Hyper-V Memory, Integration Services, Discrete Device Assignment, and Resource Groups

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING]

0:06Hey.

0:07Are you forgetting something?

0:09Ha!

0:09I know when you get to be my age,

0:12you always feel like you're forgetting something.

0:14There's something that I forgot to do.

0:16I should have put it on my to-do list and I didn't.

0:18Yesterday, I walked into the garage,

0:20and I stood there in the middle of the garage for probably

0:22a solid minute.

0:23What did I come in here for?

0:25I never could remember.

0:26Anyway, we all need more memory or maybe

0:29better memory from time to time, other than a couple

0:32of friends of mine who have photographic memories.

0:35I think I hate them.

0:36Then we all need some more memory.

0:38Now of course, we're not talking about human memory here.

0:40We're talking about physical memory

0:42and/or in this case, virtual memory.

0:45And of course, I'm really talking about virtual machine

0:47memory, not virtual memory.

0:49That's kind of another topic.

0:50So, how does all this work out?

0:52You know how things go on a physical level.

0:56On this machine I'm recording from right now,

0:58I have 64 gigabytes, and I don't have to use all of that

1:03all the time.

1:03A lot of it will go to virtual machines that I run.

1:06So, I might have Hyper-V running here

1:08with virtual machines running in it.

1:10And I've got this virtual machine, and this one,

1:12and this one.

1:13And maybe this is a server down here,

1:15and maybe it needs, oh, let's say, eight gigabytes.

1:18Maybe this one's just a Windows 10 computer.

1:21It needs two gigabytes.

1:22And this one over here maybe is a Linux machine,

1:25that maybe we decide it needs two gigabytes as well.

1:30What does that add it up to, 12?

1:31So, does that mean that this over here

1:33is actually 52 gigabytes that are left?

1:37And how does that get balanced out?

1:39This machine over here is also going

1:40to have a paging file, which is substituting memory

1:44in hard disk paging instead.

1:47I think you may already be familiar with that.

1:49The virtual machine is here also though.

1:50Even inside of them is, for example, this server

1:52down here that's using eight gigabytes.

1:54What if it has a combination of applications

1:57and different things that it's doing

1:59and data that's processing, where now,

2:01oh no, it needs 10 gigabytes total,

2:03but I only gave it eight?

2:04Now what?

2:05Well, a couple of different things.

2:07Number one, it can use paging on its own within that.

2:11But the virtual machine management here,

2:13actually Hyper-V itself, can also allocate memory

2:17in various ways.

2:18And one of the ways that it can do that is through something

2:20called dynamic memory.

2:22Now, in addition to that, there are other things

2:25that happen when a computer starts up as a virtual machine.

2:28Actually, this is true of physical machines as well as

2:31virtual machines.

2:32And it's mostly true of Windows, but it probably

2:34also applies to most other operating systems.

2:36And that is, it uses more memory during the full startup

2:41process, and then once it's at rest, it usually calms down.

2:45So, these virtual machines here, let's say these two gigabyte

2:47ones, let's say if this is a Windows 10 or 11 machine,

2:50it might use 1 and 1/2 or two gigabytes during the startup.

2:53I don't really know the exact amount that it's going to use.

2:56They're all going to be different

2:57depending upon their load.

2:58But after a while, it might go way up here to two gigabytes,

3:03and then after 10 minutes or so it might come back down

3:07to one gigabyte.

3:09That it's really using at rest, so to speak.

3:11This becomes a factor when you're working

3:13with VDI or virtual desktops.

3:17This would be where, for example, someone's

3:20sitting at home.

3:20Let's say this is their--

3:21I don't know why I'm writing a triangle for someone's home,

3:24and I'm in the way.

3:24But this is their home down here,

3:26and they're working on their-- maybe

3:28it's an old, crusty laptop computer, sitting

3:30on their couch because everybody works from home these days,

3:33or a lot of people do anyway.

3:34That's not a window.

3:35It's supposed to be a laptop.

3:36There's the keys on it and everything.

3:38Anyway, they're working from here.

3:39And it's really just enough to get started.

3:41It's a bring your own device kind of a situation,

3:44but they need to be able to use this virtual machine right

3:48here.

3:48And that again would be the case if I'm

3:50using VDI, which, by the way, stands for virtual desk

3:53infrastructure.

3:54And if you're using something like that,

3:56you probably have a bunch of other desktop computers here.

4:00These are all, let's say, VDI machines

4:02that other users will be connecting to

4:04throughout the day.

4:05What's the advantage of a VDI?

4:06And we're not really talking about VDI per se here today

4:10on its own, but it does affect how memory gets used.

4:13So, let's discuss it in a virtualization environment.

4:15The advantage of VDI is that these desktops

4:18will be corporate desktops that have

4:22a lot of our wallpaper, configuration, all of our apps,

4:25everything like that.

4:25That means that we don't have to have an administrator,

4:28and this is the worst case, traveling to this person's

4:30house, configuring their personal desktop to have

4:33only exactly what we need.

4:34No, that would be very impractical.

4:36So, instead we configure all these VDI machines here,

4:39and it's the exact image of our corporate desktop that we

4:42want with all the apps that they need and everything.

4:45So, we might have quite an infrastructure

4:47where there's quite a few people connecting to these VDIs.

4:50As you can imagine, that's going to consume a lot of memory

4:53as the day goes by.

4:55And this gets to be more complex as these machines

4:57not only start, but also as they restart, because again, it

5:01might have gone up to two gigabytes at a certain point,

5:04then it went down to one gigabyte.

5:05But then the user restarts the computer,

5:07so it again it has to go into this cycle,

5:09where it goes back up to two gigabytes and down to one

5:12or whatever.

5:12Well, as all of these machines start to consume memory,

5:15our physical memory in our host machine

5:17can start to go down, down, down until we get into kind

5:20of a memory depleted situation.

5:22And maybe we're paging too much now

5:23and performance will already start to suffer.

5:25And there are even situations in which maybe we

5:28have something going on where a lot of these machines

5:30are rebooting at once and all going through this memory spike

5:33where they have to consume all of their memory.

5:35We might even start to get error messages

5:37that there is insufficient memory to restart a computer,

5:40and even that is not really quite how it happens.

5:43What happens, is now in modern versions of Hyper-V operating

5:47systems is that it's going to use

5:49something called smart paging.

5:51And smart paging only happens when virtual machines are being

5:54restarted, and there's no physical memory available

5:58to give us this increase right here that we might need,

6:01and when it cannot be reclaimed from any of these other virtual

6:05machines, and they don't have any memory to give up

6:07or to borrow from.

6:08Also, be aware of the fact this only

6:10applies to actual restarts.

6:12If a machine is doing a cold start,

6:13a virtual machine's a cold start from an off position,

6:16then this is no longer a factor.

6:18It just restarts.

6:19And to illustrate some of this, I've gone to my own Hyper-V

6:22here.

6:22Now, this is running on a Windows 11 computer,

6:25but everything I'm going to show you here

6:26is going to be the same, whether it's on 11, server 2008, R2,

6:292016, 2019, server 2022.

6:32All of those are going to be the same, Windows 10.

6:35So, what we can do here is we can right

6:37click there to go to settings, and if we

6:39go into memory right here, we could

6:42get a little bit more detail.

6:43And some of this is a little bit misleading.

6:44Let me talk to you about what's really going on here in terms

6:47of the memory allocation.

6:48Now, first of all, think about a physical machine.

6:50Let's say a physical machine had only two gigs of RAM.

6:53That's not very much these days, but let's say

6:55it had two gigabytes of RAM.

6:57Well, it's probably got a couple of memory modules in there,

6:59and the entire time that that machine is

7:01turned on and running and the operating system is going,

7:04it's got two gigabytes constantly.

7:06And it will play around with how much of that two gigabytes

7:09it actually needs for its operating

7:11system and applications.

7:12But you don't just rip out a memory module

7:14while the machine is powered and turned on in most cases,

7:17unless you want to have a really bad day.

7:19Well, when it comes to a virtual machine in Hyper-V,

7:23it really actually has those two gigabytes

7:25that we see here during startup.

7:27This probably should be renamed not to just RAM,

7:30but to startup RAM.

7:32That's how much is allocated during startup.

7:34That will give a better performance during the startup

7:36process because most operating systems will require more RAM

7:40during startup, and then after a minute or two or a few minutes,

7:43it will kind of settle down and go back down again.

7:45So, we start up.

7:46We go on the run-up.

7:48As the computer boots up, you run up

7:50and you get up to this 2048 and it

7:52needs that for a few minutes.

7:54And then again in a VDI situation,

7:56where you'll have, gosh, maybe dozens

7:58of machines that are really just idle, nobody's connecting.

8:01Maybe it's not our business hours or whatever.

8:03They're available if somebody does

8:05need to connect to it in the middle of the night,

8:06they forgot to do something.

8:07But it could be that they're just kind of sitting there.

8:10And in that case, they'll relinquish memory up

8:13to as little as 512 megabytes in this case.

8:17Now, that's operating system dependent as well.

8:20If we're running Windows 11 VDIs,

8:22and I don't know what the minimum is, but let's

8:24say it can only go as low as 700 megabytes,

8:28then it won't go quite as low as this.

8:30But let's just for the sake of argument

8:32say that it goes all the way down to 512.

8:34Well, now as the user starts to use more memory,

8:36they come in the morning, they log on,

8:38they start up their VDI.

8:40Then they got some applications running.

8:41Now they need this much memory.

8:43Now they have an issue that's come up

8:44and they need to restart their machine.

8:46On restart again, it can use that smart paging

8:50in order to get memory that it might need.

8:53And it'll create a temporary paging file

8:56that's not the main big paging file that you use

8:59on the host operating system.

9:00This is a smart paging file that is temporarily

9:03created in low memory situations in order

9:05to get it back up to this 2048 if necessary

9:09to perform the full restart.

9:10And then while the operating system

9:12is running, if we have something that's extremely high demanding

9:15or whatever, we could increase up to and that should be--

9:20Is that a terabyte?

9:20Yeah, a terabyte of memory there.

9:23And, of course, I've only got 64 gigs of physical RAM

9:25on this physical machine, so it would never

9:27be able to get quite that high.

9:29But at least in theory, it could go up to a terabyte

9:31if I had a terabyte's worth of RAM installed.

9:34And then we also have this value here, the memory buffer,

9:37and that works in coordination with the current needs

9:39of the installed operating system

9:41and what its current memory requirements are.

9:44So, it'll take what those needs are

9:46and it uses a factor to add in a 20% buffer

9:49to give it better performance.

9:51Then there's this value down here, the memory weight.

9:54This is a relative value.

9:55So, for example, if all of my machines

9:57were all smack dab in the middle here,

9:59then they would all be equally distributed, especially

10:01in a low memory situation.

10:03But if memory starts to get oversubscribed,

10:06then anything that's up higher-- so, for example,

10:09if this machine is a couple of notches higher and all

10:11the other machines are right in the middle,

10:13then this one will start to have priority

10:14in terms of allocating memory.

10:16And if you want a little bit more detail

10:18about how much memory is available in your normal

10:20runtime environments, you can use Performance Monitor

10:23there just as an FYI.

10:25There's a counter there, the Hyper-V dynamic memory

10:27balancer, and specifically what you would look for here

10:30is this one, available memory for balancing.

10:33Now, of course, I don't have much going on

10:34on mine, so I highlighted it.

10:36It's the black line you can see way up here at the top.

10:39So, it's got pretty much 100% of the available

10:41memory available for my virtual machines if needed.

10:45And then also, it's a little bit beyond our scope here,

10:48but there's also this item right here.

10:49It's an article from Microsoft that you

10:51can refer to if you like.

10:53And this is for virtual machine sizing guidelines.

10:57And because sometimes it's a little bit

10:59relative in terms of determining how big of a server should

11:02you buy that's for your Hyper-V server.

11:05How many hosts can it support?

11:07If you're using VDI, you're going

11:09to have to look for other data there as well.

11:11But this is at least a good starting point

11:12to determine what kind of load you can

11:15put onto your Hyper-V server.

11:18All right, that's it for memory.

11:19I hope this has been informative for you,

11:21and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO]

0:06In previous Nuggets, for various reasons,

0:08we've kind of talked about the integration services, at least

0:11a little bit.

0:12But now, let's take a look at it at a little bit more detail

0:14and also about some of the specific ones

0:16we haven't covered yet.

0:17And also, we're going to be taking a look here

0:19at how to manage these using PowerShell.

0:21So here we are in the Hyper-V host.

0:23And in order to access these Hyper-V integration services,

0:27all you really have to do is to right-click a machine like I've

0:29got this domain controller down at the bottom here of my list,

0:33and if I go into the Settings-- it's very simple,

0:35it's right down here where it says Integration Services,

0:38obviously.

0:38And then, by default, at least in the installations I normally

0:42do, all of these top ones right up to here

0:45are selected by default. Why they don't do the bottom one,

0:47I don't know.

0:48But let's talk a little bit about what these are.

0:50And by the way, each one of these

0:52has a corresponding guest side to this inside

0:57of the virtual machine.

0:59When you install a virtual machine that's

1:01a Windows virtual machine, it just somehow

1:03knows that it's a Hyper-V guest and it'll

1:06install a corresponding service for each one of these items

1:10and run it.

1:11Well, here we have the first one, Operating system shutdown.

1:14OK, when we do that one, what's that really talking about?

1:17I mean, would we not be able to shut down the virtual machine

1:21if that did not exist?

1:22No, certainly you can.

1:23In the UI, if you're in the UI of the desktop for this machine

1:27for example, like I am right here,

1:29obviously, you can still click the Start menu

1:31and hit the little power button and all that.

1:33Or you could just run shutdown space forward

1:35slash s space forward slash T followed

1:38by a time interval, which is how I do it

1:40usually from the command line.

1:41But what we're talking about here

1:43is the capability of going to the virtual machine

1:47here in the host, right-clicking on it

1:49and then choosing Shut Down.

1:51See, without that item there, I would only

1:54have either Save or Turn Off as my other options.

1:57And Turn Off has an undesirable effect, the same as flipping

2:00the switch, the power switch on a physical computer.

2:03You do that and you could wind up

2:04with corrupt files, things that are kind of half open, so

2:08to speak, corrupt operating system.

2:10Really pretty nasty.

2:12As you know, you don't ever want to shut down

2:13a machine like that if you can.

2:15The other integration service that we have here,

2:17if we go back into these would be this Time synchronization

2:20one.

2:21This one is pretty important because as I've

2:23mentioned a couple of times in this course,

2:25time sync is so critical to Windows machines because

2:28of Kerberos.

2:29You see if Kerberos tickets are any more than five minutes out

2:33of sync or a log on attempt for example,

2:35any more than five minutes out of sync with its authenticator,

2:38then it's going to not work.

2:40It just fails authentication.

2:42So you have to have time synchronization.

2:44Now if I did not have that turned on,

2:46what would happen on my guest?

2:48Well, at least initially, it would still

2:49have the same time as my host operating system.

2:51Now you really want the chain of time

2:54to be consistent all the way through.

2:56So on most Windows operating systems,

2:58by default really, it synchronizes

3:00with a reliable time source, usually

3:02a time.windows.com, I think it is something like that,

3:05time.microsoft.com.

3:06And you can look at it in your settings

3:08and find it if you want.

3:09But that's an atomic clock which is accurate to within,

3:13I don't know, a bazillionth of a second or something like that,

3:16OK.

3:17So very, very accurate time, in other words.

3:19If you're in a domain, then your client

3:21will synchronize up with your domain controller, which then--

3:25especially if it's at the top level of your infrastructure,

3:27would then get its time from another authentic time

3:31source, such as Microsoft or NIST

3:33or some government organization like that or atomic clock,

3:36something like this.

3:37Anyway, the same would be true of a guest here.

3:41So why do I have to have this time sync?

3:43Well, what can we do here that we

3:45don't do in physical computer land really so much?

3:49We can right-click here and choose Save.

3:50That's a little bit different than what

3:52you could do on a desktop.

3:53If I choose Save and I had that time service turned off--

3:57Let's say, I turned it off for 12 hours.

3:59When I resumed it again, then the time would be 12 hours off

4:04and it wouldn't sync up with my host operating system.

4:08I would have to then make sure that I had also enabled

4:11some other synchronization mechanism with that client

4:13in order to make sure that it had current time.

4:15Otherwise, it just causes a whole mess,

4:17so don't mess with that one.

4:18And then what else we got?

4:19We have Data Exchange.

4:21OK, Data Exchange is not something

4:23you use very often, at least consciously, so to speak.

4:26It really refers to a registry value in the guest operating

4:32system where you can use it to exchange

4:34various types of small amounts of data like metadata.

4:37You're not doing this for file transfers

4:39or something like that, Word documents or something.

4:41You're doing just small bits of data.

4:44It might be of value that evaluates to yes or no,

4:46true or false, something like that.

4:48And it's just going to be string values.

4:50And in fact, I thought I'd just go ahead and take you

4:51to the registry location where that actually is.

4:54If you look at the top here, you can see that I'm in-- well,

4:57I guess I cut it off, let me try it again.

4:58If you look at the top here, you can

5:00see that I'm in Computer HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_SOFTWARE

5:03Microsoft Virtual Machine.

5:04And then from there, we go down here into these values, Auto

5:09and then this is just any data that's

5:11going to be exchanged between the host and the guest.

5:13So this might be useful in identifying

5:15certain aspects of it, such as the operating system version,

5:19build number, stuff like that.

5:21But the other part of this would be external,

5:23which would be any kind of metadata

5:25that I would exchange between the host and the guest.

5:28This would be coming from the host operating

5:30system into the guest.

5:32And this would be any data that I have from the guest

5:35that I'm going to send out to the host.

5:38And you may also see this referred to as a KVP, which

5:41is key-value pair.

5:42And then returning back here, the next thing we have

5:44would be the Heartbeat.

5:46This is what tells the host machine whether or not

5:49the operating system is actually booted

5:51and running in the guest.

5:54But it's also a little bit misleading

5:55when I describe that, so let me clarify.

5:57You see where it says Running right here,

5:59you can see I've got a couple of different machines

6:00that are running right now.

6:01Running doesn't really mean much.

6:03There might not even be an operating system

6:04installed there.

6:05It might just be a Bare Metal kind of thing or something

6:07like this.

6:08So that does not necessarily mean that the operating system

6:11is booted and healthy.

6:12Although we don't see it in any of the UI things right

6:15through here, this is that value that I showed you there,

6:18the Heartbeat, is what communicates to the host

6:21that the operating system has booted and is healthy.

6:24And then there's a Backup.

6:25This one's interesting, the volume shadow copy service.

6:28OK, so in order to understand that,

6:30you kind of have to understand how backup works in its older

6:34and most fundamental sense.

6:35If I have-- let's just think about a file backup.

6:37If I want to backup my documents or whatever,

6:40then if I have a Word document open right now

6:42and I try to back it up with older methods,

6:45it would skip that file, because it would say the file

6:48was open at the time the backup tried to run.

6:50Well, with modern Windows--

6:53this has been going on for a few years now,

6:54it uses the volume shadow copy service

6:57and it kind of creates a sly copy

6:59of that file even though it's open,

7:01and then it backs up that copy.

7:02I'm oversimplifying a little bit.

7:04But by doing so, it's able to actually back up a file

7:07even if it's alive and open.

7:09And this overcame a significant problem with backup solutions

7:13in years past.

7:14Because some files are open almost all the time,

7:16and therefore, would never get backed up.

7:18And by the way, if they're open almost all the time,

7:21probably means they're pretty important.

7:22So here, the volume shadow copy service

7:25can also interoperate with virtual machines

7:28so that you can even back up your virtual machines when

7:31they're running.

7:31And then finally, I think I demonstrated

7:33this in a previous Nugget, there's this Guest services.

7:36That's what gives us the ability to copy files back and forth.

7:39Now as an FYI, inside of your guest,

7:41each one of those services that I just talked about,

7:43those integration services, is also visible here.

7:46If you go into Services such as in Computer Management

7:49where I am now, or you can just go to the Services node,

7:52and there should be a Hyper-V set of services.

7:56Each one that starts with Hyper-V

7:58corresponds to an appropriately named guest integration

8:02service that we just looked at.

8:03And I don't think any of those are a mystery.

8:05So if you just look at those, that

8:07happens to be the very services that control all those things.

8:10They should all be running.

8:11If you've selected every box, they

8:13should all be running except for this one, because this one is

8:15the PowerShell direct service.

8:17That's what we talked about in a previous Nugget here as well.

8:20Might have been in the previous skill in fact.

8:22But the PowerShell direct service,

8:24that's only going to be running when we're actually using it,

8:27when we're actually sending commandlets.

8:29Now I can't really think of a reason

8:31to stop any of these services particularly

8:33unless it has to do with some kind of a troubleshooting

8:36thing.

8:36But Microsoft has also document it,

8:39so I wanted to go ahead and share with you how

8:41you would stop those services.

8:42By the way, what I'm about to show you

8:44there would be true of really any service, this service

8:46or that service or any other service

8:48you wanted it to work with.

8:50And again, for this I have this PS1

8:52file integrationservices.PS1 available for you as a student

8:55download as well.

8:57Anyway, what we will do here is, first of all,

8:59you got to know the name of the service,

9:00because sometimes they're a little obscurely named

9:03or you just kind of have to guess.

9:04So I'm going to go ahead and list the services first by get

9:06service, and anything that starts with VM, I do

9:09know that much.

9:10And so any of those that start with VM will now appear,

9:13and we see them down here at the bottom.

9:15Now, as you could see, in this case,

9:18I ran those from my host operating system.

9:21So all of those services that we just discussed are stopped.

9:24So therefore, that's not really what we're looking for.

9:26What I would want to do is to run that inside of the guest

9:29itself.

9:30So let me copy that, hit the little Copy button,

9:32then I'll head over to the guest where I am right now,

9:34I'll right-click on a Windows PowerShell

9:36as I start to type that in the search bar,

9:38and then I'll run that as administrator, because that

9:40obviously would have to be run as an administrator.

9:42Then I'll paste that in Get-Service -Name vm,

9:45and there we go.

9:46You see that those services are now here running

9:48except for the PowerShell direct, which we already

9:50discussed.

9:51And then of course, if we wanted to stop one of those--

9:54Let's take this vmicshutdown, OK, this is the shutdown one.

9:58Then I can enter that here as well

10:00like this, Stop-Service -Name, and then vmicshutdown.

10:05And then that would then, of course, shut down that service.

10:08We should be able to confirm that if we

10:09go into the background here.

10:11There's the shutdown service.

10:12It says it's running.

10:13But if I refresh it, I'm pretty sure-- yeah, there it goes,

10:15it is now stopped.

10:16And then of course correspondingly,

10:17if I wanted to start it, I would go back here and just type

10:20Start-Service and press Enter.

10:22And we should see that also in the background

10:25here as I refresh the screen then

10:26come back up and running again.

10:28Now I mentioned earlier that Heartbeat service,

10:30that's what tells us whether the operating system has

10:33booted and is running properly, which

10:35is not to be confused with that running status thing

10:38that you'll see in the host operating system.

10:40But if you do want to see from a command line

10:42if it's running properly, you can run this here as well.

10:45This actually might be useful, because you could,

10:47if you have a cluster of virtual machine servers

10:50or if you have some VDI machines that you

10:53want to see if they're running properly,

10:55then you could script that and then what we would do here

10:58is just run that line.

11:00Let me use the little squeegee here to clear off

11:02the previous screen.

11:03But I can just run that line there

11:04and it gives you information about whether the operating

11:07system is up and running normally.

11:09And also here, I went to my Windows 11 computer,

11:11and I saved that machine.

11:13Let's see what happens if I run that same command again here.

11:16I think that machine's Win11-01.

11:18Hopefully, I remember the name right, and press Enter there.

11:21And it says Saved but Operating normally.

11:23Oh also, as you can probably imagine, all of these,

11:26computer names and everything, just

11:27change those to whatever your computer names

11:29are in your lab environment.

11:31If I wanted to look at the status of the integration

11:33services from the host side of things,

11:36then I would run this line right here.

11:37Let me squeegee all of this away.

11:39And then run that little item, and then we

11:42can see again here whether they are enabled.

11:45And it looks like they're all OK.

11:46And then these are pretty simple down here at the bottom.

11:48I think you could probably make sense of those.

11:50I'll just run those real quickly.

11:51I could disable one of those services,

11:53like the Time Synchronization service.

11:55With those, you don't actually type the name of a service,

11:57you type in the way it appears in the plain English version

12:01over here.

12:02So you see that it says Time Synchronization--

12:04for some reason, my highlight's not working-- there it goes.

12:07Time Synchronization right here.

12:08So I just type in the actual name of it.

12:10And that's how I'll run that one, so let's run that

12:13and we can see that it would then disable it.

12:15If I want to run that previous line again, we'll confirm that.

12:18Yeah, sure enough, it is not enabled

12:20because I just disabled it.

12:22And then if I wanted to re-enable it,

12:23I would just do pretty much the same thing only

12:25to choose Enabled instead now.

12:27And then we should now see that it has now

12:29become, once again, enabled.

12:31And it looks like it is.

12:32OK, and then just as a final note

12:35here, I'm going to point you to a document here.

12:37And you can see the URL up here at the top.

12:39It's kind of long.

12:40But if you also just search for Manage Hyper-V integration

12:44services, I think that'll get you here.

12:46But the reason why I'm here is because I've

12:48shown you some of the things that are already in this,

12:50but we did not really talk about Linux guests.

12:52And I don't know that you're going to really

12:54be tested on Linux products in a Microsoft exam,

12:56so if you're a test taker, might not be as relevant.

12:58But if you do run Linux machines,

13:00and you need to know some of this stuff for the real world,

13:02there you go.

13:03And it's about halfway down, you can see the kind of contents

13:06over on the right.

13:07It'll take you right here and good information.

13:10So there's your integration services

13:12in Hyper-V. I hope this has been informative for you

13:14and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:06Discrete Device Assignment, while this

0:08is an interesting concept, typically

0:11what happens when you install an operating system on hardware,

0:14for example, is that in-between the operating system

0:17and the hardware, you have to have the drivers,

0:19because the drivers are what allows the operating system

0:22to control that hardware.

0:24However, when you're taking a look

0:26at something called a Discrete Device

0:27Assignment in virtualization, you

0:29have a different situation going on.

0:31So here at the bottom level, we have the hardware,

0:34and then we have drivers right here in-between

0:37the actual hardware and the host operating system.

0:42Now when we bring virtualization into the picture, which

0:45in a certain way is really an application on top

0:47of the operating system, then what happens here

0:49is we have another layer of drivers.

0:52And of course, I'm probably oversimplifying

0:54somewhere in here.

0:54And then on top of that, in your virtualization here,

0:57you would have the various operating systems--

0:59Windows, Linux, what have you.

1:02So what happens here is maybe I've

1:05got a very high end video card down here that I really

1:09want to take advantage of.

1:10And I want to be able to take a look at, oh, all

1:13the fancy stuff that video cards can

1:14do now, the shading, the processing, all

1:17that sort of thing.

1:18But because I'm just using these middle drivers right here that

1:21are part of, in this case, Hyper-V application,

1:25they're probably not going to be able to deliver

1:27all of those whiz bang features that the actual manufacturers

1:30drivers could.

1:31In addition, if you think about something

1:33like video cards, well, of course,

1:34they're frequently used now for mining,

1:36Bitcoin mining, Ethereum, other kinds of mining that

1:40can take place.

1:41And so if I had some virtual machines up here

1:44that were mining, maybe I would really rather

1:46have these drivers directly connected

1:49to those virtual machines.

1:51And really it wouldn't even be that way,

1:52it would really be the drivers, the original manufacturers

1:55drivers themselves would be installed

1:58on the virtual machine and would give me direct access

2:01to this video card, then I could get the full benefit of it,

2:04and there's really nothing in between and very little,

2:07if any performance hit by doing it this way.

2:09Whereas here we kind of dilute the whole thing.

2:12Looking at another example here, what if I had something

2:14called NVMe, that's supposed to be a little e, but I can't

2:18seem to make it that way, NVMe.

2:20I'm going to show you something about that here coming up.

2:22But that's really storage related,

2:24and it's designed for SSDs.

2:26But it's a way of magnifying the performance

2:29and throughput of these types of storage devices.

2:32Now if they're just directly connected through the drivers

2:35to the operating system, and I have virtualization

2:37in the picture at all, then I've got all the performance

2:39I need there just locally.

2:40But once again, if I have a virtual machine up here that

2:43needs to take place of that super high speed performance,

2:46then I need to figure out a way to get drivers here

2:49that directly connect to that hardware

2:52and bypassing in a certain way the middle drivers

2:55that we see here.

2:56Well, that's what Discrete Device Assignment is all about.

2:59Let's take a look at what goes on with this.

3:01This is actually what's going to give us

3:02direct access from the virtual machine

3:04to that physical hardware through

3:06to that fantastic artwork that I showed you just a moment ago.

3:09I should put an NFT up on all of that drawing

3:13that I did just there.

3:14I'll probably make a million dollars.

3:16What we can do here is we can bypass those middle host

3:19drivers from virtualization as I just described.

3:21And the two things that I described

3:23there, which are really relevant here

3:25is that so far, Microsoft and Hyper-V

3:28are supporting initially, at least, graphics adapters

3:31and NVMe storage.

3:33Now there are other devices that will work.

3:35In fact, I have on my own computer

3:37other devices that could work, but they're not

3:40supported so to speak, and you have to check through each one

3:44and test it to make sure it'll work.

3:45Obviously, the benefit here is going

3:47to be dramatically higher in performance,

3:49and it's really intended for server class hardware.

3:53So I'm really recording, for example,

3:54I'm more of a workstation level, although it's

3:56a pretty powerful workstation.

3:57It's a machine that CBT Nuggets sent me a while back.

4:01It's got great graphics cards, and lots of memory,

4:04and storage, and SSDs, and all that,

4:05but it's not really a server.

4:07But it would make a great gaming server

4:09if I were to play games on a work computer.

4:11Of course, I would do that.

4:12OK, now what are the requirements

4:13to make all of this work?

4:14First of all, the virtual machines

4:16could be either Gen 1 or Gen 2.

4:18You don't have to go, oh, I need to have Gen 2.

4:20No, either one works.

4:21And it works with the modern operating systems of Windows 10

4:25or greater for the desktops and Windows Server 2012 R2

4:29or greater for a server operating system.

4:32And you have to have hardware that

4:34can grant the operating system control over the PCIe fabric.

4:39So really what that's doing is it's

4:40getting directly down into.

4:42It's a direct connection into that hardware,

4:44and you have to enable that in your BIOS.

4:47You'll look for a setting there.

4:48Sometimes it's buried two or three levels deep.

4:50You'll probably have to get into the advanced settings.

4:53I did that on my own computer that I'm recording from here.

4:55A little further into the menu system there,

4:59but you would enable SR-IOV, is the setting

5:03that you want to enable.

5:04And then I'm going to show this to you.

5:06There is a Microsoft script that one

5:07of the developers at Microsoft wrote

5:10that will test your compatibility

5:11to see if it works at all.

5:13And if it does work, which devices

5:16will work with this Discrete Device Assignment?

5:19All right, and so what is this NVMe?

5:22First of all, that's the storage that I was talking about.

5:24Here I've gone to Kingston's website here.

5:27And you can see where I'm in right here.

5:30You can go there as well if you like to.

5:32And I recommend that because of all the places I've gone,

5:35they have an excellent run through on what

5:38NVMe is, which is really--

5:39I don't think I've explained the acronym.

5:41It's Non-Volatile Memory Express.

5:43I think it is.

5:44I think it's down in here.

5:45Yeah, there it is.

5:46Non-Volatile Memory Express, is what the acronym is.

5:50So I definitely recommend that you read through this.

5:52It's an excellent article, and I would definitely

5:55give it a read through.

5:56Oh, it looks like she's looking right down

5:58to the top of my head, it's probably

6:00what the glare is on top of her glasses there.

6:02The shiny head of baldness.

6:04OK, so when you take a look at this,

6:06though, this is a key statement right here

6:08compared to SATA equivalents.

6:11It will transfer 25 times more data.

6:15And that's just the start.

6:16There's other things that can make this even faster.

6:18It just gives it a higher level of throughput.

6:20You can see all other things that they have down here.

6:22I'll get into more detail on that.

6:24But if you want to know more about NVMe,

6:26this is a great read.

6:27And then switching over here, this

6:28is Microsoft's article on deploying

6:31these types of devices, if I can stop this here.

6:33They can read it, it's docs.microsoft.com,

6:35and you see all the rest or you can just google for the title,

6:38probably be a better idea.

6:39Anyway, this gives you the specific details

6:42on how to make these connections from your host.

6:45I don't have any devices that are compatible with this.

6:48And then for video graphics devices,

6:51then this is shown right here also from Microsoft right here.

6:55And again, you can also google for the title.

6:57But this gives you also the specific directions

7:00in PowerShell commandlets and things

7:01that you'll need to enter in.

7:03And then finally, I'm going to this article right here.

7:05I'm referencing this elsewhere as well.

7:07It's long, but it's in a script that I'm

7:08going to provide for you.

7:10So I'll show you how that works here in just a moment.

7:12This is the one that a Microsoft engineer developed presumably.

7:16It's this Ryan Morash guy who did this.

7:19And thank you, Ryan, if you're out there.

7:21Thank you for writing this because this

7:23is a really good script.

7:24Let me show you how this works out.

7:26So I just put this in PowerShell ISC

7:28and I referenced-- and this is available for you on Nugget lab

7:31in our student download files.

7:33I reference the URL there if you want

7:36to go there directly yourself, and that's probably a good idea

7:39as well because this might get updated.

7:40But anyway, if you want to see what devices locally

7:43are going to work for you in discrete device assignment,

7:46this script will identify them for you.

7:48Now, this will not work initially.

7:50So for example, if I hit the big green Play button right up

7:53here, it says, oops, it won't run.

7:55It didn't really say it in a word,

7:57but it says right down here, cannot be loaded

8:00because running scripts is disabled.

8:03So it's restricted.

8:04That's the setting that I have.

8:06So if I want to find out why that didn't

8:07run in terms of scripts anyway, I

8:08could go to good execution policy

8:10and hit the little green button over here

8:12to the right or hit F8, and that says, yep, sure enough.

8:14That's why because it's restricted as you

8:16can see right down here at the bottom.

8:19Now, what's that about?

8:20Well, normally, you don't want your operating system

8:23to run scripts just unrestricted,

8:26because malware could infect your computer,

8:28and a script is completely powerful.

8:30It can completely overwhelm and take full control

8:33over your machine, or to do something discrete and slide,

8:38and maybe plant some kind of malware that you're not aware

8:41exists.

8:41Lots of different kinds of things.

8:43So what you could do is you could run this unrestricted.

8:46And if you do that like I'm going to do right here,

8:48I would only do that temporarily.

8:50Don't just do that and then forget about it.

8:52Just make an unrestricted, run the script you want,

8:54and then turn it back on to restricted, which

8:58is what I've got down here.

8:59The other option there, there's another one that's all signed.

9:02You can also do all sign, and that would only

9:06allow scripts to run that are signed with a respected

9:09signature.

9:09OK, so I'm going to make this unrestricted,

9:11and I can just do this to all.

9:13But it's really only one thing anyway.

9:14So I'm going to do that one and then

9:16I'll do another get execution policy.

9:18Now I can see that it is indeed unrestricted.

9:20And then I'm going to run this script from the Microsoft

9:24person that wrote this, and we'll see what kinds of things

9:27will work on my computer if I wanted to use them.

9:30Now, I've run this in advance so I can tell you in advance.

9:33I can't actually use anything that's here,

9:34but it does show some things that at least have

9:37the capability of running.

9:38This USB Type C port policy controller, that one

9:42would work.

9:43And by the way, you do have to know the location of that.

9:46This will also be mirrored in Device Manager

9:49if you look at that.

9:50But what you have to have there is MMIO gap space,

9:53not all devices require it, but some do.

9:55And by the way, MMIO is Memory-Mapped I/O.

9:59OK, so anyway, yeah, so I could do that.

10:01But if I use this USB controller to demonstrate that,

10:05then it will disconnect my camera, and my mouse,

10:08and keyboard.

10:09So that can't be done.

10:10Likewise, if I scroll down here, this one

10:13disables the tablet that I use to draw on

10:15and everything like that.

10:16So I can't use the ones that we see down here.

10:19But you'll see what it looks like, at least if you have

10:22devices that are compatible.

10:23And again, it's designed mostly for server-level hardware.

10:26And then before we conclude here,

10:28I should point out some limitations here

10:29with virtual machines using Discrete Device Assignment.

10:33First of all, you cannot use Save or Restore.

10:35So you know how you can right click on a virtual machine

10:37and save it?

10:38That same kind of an idea there.

10:40You don't have that capability.

10:42Of course, since you can't save it, you also can't restore it.

10:45Also, there are no live migrations in order

10:47to move a virtual machine to a different host, for example.

10:51You do not have the capability of using dynamic memory.

10:53So you're going to have to be sure you carve out

10:55enough memory in advance.

10:57And you cannot put one of these virtual machines in a high

11:00availability cluster.

11:01But there you have it.

11:02That's using Discrete Device Assignment in a virtual machine

11:05allows direct access to those hardware

11:08devices for very high performance.

11:10I hope this has been informative for you,

11:12and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING]

0:09Hey.

0:09Let's take a quick poll here.

0:11How many of prefer more work?

0:14Raise your hand.

0:15Yeah, not too many of you, a couple of you over there.

0:18I'm not sure what's the matter with you guys.

0:20Anyway, how many of you prefer less work?

0:23Yeah, just about everybody raised their hand

0:26when I asked how many of you preferred less work.

0:28Well, if you preferred less work,

0:30then VM Resource Groups is for you.

0:33You see, when it comes to virtualization--

0:35and we've been playing around with a couple of machines here

0:38and there, maybe a dozen or so.

0:40How many have I got?

0:41Not too many, but I've got some that Microsoft configured here

0:45from various labs and things, and I've

0:46got a couple I created on my own.

0:48This is manageable in human terms.

0:50It's not that big a deal, but when

0:52you're in a production environment where you've

0:54got a lot going on, bunch of web servers,

0:56you've got a bunch of remote desktop computers

0:59that you're running in here, all that sort of thing,

1:01it could get to be hundreds of machines,

1:03difficult to manage after a certain point.

1:06Even if you use good management techniques and good naming

1:09conventions to find the machines that you want to work with,

1:12it still gets to be a little bit of a hassle.

1:14So, Virtual Machine Resource Groups

1:16will allow you to take repetitive actions,

1:19repeatable tasks, and you can perform them

1:23against a group of virtual machines all at once.

1:26Some servering suggestions for this,

1:28some types of servers that you might want to work with

1:30or machines would be a remote desktop farm.

1:33That's what I'm going to illustrate

1:35when we look at demos in a moment, domain controllers, web

1:39servers.

1:39And, again, that's a really good candidate

1:41for maybe dozens of servers, or hundreds even sometimes,

1:45that all have supposedly the same content,

1:48the same configuration, all that sort of stuff.

1:50So, I want to create repeatable tasks against all of my web

1:55servers, for example, so that I don't have a maverick out there

1:58that's got some kind of a configuration on it that

2:01the rest of them don't have, and then we get a consistency

2:04problem-- it's a hassle--

2:05or a Hyper-V replica.

2:07We don't really talk about that here, I don't think,

2:09in this particular course.

2:10But that's where I have a virtual machine

2:13on a specific host and we can replicate it to another host.

2:17Now, the key to the management here

2:19though, is that there's no UI for it.

2:22You only use PowerShell with this thing.

2:24So here I'm going to embark on using PowerShell

2:27to show you some serving samples of how this might work out.

2:30Of course, PowerShell is very flexible,

2:32a lot of different ways you can work with it.

2:34So you don't have to do everything the way

2:35I'm doing it.

2:36These are just serving suggestions.

2:38So one of the ways you might do it is,

2:39if I've got a bunch of machines that I'm going to be working

2:42with and if they're difficult to type or the names are long

2:46or convoluted or something like that--

2:48and that does get to be the case when you have lots of machines

2:51and you have to make them all unique--

2:52I might want to shorten some of that

2:54up and make variables there.

2:56The other advantage of making the variables

2:58is if I have a repeatable action or a script that

3:01has to reference the same computer over and over

3:03and over again, then I don't have

3:05to keep typing it in there.

3:06I can just use the variables instead.

3:08And in this case, all those variables

3:10are going to be put into a group anyway.

3:13This script, by the way, is available for you

3:15up on nuggetlab.com.

3:15I'm really hesitant to call it a script.

3:17It's just a bunch of separate commandlets

3:19that we've got typed in here.

3:21And then what I'm going to do here

3:22is, I've created a VM group.

3:24But what we're going to do here is

3:26we can use these variables to add

3:27virtual machines to a group.

3:30We're going to then-- and there's the variables

3:32that we got right there.

3:33Actually, let me just run all those

3:34at once right now real quick.

3:36And for what we're doing, it's small enough

3:38that it really won't make much difference if I use variables

3:41or not.

3:41But you can see down at the bottom, it did the commandlets.

3:44Then I could create a virtual machine group or VM group.

3:48So, what I do with that is, this is the beginning of this.

3:51I create a new VM group, and then I name it.

3:54This is an arbitrary name.

3:55Call it whatever you want.

3:56I'm going to pretend as if this is a remote desktop farm,

3:59so I called it RD farm.

4:01And then the group type that I'm creating

4:03is a VM collection type.

4:05Now, there's also another kind, and I've

4:07described it down here.

4:08But there's another type of a group

4:10that you can create here called a management collection group

4:13type.

4:13And all that is, is it's a collection of groups.

4:17So, I might create several different VM groups

4:20of the VM collection types.

4:22And once I've got a few of those,

4:23I might want to manage them under a higher

4:26overarching management group, and that

4:28would be the management collection group type.

4:31So then let's see here.

4:32Let's go down and scroll down a little bit.

4:34Then I need to add the members to the group.

4:36Right now, the group is just empty.

4:37I haven't created it yet.

4:38Let's create it.

4:39So let me put my little cursor up here,

4:41and I'll create that group.

4:43And you can see here the members just have empty braces there.

4:47So in other words, there's no membership there right now.

4:50So what I need to do is to add members to that group.

4:52And I'll go add VM group member, and we'll hit that one.

4:56And then now we will see down here,

4:58as long as I don't see the red letters, I'm pretty encouraged.

5:02So, what I want to do here now is

5:03to confirm the membership also.

5:05Remember earlier when we saw the membership,

5:06it was just the braces, meaning there's nothing in there.

5:09Here we'll confirm the membership

5:10by doing a get VM group.

5:13So I'll run that one.

5:14And we can see that sure enough, in between the braces

5:16are all of the members of this group.

5:19Now, there's a lot of different kinds

5:20of things you can do with this.

5:22You could send a registry value to all of them

5:24simultaneously as a group.

5:26What else could you do?

5:27Send a file or send some files to them.

5:30You can also start up the computers all at once.

5:33Maybe I've got all these in a group for a new website we're

5:36ready to spin up, and once I'm ready to pull the trigger,

5:40I just start up that group and set up

5:43dozens or hundreds of web servers

5:44all at one time using a group.

5:47In this particular case, these are the four virtual machines

5:50that I've referenced there in the script so far,

5:53HYD client one, two, and three, and four.

5:56And as you look at the checkpoints now at the bottom,

5:58there's either none or there's, I think, a default one,

6:00an automatic one.

6:01Yeah.

6:02So there's really not much going on there

6:03in terms of checkpoints.

6:04I'm just going through all of them,

6:05and we see that it's really just mostly empty there.

6:08So now what I want to do is, I could in the UI

6:11here, because it's not too hard, I

6:13could just select all of those and hit checkpoint.

6:16But, again, in a larger environment

6:18where you've got a bunch of scattered machines,

6:21it's much more efficient to put them in a group

6:23and then manage just that group at once.

6:25So what I'm going to do is, to use PowerShell

6:28to hopefully make all of that a little bit more streamlined.

6:31All right.

6:31So we're going to, first of all, create a checkpoint.

6:33It's going to be checkpoint hyphen RM.

6:35That's the commandlet.

6:36VM, we're going to specify which VMs.

6:38If I didn't have this group, then I

6:40would just name the virtual machine.

6:43But instead, since I have the group,

6:45I'm going to put it in the parentheses here.

6:46Oops.

6:47I'm clicking and dragging.

6:48You don't want to do that.

6:49I'm going to get the group of RD farm and its members,

6:53and I'm going to name the snapshot.

6:55Let's say before new app.

6:56Maybe I was ready to deploy an app.

6:57We already tested, of course, because that's

6:59what we do as administrators.

7:01We're not reckless.

7:02But anyway, just in case it causes

7:05some unexpected bad behavior, we're

7:08going to create a snapshot called before new app.

7:11So now I'm going to go ahead and run that.

7:13I think there's going to be a progress bar-- yeah,

7:15there it is-- that you can see here

7:17it's creating these checkpoints for me.

7:18And wow!

7:20Lickety split, it just creates all those checkpoints.

7:23Geez, who says lickety split anymore?

7:25How old am I?

7:25Anyway, so let's go back to these virtual machines now,

7:28and now you can see, sure enough, if I go back up here,

7:31there's the before new app checkpoint.

7:33There's this one, before new app, before new app,

7:35before new app.

7:36You can see they all have this before new app checkpoint that

7:40has now been created.

7:42And then now let's imagine that, sure enough,

7:45that app, it crashed and burned on us,

7:47caused a big catastrophe.

7:49We're all up at 3:00 in the morning

7:51trying to figure this thing out, and we said, oh heck with it.

7:53Let's just go back to before the new app.

7:55So, we're going to now restore the virtual machine checkpoint,

7:58and we hit the run selection there.

8:01It's going to then restore them.

8:02I could force it, but I'm just going to say yes to all

8:04now, since the UI popped up there anyway.

8:07And then now they should all reappear.

8:09And then if I had actually made a change,

8:12then it would go back to that previous snapshot.

8:15Now, what else I could do, is maybe

8:17I'm trying to save some space, and we've

8:19got a really old crusty checkpoint that's

8:21taking up a lot of space.

8:22We're 100% confident, I hope, that we're never

8:26going to need it anymore.

8:27And maybe it's this before new app item.

8:29It's no longer relevant.

8:30So, now what I'll do is, I'll run that particular line.

8:33And we see that it is now deleting it all,

8:35and it's mostly the same lingo.

8:37It's restoring.

8:38It's removing.

8:39And then as I go back over to my virtual machines, HYD client

8:43one, two, three, don't see the checkpoint there anymore.

8:46Yep, sure enough, that's gone from all of those.

8:48By the way, while I'm here, let me remind you again

8:51that there's no UI management for the VM resource groups,

8:54so there's no way to tell just by looking, oh yeah,

8:56these four, they're in a specific group that I created.

8:59Not going to be able to tell it by looking at that.

9:01You're going to have to, again, depend upon PowerShell in order

9:03to also know what the memberships are.

9:06But anyway, now let's say that I don't need that group anymore,

9:09and we're decommissioning everything or something.

9:11Then I can delete that group, but you have

9:13to remove the membership first.

9:15You can't delete the group and it automatically

9:17remove all the memberships.

9:18By the way, it doesn't delete the virtual machines.

9:21It just deletes the membership, thankfully,

9:23because that could be catastrophic

9:26if you didn't understand that.

9:27So, anyway, I'm going to remove the group members.

9:29And you can see, again, the language right through here.

9:32I think that will explain itself.

9:33And then I'll hit the button right there,

9:35and it's now removed those members.

9:37If you want to confirm though, let's

9:39go back up to the get membership, get the VM group.

9:42And we can see that it now goes back to just the braces there.

9:46So, there's no membership at all there.

9:48And then if I want to remove the group, pretty simple.

9:50I can just remove the group like this.

9:52And I'm using force here, just so it doesn't prompt me

9:54with the yes/no.

9:55But it doesn't really matter too much for our purposes.

9:57I'm just showing you how you could use it.

9:59So, now I've run that, and now that

10:01deletes that resource group.

10:03So, there you go.

10:04That's how you can create less work for yourself by using

10:08these VM resource groups.

10:09Don't tell your boss about it.

10:11Tell them you're working 80 hours a week still.

10:13But hopefully you'll save some time there and get it

10:15down to 75 hours a week.

10:16All right, I hope this has been informative for you,

10:18and I'd like to thank you for viewing.