1. What’s New in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V
Aidan Finn, MVP
Technical Sales Lead, MicroWarehouse

2. MVP, Cloud & Datacenter Management (Hyper-V)
About Aidan Finn
Technical Sales Lead, MicroWarehouse
MVP, Cloud & Datacenter Management (Hyper-V)
Experienced with Azure, Hyper-V, Windows Server/Desktop, System Center, and IT infrastructure
@joe_elway
aidanfinn.com

3. About MicroWarehouse Irish owned/located distributor Distributors for:
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And many more
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Get your licensing right
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@MWHDistribution

4. Windows Server 2016

5. Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2 Hyper-V
What we already have …

6. High speed Live Migration vRSS 64 TB VHDX
Notable Features
Difference makers
Storage Spaces
SMB Multichannel
SMB Direct (RDMA)
High speed Live Migration
vRSS
64 TB VHDX
Hyper-V Replica > Azure Site Recovery
SR-IOV

7. Improved service availability Cloud Inspired by Azure
WS2016 Talking Points
Cloud, cloud, cloud
Feedback has shaped WS2016
WS2012 and WS2012 R2
5 x WS2016 Technical Preview releases
Easier management
Improved service availability
Cloud
Inspired by Azure

8. Up to 24 TB per physical server (6x)
Greater Scalability
More RAM & CPU
Capability
Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter
Windows Server Standard and Datacenter
VMware vSphere 6 Enterprise Plus
Physical (Host) Memory Support
Up to 4 TB per physical server
Up to 24 TB per physical server (6x)
Up to 6 TB per physical server (12 TB for specific OEM certified platform)
Physical (Host) Logical Processor Support
Up to 320 LPs
Up to 512 LPs
Up to 480 LPs
Virtual Machine Memory Support
Up to 1 TB per VM
Up to 12 TB per VM (12x)
Up to 4TB per VM
Virtual Machine Virtual Processor Support
Up to 64 VPs per VM
Up to 240 VPs per VM (3.75x)
Up to 128 VPs per VM

9. Hyper-V

10. Connected Standby support Discrete Device Assignments (DDA) VM version
Virtualization
New features
Connected Standby support
Discrete Device Assignments (DDA)
Used by Azure N-Series VMs
VM version
WS2012 R2 is v5.0
WS2016 is v8.0
Virtual machine binary configuration
Binary .VMCX instead of .XML
.VMRS instead of .BIN and .VSV

11. Demo
Nano Server

12. Nested Virtualization
New features
Fully supported feature
Enable Hyper-V inside a VM
Requires host & VM to run:
Windows 10
WS2016
Great for:
Learning
Demo
Training
Really for Hyper-V containers

13. Nested Virtualization Notes
Things to know
Restrictions:
Requires Intel VT-x and EPT
Windows 10 AU or WS2016 only
It might work with vSphere, but unsupported
Device Guard must be disabled
VMs with virtualization based security cannot do this
The virtual host:
MAC spoofing enabled
Dynamic memory disabled
No runtime memory resizing
No Live Migration of virtual host
No checkpoints of virtual host
Must be on latest VM version (8.0)

14. Demo
Nested virtualization

15. Security

16. Security Hypervisor has been hardened Host Resource Protection
Protecting the cloud and tenants, offering trust
Hypervisor has been hardened
Host Resource Protection
From Azure
Linux secure boot
Credential Guard
Device Guard
Key Storage Drive for Generation 1 VMs

17. Guarded Fabric Control where VMs can run A new attestation service:
Trust for the tenant
Control where VMs can run
A new attestation service:
Host must be authorized to start a VM
Host Guardian Service
Key/attestation service
Runs in dedicated physical domain
Two models
Admin-trusted: easy to deploy & good for PoC
TPM-trusted: more secure
TPM-trusted
HGS requires HSM
Hosts require TPM 2.0 and UEFI with secure boot

18. Shielded Virtual Machines
Security for the tenant
Control who can see inside your VMs
Shielded virtual machines:
Virtual TPM: BitLocker that you control
Optionally limit access to the guest OS
Two levels of shielding:
Encryption supported: Trusted admins
Shielded: Non-trusted admins

19. Modern App Deployment

20. Containers A new way to deploy services in a cloud
Operating system virtualization
A new way to deploy services in a cloud
No longer 1 app per server
Instant deployment from a repository
Meet demand immediately
Deployed in VM or on physical machine
Windows Server Containers
Shared kernel
Hyper-V Containers
Isolation via Hyper-V

21. Operations

22. Operational Improvements
Day-to-day admin activities
Hot Add/Remove of memory and virtual NICs
Hyper-V Manager slight improvements
Integration services via Windows Update
VM version
Resilient Change Tracking
In host RAM
Also on disk with VM

23. Demo
PowerShell Direct

24. Storage

25. Storage ReFS Accelerated VHDX Operations New Shared VHDX format
Virtual machine storage enhancements
ReFS Accelerated VHDX Operations
Matured for data volumes
Recommended for Hyper-V
Faster VHDX operations – creation, checkpoint merge
New Shared VHDX format
Host based backup
Hyper-V Replica
Online resizing of shared disk
Type specific extension: *.vhds
Storage Replica

26. Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)
Storage Spaces without JBODs
Storage Spaces without SAS hardware
Build a Scale-Out File Server without:
SAS HBAs
SAS cables
JBODs
S2D cluster:
Servers with internal disks
Working as 1 storage system
CSVs span servers
Shared to Hyper-V hosts via SMB 3.0
Use SATA disks to reduce costs
Flash (SSD or NVMe): persistent cache
SSD + HDD: mirror + parity for performance + capacity

27. Hyper-Convergence Classic virtualization architecture:
1 tier that includes compute, network, and storage
Classic virtualization architecture:
Compute: Hyper-V
Network: iSCSI, FC(oE), SMB 3.0
Storage: SAN, SOFS
If storage + compute = servers?
Hyper-converged infrastructure
Flatten it all
1 tier of inter-connected servers
Includes storage in the servers
Simpler than you think:
CSVs deployed on Storage Spaces
VMs are storage on CSVs
No file shares!

28. Checkpoints (Hyper-V snapshots):
Enabling DevOps
Checkpoints (Hyper-V snapshots):
Were not supported in production
Were not backups!
Still aren’t backups!
Major cause of support tickets
Production checkpoints
Uses backup features of Hyper-V
Supported in production
Restores the VM as if restored from backup
Checkpoint merge
Near-instant if stored on ReFS

29. Backup

30. Resilient Change Tracking (RCT)
Backup
Historically a source of issues in Hyper-V
Several enhancements
Resilient Change Tracking (RCT)
WS2016 Hyper-V does not need 3rd party filter driver in the kernel of the host
Tracks block-level changes
Enables incremental backup of Hyper-V VMs
Improved backup mechanism
Leverages production checkpoints
Should prove to be much more scalable
Recommend storing VMs on ReFS

31. Networking

32. Network function virtualization Software-defined encapsulation
Networking
Cloud enhancements
Network function virtualization
Moving appliances into the fabric
Software-defined encapsulation
VXLAN supported added to NVGRE
Network controller
New centralized management
Windows role
Ported from Azure

33. Virtual Switch Improvements
Switch Embedded Teaming and virtual (host) RDMA
Windows Server 2016

34. High Availability

35. High Availability Compute resiliency Ordered start of virtual machines
Uptime = SLA = happy customers = happy boss = happy you
Compute resiliency
Ordered start of virtual machines
Node fairness

36. Cluster Rolling Upgrade
Uptime = SLA = happy customers = happy boss = happy you
Huge amount of legacy Hyper-V out there
No upgrade process
Too complicated/expensive to migrate
“Upgrade” WS2012 R2 (only) to WS2016
Process:
Drain host of VMs
Evict host from cluster
Rebuild host with WS2016 and configure
Join rebuilt host to old cluster
Repeat steps 1-4 for each host
Upgrade cluster to WS2016 functional level
Upgrade VM Version

37. Wrap Up

38. Aidan Finn @joe_elway aidanfinn.com @MWHDistribution
Thanks for attending!
@joe_elway
aidanfinn.com
@MWHDistribution