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Beginners’ Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V: What is Azure Monitor for Hyper-V – Part 46
Many great options exist for deploying Hyper-V virtualization in conjunction with hybrid services. However, when connecting Hyper-V with Microsoft Azure, there are best practices to follow when configuring Microsoft Hyper-V to support hybrid infrastructure services in your organization. Let’s look at Hyper-V hybrid best practices for beginners and supporting virtualized services with hybrid connectivity.
What does hybrid mean?
It is a common buzzword today – hybrid. But what is it exactly, and why is it important? Hybrid is a word that encapsulates different meanings to different businesses. However, hybridization generally means companies use technologies on-premises and in the cloud.
Most organizations, like Microsoft, are taking a hybrid approach to their offerings as they realize it is unrealistic to think that companies will abandon on-premises technologies and place everything in the cloud. After all, many businesses may be prohibited from doing that due to compliance requirements, etc.
With Microsoft Azure, Microsoft is creating a rich ecosystem of solutions that pair nicely with traditional infrastructure, allowing you to find the right mix and balance between on-premises and cloud. It is where most organizations are comfortable at this point, and it aligns with current trends and needs.
Hyper-V hybrid Best practices
There are a few best practices with Hyper-V to keep in mind to align your Hyper-V environment and virtualization technologies with hybrid environments. Consider the following:
- Consider using Azure Stack HCI
- Arc-enable your Microsoft Servers and Hyper-V hosts
- Manage Hyper-V using Windows Admin Center
- Run Docker containers on Hyper-V
- Use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Use Azure Network Adapter
Consider using Azure Stack HCI
You can do this with traditional Windows Servers running the Hyper-V role and Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) for storage when running Hyper-V HCI clusters on-premises. However, if you have an Azure subscription, you can leverage Azure Stack HCI, an HCI solution running on-premises on certified hardware and fully enabled from Azure.
By using Azure Stack HCI, you can run Azure services natively on-premises, something you can’t do with the more traditional approach of running Windows Servers, Hyper-V, and Storage Spaces Direct. You can run services on your Azure Stack HCI cluster, like Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Virtual Desktops.
Arc-enable your Microsoft Servers and Hyper-V hosts
You can hybridize just about any traditional Microsoft infrastructure using Microsoft Arc, including Windows Server, SQL Server, Kubernetes clusters, etc. In addition, Azure Arc extends the management of Microsoft Azure Resource Manager (ARM) down to your on-premises environment.
With Azure Arc-enabled resources, these appear as native Azure resources. It allows you to choose where your resources run while still having the benefits of Azure management with a single management and control plane. Once you extend ARM to your on-premises resources via Azure Arc, you can integrate these resources with other native Azure services and solutions.
Manage Hyper-V using Windows Admin Center
To fully benefit from all the hybrid resources you can use with your Hyper-V server, managing your Hyper-V hosts with Windows Admin Center enables quick and easy access to hybrid Azure services. It greatly simplifies and automates the workflows to onboard your services with the available Azure solutions like:
- Azure Backup
- Azure File Sync
- Azure hybrid center
- Azure Kubernetes Service
- Azure Monitor
Run Docker containers on Hyper-V
One of the great ways to hybridize your Hyper-V installation is to start the migration to containerized services and applications. By containerizing your applications, you are setting these up for a much easier move to cloud environments. In addition, containers provide a cloud-native solution that is much more cloud-friendly than virtual machines from a resource and cost perspective.
Docker is fully supported to run on Hyper-V hosts. You can also use Hyper-V isolation with Docker containers for the highest level of security and isolation between containers.
Use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
When thinking about cloud technologies, there isn’t a more talked about technology solution than Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the de facto standard for orchestrating your containers. In addition, Kubernetes allows running your containers, so these are self-healing, resilient, and can run with elasticity.
The Azure Kubernetes Service simplifies the deployment of containers on your Windows Server platform. Windows Admin Center makes this extremely easy since the Azure Kubernetes Service extension is one of the available hybrid extensions.
Use Azure Network Adapter
One of the challenges with extending on-premises resources to the Microsoft Azure cloud is networking. It is not a trivial undertaking to easily connect your on-premises network with networks existing in Microsoft Azure. The Azure Network Adapter is an easy way to set up a point-to-site VPN connection to Azure between your Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft Azure.
Following the built-in workflow found in Windows Admin Center, admins can add the Azure Network adapter to a managed server and easily setup connectivity between the server and Azure.
Hyper-V hybrid FAQs
What is hybrid?
Hybrid refers to the modern approach of using both on-premises and cloud technologies seamlessly to solve the challenging technical and business problems facing organizations today.
What is Windows Admin Center?
Windows Admin Center is the new web-based management console that provides easy hybrid solutions for on-premises technologies like Windows Server and Hyper-V.
How can you run containers and Kubernetes in Hyper-V?
Running Docker on Hyper-V is natively supported and allows admins to utilize capabilities like Hyper-V isolation. In addition, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides an easy way to run AKS clusters on-premises using the easy workflow provided by Windows Admin Center.
Wrapping up
The Hyper-V hybrid best practices we have described do not include every possible solution that today’s businesses can use in the Microsoft ecosystem. However, it helps to show the wealth of hybrid options and solutions available for organizations today. In addition, the hybrid solutions from Microsoft continue to grow and evolve as the hybrid approach matures.
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