Server Virtualization Features

In Hyper-V, “shared nothing” live migration enables the migration of a virtual machine from a server running Hyper-V to another one without the need for both of them to be in the same cluster or to share storage. This capability means you can live migrate a virtual machine from one cluster to a different cluster without setting up complex storage mappings.

The Hyper-V Extensible Switch in Windows Server 2012 is a layer-2 virtual network switch that provides programmatically managed and extensible capabilities to connect virtual machines to the physical network. The Hyper-V Extensible Switch is an open platform that makes it possible for multiple vendors to provide extensions that are written to standard Windows API frameworks, the reliability of which are strengthened through the Windows standard framework. In addition, along with its extensions, the open platform allows you to manage with Windows PowerShell, programmatically with Windows Management Instrumentation, or the Hyper-V Manager user interface.

Dynamic Memory improvements in Windows Server 2012 help you to allocate virtual machine memory resources more efficiently while dramatically increasing virtual machine consolidation ratios. Hyper-V uses techniques like Ballooning and Internal Guest Paging, while offering new functionality to set minimum RAM requirements and assist in virtual machine startup using Hyper-V smart paging. A new capability in Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V allows you to increase the availability of your virtual machines by making memory configuration changes to Dynamic Memory while the virtual machine is running. For example you can decrease the minimum memory when you know the virtual machine will not need it. Conversely, you can increase the maximum memory to allow the virtual machine to consume more RAM than its startup configuration without first shutting it down.