As we start to look at the next version of server products I wanted to touch on Microsoft latest version of Hyper-V.
So what is HyperV/Virtualisation?
Released as a updated feature in Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V provides virtualisation of your operating systems on a single box. A single physical machine can host multiple machines allowing you to take advantage of hardware, how ever you do you need a decent box.
The base machine has a large amount of hard disk space to store multiple operating systems and will require a decent dual core or recommended quad core. As you build each machine it take the more and more RAM from the machine so make sure you have enough for each virtual machine.
From a multi server point of view you can store all your data on a SAN (data store) and each host machine connects to the SAN to get the data it requires to run the operating systems. With the features of HyperV should one of your physical machine lose power, another machine will start hosting the operating system.
With the example below the virtual machines OS is stored in VHD files on a SAN. The physical servers connect to those files through SCSI or iSCSI to connect a LUN. Then the physical machine start your virtual machines and you can connect to them to deliver you services in the Learning Gateway.
I’ve recent got my hands on a brand new laptops which was spec’d for me to run multi virtual machines at a time for development. I’m currently installing the machine with Hyper V version 2 and its all going well. I’ll keep you updated with the progress.
