Chapter 2. Hyper-V Overview

• Hyper-V Background 28

• Hyper-V Core Features 30

• Reviewing Hyper-V 41

• Virtual Machine Hardware Environment 41

• Using the Hyper-V Manager Console 47

• Outlining the WMI API 67

• Summary 68

• Additional Resources 68

This chapter contains an overview of the Hyper-V features available as a role in a full installation of Windows Server 2008, as a Server Core role, and in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. In order to provide a robust virtualization platform that abstracts physical hardware dependencies and scales to support numerous concurrent workloads, Hyper-V is based on a hypervisor-based architecture that enables standard services and resources to create, manage, and execute virtual machines. Hyper-V offers a standard virtual hardware environment, virtual hard disks (VHD), and virtual networks that enable virtual machine execution, storage, and communications, respectively. Integration Services (IS) and Integration Components (IC) support critical processes and enhance the performance of virtual machines. Hyper-V Manager, a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, is available to perform Hyper-V management and virtual machine configuration functions. The Hyper-V Manager provides a primary interface to create, inspect, and configure virtual machines, virtual hard disks, and virtual networks, as well as to assign virtual machine memory and processor allocations. Hyper-V properties are also modified through the Hyper-V Manager. Virtual Machine Connection (VMC) is integrated into the Hyper-V Manager to provide remote access to virtual machines from within the console and is also available as a stand-alone application. In addition, Hyper-V offers an extensive Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface that you can leverage using various scripting and development languages, including PowerShell, to programmatically and remotely control the deployment, administration, and configuration of virtual machines.