The Virtualization Fabric Design Considerations Guide is now available online and for download!

You’re no doubt familiar with Windows Server Hyper-V, and how simple it is to install on Windows Server.  If you want to use it to host hundreds or thousands of virtual machines running mission critical workloads in your environment though, then you need to do more than just install it.  You need to determine which of its configuration options best meet the needs of your organization.  Further, you need to determine how it can best utilize the physical servers, storage, and network in your environment. Below is a picture of a very simple virtualization fabric.

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This example fabric is probably not the fabric you’ll design for your organization, because every organizations’ designs are different.  What will yours look like and why?  To help you answer those questions, this guide details a series of steps and tasks that you can go through to design a virtualization fabric that best meets the requirements of your organization. Throughout the steps and tasks, the guide presents the relevant design and configuration options available to you to meet functional and service quality (such as availability, scalability, performance, manageability, and security) requirements.  The guide is available for online viewing and for download.  We hope you find it helpful for designing your virtualization fabric.

If you have any questions about the document, or suggestions for future revisions, feel free to send an email to virtua@microsoft.com

Thanks!

Tom Shinder