HYPER-V 3.0 Best Practice Guide

These can change per your environment and requirements. All needs to be evaluated against your implementation. This list is just a checklist to remind simple installation steps. Please review each step, test, test, and then apply if applicable.

1. Check BIOS, firmware/driver versions

2. Check security patch level of hosts, for critical patches and if in a cluster, their patch level should be the same.

3. Check for Windows Server 2012 cumulative updates

As of now, list of Windows 2012 Cumulative updates: Windows 8 Client and Windows Server 2012 General Availability Cumulative Update (October) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2756872 Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 cumulative update: November 2012  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2770917 Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 cumulative update: December 2012 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2779768

1. Check if there is any new hotfixes for Hyper-V and failover cluster

2. Try to delay new updates for couple weeks to prevent issues introduced with those (you don’t need to apply .NET 4.5 updates immediately for example on hosts)

3. Disable printer mapping

4. Change host power plan to maximum

5. Disable NIC sleep

6. Do not install any other software to Hyper-V hosts.

7. Antivirus, exclude

VM directories (config/vhd/snapshot etc) vmms.exe vmwp.exe csv path

NIC Driver/firmware

1. Consider using jumbo frames for CSV/ISCSI/LM

2. ISCSI NICS should only have IP protocols

Disk:

1. Fixed or pass-through for VMs: The performance of dynamic disks is almost same as fixed disks on Windows 2012 but dynamic disls have more disk fragmentation than fixed disks.

2. 
   

3. be careful with snapshots

4. page file of host should be fixed 4GB on system drive

Memory:

1. Reserve memory for Hyper-V parent.

384 + (30 * Physical Memory) HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization\MemoryReserve

1. use dynamic memory when possible

Cluster:

1. Set network for CSV

2. Set network for LM

3. Cluster Shutdown Time (HKLM\Cluster\ShutdownTimeoutInMinutes)  depends on memory can be high

(100 / 64) * physical RAM (recommend 10-15-30 min)

1. run validation.

2. run best practice analyzer for HyperV

Invoke-BpaModel –BestPracticesModelId Microsoft/Windows/Hyper-V Get-BpaResult –BestPracticesModelId Microsoft/Windows/Hyper-V

Smart Paging: it is a best practice to add the page file onto a fast hard drive to avoid performance issues. Virtual DC: disable time sync with host in the guest: reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\VMICTimeProvider /v Enabled /t reg_dword /d 0 automatic action shut down if vhds IDE, disable write caching to reduce chance of corruption VMM use a dedicated domain account for VMM 2012 and do not share it with other purposes or services. When Hyper*V host removed from VMM, the domain account also gets removed from the local Administrators group of the host.   Library Server: Make the library server highly available (clustered file server share) Cluster Reserve: Cluster > General tab >  cluster reserve state. The default is 1 ie one node is reserved for HA. Depending on the infrasturture, in general, one node per eight nodes is good.