Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V – What you should know ?

As a Server Admin, theoretically & practically, you should know what’s the feature technology behind Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Here I list down bunch of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V features technologies for your info…

Feature	Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Multitenant security and isolation	Server virtualization provides a fully isolated network layer of the datacenter through programmatically managed and extensible capabilities.
Private virtual local area network (LAN), or PVLAN	PVLANs can isolate VM from each other meaning you VM cannot contact other VM over the network while still maintaining external network connectivity for all VM.
DHCP guard	DHCP guard drops server messages from unauthorized VM that are acting as DHCP servers.
Router guard	Router guard drops router advertisement and redirection messages from unauthorized VM that are acting as routers.
Hyper-V Extensible Switch	The Hyper-V Extensible Switch is an open platform that lets vendors provide extensions written to standard Windows application programming interface (API) frameworks.
Extension monitoring	Multiple monitoring and filtering extensions can be supported at the entrance and outlet portions of the Hyper-V Extensible Switch.
Extension uniqueness	Extension configuration is unique to each instance of a Hyper-V Extensible Switch on a machine.
Extensions that prohibit state changes	The extensions can stop state changes from being implemented, while allowing features for monitoring and security to be launched.
Multiple extensions on same switch	Multiple extensions can coexist on the same Hyper-V Extensible Switch.
Network virtualization	Hyper-V Network Virtualization helps to isolate network traffic on a shared infrastructure without the need to use VLANs. It also allows users to move VM, as needed, within a virtual infrastructure while preserving virtual network assignments.A VM can be placed on any node even across the cloud.
IP address rewrite	Each VM customer address (CA) is mapped to a unique host provider address (PA).
Generic Routing Encapsulation	Hyper-V Network Virtualization uses Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) IP packets to map a virtual network to a physical network.
Live migration	Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V can migrate VM, with support for simultaneous live migrations. That is, users can move several VM at the same time.
Live storage migration	Live storage migration allows users to move virtual hard disks that are attached to a runningVM.Users can transfer virtual hard disks to a new location for upgrading or migrating storage, performing back-end storage maintenance, or redistributing the storage load.
Importing VM	With the Import Wizard, users can quickly and reliably import VM from one server to another.
Merging snapshots	The Hyper-V Live Merge feature allows users to merge snapshots back into the VM while it continues to run.
Automation support for Hyper-V	Automation support consists of more than 150 built-in Hyper-V cmdlets.
Hyper-V host and workload support	Users can configure up to 320 logical processors on hardware, 4 TB of physical memory, 64 virtual processors, and up to 1 TB of memory on a VM. Up to 64 nodes and 8,000 VM in a cluster also can be supported.
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) support inside VM	A NUMA topology can be projected onto a VM, and guest operating systems and applications can make intelligent NUMA decisions.
Support for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) networking devices	Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V enables support for SR-IOV-capable network devices and allows the SR-IOV virtual function of a physical network adapter to be assigned directly to a VM.
Dynamic Memory, startup memory, and minimum memory	Can reclaim the unused memory from VM with a minimum memory value lower than their startup value.
Hyper-V smart paging	If a VM is configured with a lower minimum memory than its startup memory and Hyper-V needs additional memory to restart it, Hyper-V smart paging is used to bridge the gap between minimum and startup memory.
Runtime memory configuration	Users can make configuration changes to Dynamic Memory (increase maximum memory or decrease minimum memory) when a VM is running.
Resource Metering in Hyper-V	Resource Metering allows users to track how many CPU, memory, storage, and network resources are consumed by a VM over time.
Virtual hard disk format (VHDX)	VHDX supports up to 64 TB of storage.
Offloaded data transfer support	Uses SAN copy offload to copy large amounts of data from one location to another.
Data Center Bridging (DCB)	Uses DCB-capable hardware to converge multiple types of network traffic onto a single network adapter, with a maximum level of service to each.
Virtual Fibre Channel in Hyper-V	Provides Fibre Channel ports within the guest OS.
Multipath I/O (MPIO) functionality for Fibre Channel storage within a VM	Uses MPIO functionality for proper connectivity to Fibre Channel storage within a VM.
Support for 4 KB disk sectors in Hyper-V virtual hard disks	Supports 4 KB disk sectors. This reduces the impact of 512e disks on the virtual hard disk stack.
Quality of Service (QoS) minimum bandwidth	Uses minimum bandwidth to assign specific bandwidth for each type of traffic and to ensure fair sharing during congestion.
Backup capability	Supports incremental backup of virtual hard disks while the VM is running.
Disaster recovery	Asynchronous replication of VM occurs over a network link from one Hyper-V host at a primary site to another Hyper-V host at a replica site. It also can restore the system from an unplanned shutdown.In the event of at the primary site, administrators can manually fail over production VM to the Hyper-V server at the recovery site. During failover, VM are brought back to a consistent point in time, and they can be accessed by the rest of the network within minutes.
Network Interface Card (NIC) Teaming for load balancing and failover (LBFO)	Provides built-in support for NIC Teaming: A VM can have virtual network adapters that are connected to more than one virtual switch. If a network adapter under that virtual switch is disconnected, it still has connectivity. NIC Teaming supports up to 32 network adapters in a team.
Hyper-V clustering	Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V provides protection against application and service failure, and system and hardware failure.
Guest clustering	Workloads can be virtualized by directly accessing cluster guest operating systems and storage over Fibre Channel or through iSCSI.
Live Migration	Live migrations in a clustered environment can use higher network bandwidths (up to 10 GB). Administrators can perform multiple simultaneous live migrations.
Encrypted cluster volumes	Microsoft BitLocker-encrypted cluster disks provide security for deployment outside the secure datacenter. They also provide a safeguard for the cloud.
Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) 2.0	Can integrate with storage arrays for replication and hardware snapshots out of the box.
Application monitoring	The health of key services provided by VM can be monitored. If an issue is detected, automatic corrective action can be initiated. Such action includes restarting a VM or moving it to a different Hyper-V server. This provides higher availability to workloads that do not support clustering.
In-box live migration queuing	Administrators can perform large, multiselect actions to queue live migrations of multiple VM.
VM failover prioritization	Administrators can configure priorities to control the order of VM failover. Lower priority VM automatically release resources if they are needed for higher priority VM.