Many of the improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 are centered on Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor that ships with the product. Noteworthy is the support for Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI), a key feature of AMD-V^TM technology that is designed to reduce the complexity of memory handling and enhance performance for demanding applications like web serving and database. My colleague Tim Mueting has an  in-depth Q&A on RVI posted on the Doing It Virtual web site if you want a more detailed look at the technology.

In addition Windows Server 2008 R2 offers live migration capabilities. This long awaited functionality, which allows the migration of running VMs between physical hosts, is a standard feature of the basic Server 2008 R2 product as well as with the upcoming Hyper-V 2008 R2 Server.  This means you don’t have to pay extra for this key functionality. Hyper-V Live Migration is supported on up to 16 node clusters. AMD Opteron^TM processors have included Extend Migration functionality since 2005, designed specifically to enable live migration capabilities in virtualization software. Check out the video on YouTube that showcases Hyper-V Live Migration on AMD Opteron processor-based servers.

Windows Server 2008 R2 is also about scalability offering support of up to 64 processors cores and up to 384 VMs running concurrently per host system in Hyper-V. This provides seamless support for the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 8 Socket featuring Six-Core AMD Opteron processors.

So congratulations to Microsoft on another successful RTM. Check out Jason Perlow’s article for a more in-depth look at Windows Server 2008 R2.

And don’t forget Windows 7 – check out Nigel Dessau’s recent blog to read more about how Windows 7 combined with the upcoming DirectX 11-enabled ATI Radeon^TM graphics cards will help deliver what we at AMD like to call The Ultimate Visual Experience^TM.  Another good read is Matt Kimball’s blog on Windows 7 virtualization capabilities.

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD.

Hyper-V, as a feature of Windows Server 2008, relies upon hardware-assisted virtualization, such as AMD-Virtualization (AMD-V). The use of this technology is a design principle of Microsoft’s virtualization architecture that is continuing with the upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 (now in beta).

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, builds upon the solid foundation laid in Windows Server 2008. Of the many virtualization enhancements being made in Release 2, a few of the key features take advantage of advancements included in the newest generation processors.

Specifically Hyper-V, as part of Windows Server 2008 R2, will take full advantage of Second Level Address Translation such as AMD’s Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) (formerly known as Nested Page Tables). Through RVI, the AMD processor provides two levels of address translation. This additional page table is used to translate guest physical addresses to system physical address allowing the guest to control its own page tables. This negates the need for the hypervisor to intercept the guest’s modifications of the page tables. This model provides virtualization overhead improvement as compared with traditional software shadow page tables.

In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V can use the AMD RVI technology to increase performance of the virtualization platform and results in system resource savings. These savings include a drop in Hypervisor CPU time as well as a reduction in memory overhead.

The continued cooperative development efforts between Microsoft and AMD are highly valued and critical in delivering great virtualization technology.

If you have more questions about Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, or about other Microsoft server, desktop, or management virtualization products, check out Edwin Yuen’s web chat on March 31. It’s 8am-noon PST. Register and submit questions ahead of time here.

Thanks to AMD for allowing me to post a guest blog.

Bryon Surace a senior program manager on the Windows virtualization team within the Server & Tools Business at Microsoft. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Any claims made herein have not been independently verified by AMD. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.