Windows Server 2012

Beyond Virtualization
Hyper-V Scalability
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Scalability Improvements

Why should I care?

Technology Overview

Demo

Next Steps
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Scalability
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Scalability Improvements
• Expanded processor and memory support
• Virtual Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)
• Network Adapter Hardware Acceleration
• Offload Data Transfer (ODX)
• Support for 4 KB sector disks
• Virtual Fibre Channel
• SMB 3.0
• Improved VM Import
• VHDX disk format
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Scalability
Why should I care?
Why should I care?
Enhanced support for high-performance hardware configurations in Windows Server 2012
Hyper-V…

• Provides more options for IT organizations for deploying a wider range of enterprise
applications in virtualized environments
• Increases support for high-performance processor and memory configurations,
which in turn help support the deployment and operation of mission-critical
applications on virtualized systems
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Scalability
Technical Overview
Expanded Processor &
Memory Support
Maximum Number
Improvement
System Resource Windows Server Windows Server Factor
2008 R2 2012
Logical processors on
64 320 5x
hardware
Host Physical Memory 1 TB 4 TB 4x
Virtual processors per
512 2,048 4x
host
Virtual processors per
4 64 16x
virtual machine
Memory per virtual
Virtual Machine 64 GB 1 TB 16x
machine
Active virtual machines
384 1,024 2.7x
per server
Nodes 16 64 4x
Cluster
Virtual machines 1,000 4,000 4x
Virtual NUMA
VMs are NUMA-aware
• Dynamic memory cannot be
configured on the host
• Performance of applications like SQL
Server are significantly better
• Support extends into high-availability
solutions built using Windows Server
2012 Failover Clustering

How NUMA works…

• Guest OS and applications make
intelligent decisions about thread
and memory allocation
• Decisions are reflected in the physical
NUMA topology of the host
Network Adapter Hardware
Acceleration
Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ)
• Employs hardware packet filtering to
deliver packets from an external VM
network directly to VMs using DMA
transfers
IPsec task offload
• Reduces the load on the system’s
processors by IPsec encryption/decryption
using a dedicated processor on the
network adapter
Single-Root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV)
• Enables a device to divide access to its
resources among various PCIe hardware
functions
Offload Data Transfer (ODX)
A feature of high-end storage arrays that uses a token-based
mechanism to read and write data within and between arrays
Support for Large Sector Disks
To meet demands for increased disk capacity,
Windows Server 2012 supports…
• 512-byte sector format is replace by
4,096-byte (4 KB) format
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012…
• Supports hosting VHD files on native 4
KB format or 512-byte emulation (512e)
mode
• Mitigates the RMW impact when
accessing data within VHD files and when
updating metadata structures
Read-Modify-Write (RMW)
1. The disk reads the 4 KB physical
sector into its internal cache, which
contains the 512-byte logical sector
referred to in the write
2. Data in the 4 KB buffer is modified to
include the updated 512-byte sector
3. The disk performs a write of the
updated 4 KB buffer back to its
physical sector on the disk
Dynamic Memory Improvements
• New Minimum Memory setting
• Minimum/Maximum memory settings can be modified while VM is running
Viewing Dynamic Memory
Hyper-V Manager console redesigned for improved display
of Dynamic Memory real-time measurements – No Scrolling!

Get-VM cmdlet
Virtual Fibre Channel
Provides Fibre Channel ports within the guest operating system of VM
• Drivers for your HBAs must support Virtual Fibre Channel
• Connects only to LUNs - a LUN cannot be used as boot media for VMs
Allows for new scenarios
• Example: running the Failover Clustering feature inside the guest operating
system of a virtual machine connected to shared Fibre Channel storage
Protects existing investments
• Allows you to use any advanced storage functionality of an existing SAN
directly from VMs
Includes support for many related features
• Virtual SAN
• Live Migration
• Multipath I/O (MPIO)
• Use for host access
• Virtualize workloads that use MPIO
• Use different device specific modules (DSMs) for the host or each virtual
machine
SMB 3
Improvements in SMB 3 are designed to provide increased performance, reliability,
and availability in scenarios where data is stored on file shares

SMB Direct
• Provides remote storage solutions equivalent in performance to Fibre
Channel, but at a lower cost
SMB Directory leasing
• Improves application response time by reducing round-trips from client to
server
SMB Encryption
• Protects network traffic from eavesdropping when travelling over untrusted
networks
SMB Multichannel
• Server applications become more resilient to network failure
Improved VM Import
To help prevent configuration problems that prevent the import process from
completing successfully

• Configuration validation during import

• Can manually copy VM files between hosts and then import them
• No need to export first!
• Improved Import wizard
VHDX Disk Format
New default format for VHDs in Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012

• Supports virtual disks up to 64 TB

• Aligns to megabyte boundaries to support large sector disks (4 KB sector disks)
• Uses large block sizes to provide better performance
• Includes a new log to protect from corruption due to power failure
• Has much greater resiliency
• Allows for embedded custom user-defined metadata into VHDX files
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Scalability
DEMO
Hyper-V Support for Scaling Up and Scaling Out Technical
Preview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831389.aspx
System Center 2012 Evaluation Download
http://aka.ms/hwsc2012

Windows Server 2012 Product Download

http://aka.ms/hwws2012

Microsoft Virtual Academy

http://aka.ms/virtualacademy

Windows Server 2012 Virtual Labs

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/hh968267.aspx