Space Age vindicated for supporting Microsoft’s Hyper-V
I was asked to explain why Space Age Technologies uses virtualisation and the Microsoft implementation of that in the form of Hyper-V recently and I honestly was initially stumped as to how I should reply. Virtualised servers are now so much a part of how I look at server infrastructure that I hardly consider any alternative. The idea that there used to be another option is foreign to me now.
The reason I gave to that question was a simple one: virtualised servers are more stable and more controllable from a distance and Hyper-V is the least expensive way to virtualise Windows servers to the enterprise levels we (the Network Operations Centre) demand of our environments. Allow me to explore this in a little more detail….
Microsoft’s top 10 reasons to adopt Hyper-V:
1. Reduce Infrastructure Costs Through Consolidation
It’s true. If your environment calls for a number of servers then buying the hardware for all those servers can be a huge investment. Consolidating those into one machine will greatly reduce the costs.
2. Virtualize the Most Demanding Workloads
Having the ability to run multiple servers mixing 32bit and 64bit processing and being able to spec each virtual machine as is necessary means that you can have even resource hungry services virtualised.
3. Virtualize for High Availability
Two hardware servers each running as Virtual Server Hosts (VSH) can be built so that the Virtual Machines (VM) on one host move to the other- when the first host goes down for maintenance and moves back once the VSH is available again means that anything that causes one set of hardware to be unavailable for a time does not mean you lose all the functionality running on that machine.
4. Improve Security and Reliability with Microkernelized Hypervisor
A small, core installation designed to be stable and hardened against attack makes for a secure and reliable base to build on. Add the role-based security through Active Directory and hardware level security features, like the execute disable (NX) bit, and you have a very secure setup.
5. Protect Important Data Using Live Backup
Hyper-V Snapshots make for a quicker and more certain way to lock down the state of a machine before you make any major change to it. If the change has undesirable results (or fails completely) you can simply return to the previous state. Additionally the use of the Windows Server 2008 Volume Shadow Copy Service enables fast and reliable disaster recovery.
6. Minimize Downtime with Quick Migration
Moving from one hardware platform to another? Perhaps due to an upgrade of your hardware or replacement of the same for warrantee purposes? This becomes easy and fairly quick if the servers are VMs and painless too.
7. Delegate Virtual Machine Management
Because of the security architecture you can allow certain VMs to be managed by certain individuals. This allows a client to have VMs running on the same VSH controlled and managed by us or by them, with permissions set up exactly as desired.
8. Reduce Support Time with Integrated Management
While we do not use System Centre, any organization using it would find this to be a huge boon. All servers, physical or virtual managed from one location.
9. Save Time and Money with a More Flexible Test Environment
All the benefits listed so far apply just as much to test environments as they do to your production. In fact think about how much time you can save rebuilding test environments if you could just revert back to the snapshot.
10. Take Advantage of Broad Compatibility
Because Hyper-V provides the VMs with virtual hardware and because Hyper-V itself is able to run on many varied hardware platforms you can be assured of great compatibility with hardware and any guest OS running under Hyper-V.
But why Hyper-V?
While it is true that much of this top 10 list is also true for competitor’s hypervisors, none of them offer the enterprise level of these features at anywhere near the same price point for Windows environments. It is free with modern Windows and as such, has to be compared with the free versions of those other products. Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualisation lists Microsoft with Hyper-V in the leader’s quadrant for exactly this reason (amongst others) and InfoWorld’s virtualisation shootout gave them a Very Good result placing them above Citrix and firmly in the company of VMWare. At this level, Hyper-V is certainly king of options and performance. If you need to virtualise a Windows environment, then there really is only one choice.
Written by: Grant Ongers- Network Operations Manager
