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I recently notice upgrade my virtual machines hosting machine from window server 2008 to windows server 2008 R2. There are some noticeable performance drop, especially on virtual machines that handles big log files, the script execution time can be 200% than it was before upgrade.

I did some testing and it turns out power management in windows server 2008 R2 causes this performance degrading. Windows Server 2008 R2 has 3 power plan

• Balanced (recommended)
• High Performance
• Power Saver

By default, Windows Server 2008 R2 sets the power plan to Balanced (recommended) power plan. This might prevent applications from fully utilizing available hardware resources.

Change Power Plan to High Performance and the performance degrade issue does no occur any more.

You can also checkout this post for Set the power configuration to High Performance in scripts.

If you are thinking about installing Hyper-V on laptop, you need to put following into consideration. Some of Hyper-V’s design will limit laptop’s functions, these limitation are reasonable for a server operation system but would be a pain when you consider installing Hyper-V on a laptop.

You cannot connect a virtual network to a wireless network adapter

As a result, you cannot provide wireless networking capabilities to virtual machines. if you mainly use wireless NIC or all communication between the VM and the outside world would have to be through the Wireless NIC, this will turn out to be a great deal.

Power-saving features are disabled after Hyper-V role is enabled

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What is Hyper-V

Hyper-V is Microsoft’s supported form of machine virtualization.  It allows you to run any number of guest machines on your host machine.  Each guest thinks it’s running on its own hardware, and is unaware that it’s just a simulation.

Hyper-V also provides an easy way to snapshot and rollback virtual machine to an old saved stage.

Hyper Installation Prerequisites

• Operation System – Hyper-V is only available in 64 bit versions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• Hardware – Processors should include a virtualization option. For example, Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V).

If you are not sure if your computer processor supports hardware virtualization, you can checkout Microsoft’s Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Detection Tool. The tool also checks if virtualization is enabled on the processor.

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Once Hyper-V role is enabled on windows server 2008/R2, Hyper-V manager will be installed automatically. However, you don’t need to log on to Hyper-V host server to use Hyper-V manager. Instead, you can manage Hyper-V machines remotely from you Win7 desktop.

To manage Hyper-V machines remotely from Win 7, following these steps:

1. Install Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&displaylang=en
2. Go to Start > Control panel Under Programs, click on Get programs
3. On the left panel, click on Turn Windows feature on or off
4. On the feature list, expand Remote Server Administration roles > Role Administration Tools, mark Hyper-V Tools, then click OK
5. Go to Administrative tools > Hyper-V Manager, launch it
6. Now you can manage Hyper-V virtual machines from your windows 7 box.   Read more »

For Dell Systems

1. Restart your machine, and press F2 at boot (or whichever key is necessary) to enter BIOS setup
2. Under Performance > set Virtualization to ON
3. Under Performance > set VT for Direct I/O Access to ON
4. Save & Exit BIOS
5. Restart computer

For HP Systems

1. Restart your machine, and press F2 at boot (or whichever key is necessary) to enter BIOS setup
2. Under OS Security > set Intel Virtualization Technology (VTx) to ON
3. Under OS Security > set IO Virtualization to ON
4. Save & Exit BIOS
5. Restart computer