Tag Archives: Virtual Machine

Setting up the lab environment – Hyper-V: Virtual Machines

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Now to the good stuff

Usually when working with Hyper-V I use reference disks, mainly to save space on rather expensive disks. But is there much to gain when using deduplication? I was on sure, so asked in Tech Konnect

The response from Tech Konnect confirmed, when using deduplication, it out wages the other issues with reference disks, rather than saving disk space.

Since it’s not possible to create folders or groups within the Hyper-V Management Console, I will be using a naming standard: <Group> – <Generation> – <OS> – <hostname>

The first Virtual Machine will be a Domain Controller, what better way to start?

Virtual Machine Configuration:
Generation: 2
Startup memory: 4096
Dynamic Memory: Enabled
Network Connection: External
Disk size: 60 GB
Boot from the ISO File – Windows Server 2016 Standard (Desktop Experience)

The quick wins for a Generation 2 Virtual Machine

  • PXE Boot by using a standard network adapter
  • Boot from a SCSI virtual hard disk
  • Boot from SCSI virtual DVD
  • Secure Boot (enabled by default
  • UEFI firmware support
  • Shielded Virtual Machines
  • Storage spaces direct
  • Hot add/removal of virtual network adapters

Note: IDE drives and legacy network adapter support has been removed.
For more info: Generation 2 Virtual Machine Overview and Hyper-V feature compatibility by Generation and Guest

The memory assigned might be a bit overkill, but for now it will be OK.
When configuring the second DC i will only assign: 2048.
The complete installation time to logon was 3 minutes and 9 seconds

Both DCs can actually live with 2048 mb ram, so it can always be cut down, but keep in mind we are using Dynamic Memory allocation.

I will of course be setting up MDT and ConfigMgr at a later point, to streamline and gain a bit of speed.