Windows

Virtualization provides an expansive list of advantages including easy migration, rational consumption of resources, scalability, etc. For this reason, companies that have physical servers often want to convert at least some of them to virtual machines. Hyper-V is a hardware virtualization platform provided by Microsoft. Today’s blog post explains which servers should be converted and tools that can be used for converting physical machines to Hyper-V virtual machines. Read to decide which tool best suits your needs. General P2V Conversion…

Microsoft strives to make its products effective, reliable, and practical, improving the overall user experience and operational efficiency. And Hyper-V was designed with such simplicity and usability in mind, allowing you to customize every aspect of the infrastructure. For this reason, there are at least three ways to install Hyper-V: by using PowerShell, Server Manager, or DISM. In this post, we will guide you through the three installation methods. Requirement to Install Hyper-V on Windows Server 2019 Before you can…

VM licensing has always been a confusing topic for many users due to the multitude of implications and liabilities that it entails. Currently, Microsoft customers who want to build a highly functional Hyper-V environment can choose between two deployment options: the Hyper-V role on Windows Server and free Hyper-V Server. Unfortunately, when choosing between the two options, customers rarely consider the implications that go along with each of them, especially in terms of licensing. This blog post compares the Hyper-V…

Starting with Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V has been available as a Windows Server role and as a standalone Hyper-V Server. There are essentially three Hyper-V installation options to choose from: GUI installation on Windows Server, Server Core installation on Windows Server, and Hyper-V Server installation. This blog post compares these Hyper-V installation options and provides an answer to the following question: why would you choose the GUI installation vs the Server Core? In short, the main reasons why you should…

The goal of most organizations is to grow and expand over time. While meeting this goal, an organization also often finds it more difficult to properly and efficiently manage all aspects of its infrastructure. Modern businesses have long recognized the multiple benefits that virtualization can provide. Currently, there are multiple virtualization platforms which offer a reliable and cost-effective approach to managing the organization’s infrastructure of any scale and complexity. To meet the growing demand for virtualization, Microsoft has introduced its…

When looking to install Microsoft Hyper-V, you need to install the Hyper-V role on Window Server. One option is to use the GUI to run and manage your server and VMs. However, in certain situations, you can save resources by running Windows Server in command line (without GUI). To install the Hyper-V role, you need to install the Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Server Core as your operating system (OS) platform. For the purposes of this walkthrough, we are using the…

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory was first introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1. Prior to its release, a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) would start and run with the full amount of RAM assigned to it, which resulted in memory overuse and affected overall VM performance. Moreover, the amount of available VM memory could be changed only when the VM was turned off. Thus, it is reasonable that static memory allocation had to be replaced with dynamic memory allocation and the…

A possible error when working with Microsoft Hyper-V checkpoints is the Hyper-V checkpoint operation failed error and other similar errors. Read this blog post to learn about the possible reasons for this error and the cleanup methods available to fix checkpoint errors. Quick Hyper-V Checkpoint Overview Hyper-V checkpoint is a feature that allows you to save a virtual machine’s state by creating a  differencing virtual disk. Any changes made on a virtual disk (that is, changed blocks) are recorded to…

Microsoft introduced their proprietary virtualization platform, Hyper-V, as a part of Windows Server 2008. Since its first release, Hyper-V has been available on all subsequent versions of Windows Server. However, it was not long before Microsoft released a standalone virtualization product called Hyper-V Server 2008. This software is also available in the x64 SKUs of the Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. Both operational modes have similar functionality, but there are still some differences…