Installing and configuring Hyper-V and virtual machines

Describe storage options for Hyper-V, including VHD/VHDX formats and fixed, dynamic, passthrough, and differencing disks, plus SMB 3 shares and Fibre Channel support.

Examine virtual hard disk formats and types in Hyper-V, including VHD and dynamic versus fixed sizing, and understand Fibre Channel support and storage locations for virtual disks.

Create and manage differencing virtual disks in Hyper-V using Hyper-V Manager and PowerShell, exploring VHDX versus VHD, dynamic and differencing disks, and nested virtualization.

Master Hyper-V storage options by comparing VHD/VHDX, dynamic and differential disks, plus Virtual Fiber Channel; SMB 3.0 storage needs at least 1 Gbps.

Configure Hyper-V networks by creating external, internal, and private virtual switches, using VLANs and NAT when needed, to manage traffic between virtual machines and the host.

Learn best practices for configuring Hyper-V virtual networks to ensure adequate per-VM bandwidth, high availability, and improved performance with NIC teaming, bandwidth management, VMQ, and network virtualization over VLANs.

Explore new Hyper-V networking features in Windows Server 2016, including software defined networking enhancements, QoS integration, VMQ, RDMA for virtual switches, and switch embedded teaming with NAT.

Showcases configuring hyper-v networking with an internal net switch via PowerShell, using a 192.168.100.0/24 network, and enabling icmp through firewall rules for VM communication.

Explore best practices for configuring Hyper-V virtual networks in Windows Server, test knowledge on bandwidth management, VM queue, NIC teaming, and network virtualization for fault tolerance and performance.

Explore configuring Hyper-V virtual machine versions, compare generation one and two, upgrade VMs to the latest version, and consider shielded VMs, host compatibility, and import rules.

Demonstrates how to create a Hyper-V virtual machine, choosing generation one or two, configuring memory and networking, and planning VM compatibility with guest operating systems, disk formats, and secure boot.

Learn to create and manage Hyper-V virtual machines with PowerShell, using New-VM and Get-VM, configure memory and VHD, choose generation, attach an existing VHD, and manage start and stop.

Master Hyper-V VM configuration concepts through a knowledge check, covering VM versions, generations, creation methods, dynamic memory, secure boot, and planning and managing virtual machines.

Identify virtual machine states in Hyper-V to ensure adequate host resources and plan capacity. Manage checkpoints, export and import virtual machines, and use PowerShell Direct for offline VM management.

learn to create and manage Hyper-V checkpoints, choosing standard or production checkpoints for compatibility and backups, with up to 50 checkpoints per virtual machine and synchronized multi‑VM snapshots.

Demonstrates creating production and standard checkpoints in Hyper-V manager, renaming, applying, exporting, and deleting checkpoints, using PowerShell direct to configure virtual machines remotely.

Learn to manage Hyper-V virtual machines, covering VM states, checkpoints, and PowerShell Direct, with notes on production versus standard checkpoints, memory state, and backup considerations.

Explore importing and exporting virtual machines in Hyper-V, including register in place, restore, or copy options, exporting with or without checkpoints, and live migration considerations.

Learn how to perform live migrations of virtual machines in Hyper-V, enable live migrations, configure migration networks and Kerberos authentication, and troubleshoot authentication and resource issues that can block migrations.

Gain hands-on knowledge from a knowledge check on importing, exporting, and migrating virtual machines in Hyper-V, including copy import creating a new VM and Kerberos authentication for live migration.

Install and configure Microsoft System Center VMM, explore VM components, library, jobs, and settings, and automate tasks with PowerShell while adding a Hyper-V host to the fabric.

Install Virtual Machine Manager by running setup, configuring the management server and console, using a service account, selecting a SQL database, and configuring a library share for templates and vhds.

Explore the virtual machine manager UI, navigate five component categories: VMs and services, fabric, library, jobs, settings, and learn how the PowerShell console integrates with VM Manager commands.

Review initial configuration tasks in Virtual Machine Manager, including general settings, run as accounts, user roles, servicing windows, backups, and integrations for Azure Site Recovery and Ops Manager.

Explore the power of PowerShell and Virtual Machine Manager to automate Hyper-V tasks, generate and customize scripts from the VM console, manage host properties, and monitor automation jobs.

Master bare metal deployment with ipmi or smash management ports via Virtual Machine Manager, provisioning a Hyper-V host from a Windows Server 2016 image using Windows Deployment Services.

Learn to deploy bare-metal to Hyper-V hosts with SCVMM by automating discovery, OS installation, and provisioning as Hyper-V servers or clusters, with bios, pxe, dns, and ad setup.

Learn to deploy Hyper-V clusters using Virtual Machine Manager, including adding Hyper-V hosts, creating a compute cluster, and handling storage and bare-metal deployment.

Implement and manage highly available failover clusters with Windows Server, covering prerequisites, hardware, shared storage, networking, VM provisioning, validation wizard, quorum settings, and cluster aware updating, plus monitoring and troubleshooting.

Plan a highly available failover cluster, including dynamic quorum with dynamic Witness, storage, hardware, network, and security considerations, plus migration and operating system upgrade steps.

Identify services and applications for failover clustering, focusing on stateful apps and Hyper-V virtual machines; plan capacity and hardware to prevent single points of failure and ensure automatic client reconnect.

Explore shared storage options for failover clusters, including SAS, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, shared virtual disks via CSV, and SMB scale-out storage, plus key requirements for reliability.

Ensure Hyper-V failover clusters use Windows Server certified hardware, identical node hardware and firmware, and consistent storage and network settings, then validate with the validated configuration wizard before deployment.

Verify RSS and RDMA compatibility of network adapters on an SMB server using PowerShell, examining Get-NetAdapter RSS and Get-SmbServerNetworkInterface outputs.

Configure failover clusters by meeting hardware, security, and migration requirements: ensure Windows Server 2008+ domain controllers, DNS, and Server 2016 compatibility, with identical editions and updates across nodes.

Configure cluster properties via Failover Cluster Manager, including General, Resource Type, Balancer tabs; set preferred owners and manage failover failback and node actions like add and evict.

Understand quorum modes in failover clustering for Windows Server 2016, including dynamic quorum and dynamic witness, and compare disk, file share, and Azure cloud witnesses.

Configure storage for the failover cluster by creating storage spaces and pools, adding disks, and selecting resiliency and virtual disk size. Set up private and public networks for cluster communication.

Learn to run the validation configuration wizard, install the Hyper-V role on both nodes, and create a failover cluster with shared storage.

Configure storage spaces and create clustered storage pools with physical disks for failover clusters; manage disks and network design, including private, public, and iSCSI networks, to ensure reliable cluster communications.

Demonstrates building a general file-server failover cluster in a simple domain using Hyper-V virtual machines, iSCSI storage, and Windows failover clustering to ensure high availability of file services.

Configure cluster quorum settings for Windows Server Failover Clustering using the quorum wizard or PowerShell, to manage node votes and disk or file share witnesses with dynamic quorum.

Learn to configure a cluster quorum by inspecting the current quorum, switching from disk witness to file share witness, and validating with Get-ClusterQuorum and Set-ClusterVolume commands.

Monitor failover clusters using Event Viewer, Performance and Reliability Monitor, and cluster reports; back up and restore cluster configurations and implement cluster aware updating to update nodes without downtime.

Add a shared folder to a highly available file server, configure failover and failback, and validate the deployment and failover behavior using Failover Cluster Manager and Windows Admin Center.

Master backing up, restoring, and troubleshooting failover clusters, covering quorum, witness configurations, authoritative versus non-authoritative restores, and issue diagnosis via events, logs, and validation tools.

Configure aggressive or relaxed network monitoring and heartbeat delays and thresholds for same-subnet, cross-subnet, and cross-site, and use Get-Cluster to view and set cluster health settings to improve availability.

Learn how zero downtime updates are achieved with cluster aware updating for a failover cluster, using a queue to update nodes and two modes: remote updating and self-updating.

Learn to configure cluster aware updating in hyper-v by installing failover clustering tools, generating and applying update previews, and enabling self-updating schedules for a windows cluster.

diagnose failover cluster health in windows server by analyzing network latency, failures, drivers, firewall, and security software; generate and interpret the cluster log with get-clusterlog and powershell for troubleshooting.

Identify and resolve failover cluster communication faults by resynchronizing CNO and VCO passwords in Active Directory, repairing computer objects, and managing quorum configuration and forced quorum mode.

Monitor failover clusters in Hyper-V using performance counters, event viewer, and the Failover Cluster Management snap-in; troubleshoot with PowerShell cmdlets.

Deploy stretch clusters to deliver site resiliency by automating failover and replicating storage across sites, while managing prerequisites, network heartbeats, and admin overhead.

Explore deploying highly available stretched storage clusters across locations, using replication for independent sites, automated failover, and site aware features to reduce admin overhead and improve resilience.

Understand storage replica on Windows Server 2016 enabling synchronous or asynchronous replication for site clusters without vendor storage, and recognize DFS replication's limitations for stretch failover clustering.

Explore storage replica, a storage agnostic, block-level replication in Windows Server 2016, enabling synchronous and asynchronous replication across storage cluster, server to server, or cluster to cluster.

Explore storage replica in Windows Server 2016, a storage-agnostic, block-level replication across clusters and servers, with synchronous or asynchronous modes for disaster recovery, not suited for branch offices.

Learn how to configure site-aware stretched failover clusters with dynamic quorum and dynamic witness, choosing between Azure cloud witness or file share witness depending on data centers and connectivity.

Define failover and failback procedures for stretched clusters, detailing critical services, quorum, storage replication, DNS and client connectivity, and controlled failback to prevent data loss.