Microsoft Hyper-V Introduction

RTA Information Technology, Tempe, Arizona http://rtait.com/index.htm


I'm back. I haven't posted for a while. I just got Microsoft-certified in Microsoft's new Windows Small Business Server 2008 after having been a beta tester for the past year. As near as I can tell I was the second person in Arizona to get SBS 2008-certified. There's only 200 of us in the world so far.

While the new SBS 2008 is big news, my personal hot topic of the year 2008 was Microsoft's Hyper-V. This is very low-level virtualization software to allow multiple operating systems to run in separate "virtual machines" on a single PC or server.

For the past year, I've been running Windows Small Business Server 2008 inside of Hyper-V. Doing so allows me to easily restore the operating system if needed. And it allows me to build companionn virtual machines (like XP and Vista clients) that can talk to my server and interact with it.

I've been using virtualization for several years now. Hyper-V is a big improvement over past Microsoft virtual server software because it's faster, can run 64-bit software (like SBS 2008), and can accomodate much more memory.

And the best news of all: Hyper-V software is essentially free.

I'll have more to say about Hyper-V and SBS 2008 in future posts. Right now, I'm concentrating on backups and restores for SBS in Hyper-V. Because of the complexity of SBS (Exchange Server 2007 and, often, SQL Server are running), SBS 2008 requires special backup techniques and solutions that are, right now, a work in progress.

Later. Myuron

P.S. Catch me at the AnandTech forums

http://forums.anandtech.com

where I'm been Moderator for Networking and General Hardware for several years. Feel free to ask technical questions there. My screen name is "RebateMonger", for my proclivity for finding good deals on computer hardware.