Virtualizing Windows Server 2012 Essentials on Hyper-V

This book is a standalone chapter that complements the book, An Administrator's Guide to Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Essentials. The decrease in the cost of hardware has made it affordable for small businesses to purchase servers that are capable of performing much more than the operating system could require. Virtualization has become a hot topic in the IT world today. The concept of virtualization involves turning a server into a virtualization host server and running the actual workload servers as virtual servers on the host. The processing, memory and storage resources on the host server are shared to the virtual servers. This chapter will cover the basic aspects of virtualization with Hyper-V, how to install the host server, and how to set up the WS2012E server as a VM. We will examine some tips and tricks that will make the process smoother and keep the installation running efficiently that are particularly useful in the small business environment.