Published: November 12, 2007   |   Updated: February 25, 2008

This guide is one in a series of planning and design guides that clarify and streamline the planning and design process for Microsoft® infrastructure technologies. Each guide in the series addresses a unique infrastructure technology or scenario. These guides include the following topics:

• Defining the technical decision flow (flow chart) through the planning process.
• Describing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options to consider in making the decisions.
• Relating the decisions and options for the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
• Framing the decision in terms of additional questions for the business to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the appropriate business landscape.

The guides in this series are intended to complement and augment Microsoft product documentation.

Document Approach

This guide is designed to provide a consistent structure for addressing the decisions and activities most critical to the successful implementation of the infrastructure for Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ technology and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. Each decision or activity is subdivided into four elements:

• Background on the decision or activity, including general considerations.
• Typical options or tasks to perform for the activity.
• A reference section that evaluates items such as cost and complexity for the options or tasks identified.
• Questions for the business that might significantly affect the decisions to be made.

Table 1 lists the full range of characteristics discussed in the option-evaluation sections later in this guide. Only the characteristics relevant to a particular option or task are included in each section.

Table 1. Characteristics

Each of the design options is compared against the above characteristics and is subjectively rated in order to provide a relative weighting of the option against the characteristic. The options are not explicitly rated against each other as there are too many unknowns about the business drivers to accurately compare them.

The ratings take two forms:

• Cost and Complexity are rated on a scale of High, Medium, Low.
• The rest of the characteristics are rated on the scale listed in the following table.

Table 2. Additional Characteristics

The characteristics are presented either as two-column or three-column tables. The two-column table is used when the characteristic is applicable to all options or when there are no options available—for example, when performing a task.

The three-column table is used to present an option, the description, and the effect—in that order—for the characteristic.

There are times that decisions being made within the business may affect the infrastructure design. The “Validating with the Business” section is used to provide additional questions that should be asked of the business leaders. In addition, this provides a means to have check points within the design process to give the business leaders a way to provide additional input into the design process.

Who Should Use This Document

This guide is written for information technology (IT) infrastructure specialists who are responsible for planning and designing a Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 infrastructure for server virtualization. These specialists include consultants, internal IT architects, and others who are concerned with design decisions related to virtualization.

The content in this guide assumes that the reader is familiar with Microsoft virtualization technology and its potential applications.