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Hyper-V containers with Windows Server 2016
High Demand
Gone are the days when Hyper-V was trying to catch up with the basic functionality of VMware. After the release of Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft's hypervisor drew level with vSphere for most applications. Therefore, the new version of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016 mainly offers improvements for demanding environments, such as snapshots and improved security in the cloud.
Initially, Microsoft intended to release Windows Server 2016 simultaneously with Windows 10, but they dropped this plan in the beta phase and moved Server 2016 to an unspecified date in the second half of 2016. The tests for this article were conducted before the final release and are based on Technical Preview 4.
New File Format for VMs
A few things quickly catch the eye when you look at the new Hyper-V: The role of the hypervisor in Windows Server 2016 can only be activated if the server's processors support second-level address translation (SLAT). Before, this function was only required for the client Hyper-V; however, now, it is also required for the server. Older machines might have to be retired.
When you create new virtual machines (VMs) in Hyper-V, the new file formats become apparent. Thus far, Hyper-V has used files in XML format to configure the VMs, but now the system relies on binary files. This eliminates a convenient way of quickly reviewing the configuration of a VM in the XML source code. The official message from Microsoft here is that the new format is much faster to process than the XML files, which need to be parsed in a computationally expensive way in large environments. Rumor has it that support reasons were also decisive: All too often, customers directly manipulated the XML files, creating problems that were difficult for Microsoft's support teams to fix. With binary files, this problem is a thing of the past.
If administrators move existing VMs from one Hyper-V host with
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