Assignment 5 – Hyper-V

Question 1

1. What are the four typical components associated with virtualization with Windows?

Answer 1

physical machine,
the virtual machine,
the virtual hard drive (and operating system),
hypervisor.

Question 2

2. What is the name associated with the physical computer used to deploy virtual machines?

Answer 2

The physical computer used to deploy virtual machines is called the host.

Question 3

3. What is the name associated with the virtual machines installed on the physical computer?

Answer 3

The name associated with the virtual machines installed on the host is the guest or guest operating system.

Question 4

4. What are the advantages of deploying virtual machines?

Answer 4

Virtual machines offer flexibility in that
they act just like real computer systems,
they can be moved easily between host machines,
they are easy to backup and manage.

Virtual machines provide simple testing environments where details can be worked out before being put into production.

Virtual machines allow for server consolidation where there are less physical machines as multiple virtual servers can be configured on a single physical computer. This reduces the hardware requirements, has less power consumption, increases the server utilization, and helps resolve compatibility issues. Virtual machines are ideal for sandbox testing.

Question 5

5. What are the disadvantages of deploying virtual machines?

Answer 5

The disadvantages of virtual machines are they represent a single point of failure if the host computer goes offline, an attack on the host computer could compromise all of the guest machines, and administrators need potential training with virtual machine environments. Generally the hardware requirements would be greater for the host machine if multiple VMs are configured.

Question 6

6. What characteristics of a CPU do you need to support Hyper-V?

Answer 6

The CPU should be a 64-bit processor and have hardware-assisted virtualization.

Question 7

7. What impact does the amount of RAM in the host machine have on virtualization with Hyper-V?

Answer 7

Since memory is assigned for each virtual machine, the host computer should have adequate resources to support each VM. The amount of RAM could impact how many VMs can be configured on a single host computer. The use of dynamically expanding memory with VMs helps to manage the memory resources.

Question 8

8. What recommendations does Microsoft make when considering the network configuration with virtual machines?

Answer 8

Microsoft recommends on NIC for the physical system and an additional NIC for every four VMs.

Question 9

9. What is ‘Discrete Device Assignment’?

Answer 9

Discrete Device Assignment is a feature of Hyper-V that allows the VMs to have direct access to the physical hardware of the host computer. This bypasses the Hypervisor layer and can improve performance.

Question 10

10. Describe what dynamically expanding memory is with respect to virtual machines.

Answer 10

Dynamically expanding memory with VMs allows the memory assigned to a VM to vary up to a maximum amount specified. Rather than be a fixed amount all the time, the memory adjusts to the demands of the VM up to a maximum amount. This saves resources that are shared between multiple VMs.

Question 11

11. What does Enhanced Session Mode allow you to do with virtual machines?

Answer 11

Enhance Session Mode allows you to redirect local resources to a virtual machine session. Resources include Smart cards, Clipboard, USB devices, Audio, and Printers. One example of Enhance Session Mode is the ability to drag and drop files directly between the host and guest operating systems.

Question 12

12. Describe the differences between Generation 1 and Generation 2 Virtual Machines.

Answer 12

A Generation 1 VM is basically an older VM format that supports some legacy devices. Gen 1 is used on older Windows Server and host Oss and runs an older version of Hyper-V.

Generation 2 is a newer format for VMs which support newer BIOS features such as UEFI. They can only be installed on 64-bit guest operating systems. One feature of Gen 2 to take advantage of is the ability to perform a PXE boot to load an operating system.
You cannot change the Generation of a VM once it is created.

Question 13

13. What are the two virtual hard disk formats supported by Windows 2016?

Answer 13

VHD is the older legacy disk format for virtual disks.
VHDX is a newer disk format that increases the capacity from 2TB to 64TB. VHDX also has better performance over VHD and provides protection against file corruption.

Question 14

14. Describe the four management tasks that can be performed on a VHD.

Answer 14

VHDs can be expanded to allow the maximum size to be increased.

VHDs can be shrunk to reduce the maximum size.

VHDs can be compacted to allow dynamically
expanding VHDs to be reduced in size.

VHDs can be converted from VHD to VHDx or VHDx to VHD as well as from dynamically expanding to fixed and back again.

Question 15

15. What must you do first before editing a VHD?

Answer 15

To make changes to a VHD, you must power off the Virtual Machine (VM).

Question 16

16. What is a ‘Pass-through disk’?

Answer 16

A Pass-through disk is a physical disk that has been connected to a VM.

Question 17

17. What is a ‘Differencing disk’?

Answer 17

A Differencing disk is a VHD associated with another disk and contains only changes to the associated disk. The differencing disk is a child disk, while the associated disk is the parent disk.

Question 18

18. What is a ‘Checkpoint’?

Answer 18

A checkpoint is a point in time capture of the VM. Checkpoints are used to restore a VM to a previous state. Multiple checkpoints can be merged to fully restore a VM.

Question 19

19. What four types of virtual networks that can be created?

Answer 19

You can create an External network to bind the VM to the physical NIC and allows access to the physical network.
You can also create an Internal network to allow VMs to communicate to each other and the host operating system, but not to the physical network.
You can also create a Private network to allow VMs to communicate to each other, but not the host operating system. Private networks provide isolation for security.

You can also create a Fibre-Channel network where VMs can connect to existing Fibre-Channel storage arrays.

Question 20

20. What is the purpose of a virtual switch?

Answer 20

A virtual switch allows one or more VMs to transmit data to local or external network resources. Server and client VMs can be connected using virtual switches.

Question 21

21. What is the maximum number of ports that can be configured on a virtual switch?
    .

Answer 21

The number of ports on a virtual switch is unlimited

Question 22

22. What features are available for optimizing virtual networks?

Answer 22

Virtual Machine Queue – allows network traffic received on the virtual network adapter to be distributed across multiple CPU cores.
IPSec Task Offload – allows the security associations used by IPSec to be processed by the physical network adapter.
Bandwidth Management – configure the amount of BW used by the virtual network adapters.
NIC Teaming – combine virtual network adapters together as a team for BW aggregation or failover.

Question 23

23. Describe the steps for moving a virtual machine using the two methods discussed in the curriculum.

Answer 23

One method for moving a VM involves Exporting the VM and then Importing it on a different host machine. The VM must be shut down to perform this option.

The other method called Storage Migration allows the VM to be moved over the network link. You use the Move Wizard to perform the move of the virtual machine and/or the virtual machine’s storage between Hypervisors.

Question 24

24. What is the advantage of performing a Storage Migration over exporting a VM when moving VMs?

Answer 24

With Storage Migration, the VM does not need to be shut down or taken offline to perform the move.