Hyper-V is the next-generation hypervisor-based virtualization platform from Microsoft, which is designed to offer high performance, enhanced security, high availability, scalability, and many other improvements. VMM is designed to take full advantage of these foundational benefits through a powerful yet easy-to-use console that streamlines many of the tasks necessary to manage virtualized infrastructure. Even better, administrators can manage their traditional physical servers right alongside their virtual resources through one unified console.

Support for Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware ESX

With this release, VMM now manages VMware ESX virtualized infrastructure in conjunction with the Virtual Center product. Now administrators running multiple virtualization platforms can rely on one tool to manage virtually everything. With its compatibility with VMware VI3 (through Virtual Center), VMM now supports features such as VMotion™ and can also provide VMM-specific features like Intelligent Placement to VMware servers.

Live Migration allows your datacenter to be dynamic

Live Migration enables you to move virtual machines between Hyper-V hosts with no downtime and reduces the planned downtime associated with routine system maintenance. When Live Migration is coupled with VMM’s Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) feature, you can create a dynamic IT environment, automatically reallocating virtual machine workloads based on resource utilization and available capacity. In addition, VMM 2012 supports queuing live migrations; this improvement allows you to now define multiple live migrations and run them one after another in sequence without waiting for the current live migration to complete.

Hot-add and removal of storage

Hot-add and removal of storage reduces planned downtime associated with adding disk storage to your virtual infrastructure to accommodate increased storage requirements. The new Hot-Add and Removal of Storage feature in VMM 2012 allows an administrator to dynamically add and remove VHDs from a running virtual machine with no interruption of service.

Maximize datacenter resources through consolidation

A typical physical server in the datacenter operates at only 5 to 15 percent CPU capacity. VMM can assess and then consolidate suitable server workloads onto virtual machine host infrastructure thus freeing up physical resources for repurposing or hardware retirement. Through physical server consolidation, continued datacenter growth is less constrained by space, electrical and cooling requirements especially with Windows Server 2008 R2 power management enhancements.

Support for Clustered Shared Volumes and third-party CFS

Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 that provides support for live migration. CSV enhances the virtual infrastructure by allowing multiple Hyper-V hosts to access multiple VMs on a single LUN simultaneously. CSV support also enhances Live Migration by allowing individual virtual machines to be moved to different hosts without affecting the other VMs running on that host. With CSV, there is no need to move the virtual machine’s virtual hard disk files to another LUN. In addition, unlike the earlier storage model that required one VM per LUN, the new CSV storage permits multiple virtual machine files to be stored on the same LUN, making storage management much easier. VMM 2012 can also detect and support third-party Clustered File Systems such as Sanbolic.

Machine conversions are a snap!

Converting a physical machine to a virtual one can be a daunting undertaking—slow, problematic, and typically requiring you to halt the physical server. But thanks to the enhanced P2V conversion in VMM, P2V conversions will become routine. Similarly, VMM also provides a straightforward wizard that can convert VMware virtual machines to VHDs through an easy and speedy Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) transfer process.

Quick storage migration

Quick storage migration enables an administrator to move a virtual machine’s storage to a different LUN or even to a different host while the VM is running, both with a minimum of downtime. Typically, the amount of downtime required for quick storage migration is less than 2 minutes, though the actual amount of downtime depends on the virtual machine’s activity level during the move. In addition, VMM 2012 can take advantage of VMware’s Storage VMotion™ feature for moving VMware virtual machines to different storage locations with no downtime. Quick storage migration is especially useful for customers taking advantage of the new CSV feature in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Windows PowerShell provides rich management and scripting environment

The entire VMM application is built on the command line and scripting environment, Windows PowerShell. This version of VMM adds additional PowerShell commandlets and “view script” controls, which allow administrators to exploit customizing or automating operations at an unprecedented level.