Usually, virtual machines use virtual hard disks as storage device. A virtual disk is an area of space on a physical drive allocated for use by VMs.

But it’s also possible to use a physical disk connected to the host machine as storage device. This setup is named pass-through disk and Microsoft Hyper-V support it. The configuration is quick, you just need a spare HD connected to the Hyper-V server.
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Networking is a critical part of creating a VM infrastructure. Virtual machines need to communicate with other physical and/or virtual machines and/or with the Internet.

Having the possibility to build a virtual network infrastructure simplifies the job of system administrators. Furthermore it improves network efficiency and decreases costs.

Hyper-V can create and manage virtual switches, the backbone of a virtual network. A switch, physical or virtual, is a device operating at Layer 2 of the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) reference model.

Hyper-V requires the configuration of a default virtual switch during the installation procedure. You can skip the configuration but sooner or later you’ll be forced to configure at least one virtual switch.
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We’ve already seen how you can convert a VMware ESX(i) virtual machine in a Hyper-V one, using 5nine V2V Easy Converter. We can do the same, with some limitation, with a tool called Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter.

Compared to the 5Nine application we have the support of Microsoft, a good news, but we’re limited by a condition: the Hyper-V node must be in the same Active Directory Domain Services of the virtual machine.

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter also allows to convert physical machines and to deploy converted machines directly to Azure.
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Virtual machine replication is a powerful technology for business continuity and disaster recorvery. Microsoft introduced its own replication technology, called Hyper-V Replica, with Windows Server 2012.

Hyper-V Replica allows asynchronous replication between two Hyper-V hosts. The configuration is quite simple and can save your day in case of accident.
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