Installing Hyper-V in Windows Server "8"

First of all, I`m a though guy. Currently, I`m located in Seattle and I did a remote upgrade of one of my lab servers in Norway. And you know what? It just works.

So basically, I just want to cover the setup of a new Hyper-V host using some screen shots in case you`re not familiar with the process in the first place.

1.       Either boot from DVD, VHD, or USB. In my example, I used a DVD. Select language, time and currency format and keyboard

2.       Click Install now

3.       Select which version you want to install. As you can see there are two versions. The server core (without a GUI) for smallest footprints and the traditional rich Windows Server with a GUI.

4.       Read through the license terms and eventually accept it and move on.

5.       Select which disk/partition you want to use. You can also select navigate to drive options if you need additional options related to the selected disk.

6.       Files will be copied to the disk and some reboots will be required through the process

7.       The final bits are almost in place,

8.       Enter an administrator password for the built-in admin account

9.       Finalizing your settings before you`re good to go

The next thing that I want to do is quite obviously, enabling the Hyper-V role and see what`s changed in this build.

By default, Server Manager will launch after you`ve logged on to your Windows Server “8”.

A nice fresh looking metro designed Server Manager that also shows some improvements on the management side, like adding several servers and also create a server group. All this for simplified management and streamlined actions across your Win 8 servers.

If you click the ‘Manage’ button in the right corner, this will show some options for either the current local server or an remote server. To summarize, click here when you want to add new roles and features. (If you want to list all the administration tools available on the server, click ‘Tools’)

1.       After you have clicked ‘Add roles’, you can choose from a Role-based or feature-based installation, or a Remote Desktop Services scenario-based installation. Select the first one since this is a traditional Hyper-V deployment on a single host.

2.       Select a server from the server pool or a virtual hard disk. As mentioned above, you can add and create a server group. If you had several servers in this group, you could have selected a remote server and deployed Hyper-V. The VHD option is currently untested by me, but it`s pretty self-explained what this means. It will mount the VHD and enable roles/features within the file.

3.       Navigate to the Hyper-V role and click Next.

4.       You get information about the installation itself and what you`re able to do during the install, or simply do it afterwards.

5.       Select a dedicated physical NIC presented in the host for the Virtual Switch (yes, it`s now called virtual switch instead of virtual network. Simplified, right? J)

6.       Some pretty new improvements related to VM migrations in this build, so you must decide which protocol you`d like to use for this purpose if you want to allow this server to send and receive live migrations of virtual machines. Also note that if you intend to cluster this Hyper-V host, you should not enable migration now, but configure it during the creation of your Hyper-V cluster – and use dedicated networks. BTW, this is very useful information at this stage. Remember in the 2008 R2 version, where you had to investigate to find the network for live migration, hidden on the settings of a random VM?

7.       Select location for both virtual hard disks and VM config files. This server is not a part of a cluster so I will actually specify the locations at this time.

8.       Confirm the selections and eventually mark the ‘Restart the destination server automatically if required.

Once it`s done, you are free to deploy virtual machines. Follow this blog to participate in the next excited post about the subject.