My name is Ronald Beekelaar. I'm a Microsoft MVP of Virtual Machine Technology, based in Amsterdam. I have my own consultancy firm, and since 2002 I focus on virtualization. At first, this was strictly VMware-oriented, but a few years later this included Microsoft's virtualization products as well. Since the first public beta of Hyper-V more than a year ago, I have done many presentations about Hyper-V at various events, and talked to a lot of customers about transitioning to Hyper-V. The people I talk to can be divided into two groups: they either have experience with Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server, or they only know the VMware products and are just now looking into Hyper-V. However, for both groups, and despite very different opinions, there are five topics that always come up in discussions. Below is my list of the top-5 things you should know and understand about Hyper-V.
5) Understand the hypervisor model and performance consequences.
This is especially a big one for people that know Virtual PC and Virtual Server. The virtualization model that Hyper-V uses is very different from the model that Virtual PC and Virtual Server use. The Hyper-V model allows for much better I/O performance of virtual machines. This is mainly due to the new 64-bit hypervisor layer underneath everything - including the host operating system even, and the new high-speed VMBus "synthetic" drivers that run in the virtual machines.
Particularly- the use of optimized synthetic disk and network drivers talking to the VMBus, instead of using normal "hardware-oriented" drivers, make for a much faster I/O path from applications inside the Hyper-V virtual machines to the physical hardware. To make use of these synthetic drivers, make sure you use an operating system inside the virtual machines for which Microsoft provides so-called Integration Components. When you install the Integration Components, the synthetic drivers are installed as well.
To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Top 5 things to know about Hyper-V