Class in Session: Microsoft

I have written several times about Hyper-V in the past few months. One of my preoccupations is figuring out how to run Hyper-V and other Server 2008 Roles on non-server hardware. Everyone needs a hobby, right?

But it is also true that discovering how to run cool software on ordinary laptops and desktops can have some practical benefits. For example, a student could practice using the latest version of an operating system in order to learn how it works. Developers can test new applications on lower cost hardware and save money. The savings can be spent on late night runs to a coffee bar for a triple-shock caffeinated latte so that they can stay up for 36 hours straight to make deadlines.

But perhaps part of the attraction in making big server application run on unlikely computers is that it is fun to do. It is a little like hot-rodding a riding mower or seeing just how much luggage you can load into a little car.

So naturally a challenge I could not pass by was to attempt an installation of Window Server 2008 R2 64 bit Enterprise Edition on a Lenovo T61 laptop. The 64 bit version of Server is required for the Hyper-V Role. Hyper-V also requires hardware-assisted virtualization support from the processor and data execution prevention from the Bios. The T61 has an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 @2.4GHz and 4 GB of RAM. It has 160 GB SATA hard drive that spins at 7200 RPM. I wanted to put this typical business laptop to the test. Will it run Hyper-V? What kind of performance will it have? Could I run other Roles on the same server?

The T61 was terrific. It accepted the Hyper-V Role and could easily support four guest VMs of 64 bit Windows Server Standard running simultaneously. Each VM was allocated 512 GB on the host system. With the four VMs running and the host OS the laptop still had 1.1 GB of RAM available. As an extra test I had also installed the Windows Deployment Services Role on the host OS. I used WDS to install Server 2008 into four empty VMs using a multicast transmission over Hyper-V’s virtual network switch. The T61 managed to handle the heavy disk I/O load of over 19 MB per second.

The mighty little Lenovo managed very well. I makes me wonder what else I could do with it. Perhaps I could install Failover Clustering on the VMs and see how many cluster nodes it could support. Or maybe I could install Windows Media Services and stream video out to dozens of clients. So little time…

-Mark

Related Courses:

Enterprise Virtualization Using Microsoft Hyper-V

Configuring, Managing, and Maintaining Server 2008