The news has broken that Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 SP1 has been “released to manufacturing”. In other words, development and testing have been completed. TechNet/MSDN customers get access to the download on Feb 16th. It will go GA on Feb 22nd.
Last year I listed the then-included features of the service pack. The big two are RemoteFX (HD graphics via RDP for Remote Desktop Services Session Hosts and Hyper-V VDI) and, of course, Dynamic Memory for Hyper-V (memory allocated to VMs as required).
Those who are using VMM should know that the changes affect VMM as well. VMM 2008 R2 RTM will not be aware of the RemoteFX or Dynamic Memory features. There is a Service Pack 1 on the way (it’s an RC release now) to add support. Normally, an update for VMM will follow an associated Hyper-V update 90 days. But the VMM team has shared that you can expect to see Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 within 30 days of W2008 R2 SP1.
I’ve set up a cluster with both service packs. You need to know that the VMM PRO management packs for OpsMgr also need to be updated in OpsMgr. You can find them in the VMM SP1 media. They will require updated dependencies.
You may have noticed that my Hyper-V blogging was a little quiet as of late; that’s because we didn’t have much new stuff to talk about. I plan to get going again in the near future with these new features arriving on our doorsteps soon.
Hi Aidan,
I appreciate the valuable information that you publish. I have a the following question : If we have SCVMM and SCOM managing the cluster in order to keep the VMs load balanced on the nodes we should wait till the release of SCVMM sp1 and implement it before implementing 2008 R2 SP1? I’ve read this on one of the releases “Dynamic Memory brings memory overcommitment, of a kind, to Hyper-V; that is, it allows creation of virtual machines such that in aggregate the virtual machines think they have more physical memory than a server actually has installed” how the cluster reservation feature included with SCVMM will work in such case? or it should be ignored?
Thank you.
Hi Charbel,
Take a look backa little bit in my posts and you’ll find some details on how SP1 for VMM 2008 R2 will affect PRO management and intelligent placement of Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1.
If I was running a production system, I would definitely wait for VMM 2008 R2 SP1 before deploying W2008 R2 SP1 on Hyper-V _hosts_. I would not delay updating the guests.
Aidan.