Configure Hyper-V

What is Hyper-V
Hypervisor technology is software on which multiple virtual machines can run, with the
hypervisor layer controlling the hardware and allocating resources to each VM operating
system. Hyper-V is the virtualization platform that is included in windows server 2008.

Benefits
Ease of administration
Hardware costs are significantly reduced because multiple virtual machines can run on a
single physical machine.
Hyper-v licensing costs are included with the license cost of windows server 2008.
Fault tolerance support through Hyper-V clustering.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating system support windows, and others.

Hardware Requirement to run Hyper-V

Server 2008 64-bit Enterprise or Datacenter Edition.
RAM – it Depends
Processor – 64 bit must support virtualization.
HDD – varies by situation
Network Card – At least 2, one for you virtual machines to share, 1 for the physical machine
to use.

Virtual Machine – A software based instance of an operating system that uses shared
physical hardware.
VHD – Virtual Hard disk – A file that lives on a physical HDD that acts like a physical HDD
on a virtual machine.
Volume: A fixed amount of space on a disk. Single disk can hold multiple volumes.
Windows Deployment Services – A server role that allows easy installation of server and
client operating systems, using image-based installations.

WIM – Windows Imaging Format – The file type used to create and deploy Windows OS.

PXE – Preboot eXecution Environment is an environment to boot computers using a

network interface independently of available data storage devices (like hard disks) or
installed operating systems.

Boot Image – An image pulled from the server 2008 installation disk that allows a machine to
boot into Deployment Services installation mode.

Install Image – An image file that contains the actual OS you want to install.

Cluster
Network Load Balancing – Using multiple servers with similar configuration to share the load
by alternating which server handles requests.

Failover Clustering – Using multiple servers with similar configuration to provide highly
available services in case of a machine failure.

TS Load Balancing – Network Load Balancing with TS servers using TS session Broker.

Network Attached Storage Vs Storage Area Network

Here is the difference
A Storage Area Network is a bunch of drives on a separate machine that look like they re
attached to a machine. Usually a server or a server farm.
(Fiberchannel, iscsi, or AOE)

Network Attached Storage is a bunch of drives on a server or an appliance that are clearly
on a separate drive . ( Think Shared Drives/ Folders.) (SMB, NFS, AFS)
SCSI (small computer system interface) is a faster ( and more expensive) type of HDD is the
foundation of many RAID hardware solutions.
Its very popular in SANs and NAS, as it natively support multiple disk on the same Bus.

Iscsi is very similar to SCSI, except that is uses TCP/IP as a transport protocol and doesn’t
require crazy cabling like Fiber Channel. It can be used over long distances using existing
network structure.

Roles & Responsibility

 Analyzing system logs and identifying potential issues with computer systems.

 Performing routine audits of systems and software.

 Performing backups.

 Applying operating system updates, patches, and configuration changes.

 Installing and configuring new hardware and software.

 Adding, removing, or updating user account information, resetting passwords, etc.

 Troubleshooting any reported problems.

What is difference between Raid 1and Raid 5?

Mirroring and parity striping across the disks.

Name at least 4 of the hardware component in a SAN?

Cable, SAN Switch, GBIC, storage subsystem, Host bus Adapters.
What is the need for separate network for storage why LAN can’t be used?
Lan hardware and operating system are geared to user traffic, and lan are tuned for a fast
user response to messaging requests.
With a SAN, the storage units can be secured separately from the servers and totally apart
from the user network enhancing storage access in data blocks (bulk data transfers)

Q. What is HBA?
Host bust Adapters (HBAs) are needed to connect the server (host) to the storage.

Q. What is snapshot?
A snapshot of data object contain an image of data at a particular point of time.

What is a Hypervisor ?
Hypervisor as the kernel or the core of a virtualization platform. The hypervisor also called
the virtual machine monitor. The hypervisor has access to the physical host hardware.

Type 1 – hypervisor run on the bare metal of the hardware. Eg are Hyper-V & ESX Server.

Type 2 – hypervisor is hosted by an operating system. Eg are Vmware server & Microsoft
virtual server.

What ESX Server?

ESX server is VMware’s flagship server virtualization platform.
It comes in two versions – ESX Server & ESXi Server where the latter has no service
console and is the thinnest version available.
ESX server has many optional features like VMotion and VHMA and some built in features
like VMFS file system.
Most end users purchase Vmware ESX server with some set of optional features in a
package called VMware infrastructure. ESX server is managed by the VMware infrastructure
client. Its centralized management platform is called Virtual Center.
What are a Host, Guest, and Virtual Machine ?
A host system would be the primary & first installed operating system. If you are using a
bare metal virtualization platform like Hyper-V or ESX, there really isn’t host operating
system besides the Hypervisor.
If you are using a Type-2 Hypervisor like Vmware server or virtual server, the host operating
system is whatever operating system those applications are installed into.

A guest system is a virtual guest or virtual machine (VM) that is installed under the host
operating system. The guests are the VMs that you run in your virtualization platform.

Some admin also call the host & guest the parent and child.

What Products are available for server virtualization ?

Bare metal Hypervisor / Native / Type 1
VMware ESX Server
Microsoft Hyper-V
Critix / Zen Server.

What products are available for Desktop Virtualization ?

Host in an OS /Type-2 / Intended for workstations.
VMware Workstation
Mircosoft Virtual PC
Parallells Workstation
Vmware Fusion for MAC OS
Parallels Desktop for MAC OS.

What is the difference between Esx Server and Vmware Server ?

While both Esx server and vmware server are server virtualization products the difference is
that VMware ESX installs and runs on the bare metal of a physical server where as VMware
server needs a base operating system. In other word VMware ESX has a type 1 hypervisor
where as VMware server has a type 2 hypervisor.
You will obtain much better performance from ESX server as it has much less overhead.
ESX

Prerequisite for Backups & Restoration

 Root Credentials required of ESX server in case of VM restoration.

 Approval required from Kamal Khanna/Munish Sharma as well as CR will be raised for any
Changes in VM Infra.

VM Machine Backup:-

We are using VCB (VMware consolidated Backup) utility for taking the backup.
VMware supports the following two modes of Consolidated Backup:

1. SAN Mode (Fibre Channel and iSCSI)

2. LAN Mode

Consolidated Backup supports image‐level backups for virtual machines running any guest operating
system and file‐level backups for virtual machines running Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Performing Image-Level Virtual Machine Backups

When we run the image‐ level virtual machine backup, Consolidated Backup first creates a
snapshot of virtual machine. Then the following steps take place:
1 Consolidated Backup exports the virtual machine snapshot to a local directory on the VCB
proxy.

2 We take the virtual machine disk images and configuration files and move them to the LTO Tape
through Backup Exec.

Backup Configuration:
Image Level configuration Scripts Example-
vcbMounter.exe -h 180.190.0.21 -u <Username> -p <Password> -a ipaddr:180.190.0.111 -t
fullvm -r e:\VCB\COR-SR-060 -m san -M 1
Backup Symantec backup Exec;

Inventory: Inventory is generally used when you physically change tapes in you tape drive or
library and you’d like to inform Backup Exec of the change. Without performing an inventory,
Backup Exec won’t know which tape is in which slot of the tape drive or library.

Catalog:
Catalog is generally used when you insert a tape drive or library that backup Exec has not
previously seen or contains a backup from another office.When a tape such as this contains
data that you’d like to work with, performing a catalog will allow backup exe to read directory
information from the tape and populate the restore tape with the new data allowing you to
restore the data if needed.