Live Migration: With this feature, administrators can use VMM to easily migrate virtual machines between clustered hosts without affecting the connected users. This allows more flexibility for administrators undertaking host maintenance or upgrades as the running virtual workloads can be moved from host to host without interruption to end users. Coupled with the high availability capabilities of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, customers now have a robust virtual machine solution for elegantly handling planned and unplanned downtime.
Clustered Shared Volumes: Enables administrators to place multiple virtual machines on a single LUN and manage them individually. The key benefit that CSV delivers here is greatly simplified LUN configuration for the administrator: through the VMM console, the administrator now sees one LUN containing all virtual machines which eliminates the need to create, configure and modify LUNs for individual VMs. Furthermore, as a layer that simply rides on top of existing NTFS file structure, CSV avoids the need for a completely new or customized file system that can introduce additional complexities and potential incompatibilities with existing services such as security, backup and disaster recovery solutions – to name just a few.
Hot addition/removal of storage: With this capability, administrators can quickly and efficiently respond to changing storage requirements of virtual machines. This ability to hot-add additional storage eliminates the previous need to take the host down to upgrade storage thus increasing business continuity for end users and reducing complexity for administrators. Additionally it allows administrators to confidently deploy mission critical applications (in which up-time is of paramount importance) that may have rapidly changing storage requirements such as web, database or other business applications.
Maintenance Mode: Designed to simplify the process of initiating maintenance or upgrades to virtual hosts, VMM 2008 R2 provides maintenance mode – a one-step process whereby active virtual machines are safely evacuated to other hosts within the cluster before maintenance begins. Enabling the administrator with control, Maintenance Mode can be configured to utilize Live Migration if the virtual machines must not be interrupted or can be configured to put the VMs in a saved state if a service pause is acceptable.
SAN migrations in and out of clustered hosts: Another time and labor saving feature of VMM 2008 R2 is its ability to automatically migrate VMs in and out of clustered hosts using SAN transfers. Unlike before, VMM 2008 R2 automatically configures the cluster nodes to recognize new VMs coming in and exiting VMs migrating off, saving administrators the additional burden of manual modification.
Automatic resolution of disjoint domains: To configure VMM 2008 previously, administrators would have to manually reconcile host server names from disjoint domains that would appear differently in Active Directory (AD) and Domain Name Service (DNS) and cause authentication failure. With VMM 2008 R2, this process is automated by the creation of a custom Service Principal Name (SPN) in both AD and DNS. This eases management oversight for administrators and speeds along a successful authentication process
Expanded support for iSCSI SANs: With expanded support now covering the majority of available iSCSI SANs, VMM 2008 R2 enables administrators to choose from a much wider range of options when selecting a new SAN solution. For those with SAN infrastructure in place, VMM 2008 R2 features greater SAN compatibility enabling administrators to leverage their storage investments.
Support for optimized networking: VMM 2008 R2 supports two new networking services – Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney – built into Windows Server 2008 R2. Key benefits to both of these technologies are more efficient processing of network traffic (through the creation of virtual network queues in the former and offloading of TCP/IP workloads to a physical NIC, in the latter) and thus freeing up CPU cycles on the host machine. As a result, administrators will appreciate faster network performance and smaller network-related workloads on their host machines.
Admin control of port groups used by VMM: During its initial configuration with VMware vCenter Server, VMM 2008 R2 enables administrators to select which port groups the console will use. Previously, this process was automated and port groups were automatically configured. Now, VMM 2008 R2 enables administrators to maintain control in selecting the preferred port groups for VMM’s use. This enables customized settings for VMM 2008 R2 that accommodates the administrator’s chosen configuration and minimizes any conflicts or disruption resulting from VMM’s introduction.
Support for Quick Storage Migration: VMM 2008 R2 now allows for the migration of a VM’s storage both within the same host and across hosts with minimum downtime. VMM 2008 R2 also supports VMware storage vMotion so the storage for a VMware VM can be transferred on the same hosts no downtime.
Queuing of Live migrations: Administrators can perform multiple Live Migrations without having to keep track of other Live Migrations within the cluster. When a Live Migration is in jeopardy of failing due to another migration already in progress VMM 2008 R2 queues the request for later.
Rapid Provisioning: VMM 2008 R2 leverages advanced storage provider technologies to clone LUNs containing a VHD while still taking advantage of VMM templates.
Host compatibility checks: Provides deep compatibility checks so administrators can determine if a Source host is compatible with the destination host before performing a migration. In the event of incompatibility, the administrator can choose to turn off certain CPU features to make the VM compatible with the host.
Support for third party CFS: For users requiring a true clustered file system, VMM 2008 R2 supports third party file systems by detecting CFS disks and allows for deploying multiple VMs per LUN.
Support for Veritas Volume Manager: VMM 2008 R2 recognizes Veritas Volume Manager disks as a cluster disk resource.
