Technical Considerations for Using Hyper-V in a Windows Small Business Server 2008 Environment

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Updated: March 10, 2009

Applies To: Windows SBS 2008

Before you implement a Hyper-V solution for your Windows SBS 2008 network, you should fully investigate the need and plan the deployment. There are many things to consider in your decision, including the following technical matters.

  • Microsoft strongly recommends that a parent partition contain only the Hypervisor. Because of this, Windows SBS 2008 does not support using the primary server as a Hyper-V parent partition. However, when you install the 64-bit version of the second server, Windows SBS 2008 Premium allows you to enable a Hyper-V parent partition on the second server.

  • Virtual machine installations must meet the same minimum hardware requirements as physical installations of the operating system or software. You should also consider other recommendations, such as whether to use dedicated hard disk drives for process intensive applications.

  • Windows SBS 2008 supports installation on a Hyper-V child partition. However, before you install additional guest operating systems or other software, you should ensure that the software is supported to run in a Hyper-V environment. For a list of Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments, see Knowledge Base article 957006 at the Microsoft Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129503).

  • For the most current list of guest operating systems that Hyper-V supports, see the Microsoft Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129034).

For more information about Hyper-V and instructions for installing the Hyper-V Server Role and configuring a virtual machine, see “Hyper-V Getting Started Guide” at the Microsoft Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129035) and “Overview of Hyper-V” at the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129036).