First refer to all rules listed in "Rules to Better Hyper-V" as these are the basics for Hyper-V.

Let's continue with the rules specially for clustering...

It may work fine initially on a non-supported configuration but when you start loading more Virtual Machines on to the cluster the performance will be degrade dramatically.

Note: An even better and more expensive solution is purchase a separate Switch for each network (this example means 3 network adapters = 3 networks)

1. Open the Hyper-V Manager on the server hosting the Virtual Machine
2. Shutdown the virtual machine
3. Click Edit Disk... in the Actions pane of the Hyper-V Manager
   
   Figure: You expand a VHD from the Actions Menu | Edit Disk
4. In the Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard window, choose the VHD you want to edit and choose Next.
5. Select Expand and click Next
6. Enter the new size of the VHD and click Next

You will now have a resized VHD. Next step is to boot up into the virtual machine and tell disk manager to resize the partition on the VHD to use the free space which has been added at the end of the VHD. Windows Server 2008 makes this very simple:

1. Boot into the virtual machine
2. Open Computer Management and choose Disk Management
3. Right click on the partition sitting at the front of the newly resized disk and click on Extend Volume...
   
   Figure: The first partition on the disk needs to be expanded to use up the unallocated space created when expanding the VHD
4. You will have to use all the available space when you extend the volume as it is a Simple Volume. (See Rule: Do you use Basic Volumes inside VHD’s? ) When you are asked to select your disks just click Next
5. Click Finish
   Figure: The disk is now using all the available space inside the VHD

1. Right click on it when it is shut down and clicking Export...
2. Choose the location you wish to export the Virtual Machine to and click on Export

Create a policy that you would like applied to each node of the cluster using the Group Policy Management.

To specify the roles of each network adapter:

1. Open the Failover Cluster Manager
2. Expand the Networks section and you will see all of your network adapters listed
3. Right click on the network that you are using for LAN and ISCSI and make sure that the following setting is selected

This setting prevents ISCSI and LAN traffic from going over the cluster network

1. Shutdown the virtual server
2. In the Hyper-V Manager, ensure the Virtual Machine has the state of Off
3. Right click on the virtual machine you wish to snapshot and click Snapshot
4. The snapshot should run very quickly and you will notice the snapshot in the Snapshots area of the Hyper-V Manager
   
   
You will see the snapshots associated with a Virtual Machine when you click on them


5. You can start your server back up again

When you delete a snapshot you can no longer restore the virtual machine to the point in time the snapshot was taken. Deleting a snapshot does not affect any other snapshots, nor will it affect the current state of the virtual machine.

Set yourself a calendar reminder 3 weeks after you make a snapshot so you remember to apply the snapshot to the Virtual Machine (assuming you are happy with the virtual machine after the snapshot).

1. In the Hyper-V Manager, click on the virtual machine you want to apply the snapshot to
2. In the Snapshots window, right click on the snapshot you wish to apply and click Delete Snapshot…
3. Confirm the snapshot deletion.
4. Wait for the merge process to complete (this may take a while if you have had the snapshot running for a long time and it has grown large in size).

Having a separate Active Directory domain will allow your Hyper-V machines to run without problems in the case that your main Active Directory domain fails for any reason.

When you setup a new Active Directory domain for your Hyper-V cluster, create a trust between to 2 domains.

1. Let the people that may have been using the Virtual Machine that it is going to be decommissioned. This might be difficult if it was being used for testing or staging.
2. Make a text file that matches the name of the Virtual Machine.
3. Note down the Virtual Machines static IP address in the text file.
4. Check the DNS Manager on a domain controller and note down any DNS names that pointed to the IP Address of the Virtual Machine.
5. Copy the Virtual Machines folder to a file server or backup drive.
6. Copy the text file into the same location.
7. Set a calendar reminder for yourself to delete the Virtual Machine if it hasn’t been requested in 3 months.

​Instead of managing each Virtual Machine network itself, using VMM to manage them all is much easier.

To do that, you need to complete a few steps:

  1. Configure network settings with a logical switch;

You can learn more on how to set this up here.

  2. Ask yourself: "What is this network adapter going to be used for?"

You need to specify if the network adapter is going to be used for virtual machines, host management, etc...

  3. Apply the logical switch and monitor physical network devices

For full instructions on how to do this, see here.

​You can provision VMs using a number of different approaches in VMM:

  1. Create VMs from a blank virtual disk;
  2. Create VMs from existing hard disks;
  3. Clone a VM from existing VM;
  4. Create VM from a template;
  5. Create VM in a service deployment;
  6. Rapidly provision a VM using storage area network (SAN) copy.

You can also deploy VM guest clusters that acts as a failover cluster for your VMs, sharing the same .vhdx files as the main ones!

VMM uses an algorithm to intelligently place your newly created virtual machine on an available host, depending on a few factors:

  1. CPU rating;
  2. RAM rating;
  3. Disk I/O rating;
  4. Network rating.

It then places the VM in the best host available for it.

VMM does this and much more for VMs, and you can read a bigger explanation here.

​To find full explained instructions on how to set this up, see here.

Before starting, you should take some things into consideration:

  1. The WSUS server must be in the same domain as the VMM server;
  2. Best practices dictates that you should use a separate server to be a WSUS server;
  3. After you add a WSUS server to VMM, you should use the VMM console to manage it, and not the WSUS console.

After taking these into consideration, you can start deploying update baselines, which contains a set of required updates scoped to objects, and adding update exemptions as necessary.

There are 2 types of templates:

  1. VM templates, which are database objects stored in the VMM library, used to quickly set up VMs
  2. Service templates, which defines how a service is configured. They hold information about the VMs, which application to install on VMs, and the network settings that should be used.

You can create a VM template from an existing virtual hard disk, or from an existing VM deployed on a host.

To see how this is done, you can check here.