Use Hyper-V in Windows

Microsoft's Hyper-V will become popular because IT is a free part of Windows server licenses. However, this does not mean that IT managers can ignore best practices when managing virtualized environments. Especially as the virtualization market becomes increasingly commercialized.

Today, manufacturers provide practical virtualization layers for free and facilitate management. Therefore, it is necessary to verify each vendor's management tool suite and select the best tool for your enterprise architecture.

There are now Hyper-V tools dedicated to small, medium, and large organizations that can benefit a variety of environments.

Manage Hyper-V Installation

Virtualization is no longer just for large IT departments. In fact, using a small number of servers can save a lot of money for small business customers. The practical Hyper-V integration tool can be seen in this situation. For example, when managing one or two servers, using the built-in Hyper-V manager is the most obvious no-cost option, because IT managers can easily create and manage them on a single system.

It seems that this is the best choice for small-sized installation, especially if there is no cluster requirement. In addition, small enterprises can use free remote server management tools and use tested remote desktop sessions to create remote connections to manage arbitrary servers.

The IT department needs to add virtualization functions, such as high availability or physical-to-virtualized P2V migration. They need to consider investment in the system center Virtual Machine manager SCVMM. When you see a gentle IT configuration quotation, you may spit out your coffee; however, Microsoft provides a Working Group version that allows IT procurement to buy these features at a lower cost. SCVMM workgroup versions can manage up to five Hyper-V host servers. Therefore, you can perform real-time migration on cluster servers while enjoying P2V migration. It is especially useful for old servers that will be phased out, including software that has no value for re-installation.

Medium-sized enterprises need more management

The IT department must maintain dozens or even hundreds of virtual server labels to avoid relying entirely on the Hyper-V tool to manage the new Virtual Layer. Organizations are looking for a tool with superior monitoring and automation capabilities, but it does not impose a significant burden on employees and does not have to worry about re-building from scratch.

Virtual Machine manager will be interesting for IT departments with the Microsoft System Center suite. The "Single Window" function in the system can only be implemented in the next version. The current version is system center Virtual Machine manager 2012, which may be released along with other parts of the suite, including Configuration Manager SCCM) and Operation Manager SCOM ). With an out-of-the-box management package for monitoring Hyper-V, SCOM is a wise choice for companies that need to quickly reach the stable operation level without causing too much fuss. In fact, SCVMM does need an appropriate SCOM to fully monitor your Vm and host.

Use Microsoft Hyper-V for enterprise flexibility

Large IT departments face challenges in the integration of virtual machines and existing IT management systems, because management systems are always rooted in the enterprise. In this case, flexibility is the key. To plan an appropriate solution, the IT manager needs to find a good combination management tool.

Major vendors provide vendor-neutral options for virtual environments, not only to manage and monitor Hyper-V, but also to other virtual layers, such as VMware ESX and ESXi. For example, vFoglight of Quest provides an integrated choice for monitoring the Virtual Layer, which distributes workload to available computing resources. Therefore, to interact with thousands of virtual machines, it is important to find tools to support and maintain variable workload and service quality requirements.

Large enterprises need more features that small enterprises cannot consider, such as automated Hyper-V host deployment, fast Virtual Machine backup, and shared storage compatibility. For example, HP's IO designer supports automated Hyper-V host deployment and verifies the availability of all required resources of the target blade. It also supports the self-service interface, so the administrator can easily install a new Hyper-V host.

Go beyond a single tool

There are a variety of tool sets that support Hyper-V, which is a great change compared to the poor support of two or three years ago. From hardware integration to monitoring management, these attachments are useful once more than a few servers in a hybrid environment or the enterprise needs real-time migration and other functions.

But do not forget the typical single-function tools in the system administrator toolbox. These tools include virtual hard drive converters, processor probe, and monitoring gadgets. These tools will still be needed in the virtual server environment.