Advanced networking finally comes to Windows virtualization with Hyper-V 3.0

New features in Microsoft’s Hyper-V 3.0, such as scalability improvements, Live Migration, Storage Migration, replication, and networking enhancements, are quickly closing the technology gap between Microsoft and VMware vSphere. Microsoft previewed Windows Server 8 along with the next generation of its hypervisor technology at its Build conference last week.

While these new features are highly anticipated, it is important to note that this software is still in pre-beta and is currently intended for developers, not for general use by administrators in a production data center environment.

[ Also on InfoWorld.com: Windows 8 with Hyper-V will require new hardware. | Also read about my five lessons learned from VMworld 2011. ]

Even though Hyper-V 3.0 could be a year or more away from general release, its feature set may be enough to cause virtualization administrators to pause and take a serious look at the technology. Thanks to the new vSphere 5 vRAM pricing structure implemented by VMware, there’s even more reason for people to think about their virtual future.

Particularly noteworthy within Windows Server 8 and Hyper-V 3.0 are the changes Microsoft has made to networking. Normally Microsoft looks at networking and infrastructure components as little more than the plumbing, and has typically relied on third-party companies and OEM hardware vendors to step up to the plate and make networking extensible. This is just one more reason why Microsoft has fallen way short in the race against VMware.

But while Redmond may take a while to make a course correction, in the end it often does listen to its most vocal critics. Case in point, the company’s next-generation platform adds quite a bit of new functionality around networking — much of it long overdue if you ask almost any virtualization administrator. Microsoft is taking the fight back to VMware by trying to match VMware’s vSwitch feature for feature. In keeping with the changes in Hyper-V’s compute capabilities and storage, Microsoft has made sweeping changes with port ACLs, private VLANs, per-vNIC bandwidth reservations, QoS, metering, OpenFlow support, VN-Tag support, and network introspection — all without requiring expensive network devices.

One of the key features coming to Windows Server is native NIC teaming. This feature has been a part of VMware ESX for some time; however prior to Windows Server 8, you could only get NIC teaming for Windows with specialized NICs and third-party software from Broadcom and Intel. This was a great disadvantage and a lot of people complained about it. Now the operating system will do the job, increasing stability and security while reducing support complexity, as the new NIC teaming will also work across heterogeneous vendor NICs.

But perhaps most importantly, Microsoft has updated the virtual switch that is built into the Hyper-V hypervisor and made it extensible. Microsoft is providing an API that will allow the switch to support third-party extensions for inspecting, filtering, modifying, sampling, and inserting packets, with management of the extensions integrated into Hyper-V. The company will also be implementing a Hyper-V virtual switch logo program to help ensure and maintain the high quality of these virtual switch extensions.

As VMware has already found out, an extensible virtual switch will open the door for more third-party virtual switches. Companies like HP and Juniper may bite at the chance to participate; but just as they have already done with VMware, Cisco seems ready to partner with Microsoft in this regard. The company has already stated it will be adding support for Windows Server 8 and Hyper-V 3.0 via the company’s Nexus 1000V virtual switch. Until now, this support has been exclusive to VMware’s hypervisor technology.

In a public solution overview on the company’s website, Cisco acknowledged its intended support for Microsoft:

For enterprise and service provider customers who want to extend Cisco networking experience to their Microsoft Windows Server 8 Hyper-V deployments, Cisco offers a full portfolio of virtual networking technologies through the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches and Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX).

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is a distributed virtual switching platform that provides advanced networking features, integrated virtual services, and a consistent operational model across physical and virtual environments. Customers can rely on the robust Cisco NX-OS Software command-line interface (CLI) and feature set and Cisco’s innovative network services architecture for their virtual environments.

Cisco UCS VM-FEX simplifies virtual machine networking by collapsing virtual and physical networking into a single easy-to-manage infrastructure while using Hyper-VSingle-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) technology to provide near-bare-metal I/O performance to the virtual machines.

Much like the unknown timeframe of Windows Server 8 and Hyper-V 3.0, the timing for delivery of the Cisco Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS VM-FEX is still to be determined. But seriously, doesn’t this announcement alone really shake things up?