Background

Microsoft Hyper V

A private cloud solution running on Hyper-V enables you run up to 1024 virtual machines on each physical server running in the data centre. With physical CPUs of 32 cores or greater fast becoming common place, it makes sense to consolidate different workloads with varied operating systems and configurations onto one or more host hypervisors.

Hyper-V comes as a built-in feature to Windows and is included with the host Windows licence. Typically if you run 13 or more VMs a Windows data centre licence is more cost effective, allowing you to run as many Windows VMs as you can fit onto the host without having to buy any extra Windows licences for each VM.

And now in Windows 2016 Microsoft have introduced other advances such as Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), which is also included in data centre licensing. S2D allows for high speed/low latency, shared storage with redundancy using only local disks in each server eliminating the cost of expensive Storage Area Networks (SANs).

Is it right for me?

Compared to a shared Cloud environment, where at peak times compute resources could contended with other customers, a private cloud based on Hyper-V technology maintains the core features and flexibility of a hypervisor cluster, with no performance downside from other neighbours.

A private cloud is also the most secure, with everything behind the internet boundary ring-fenced, with dedicated firewalls and secured racks.

Hyper-V also can be configured with HGS (Host Guardian Service), which can add an extra layer of encryption and administrative control to your hypervisor cluster and virtual machines.

As it’s a private cloud, you are free to leverage the flexibility to add extra hardware and software that would in some cases be more challenging in a shared cloud environment. Customers benefit from fast Virtual Machine provisioning, and the scalability to grow as your business develops without compromising security or performance.

A fully managed Microsoft Hyper-V private cloud platform built by certified engineers to your specification. Get the most out of the latest Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016 with Storage Spaces Direct as a cost effective storage solution.

Why choose The Bunker?

The Bunker will start by arranging a session with you to go through your requirements, and build up a picture of the services you need. We will tailor a customised hardware platform to best suit your needs and budget, and include any standard services such as backup and endpoint protection if required.

We will order and build everything to an agreed deadline, ensuring maximum high availability throughout the infrastructure. Our Hyper-V cloud platforms are then monitored around the clock, including all of your virtual machines. Our service desk can be contacted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and can coordinate directly with our Microsoft, Opensource and Network engineers.

On a pre-agreed schedule we will perform hardware and software maintenance on your platform with full vendor support to keep you free from known security vulnerabilities, and ensure optimal performance.

How we helped Redline

How Microsoft Hyper V works

A Hyper-V private cloud can be scaled between 2 and 64 host hypervisors, with either a dedicated SAN for shared storage or integrated host storage (S2D). A typical infrastructure example would contain the following:

1. Between 2 and 64 Hypervisor hosts
2. Dedicated iSCSI SAN (if not using S2D)
3. A physical Management Server (also an Active Directory Domain Controller if required)
4. Veeam Backup Server with local storage
5. Pair of HA firewalls
6. Physical Monitoring server

Using a Hyper-V private cloud cluster will support virtual machines with a recommended density of 4 vCPUs per physical CPU core. At least one extra host of compute resources should be included in the specification to support high availability, and allow planned maintenance without needing downtime.

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