Networking In Microsoft Hyper-V: The Video

I've been diving into all aspects of the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 ecosystem lately, as the operating systems move out into the enterprise. High on my radar is Hyper-V, the server virtualization solution that's available both as a standalone product and as part Windows Server 2008 R2.

Poking around to learn more, I came across a really valuable video, "Hyper-V: Understanding Networking," from Matt McSpirit, which I've embedded below. Matt works for Microsoft in the UK, where he's a partner technology specialist. He also runs the Virtualboy blog, where he's posted a great string of videos about windows server and virtualization subjects. (Of course, being a Brit, he spells it "virtualization.")

Note that Hyper-V is separate from Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). As its name implies, the latter handles application virtualization. Hyper-V plays at the hypervisor level, managing server and storage virtualization. What's new in R2 of Hyper-V, according to Microsoft, is support for up to 64 logical processors. It also supports migration across different CPU versions, which eliminates a big migration headache.

At this point in the migration of hypervisor technology into the marketplace, the idea of multiple OS instances running on a single CPU isn't a big deal, conceptualize or implementation-wise. However, networking all those logical OS instances -- how all those virtual machines communicate outside their individual sandpoints -- is in many ways the more interesting challenge.

This is where Matt's video comes in. He explains creating internal networks on Hyper-V, through which virtual machines talk to each other via an inter-NIC. The he gets into the meat-and-potatoes, namely configuring VMs to communicate to the outside world. Matt also discusses managing the virtual networks he's created, including firewalling, print sharing, and management of the physical NICs to which the virtual networking instances are connected. All in all, a really nice introductory tutorial.

Here it is:

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