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Microsoft updates Hyper-V, adds dedupe to Windows Server 8

Microsoft updates Hyper-V, adds dedupe to Windows Server 8

By:  Rafael Ruffolo  On: 14 Sep 2011 For: ComputerWorld Canada Creator

The company said its latest version of Windows Server will be the “most cloud-optimized server OS.” Find out about some of the new enhancements

ANAHEIM, CALIF. – Microsoft Corp. continued to move its products “to the cloud” on Wednesday as it released an early developer preview of Windows Server 8.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage on day two of the Microsoft BUILD developer conference to tell attendees that every one of its core businesses will be optimized for the cloud. He added that “reimagining Windows,” including the significantly revamping of Windows Server 8, is necessary to completely overhaul Microsoft into a cloud services company.

The new Windows Server release was dubbed by Ballmer and pretty much every other Microsoft executive at BUILD as the “ultimate cloud OS.” The platform, the company said, will provide “multi-tenant infrastructure” for cloud services.

Bill Laing, the corporate vice-president of Microsoft’s server and cloud division, said driving the new features in Windows Server 8 was the need for increased virtualization scalability, simplified management of multiple servers and support for mobile workers and their mobile devices. He said that the updated product will fit businesses of all sizes, from small businesses looking to back up to the cloud or large enterprises building out extensive private or hybrid cloud infrastructure.

With this release, Microsoft is also pushing developers to use the identity management and development tools in its Windows Azure platform to create apps and services that can work across multiple clouds.

While Microsoft added hundreds of new features to the product, an immediately noticeable change for IT administrators will be the new Server Manager UI screen. This slick looking interface takes some of its visual cues from the tile-based Windows 8 UI and replaces the old MMC management screens.

Using the management screen, admins can check out events and performance alerts on their local and virtual servers. The interface has also been upgraded with a boatload of filtering and search capabilities to eliminate a lot of on-screen clutter.

“We were focused on making manageability easy” said Mike Neil, general manager of Windows Server. “Server Manager also has the new Metro look and feel to it.”

Behind Server Manager is Microsoft’s scripting language PowerShell, which has been made easier to use in this release. In Server Manager, uses will be able to call up the PowerShell pane to view the PowerShell commands behind the UI and use them to automate their servers.

Everything in Windows Server 8 can be managed through PowerShell scripting as Microsoft has increased the number of commands to over 2,300.

Linked to its claim that Windows Server 8 is a “cloud-based” server OS, Microsoft also touted a bunch of improvements to its Hyper-V virtualization platform. This was necessary, it said, as more and more Windows Server instances are becoming virtual.

Live migration capabilities have been substantially updated in the new OS, extending that feature beyond migration of VMs across physical machines to the movement of virtual hard disks from one storage device to another. All an IT admin needs is an IP connection from one host to another to migrate a VM, with no clustered storage required.

The new Hyper-V has also been improved to support 160 processors and up to 2 TB of RAM, while VMs can have up to 32 virtual CPUs and 512 GB of RAM. Users will find that Microsoft has updated the virtual switch found in the hypervisor as well, which gives them the ability to set minimum and maximum bandwidth guarantees.

These updates are just a few of a laundry list of Hyper-V updates Microsoft has in store for the final release of Windows Server 8.

Another new storage feature is the built-in data deduplication, which automatically detects duplicate data and puts those files into a separate store in System Volume Information to reduce storage space.

Microsoft is also adding dynamic access control to Windows Server 8, which lets IT control file access to their staff. Users

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Tags: cloud services, Microsoft
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Rafael Ruffolo Rafael Ruffolo was a senior writer for ComputerWorld Canada from 2006 to 2011. He was the winner of a Kenneth R. Wilson award for business journalism in 2009.
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