Today, Microsoft released Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 to the web as a free download. Microsoft Press plans to release the Virtual Server 2005 R2 Resource Kit (written by Robert Larson and myself) on August 29, 2007. You can also pre-order the book on Amazon.

New Features in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

There are many new features in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 that help to make it the most cost-effective and best software virtualization product for the Windows platform. Some of the new features enable better performance and reliability.

Intel-VT and AMD-V Support

In 2006, Intel and AMD released extensions to the x86 processor architecture to support native (hardware-assisted) virtualization. With Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, hardware assistance is not required to install and use the product, but it will be used if present and enabled. Even though Intel and AMD implemented hardware virtualization differently in their processors, there are no dependencies to prevent moving virtual machines between Intel VT and AMD-V servers after being cleanly shutdown. You can define whether or not hardware assistance is enabled or disabled by using a configurable setting on an individual virtual machine basis or globally in the options.xml file. To turn this support off or on for all virtual machines, set the value of the <enable_hw_assist> key to true or false, as follows:

<preferences>

<virtual_server>

<hw_assist>

<enable_hw_assist type="boolean">false</enable_hw_assist>

</hw_assist>

</virtual_server>

</preferences>

In some implementations, Intel VT support is also configurable in the system BIOS.

In terms of performance, the only real gains for virtual machines running a Windows operating system are during the setup and installation phase, which has shown up to 3 times faster completion. The reason for this is that Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 was already optimized for best performance of Windows operating systems on the x86 platform prior to hardware-assisted virtualization availability. However, for a non-Windows guest such as Linux, performance gains based on hardware-assisted virtualization should be significant.

Volume Shadow Service Support

The addition of Volume Shadow Service (VSS) support provides stateful, host side backups, eliminating the need to load an agent in each virtual machine. Any VSS-aware application can leverage this functionality to provide snapshot backup services if they utilize the VSS writer interface implemented in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. Any virtual machine running a VSS-aware guest Windows operating system (Windows Server 2003 and later) can be backed up in a live state. Any other guest operating system (Windows 2000, Linux, and so on) will need to be in saved state prior to the snapshot. Since snapshots are performed through an extremely fast process (they take seconds), virtual machine downtime is minimized. Additionally, with VSS support, the number of steps involved in archive or restore operations is reduced and consistency of the data is ensured.

Virtual Server Host Clustering

The Virtual Server host clustering script and whitepaper, originally released shortly after Virtual Server 2005 R2 as Web downloads, are now integrated into SP1. The functionality has not changed, supporting fail-over of an entire Virtual Server host workload across cluster node members as needed to achieve best performance.

VHDMOUNT Command-line Tool

A widely requested feature, Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 now includes a command-line tool to mount a VHD on a host system. VHDMOUNT mounts the VHD and assigns a drive letter to the new virtual disk device. Once mounted, the contents of the VHD can be manipulated through standard file system commands or Windows Explorer.

Using VHDMOUNT does not require Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Virtual Server service to be installed on the host. It is supported on most Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 hosts and can be automated through scripting. VHDMOUNT will also support mounting a VHD that resides on an iSCSI target.

Virtual Machine Server Publication using Active Directory Service Connection Points

Active Directory defines Service Connection Points (SCP) that allow servers to publish hosted service data in the directory. This functionality is now supported in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. Using an LDAP browser, data can be retrieved from Active Directory to identify domain members that are running Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

Supported Host Operating System Support

  • Windows Server 2003 Standard SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 Datacenter SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 Standard R2
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2
  • Windows Server 2003 Datacenter R2
  • Windows Server 2003 Standard SP1
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP1
  • Windows Server 2003 Datacenter SP1
  • Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64 SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 Standard x64
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64
  • Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64
  • Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 R2
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 R2
  • Windows Server 2003 Datacenter x64 R2
  • Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard R2
  • Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium R2
  • Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 (non-Production only)
  • Windows XP Professional SP2 (non-Production only)
  • Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (non-Production only)
  • Windows Vista Ultimate (non-Production only)
  • Windows Vista Business (non-Production only)
  • Windows Vista Enterprise (non-Production only)

Guest Operating System Support

The following list shows supported guest operating systems that can be used with both x86 and x64 versions of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2, Standard Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition with SP1
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition with SP2
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition with SP1
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition with SP2
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP2
  • Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise (non-production use only)
  • Microsoft Windows Vista Business (non-production use only)
  • Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (non-production use only)
  • Microsoft Server 2008 Beta 3 (non-production use only)
  • OS/2 4.5
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 7)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 (update 8)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 (update 4)
  • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0
  • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.0
  • Solaris 10
  • Red Hat Linux 9.0
  • SuSE Linux 9.3
  • SuSE Linux 10.0
  • SuSE Linux 10.1
  • SuSE Linux 10.2

Increased Memory Limit for x64 Version

The x64 version of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 can address up to 256 GB of memory.

Guest Virtual Machine Capacity

In Virtual Server 2005 R2, there was a hard limit of 64 virtual machines running concurrently on x86 or x64. The x86 hard limit of 64 virtual machines remains for Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. The x64 hard limit has been increased to 512 running virtual machines.

Increase in Default Size for a Dynamic VHD

In Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, the default size for dynamically expanding VHD has been changed from 16 GB to 127 GB.

Linux Guest Virtual Machine SCSI Emulation Fix

Some users encountered an issue when trying to install certain Linux distributions inside a virtual machine using the emulated SCSI bus. The issue occurred most often with the Linux 2.6.x kernel. The fix for this issue has been included in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

VMRC ActiveX control and Internet Explorer security zones

The Virtual Machine Remote Control (VMRC) ActiveX control uses the security zone information in Internet Explorer to determine whether to prompt you for your credentials when you load the control. If the Administration Website is in the Internet Zone, the VMRC ActiveX control will prompt for credentials every time you navigate to it. To suppress the prompt, you can add the fully qualified domain name of the server as shown in the address bar of Internet Explorer to the Local Intranet zone.

New VMRC client option to enable video stretch in full screen mode

A new command-line option -fullscreenstretch is included for the VMRC client. When you use this option, the console opens in full screen mode and the display is stretched to fill the entire screen.

IVMGuestOS::Get_OSName property returns more operating system information

This property now returns guest operating system service pack information (for example, "Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition, Service Pack 1".)

 


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