Exclusive: Hyper-V 2013 Product Roadmap

Now that Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V has released…

What’s that? It has not yet released?

Sorry about that, I was confused for a moment — all of the key features of Hyper-V that Microsoft Virtualization team has been talking about for months are actually in the R2 product, which is currently just at release candidate status.  I’m sure you would forgive me for such an oversight.  But I hear it has Live Migration!

Are you curious about what is coming after 2008 R2 on the Hyper-V roadmap?  I was, too, but recently I was able to obtain a comprehensive document describing many of the proposed new Hyper-V features.  Please understand that plans may change based on “customer demand” and some features may be deferred until Hyper-V 2013 R2, currently scheduled to release in 2H 2015.

Certain features may also be initially introduced using the “Quick” architecture, compromising uptime minor functionality in order to satisfy customer demand.  I’m sure everyone remembers “Quick Migration” — the technique of moving a running VM that introduces several minutes of downtime due to the lack of a clustered file system on Windows.  In 2008 R2 “Quick Storage Migration” continues the trend, introducing VM downtime in order to move virtual disks across LUNs.

Here are my top predictions for new “Quick” features to look forward to:

• Quick Fault Tolerance – secondary VM is mirrored on another host and automatically reboots if primary VM fails
• Quick CPU hot-add – CPUs may be added to a running VM — takes effect after next reboot
• Quick Host Profiles – automatically configures host networking, storage, and security (requires other System Center infrastructure and “slight” knowledge of WMI and PowerShell)
• Quick Power Management – hosts automatically power off but must be manually powered on
• Quick Linux guest customization – may not make the 2013 release

If you would like to know more, view the original document directly at the source.