FLEXIBILITY

Hyper-V allows you to move virtual guests between physical hosts if needed. Some common reasons to do this are:

• Free resources for the host
• The host requires maintenance that needs downtime or reboot
• The host is being decommissioned for any reason (old hardware, etc…)
• Moving guests from one host to another requires significantly less downtime than moving an OS from one physical server to another.

REDUNDANCY

The Failover Clustering feature of Hyper-V allows you to create and manage failover clusters. A failover cluster is a group of computers that provide redundancy as well as increase the availability of applications and services. Using a failover cluster in a Hyper-V environment does all of this without having to use as many physical computers. When one node in the cluster fails the other takes over with minimal interruption for your users.

SCALABILITY

Scalability is probably one of the biggest reasons to move to a virtualized environment with Hyper-V. You can add or remove servers as needed without having to purchase new hardware or eliminate any old hardware. There are different licensing restrictions for each version of windows server depending on your needs. Here are the licensing details for each Microsoft Windows Server 2008 version.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise: Run up to four software instances at a time in virtual operating system environments on a server under a single server license.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter: Run any number of software instances in physical and virtual operating system environments on a server.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise: Run any number of software instances in one physical server and any number of virtual operating system environments on the server.

Windows Virtual Desktop Access (Windows VDA): A standard benefit of Software Assurance and a stand-alone subscription-based license which allows roaming access to Windows virtual machines (VMs) from thin clients, third party, and non-Windows-based devices.

System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE): SMSE offers a comprehensive solution that includes Virtual Machine Manager and covers the managed node under the four main products of System Center. One SMSE license allows you to manage the physical operating system environment and up to four virtual ones on a licensed server.

REDUCE COST OF OPERATIONS

Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization can greatly reduce cost of operations. By purchasing a few very powerful servers you can virtualize all or most of your entire infrastructure while reducing the cost of hardware and maintenance. With all of your resources consolidated and centralized into a few locations administration becomes much simpler.

If you are considering ways to simplify administration of your IT operations, reduce cost and improve reliability, check out the possibilities of Microsoft’s Hyper-V.