security to production environment by means of installing antivirus software. Then it also becomes necessary that you implement a backup mechanism to restore the business services as quickly as possible using a Hyper-V Server Backup tool.

This article is written to let you know as to why it is important to choose a dedicated Hyper-V Backup toolrather than relying on the existing mechanism as explained in bullet points below.

Users interested can also read our articles on Hyper-V Concepts/VDI, how to install Hyper-V Server & creating a Virtual Machine in Hyper-V.

1. FLEXIBILITY

Third-party backup products are designed in such a way that the product is easy to use when it comes to backup or restore a virtual machine running on the Hyper-V Server. For example, using third-party backup product, you can select a virtual machine to backup or restore. In case of any disaster with a virtual machine, it becomes easy for an IT administrator to use the flexible backup product’s console to restore a virtual machine from backup copies and restore the business services as quickly as possible.

2. VERIFICATION OF RESTORES

Third-party backup products provide features to verify restores without impacting the production workload. IT administrators can use the verification feature to restore the backup copies to a standalone environment to make sure these backup copies can be restored successfully in the future, if required.

3. DESIGNED FOR USE WITH HYPER-V

A third-party backup product is designed to use with a specific technology. For example, SQL Server Backup products are designed to backup/restore SQL Server database. Similarly, third-party Hyper-V Backup Products are designed to use specifically with Hyper-V Servers. Since these dedicated Hyper-V backup products are integrated with Hyper-V closely, they are more trusted by the IT organizations.

4. FULL BACKUP COPY OF VIRTUAL MACHINE

Although, starting with Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V Server offers replication services, sometimes referred as Hyper-V Replica, which can be used to build a disaster recovery scenario. The replication takes place every 5 minutes and changed data are replicated to the Hyper-V Servers located on the disaster recovery site. At the disaster site, you only have changed copies to restore virtual machine from a failure. What if you need to restore the full virtual machine? In that case, you would require the full backup copy of the virtual machine which is only possible if you are using a dedicated Hyper-V backup product.

5. MAINTAINING DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF BACKUP COPIES

There are several reasons to maintain different versions of backup copies. One of the reasons is to revert back configuration to a point-in-time and another reason is to restore the business services as quickly as possible from a backup copy of your choice. A dedicated Hyper-V backup product can maintain several backup copies of a virtual machine.

6. AGENLTESS BACKUPS/RESTORES

Most of the third-party Hyper-V Backup products ship without an Agent. An agent is a piece of software which is installed on a Hyper-V server with communicates with the Backup software. In case of an agentless backup software, it is easy for administrators to perform backup/restore operations without worrying about the agent’s response.

7. TIMELY BACKING UP VIRTUAL MACHINES

As part of the standard IT process, many organizations have a strategy in place in which backups for critical IT components including virtual machines are scheduled in a timely manner. These backups ensure that in case of any disaster (including physical), the service can be restored from a backup copy taken from a dedicated backup product rather than relying on native methods. The backup copy not only allows you to restore services but also helps you understand the impact of restoring a backup copy which is older.

8. CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT

Backup software ships with a centralized management tool. The centralized management tool is capable of managing multiple Hyper-V Servers and checking the backup operations on multiple Hyper-V servers from a single console.

9. AVOID UNNECESSARY FILES BACKUP

Since the backup software is designed to work with a specific technology, it is designed in such a way that it excludes the files which are not necessary to include in the virtual machine backup copies. This helps in reducing the backup copy size.

10. COMPRESSION

A dedicated Hyper-V backup product offers compressing backup data before it is written to the backup drive. You can enable/disable compression for all or selected virtual machines using the third-party backup product’s console.

11. ENCRYPTION

Security is the major concern for IT organizations nowadays. Third-party Hyper-V Backup products use encryption technology to encrypt backup copies stored on a backup drive. These backup copies can only be read by the same Hyper-V backup product.

12. BACKUP AND OFFSITE LOCATION

As part of the IT processes, every organization ensures that the backup copies are kept at an off-site location and these backup copies can be retrieved easily when the disaster takes place at the production site. Native tools do not support taking backup to an off-site location. Third-party backup products can provide off-site backup feature in which backup copiescan be saved to an off-site location without requiring much network bandwidth.

13. INCREMENTAL BACKUP COPIES

A dedicated Hyper-V backup product ensures that only changed contents are backed up rather than taking a full backup copy every time the backup job runs.

14. MORE BACKUP OPTIONS

Third-party backup products provide more backup options like taking daily backups or monthly backups which can be scheduled at a pre-defined interval using the centralized management console.

15. BACKUP TO EXTERNAL SOURCES

Third-party Hyper-V backup products support backing up virtual machines to external sources including USB external devices, eSata External drives, USB flash drives, Fileserver network shares, NAS devices, and RDX cartriges.

16. BACKUP RETENTION POLICIES

Old backup copies can be deleted if they are not required. You can configure the backup retention policy for each virtual machine. A dedicated Hyper-V Backup product can take automatic actions to delete the older backup copies as per the retention policy you configure.

17. ABILITY TO RESTORE INDIVIDUAL FILES OR FOLDERS

Without using a dedicated Hyper-V backup product, it would be difficult for IT administrators to restore individual files/folders from a virtual machine backup copy. Some backup products provide a feature called “Exchange Level Item Restore” which can be used to restore selected emails or mailboxes from a backup copy of a virtual machine.

18. APPLICATION VENDOR RECOMMENDATION FOR BACKUP PRODUCTS

Many of the application vendors require that an enterprise backup system is installed in the production environment to backup data of their applications running in the virtual machines. Since most of the vendors impose this requirement, or recommend to back up application data using a dedicated Hyper-V backup product, native backup tools fail to do so.

19. ERROR AND REPORTING

Error and Reporting are the main features a third-party backup product provides. It lets you take necessary actions if a failure takes place with a backup or restore operation. Using reporting feature of a backup product, you can know how many virtual machines have been backed up successfully and how many virtual machines have failed.

20. SUPPORT

In case if you’re not able to restore virtual machine from a backup copy or hit with an error during the restore or backup operation, you can always contact product support to get you out from this situation. Many third-party backup products provide 24/7 support for their products.

ALTARO HYPER-V BACKUP

Altaro Hyper-V Backup offers a simple, easy-to-use solution for backing up Hyper-V VMs. It includes features such as offsite backup, remote management, Exchange item-level Restore, Compression, Encryption, and much more at an affordable cost.

Learn more or try Altaro Hyper-V Server Backup Tool for yourself: http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/. It’s completely free, forever for up to 2 VMs.

HOW TO INSTALL WINDOWS SERVER 2012 FROM USB FLASH – ISO IMAGE

Most would remember the days we had to have a CDROM or DVDROM in order to proceed with the installation of an operating system. Today, it is very common installing an operating system direct from an ISO image. When dealing with virtualized systems, it becomes pretty much a necessity.

This article will show how to install Windows Server 2012 (the same process can be used for almost all other operating systems) from a USB Flash.

The only prerequisite for this process to work is that you have a USB Flash big enough to fit the ISO image and the server (or virtualization platform) supports booting from a USB Flash. If these two requirements are met, then it’s a pretty straight-forward process.

THE WINDOWS 7 USB-DVD TOOL

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool is a freely distributed application available in our Administrator Utilities download section. The application is required to transfer/copy the ISO Image of the operating system we want to install, to our USB Flash. The application is also able to burn the ISO image directly on a DVD – a very hand feature.

Download a copy, install and run it on the computer where the ISO image is available.

When the tool runs, browse to the path where the ISO image is located. Once selected, click on Next:

At this point, we can choose to copy the image to our USB device (USB Flash) or directly on to a DVD. We select the USB Device option:

In the next screen, we are required to select the correct USB device. If there are more than one USB storage devices connected, extra care must be taken to ensure the correct USB Flash is selected. In case no USB Flash has been connected, insert it now into your USB port and click on the refresh button for it to appear:

After selecting the appropriate USB device, click on Begin Copying to start the transfer of files to the USB Flash:

Once the copy process is complete, we are ready to remove our USB Flash and connect it to our server:

This completes our article on how to install Windows Server 2012 from USB Flash device. We recommend users visit our Windows 2012 section and browse our growing database of high-quality Windows 2012 and Hyper-V Virtualization articles.

CREATING A VIRTUAL MACHINE IN WINDOWS HYPER-V. CONFIGURING VIRTUAL DISK, VIRTUAL SWITCH, INTEGRATION SERVICES AND OTHER COMPONENTS

STEPS TO CREATE A VIRTUAL MACHINE IN HYPER-V

To begin the creation of our first virtual machine, open the Hyper-V manager in Windows Server 2012. On the Actions pane located on the right side of the window, click New and select Virtual Machine:

Read the Before you begin page which contains imporant information and then click Next:

Type name of the virtual machine and configure the location to store virtual hard disk of this virtual machine. On server systems with shared storage devices, the virtual hard disk is best stored on the shared storage for performance and redundancy reasons, otherwise select a local hard disk drive. For the purpose of this lab, we will be using the server’s local C Drive:

Choose the generation of virtual machine and click Next. Generation 2 is new with Server 2012 R2. If the guest operating system will be running Windows Server 2012 or 64bit Windows 8, 8.1, select Generation 2, otherwise select Generation 1:

Next step involves assigning the amount of necessary memory. Under Assign Memory configure the memory and click Next. For the purpose of this lab, we will give our Windows 8.1 guest operating system 1 GB memory:

Under configure networking tab, leave the default setting and click Next. You can create virtual switches later and re-configure the virtual machine settings as required:

Next, choose to create a virtual hard disk and specify the size. We allocated a 60 GB disk size for our Windows 8.1 installation. When ready, click Next:

One of the great benefits with virtual machines is that we can proceed with the installation of the new operating system using and ISO image, rather than a CD/DVD.

Browse to the selected ISO image and click the Next button. The virtual machine will try to boot from the selected ISO disk when it starts, so it is important to ensure the ISO image is bootable:

The last step allows us to review the virtual machine’s configuration summary. When ready click the Finish button:

INSTALL WINDOWS 8.1 GUEST OPERATING SYSTEM IN HYPER-V VIRTUAL MACHINE

With the configuration of our virtual machine complete, it’s time to power on our virtual machine and install the operating system. OpenHyper-V Manager, and under the Virtual Machines section double-click the virtual machine created earlier. Click on the start button from the Action Menu to power on the virtual machine:

After the virtual machine completes its startup process, press any key to boot from the Windows 8.1 disk (ISO media) we configured previously. The Windows 8 installation screen will appear in a couple of seconds. Click Next followed by the Install Now button to begin the installation of Windows operating system on the virtual machine:

 After accepting the End User License Agreement (EULA) we can continue our post-installation setup by configuring the hard disk. Windows will then begin its installation and update the screen as it progresses. Finally, once the installation is complete, we are presented with the Personalization screen and finally, the Start Screen:

After the operating system installation and configuration is complete, it is important to proceed with the installation of Integration Services.

Integration Services on Hyper-V is what VM Tools is for VMware. Integration Services will help significantly enhance the VM’s guest operating system performance, allow file copy from the host machine to the guest machine easily, time synchronization between host and guest machines, improve management of the VM by replacing the generic operating system drivers for the mouse, keyboard, video card, network and SCSI controller components.

Other services offered by Integration Services are:

• Backup (Volume Snapshot)
• Virtual Machine Connection Enhancements
• Hyper-V Shutdown Service
• Data Exchange

 To proceed with the installation of Integration Services, Go to the Virtual Machine’s console, selection Action, and click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk as shown below:

In the Upgrade Hyper-V Integration Services dialog box, click OK and when prompted, click Yes to restart the virtual machine.  Using the Hyper-V Manager console, administrators can keep track of all VM's installed along side with their CPU Usage, Assigned memory and uptime:

This completes our article covering the installation of a Virtual Machine within Hyper-V and setup of Integration Services. AdditionalWindows 2012 Server and Hyper-V technical articles can be found in our Windows 2012 Server section

HOW TO INSTALL WINDOWS 2012 HYPER-V VIA SERVER MANAGER & WINDOWS POWERSHELL. MONITORING HYPER-V VIRTUAL MACHINES

INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT HYPER-V

Our previous article covered the basic concepts of Virtualization and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.  This article takes a closer look at Microsoft’s Hyper-V Virtualization platform and continues with the installation of the Hyper-V role via the Windows Server Manager interface and Windows PowerShell command prompt.

Hyper-V is a server role used to create virtualized environment by deploying different types of virtualization technologies such as server virtualization, network virtualization and desktop virtualization. The Hyper-V Server role can be installed in Server 2012 R2 Standard,Datacenter or Essentials edition. Hyper-V version 3.0 is the latest version of Hyper V server available in Windows Server 2012 R2 versions. Additional Windows 2012 Server and Hyper-V technical articles can be found in our Windows 2012 Server section.

HYPER-V HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

The Hyper-V server role requires specific system-hardware requirements to be met. The minimum hardware requirements are listed in the table below:

Hardware	Minimum Requirements
Processor	1.4Ghz 64-bit with hardware assisted virtualization. Available in processors that include a virtualization option—specifically, Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) Hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) must be available and enabled. Specifically, you must enable the Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit).
Memory	512 MB
Network Adapter	At least one Gigabit Ethernet adapter
Disk Space	32 GB

Keep in mind that the above table specifies the minimum requirements. If you wanted to install Hyper-V in a production environment along with a number of virtual machines, you will definitely need more than 512MB memory and 32GB disk space.

INSTALLING THE HYPER-V SERVER ROLE IN SERVER 2012 USING SERVER MANAGER

In Windows Server 2012, you can install Hyper-V server role by using the Server Manager (GUI) or windows PowerShell. In both cases, the installation requires the user to be an Administrator or member of Administrators or Hyper-V administrators group.

At first, open Server Manager. Click Manage and select the Add Roles and Features option:

Add Role and Features

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Click Next on the Before you begin page.

Choose Role-based or feature-based Installation option and click Next button:

 Choose Role-based or feature-based Installation

In the next window, click on Select a server from the server pool option and select the server where you would like to install the Hyper-V server role. Click on Next after selecting the server:

 Select the Destination Server to Install Hyper-V

The next screen lists the available roles for installation, check Hyper-V and click Next:

Selecting the Hyper-V Role for Installation

Read the Hyper-V role information and click the Next button:

 Hyper -V Installation

The next step involves the creation of Virtual Switches. Choose your server’s physical network adapters that will take part in the virtualization:

Creating Your Virtual Switches

The selected physical network adapters (in case you have more than one available) will be used and shared by virtual machines to communicate with the physical network. After selecting the appropriate network adaptors, click Next to proceed to the Migration screen.

Under Migration, leave the default settings as is and click Next:

Leave Default Migration Settings

These settings can also be modified later on. Live Migration is similar to VMware’s vMotion, allowing the real-time migration of virtual machines to another physical host (server).

Under Default Stores, you can configure the location of hard disk files and configuration files of all virtual machines. This is a location where all the virtual machine data will reside. You can also configure a SMB shared folder (Windows network folder), local drive or even a shared storage device.

We will leave the settings to their default location and click the Next button.

Selecting a Location to Store the Virtual Machines

The final screen allows us to review our configuration and proceed with the installation by clicking on the Install button:

Hyper-V Installation Confirmation

Windows will now immediately begin the installation of the Hyper-V role and continuously update the installation window as shown below.

Hyper-V Installation Progress

Once the installation of Hyper-V is complete, the Windows server will restart.

INSTALLING HYPER-V ROLE USING WINDOWS POWERSHELL

The second way to install the Hyper-V role is via Windows PowerShell. Surprisingly enough, the installation is initiated with a single command.

Type the following cmdlet in PowerShell to install the Hyper-V server role your Windows Server 2012:

C:\Users\Administrator> Install-WindowsFeature  –Name Hyper-V  –IncludeManagementTools  –Restart

 

Hyper-V Installation with PowerShell   

To install Hyper-V server role on remote computer, include the -ComputerName switch.  In our example, the remote computer was namedVoyager:

C:\Users\Administrator> Install-WindowsFeature –Name Hyper-V –ComputerName Voyager –IncludeManagementTools –Restart

Once the installation is complete, the server will restart. Once the server has booted, you can open Hyper-V Server Manager and begin creating the virtual machines:

Hyper-V Manager

MONITORING OF HYPER-V VIRTUAL MACHINES

When working in a virtualization environment, it is extremely important to keep an eye on virtualization service and ensure everything is running smoothly.

Thankfully, Microsoft provides an easy way to monitor Hyper-V elements and take action before things get to a critical stage.

The Hyper-V Manager console allows you to monitor processor, memory, networking, storage and overall health of the Hyper-V server and its virtual machines, while other Hyper-V monitoring metrics are accessible through Task Manager, Resource Monitor, Performance Monitor and Event Viewer to monitor different parameters of Hyper-V server.

The screenshot below shows the Hyper-V Manager with one virtual machine installed.  At a first glance, we can view the VM’s state, CPU Usage, Assigned Memory and Uptime:

View Virtual Machine Status

Under Window’s Event Viewer we’ll find a number of advanced logs that provide a deeper view of the various Hyper-V components, as shown below:

Hyper-V Events (click to enlarge)

Addition information on Hyper-V can be obtained through the usage of Window’s Performance Monitor, which provides a number ofHyper-V useful counters as shown below:

Hyper-V Performance Monitor

Most experienced virtualization administrators will agree that managing and monitoring a virtualization environment can be a full-time job. It is very important to ensure your virtualization strategy is well planned and VMs are hosted on servers with plenty of resources such as Physical CPUs, RAM and Disk storage space, to ensure they are not starved of these resources during periods of high-utilization.

INTRODUCTION TO WINDOWS SERVER 2012 R2 VIRTUALIZATION - UNDERSTANDING HYPER-V CONCEPTS, VIRTUAL DEPLOYMENT INFRASTRUCTURE (VDI) AND MORE

INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUALIZATION

Virtualization is an abstraction layer that creates separate distinct virtual environments allowing the operation of different operating systems, desktops and applications under the same or combined pool of resources.   In the past couple of years, virtualization has gained an incredible rate of adoption as companies consolidate their existing server and network infrastructure, in hope to create a more efficient infrastructure that can keep up with their growing needs while at the same time keep the running and administration costs as low as possible.   

Our readers can visit our dedicated Windows Server 2012 Server section to read more on Windows Hyper-V Virtualization and Windows Server 2012 technical articles.

When we hear the word ‘Virtualization’, most think about ‘server virtualization’ – which of course is the most widely applied scenario, however today the term virtualization also applies to a number of concepts including:

• Server virtualization: - Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be installed on top of single physical server.
• Desktop virtualization: - Desktop virtualization allows deployment of multiple instances of virtual desktops to users through the LAN network or Internet. Users can access virtual desktops by using thin clients, laptops, or tablets.
• Network virtualization: - Network virtualization also known as Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a software version of network technologies like switches, routers, and firewalls. The SDN makes intelligent decisions while the physical networking device forwards traffic.
• Application virtualization: - Application virtualization allows an application to be streamed to many desktop users. Hostedapplication virtualization allows the users to access applications from their local computers that are physically running on a server somewhere else on the network.

This article will be focusing on the Server virtualization platform, which is currently the most active segment of the virtualization industry.  As noted previously, with server virtualization a physical machine is divided into many virtual servers – each virtual server having its own operating system.  The core element of server virtualization is the Hypervisor – a thin layer of software that sits between the hardware layer and the multiple operating systems (virtual servers) that run on the physical machine.

The Hypervisor provides the virtual CPUs, memory and other components and intercepts virtual servers requests to the hardware. Currently, there are two types of Hypervisors:

Type 1 Hypervisor – This is the type of hypervisor used for bare-metal servers. These hypervisors run directly on the physical server’s hardware and the operating systems run on top of it. Examples of Type-1 Hypervisors are Microsoft’s Hyper-V, VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer.

Type 2 Hypervisor – This is the type of hypervisor that runs on top of existing operating systems. Examples of Type-2 Hypervisors are VMware Workstation, SWSoft’s Parallels Desktop and others.

MICROSOFT SERVER VIRTUALIZATION – HYPER-V BASICS

Microsoft introduced its server virtualization platform Hyper-V with the release of Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V is a server role that can be installed from Server Manager or PowerShell in Windows Server 2012.

With the release of Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft has made lot of improvements in their Hyper-V virtualization platform. Features like live migration, dynamic memory, network virtualization, remoteFX, Hyper-V Replica, etc. have been added to new Hyper-V 3.0 in Server 2012.

Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor that operates right above the hardware layer. The Windows Server 2012 operating system remains above the hypervisor layer, despite the fact the Hyper-V role is installed from within the Windows Server operating system. The physical server where Hypervisor or Hyper-V server role is installed is called the host machine or virtualization server. Similarly, the virtual machines installed on Hyper-V are called guest machines.

UNDERSTANDING TRADITIONAL VS MODERN SERVER DEPLOYMENT MODELS

Let’s take a look at the traditional way of server configuration. The figure below shows the typical traditional server deployment scenario where one server per application model is applied. In this deployment model, each application has its own dedicated physical server.

Traditional Server Deployment

This traditional model of server deployment has many disadvantages such as increased setup costs, management & backup overhead, increased physical space and power requirements, plus many more. Resource utilization of this type of server consolidation is usually below 10%.  Practically, this means that we have 5 underutilized servers.

Virtualization comes to dramatically change the above scenario.

Using Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 along with the Hyper-V role installed, our traditional server deployment model is transformed into a single physical server with a generous amount of resources (CPU, Memory, Storage space, etc) ready to undertake the load of all virtual servers.

The figure below shows how the traditional model of server deployment is now virtualized with Microsoft’s Hyper-V server:

Hyper-V Server Consolidation

As shown in the figure above, all the five servers are now virtualized into single physical server. It is important to note that even though these virtual machines run on top of the same hardware platform, each virtual server is completely isolated from other virtual machines.

There are many benefits of this type of virtualized server consolidation. A few important benefits are reduced management overhead, faster server deployment, efficient resource utilization, reduced power consumption and so on.

NETWORK VIRTUALIZATION WITH HYPER-V

With the power of network virtualization you can create multi-tenant environment and assign virtual machines or group of virtual machines to different organizations or different departments. In a traditional network, you would simply create different VLANs on physical switches to isolate them from the rest of the network(s). Likewise, in Hyper-V, you can also create VLANs and virtual switches to isolate them from the network in the same way.

Readers can also refer to our VLAN section that analyses the concept of VLANs and their characteristics.

For example, you can configure a group of virtual machines on the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet and other group of virtual machines on 192.168.2.0/24 subnet.

Hyper-V Networking

Each virtual machine can have more than one virtual network adapter assigned to it. Like regular physical network adapters, the virtual network adapters can be configured with IP addresses, MAC addresses, NIC teaming and so on. These virtual network adapters are connected to a virtual switch. A Virtual switch is a software version of physical switch that is capable of forwarding traffic, VLAN traffic, and so on. The virtual switch is created from within the Hyper-V Manager and is then connected to one or more available physical network adapters of the host machine. The physical network adapters on the host machine are then connected to physical switch on the network.

As shown in figure 1.3, three VLANs are created under same virtual switch. The host is then connected to the physical switch by usually combining the multiple physical network cards into one also called LAG (Link Aggregation Group) or EtherChannel (Cisco’s implementation of LAG) interface. LAG or EtherChannel combines the speed of both physical network adapters.  If for example we have two 1Gbps physical network cards, with the use of LAG or EtherChannel, these are combine into a single 2Gbps network card.

 Microsoft’s Hyper-V supports the creation of three different types of virtual switches:

1. Internal: - The internal virtual switch can communicate only between virtual machines.  A common example is a cluster based system where virtual servers connect with each other through a dedicated network connection. Internal virtual switches do not connect to the physical network infrastructure (e.g switches).
2. External: - The external virtual switch can communicate directly with the physical network infrastructure. The virtual switch is used to for the seamless communication between the virtual machines and the physical network.
3. Private: - The private virtual switch can communicate between virtual machines and the physical host only (physical hardware server).

 

VIRTUAL DEPLOYMENT INFRASTRUCTURE (VDI) DEPLOYMENT WITH HYPER-V

VDI is a new way of delivering desktops to end users. In VDI, virtual desktops are hosted centrally as virtual machines and are provided or streamed to users via the network or Internet using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) service. These virtual desktops can be used or accessed by users with different types of devices like, PCs, laptops, tablets, smart phones, thin clients, and so on. VDI have created a new hype of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept. With BYOD policy implemented in the organization, users can bring their own devices like laptops, tablets, etc. and the company delivers the required virtual desktop via the network infrastructure.

VDI is an upcoming trend that offers many advantages such as:

• Central management and control
• Low cost since there is no need of desktop PCs. Alternate devices such as thin clients usually preferred
• Low power consumption. Tablets, thin clients, laptops require low power compared to traditional desktop or tower PCs
• Faster desktop deployments
• More efficient backup

VDI is fully supported and can be implemented in Windows Server 2012 by installing Remote Desktop Services server role and configuring the virtualization host. You can create virtual machines running Windows XP/7/8 and easily assign the virtual machines to users.

We’ve covered a few of the important virtualization features deployable with Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V, that allow organizations to consolidate their server, network and desktop infrastructure, into a more efficient model.