Free Hyper-V configuration Tool helps an administrator to configure and manage important attributes of a virtual machine on the Hyper-V hypervisor. The tool supports all Hyper-V versions including the latest version, Hyper-V 2012 R2. The following parameters can be configured:
Each Virtual machine can be in any one of the following 4 stable states:
Using the Free Hyper-V Configuration Tool, administrators can change the power state of the virtual machine from remote location easily.
Virtual Machines boot their respective operating systems from various sources. The sources from where they can find operating systems are given below.
The above options can be configured by the Adminstrator for each virtual machine in different order. One virtual machine may be configured to boot from any one of the above options. Most of the time, operating systems are fetched from the Hard disk. Some machines boot from network / CD ROM.
Each virtual machine can be allocated one or more of the physical processors present in the host machine. This screen helps the user to allocate CPU resources available for the particular virtual machine.
Each virtual machine can be allocated an amount of Random Access Memory that is present in the parent host machine. There are two ways in which RAM can be allocated to a virtual machine.
In this type of allocation, only a fixed amount of RAM can be allocated to this virtual machine. This amount of RAM will be used when the virtual mahcine starts up.
The flexible Allocation plan option is available from Windows 2008 R2 SP1. In this allocation plan, a user can allocate a minimum startup RAM, Maximum RAM and Memory Buffer for each virtual machine.
When a virtual machine starts, it request an amount of RAM from the Host machine. This is amount is termed as minimum startup RAM. Each virtual machine is then allocated a maximum RAM which can use from the total physical memory available in the Host machine.
Maximum RAM is the amount of RAM that can be allocated to a virtual machine from the Host machine. When virtual machine is running and if it needs more RAM than the initial startup RAM due to a demanding application, then it uses the maximum RAM during its course of operation. When the requirement is completed it is given back to the Host OS to be shared with other applications that may need it.
The Memory Buffer is the extra amount of RAM reserved for a virtual machine at runtime as a percentage of the Total RAM present in the Host machine.
The tool comes with separate provisions to expand and cloning of virtual hard disk. The cloning feature lets administrators to clone virtual hard disks in the same location as the original files.
ManageEngine Hyper-V Configuration tool also helps an administrator to view the following performance parameters of the Hyper-V host:
CPU Utilization is the current percentage of the total clock cycles being consumed by the virtual system. If a processor of a single VM shows 100% utilization, and the machine has totally 2 physical processors, then we can expect the total CPU load percentage to be around 50%.
Memory Utilization is provided as a percentage of memory used to the total memory available in bytes.
Average rate at which data was received during the interval between the previous refresh cycle and the current refresh cycle. This represents the rate at which data is received across each physical NIC instance on the host. This parameter is shown in kbps ( Kilo bits per second).
Average rate at which data was transmitted during the interval. The rate at which data is transmitted across each physical NIC instance on the host. This parameter is shown in kbps ( Kilo bits per second).
The following variables are monitored only for the Hyper V host.
This parameter provides the number of bytes read from the disk between the previous refresh operation and the current refresh operation. This parameter will be shown in bytes/KB/MB/GB per second.
This parameter provides the number of bytes written to the disk between the previous refresh operation and the current refresh operation. This parameter will be shown in bytes/KB/MB/GB per second.