In the case of Hyper-V Server 2019, this also means that virtual machines can rather be managed locally, thus dismissing the need for another machine and a windows license to manage VMs remotely. I am in the process of planning my companies migration from VMware to Hyper-V, and therefore my question - i currently run my ESXi-servers from a 32GB SD card, will i be able to do this with Hyper-V Server? Does it support installation to SD card? How much space is required to run it? I cant seem to find any definite answers for the question.
Applies to: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019
Starting with Windows Server 2016, you can use Discrete Device Assignment, or DDA, to pass an entire PCIe Device into a VM. This will allow high performance access to devices like NVMe storage or Graphics Cards from within a VM while being able to leverage the devices native drivers. Please visit the Plan for Deploying Devices using Discrete Device Assignment for more details on which devices work, what are the possible security implications, etc.
There are three steps to using a device with Discrete Device Assignment:
All command can be executed on the Host on a Windows PowerShell console as an Administrator.
Discrete Device Assignment imposes some restrictions to the VMs and the following step needs to be taken.
Some hardware performs better if the VM in configured in a certain way. For details on whether or not you need the following configurations for your hardware, please reach out to the hardware vendor. Additional details can be found on Plan for Deploying Devices using Discrete Device Assignment and on this blog post.
Tip
The MMIO space values above are reasonable values to set for experimenting with a single GPU. If after starting the VM, the device is reporting an error relating to not enough resources, you'll likely need to modify these values. Consult Plan for Deploying Devices using Discrete Device Assignment to learn how to precisely calculate MMIO requirements.
Discrete Device Assignment provide hardware venders the ability to provide a security mitigation driver with their devices. Note that this driver is not the same as the device driver that will be installed in the guest VM. It's up to the hardware vendor's discretion to provide this driver, however, if they do provide it, please install it prior to dismounting the device from the host partition. Please reach out to the hardware vendor for more information on if they have a mitigation driver
If no Partitioning driver is provided, during dismount you must use the -force
option to bypass the security warning. Please read more about the security implications of doing this on Plan for Deploying Devices using Discrete Device Assignment.
The PCI Location path is required to dismount and mount the device from the Host. An example location path looks like the following: 'PCIROOT(20)#PCI(0300)#PCI(0000)#PCI(0800)#PCI(0000)'
. More details on located the Location Path can be found here: Plan for Deploying Devices using Discrete Device Assignment.
Using Device Manager or PowerShell, ensure the device is “disabled.”
Depending on if the vendor provided a mitigation driver, you'll either need to use the “-force” option or not.
The final step is to tell Hyper-V that a VM should have access to the device. In addition to the location path found above, you'll need to know the name of the vm.
After a device is successfully mounted in a VM, you're now able to start that VM and interact with the device as you normally would if you were running on a bare metal system. This means that you're now able to install the Hardware Vendor's drivers in the VM and applications will be able to see that hardware present. You can verify this by opening device manager in the Guest VM and seeing that the hardware now shows up.
If you want to return he device back to its original state, you will need to stop the VM and issue the following: Bebe buell groupie.
You can then re-enable the device in device manager and the host operating system will be able to interact with the device again.
In this example we use PowerShell to configure a VM named “ddatest1” to take the first GPU available by the manufacturer NVIDIA and assign it into the VM.
If you've passed a GPU into a VM but Remote Desktop or an application isn't recognizing the GPU, check for the following common issues:
The Hyper-V Amigos ride again! In this episode (19) we discuss some testing we are doing to create high performant backup targets with Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2019. We’re experimenting with stand-alone Mirror Accelerated Parity with SSDs in the performance tier and HDDs in the capacity tier on a backup target. We compare backs via the Veeam data mover to this repository directly as well as via an SMB 3 file share. We look at throughput, latency and CPU consumption.
One of the questions we have is whether an offload card like SolarFlare would benefit backups as these offload not just RDMA capable workloads. The aim is to find how much we can throw at a single 2U backup repository that must combine both speed and capacity. We discuss the reasons why we are doing so. For me, it is because rack units come at a premium price in various locations. This means that spending money to come up with repository building blocks that offer performance and capacity in fewer rack units ensure we spend the money where it benefits us. If the number of rack units (likely) and power (less likely) are less of a concern the economics are different.