Server Virtualization Benefits

Whether you are virtualizing your workloads or building a private cloud, new technologies available within the virtualization platform in Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V can provide a feature-rich and cost-effective solution. With Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V, you have the flexibility to build a server environment that can support your business needs in any phase of your IT life cycle.

 

 

As virtualized datacenters become more prevalent, you need to be able to place your workloads where they fit best, and you need to be able to quickly and easily migrate your workloads between servers to best distribute the load. Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V allows you to live migrate your virtual machines and independently migrate your virtual machine storage with few limitations; from outside a clustered environment, between two clusters, and even between two servers with nothing but a network connection between them.

 

 

To help you run the largest workloads in your virtualized environment, Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V offers support for up to 64 virtual processors and 1 terabyte of memory for your Hyper-V guests and 4,000 virtual machines on a 64-node cluster. As new hardware becomes available, you want to be able to gain performance improvements by taking advantage of these new technologies. With Hyper-V, you can support Offloaded Data Transfer and improved Quality of Service to enforce minimum bandwidth requirements (even network storage).

 

 

To help ensure your virtual machines are available either 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or based on your service-level agreements, Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V offers out-of-the-box solutions that can fit your needs.

 

High-availability options include incremental backup support, enhancements in clustered environments to support virtual Fibre Channel adapters within the virtual machine, and inbox NIC Teaming. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V can also use server message block file shares for virtual storage. This new option is simple to provision and offers performance capabilities and features that rival those available with Fibre Channel storage area networks. With all the options easily integrated, you can choose what you need to help boost confidence in your environment’s availability.

 

 

As virtualized datacenters become more practical, more IT organizations and hosting providers have begun to offer infrastructure as a service (IaaS). With the IaaS model, you can provide flexible virtualized infrastructures to multiple organizations (tenants), but these solutions must offer security and isolation from one another.

 

Hyper-V multitenancy provides you with new security and multitenant isolation capabilities that can keep virtual machines isolated, even when they are stored on the same physical network or server. New network virtualization features in Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V can help you scale beyond virtual local area network implementations. You can place a virtual machine on a node regardless of its IP address, whether on-site, hosted, or in the cloud, making the network infrastructure truly invisible. Additional capabilities include Resource Metering to help with showback (internal accounting) and chargeback (external customers) scenarios by giving you visibility into the use of your virtualization environment.

 

 

As you rely more upon virtualization, you need to be able to handle different types of requests. Some of those requests usually fall under networking options. The Hyper-V Extensible Switch within Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V gives you an open, extensible switch to help support security and management needs. You can build your own extensions, or use partner extensions to support these needs. Hyper-V works with Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 management tools to handle your multiserver virtualization environment. With new management support for Hyper-V, you can fully automate management tasks and help reduce the administrative overhead costs of your environment.