Hello folks,
In today’s demo, I would like to show you two big new features request in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V for solving operational problems.
None of us would like to bring the workload offline in order to service the virtual machine.
Table of Contents
Hot Add and Remove Memory for static Virtual Machines
As you know Microsoft introduced Dynamic memory back in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. However, we can’t use Dynamic memory on all our workloads like SQL or Exchange Server.
Microsoft is listening to us and they have added hot add and remove memory for Static Virtual Machines.
What are the requirements for static memory?
This is very specifically only if you’re running Windows 10 guests on Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V host, then you can go in with statically configured memory and change the memory both up and down while the virtual machine is running!
The interesting part is, If you go to the memory settings in the Hyper-V Manager console even though that this is a static memory VM, we can actually see the memory on demand, thus you can size the memory effectively as well. This is fantastic!
Hot Add and Remove Virtual Network Adapters
Hot add and remove virtual network adapters. This is for Generation TWO (Gen2) virtual machines only (WS2012 / W8, WS12R2 / W8.1, WS2016 / W10 guests, or later versions).
You can go in add or remove network adapters while the virtual machine is running!
The other interesting big feature is, the virtual network adapter identification or device naming, this one is actually very interesting. When you add a virtual network adapter, you can give it a name which is then exposed inside the virtual machine.
You can enable Device naming through PowerShell or through the VM Settings under Network Adapter\Advanced Features, then from inside the virtual machine you can actually go and check, this adapter is that one, and the other adapter for that one. Very convenient and useful.
Let’s look together at those new features in action!
DEMO
I hope you enjoyed the demo, and I would like to thank you for viewing it.
Cheers,
/Charbel