Key Features of Hyper-V

The following are just some of the key features of Hyper-V:

Architecture The hypervisor-based architecture, which has a 64-bit micro-kernel, provides a new array of device support as well as performance and security improvements.

Operating System Support Both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems can run simultaneously in Hyper-V. Also, different platforms like Windows, Linux, and others are supported.

Support for Symmetric Multiprocessors Support for up to 64 processors in a virtual machine environment provides you with the ability to run applications as well as multiple virtual machines faster.

Compatible with Connected Standby If an administrator installs the Hyper-V role on a computer that has the Always On/Always Connected (AOAC) power model configured, the Connected Standby power state is now available. The Connected Standby power state is a low-power state that allows Windows to function more like a tablet than a PC.

Encryption Support for Generation 1 VMs Administrators now have the ability to encrypt the operating system disk in generation 1 virtual machines by using BitLocker drive encryption. This is possible because of a new Hyper-V feature called key storage. Key storage creates a small, dedicated drive to store the system drive’s BitLocker key. When you want to decrypt the disk and start the virtual machine, the Hyper-V host will need to be either a part of an authorized guarded fabric or use a private key from one of the virtual machine’s guardians. Version 8 virtual machines must be used for key storage to function properly.

Host Resource Protection Administrators can enable this feature to ensure that a virtual machine does not use more than its share of the host machine’s system resources. Enabling this feature ensures that no one virtual machine can cause a performance issue on the host or on any other virtual machines. This feature is off by default. To enable this feature, an administrator will need to run the following Windows PowerShell command:

Set-VMProcessor -EnableHostResourceProtection $true

Network Load Balancing Hyper-V provides support for Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) to balance the network load across virtual machines on different servers.

Hardware Architecture Hyper-V’s architecture provides improved utilization of resources such as networking, memory, and disks.

Quick Migration Hyper-V’s quick migration feature provides you with the functionality to run virtual machines in a clustered environment with switchover capabilities when there is a failure. Thus, you can reduce downtime and achieve higher availability of your virtual machines.

Virtual Machine Checkpoint You can take checkpoints of running virtual machines, which provides you with the capability to recover to any previous virtual machine checkpoint state quickly and easily.

Resource Metering Hyper-V resource metering allows an organization to track usage within the businesses departments. It allows an organization to create a usage-based billing solution that adjusts to the provider’s business model and strategy.

Scripting Using the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces and APIs, you can easily build custom scripts to automate processes in your virtual machines.

RemoteFX Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V RemoteFX allows for an enhanced user experience for RemoteFX desktops by providing a 3D virtual adapter, intelligent codecs, and the ability to redirect USB devices in virtual machines.

Fibre Channel The virtual Fibre Channel feature allows you to connect to the Fibre Channel storage unit from within the virtual machine. Virtual Fibre Channel allows an administrator to use their existing Fibre Channel to support virtualized workloads. Hyper-V users have the ability to use Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs) to virtualize the workloads that require direct access to SAN logical unit numbers (LUNs).

Enhanced Session Mode Enhanced Session Mode enhances the interactive session of the Virtual Machine Connection for Hyper-V administrators who want to connect to their virtual machines. It gives administrators the same functionality as a remote desktop connection when the administrator is interacting with a virtual machine.

In previous versions of Hyper-V, the virtual machine connection gave you limited functionality while you connected to the virtual machine screen, keyboard, and mouse. An administrator could use an RDP connection to get full redirection abilities, but that would require a network connection to the virtual machine host.

Enhanced Session Mode gives administrators the following benefits for local resource redirection:

• Display configuration
• Audio
• Printers
• Clipboard
• Smart cards
• Drives
• USB devices
• Supported Plug and Play devices

Shared Virtual Hard Disk Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V has a feature called Shared Virtual Hard Disk. Shared Virtual Hard Disk allows an administrator to cluster virtual machines by using Shared Virtual Hard Disk (VHDX) files.

Shared virtual hard disks allow an administrator to build a high availability infrastructure, which is important if you are setting up either a private cloud deployment or a cloud-hosted environment for managing large workloads. Shared virtual hard disks allow two or more virtual machines to access the same virtual hard disk (VHDX) file.

Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA) Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA) is a feature that allows administrators to install virtual machines on a properly activated Windows Server 2016 system without the need to manage individual product keys for each virtual machine. When using AVMA, virtual machines get bound to the licensed Hyper-V server as soon as the virtual machine starts.

Network Isolation One nice feature of using Microsoft Hyper-V network virtualization is the ability of Hyper-V to keep virtual networks isolated from the physical network infrastructure of the hosted system. Because administrators can set up Hyper-V software–defined virtualization policies, you are no longer limited by the IP address assignment or VLAN isolation requirements of the physical network. Hyper-V allows for built-in network isolation to keep the virtual network separated from the virtual network.

Discrete Device Assignment One feature of Windows Server 2016 is the ability to use Discrete Device Assignment (DDA). DDA allows an administrator to take full advantage of performance and application compatibility improvements in the user experience by allowing the system’s graphic cards to be directly assigned to a virtual machine. This allows the graphic card processor to be fully available to the virtual desktops that are utilizing the native driver of the graphics card processor.

Non-Uniform Memory Access Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) is a multiprocessor memory architecture that allows a processor to access its local memory quicker than memory located on another processor. NUMA allows a system to access memory quickly by providing separate memory on each processor. Processor can access their local assigned memory thus speeding the system performance. Normally a multi-processor system runs into performance issues when multiple processors access the same memory at the same time. NUMA helps prevent this by allowing processors to access their own memory. Memory that is dedicated to a processor is referred to as a NUMA node.

Dynamic Memory Dynamic Memory is a feature of Hyper-V that allows it to balance memory automatically among running virtual machines. Dynamic Memory allows Hyper-V to adjust the amount of memory available to the virtual machines in response to the needs of the virtual machines. It is currently available for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016.

Virtual Machine Queue Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V includes a feature called Virtual machine queue (VMQ) as long as the hardware is VMQ compatible network hardware. VMQ uses packet filtering to provide data from an external virtual machine network directly to virtual machines. This helps reduce the overhead of routing packets from the management operating system to the virtual machine.

Once VMQ is enabled on Hyper-V, a dedicated queue is created on the physical network adapter for each virtual network adapter to use. When data arrives for the virtual network adapter, the physical network adapter places that data in a queue and once the system is available, all of the data in the queue is delivered to the virtual network adapter.

To enable the virtual machine queue on a specific virtual machine, enter the settings for the virtual machine and expand Network Adapter. Click Hardware Acceleration and on the right hand window, check the box for Enable virtual machine queue.

Hyper-V Nesting Windows Server 2016 has introduced a new feature of Hyper-V called Hyper-V nesting. Hyper-V nesting allows you to run a virtual machine in a virtual machine. So let’s say that you build a new 2016 Hyper-V server. You install Windows Server 2016 into a virtual machine. Then in that virtual machine, you can install Hyper-V and build other virtual machines within the first virtual machine. This is new to Windows Server 2016 and can be very useful in training situations. You can install a Windows Server 2016 virtual machine and still show others how to install and create virtual machines in the original virtual machine. To enable Hyper-V nesting, you would run the following PowerShell command on the Hyper-V Host. The virtual machines must be in the OFF State when this command is run (this means the virtual machines must be turned off):

Set-VMProcessor -VMName <VMName> ‐ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true

Supported Guest Operating Systems

The following guest operating systems have been successfully tested on Hyper-V and are hypervisor-aware. Table 4.1 shows all of the guest server operating systems and the maximum number of virtual processors. Table 4.2 shows all of the guest client operating systems and the maximum number of virtual processors.

Hardware Requirements

In addition to the basic hardware requirements for Windows Server 2016, there are requirements for running the Hyper-V server role on your Windows server. They are listed in Table 4.3.

The Add Roles Wizard in Server Manager additionally verifies the hardware requirements. A good starting point is to check your hardware against the Microsoft hardware list to make sure that Windows Server 2016 supports your hardware. If you try to install the Hyper-V server role on a computer that does not meet the CPU requirements, you’ll get a warning window that looks like Figure 4.2.

Software Requirements

To use virtualization in Windows Server 2016, you need to consider the basic software requirements for Hyper-V. Hyper-V runs only on the following editions of the Windows Server 2016 operating system:

• Windows Server 2016 Standard edition
• Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 edition
• Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V edition

Installing Hyper-V in Full Installation Mode

You can install the Hyper-V server role on any Windows Server 2016 installation for which the Full option was chosen. In addition, the server must meet both the hardware and software requirements. The installation process is simple, as Exercise 4.1 demonstrates.

Installing Hyper-V in Server Core

The Server Core installation option is introduced in Windows Server 2008. It creates an operating system installation without a GUI shell. You can either manage the server remotely from another system or use the Server Core’s command-line interface.

This installation option provides the following benefits:

• Reduces attack surface (because fewer applications are running on the server)
• Reduces maintenance and management (because only the required options are installed)
• Requires less disk space and produces less processor utilization
• Provides a minimal parent partition
• Reduces system resources required by the operating system as well as the attack surface

By using Hyper-V on a Server Core installation, you can fundamentally improve availability because the attack surface is reduced and the downtime required for installing patches is optimized. It will thus be more secure and reliable with less management.

To install Hyper-V for a Windows Server 2016 installation, you must execute the following command in the command-line interface:

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V

Types of Hard Disks

Depending on how you want to use the disk, Hyper-V offers various types, as described in Table 4.4.

Creating Virtual Hard Disks

To help you gain practice in creating virtual hard disks, the following three exercises will teach you how to create a differencing hard disk, how to clone an existing disk by creating a new disk, and how to configure a physical or pass-through disk to your virtual machine. First, in Exercise 4.3, you will learn how to create a differencing virtual hard disk.

The process to add a physical or pass-through disk to a virtual machine is quite different. For this, first you need to create the virtual machine, and then you open the virtual machine settings to configure the physical disk. If you want to add a physical disk to a virtual machine, the physical disk must be set as Offline in Disk Management, as shown in Figure 4.10.

To access Disk Management, click the Windows key, choose Administrative Tools ➢ Computer Management, expand Storage in the left pane, and click Disk Management.

Physical or pass-through disks might not be that important if your use of virtualization is based on test environments, but they become crucial when you need to plan for highly available virtual datacenters. This is especially true if you consider using failover clusters to provide the Quick Migration feature, which is when you should consider matching one logical unit number (LUN) from your enterprise storage system or storage area network (SAN) as one physical disk. This provides you with the optimum performance you need in such an environment.

Managing Virtual Hard Disks

Hyper-V also provides two tools to manage virtual hard disks: Inspect Disk and Edit Disk. These tools are available on the Actions pane in Hyper-V Manager.

Inspect Disk This provides you with information about the virtual hard disk. It shows you not only the type of the disk but also information such as the maximum size for dynamically expanding disks and the parent VHD for differencing disks.

Edit Disk This provides you with the Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard, which you can use to compact, convert, expand, merge, or reconnect hard disks. Figure 4.11 shows you the wizard’s options when you select a dynamically expanding disk.

Table 4.5 provides you with an overview of what you can do with the wizard.

Generation 1 vs. Generation 2 VHDs

Previous versions of Hyper-V had some pretty major drawbacks. One big drawback was that Hyper-V could not boot a virtual machine from a virtual hard drive that was SCSI. Believe it or not, SCSI controllers were not even recognized by Hyper-V unless you installed the Integration Services component.

Another issue that the previous versions of Hyper-V had was the inability to copy files from the Hyper-V host to the virtual machines without the use of a network connection in the virtual machine. The older versions of Hyper-V, prior to Windows Server 2016, are now considered generation 1 versions. Why is it so important to know which generations of Hyper-V you should use or need to use?

Hyper-V generations help determine what functionality and what virtual hardware you can use in your virtual machine. Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V now supports two different virtual machine generations: generation 1 and generation 2.

As already explained, previous versions of Hyper-V are considered generation 1, and this provides the same virtual hardware to the virtual machine as in previous versions of Hyper-V.

Generation 2 is included with Windows Server 2016, and it provides better functionality on the virtual machines including secure boot (which is enabled by default), the ability to boot from a SCSI virtual hard disk or boot from a SCSI virtual DVD, the ability to use a standard network adapter to PXE boot, and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware support. Generation 2 now gives you the ability to support UEFI firmware instead of BIOS-based firmware. On a virtual machine that is Generation 2, you can configure Secure Boot, Enable TPM, and set security policies by clicking on the Security section of the virtual machines properties.

So when you create VHDs in Windows Server 2016, one of your choices will be the ability to create the VHDs as a generation 1 or generation 2 VHD. If you need the ability to have your VHDs run on older versions of Hyper-V, make them a generation 1 VHD. If they are going to run only on Windows Server 2016, make your VHDs generation 2 and take advantage of all the new features and functionality.

Virtual Machines

Virtual machines define the child partitions in which you run operating system instances. Each virtual machine is separate and can communicate with the others only by using a virtual network. You can assign hard drives, virtual networks, DVD drives, and other system components to it. A virtual machine is similar to an existing physical server, but it no longer runs on dedicated hardware—it shares the hardware of the host system with the other virtual machines that run on the host.

Exercise 4.4 shows you how to create a new virtual machine. Before completing this exercise, download an eval copy of Windows Server from Microsoft’s website (www.microsoft.com/downloads). Make sure the file downloaded is an image file (.iso). You will use this image to install the operating system into the virtual machine.

After completing Exercise 4.4, you will have a virtual machine available in Hyper-V Manager. Initially, the state of the virtual machine will be Off. Virtual machines can have the following states: Off, Starting, Running, Paused, and Saved. You can change the state of a virtual machine in the Virtual Machines pane by right-clicking the virtual machine’s name, as shown in Figure 4.19, or by using the Virtual Machine Connection window.

Here is a list of some of the state options (when the VM is running) available for a virtual machine:

Start Turn on the virtual machine. This is similar to pressing the power button when the machine is turned off. This option is available when your virtual machine is Off or in Saved state.

Turn Off Turn off the virtual machine. This is similar to pressing the power-off button on the computer. This option is available when your virtual machine is in Running, Saved, or Paused state.

Shut Down This option shuts down your operating system. You need to have the Hyper-V Integration Components installed on the operating system; otherwise, Hyper-V will not be able to shut down the system.

Save The virtual machine is saved to disk in its current state. This option is available when your virtual machine is in Running or Paused state.

Pause Pause the current virtual machine, but do not save the state to disk. You can use this option to release processor utilization quickly from this virtual machine to the host system.

Reset Reset the virtual machine. This is like pressing the reset button on your computer. You will lose the current state and any unsaved data in the virtual machine. This option is available when your virtual machine is in Running or Paused state.

Resume When your virtual machine is paused, you can resume it and bring it online again.

Changing Configuration on an Existing Virtual Machine

To change the configuration settings on an existing virtual machine, you right-click your virtual machine’s name in the Virtual Machines pane in Hyper-V Manager and choose Settings. You can change settings such as memory allocation and hard drive configuration. All items that you can configure are described in the following list:

Add Hardware Add devices to your virtual machine, namely, a SCSI controller, a network adapter, or a legacy network adapter. A legacy network adapter is required if you want to perform a network-based installation of an operating system.

Firmware This is the replacement of the virtual machine’s BIOS. Because you can no longer enter the BIOS during startup, you need to configure it with this setting. You can turn Num Lock on or off and change the basic startup order of the devices.

Security This setting allows an administrator to set up the Secure Boot option along with enabling the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). TPM is a special-purpose microprocessor which provides cryptographic services. You can also set virtual machine shielding in the security section.

Memory Change the amount of random access memory (RAM) allocated to the virtual machine.

Processor Change the number of logical processors this virtual machine can use and define resource control to balance resources among virtual machines by using a relative weight.

SCSI Controller Configure all hard drives that are connected to the SCSI controller. You can add up to 63 hard drives to each SCSI controller, and you can have multiple SCSI controllers available.

Hard Drive Select a controller to attach to this device as well as to specify the media to use with your virtual hard disk. The available options are Virtual Hard Disk File (with additional buttons labeled New, Edit, Inspect, and Browse that are explained in the virtual hard disk section) and Physical Hard Disk. You can also remove the device here.

DVD Drive Select a controller to attach to this device and specify the media to use with your virtual CD/DVD drive. The available options are None, Image File (ISO Image), and Physical CD/DVD Drive Connected To The Host Computer. You also can remove the device here.

Network Adapter Specify the configuration of the network adapter or remove it. You can also configure the virtual network and MAC address for each adapter and enable virtual LAN identification. The network adapter section also allows you to control Bandwidth Management.

Bandwidth Management allows an administrator to specify how the network adapter will utilize network bandwidth. Administrators have the ability to set a minimum network bandwidth that a network adapter can use and a maximum bandwidth. This gives administrators greater control over how much bandwidth a virtual network adapter can use.

Name Edit the name of the virtual machine and provide some notes about it.

Integration Services Define what integration services are available to your virtual machine. Options are Operating System Shutdown, Time Synchronization, Data Exchange, Heartbeat, and Backup (Volume Checkpoint).

Checkpoints Define the default file location of your checkpoint files. Virtual machine checkpoints allow an administrator to restore a virtual machine to a previous state. After checkpoints are created, an administrator would use the “Recover action” to restore a virtual machine back to the time the checkpoint was created.

Smart Paging File Location This area allows you to set up a paging file for your virtual machine. Windows Server 2016 has a Hyper-V feature called Smart Paging. If you have a virtual machine that has a smaller amount of memory than what it needs for startup memory, when the virtual machine gets restarted, Hyper-V then needs additional memory to restart the virtual machine. Smart Paging is used to bridge the memory gap between minimum memory and startup memory. This allows your virtual machines to restart properly.

Automatic Start Define what this virtual machine will do when the physical computer starts. Options are Nothing, Automatically Start If The Service Was Running, and Always Start This Virtual Machine. You also can define a start delay here.

Automatic Stop Define what this virtual machine will do when the physical computer shuts down. Options are Save State, Turn Off, and Shut Down.

Deleting Virtual Machines

You can also delete virtual machines using Hyper-V Manager. This deletes all of the configuration files, as shown in Figure 4.20.

Make sure you manually delete any virtual disks that were part of the virtual machines to free up disk space. Virtual disks are not deleted when you delete a virtual machine.

Virtual Machine Connection

Hyper-V comes with Virtual Machine Connection to connect to virtual machines that run on a local or remote server. You can use it to log onto the virtual machine and use your computer’s mouse and keyboard to interact with the virtual machine. You can open Virtual Machine Connection in Hyper-V Manager by double-clicking a virtual machine or by right-clicking a virtual machine and selecting Connect. If your virtual machine is turned off, you might see a window similar to the one in Figure 4.21.

Virtual Machine Connection not only provides you with functionality similar to that of Hyper-V Manager, such as being able to change the state of a virtual machine, but it also provides you with additional features that are especially useful when you want to work with a virtual machine.

File Access Settings or Exit Virtual Machine Connection Change the state of a virtual machine and create or revert a checkpoint. Additionally, you have the options to send Ctrl+Alt+Delete to your virtual machine and Insert Integration Services Setup Disk.

Context-Sensitive Buttons Provide Quick Access to Key Features These buttons are available under the menu bar to provide you with fast access to the most important features, as you can see in Figure 4.22. It shows the connection of a running VM, but the VM has not had an operating system installed yet, so the figure shows the Windows Server 2016 Setup screen.

NIC Teaming

NIC Teaming, also known as load balancing and failover (LBFO), gives an administrator the ability to allow multiple network adapters on a system to be placed into a team. Independent hardware vendors (IHVs) have required NIC Teaming, but until Windows Server 2012, NIC Teaming was not part of the Windows Server operating system.

To be able to use NIC Teaming, the computer system must have at least one Ethernet adapter. If you want to provide fault protection, an administrator must have a minimum of two Ethernet adapters. One advantage of Windows Server 2016 is that an administrator can set up 32 network adapters in a NIC team.

NIC Teaming is a common practice when setting up virtualization. This is one way that you can have load balancing with Hyper-V.

NIC Teaming gives an administrator the ability to allow a virtual machine to use virtual network adapters in Hyper-V. The advantage of using NIC Teaming in Hyper-V is that the administrator can use NIC Teaming to connect to more than one Hyper-V switch. This allows Hyper-V still to have connectivity even if the network adapter under the Hyper-V switch gets disconnected.

An administrator can configure NIC Teaming in either Server Manager or PowerShell. NIC Teaming can be configured in different configuration models including Switch Independent or Switch Dependent. Switch Independent means that each NIC adapter is connected into a different switch. Switch Dependent means that all NIC adapters are connected into the same switch. If you use Switch Independent NIC Teaming then you must connect your NICs to different switches but both switches must be on the same subnet.

Remote Direct Memory Access

When most of us think of Hyper-V, we think of a group of virtual machines sharing access to a systems resource. With Windows Server 2016, Hyper-V includes Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA).

RDMA allows one computer to directly access memory from the memory of another computer without the need of interfacing with either one’s operating system. This gives systems the ability to have high throughput and low-latency networking. This is very useful when it comes to clustering systems (including Hyper-V).

Windows Server 2012 R2 RDMA services couldn’t be bound to a Hyper-V Virtual Switch and because of this, Remote Direct Memory Access and Hyper-V had to be on the same computer as the network adapters. Because of this, there was a need for a higher number of physical network adapters that were required to be installed on the Hyper-V host.

Because of the improvements of RDMA on Windows Server 2016, administrators can use less network adapters while using RDMA.

Switch Embedded Teaming

Earlier we discussed NIC Teaming but we also have the ability to do Switch Embedded Teaming (SET). SET can be an alternative to using NIC Teaming in environments that include Hyper-V and the Software Defined Networking (SDN) stack in Windows Server 2016. SET is available in all versions of Windows Server 2016 that include Hyper-V and SDN stack.

SET does use some of the functionality of NIC Teaming into the Hyper-V Virtual Switch but SET allows an administrator to combine a group of physical adapters (minimum of 1 adapter and a maximum of 8 adapters) into software based virtual adapters.

By using virtual adapters, you get better performance and greater fault tolerance in the event of a network adapter going bad. For SET to be enabled, all of the physical network adapters must be installed on the same physical Hyper-V host.

One of the requirements of SET is that all network adapters that are members of the SET group be identical adapters. This means that they need to be the same adapter types from the same manufacturers.

One main difference between NIC Teaming and Set is that SET only supports Switch Independent mode setups. Again this means that the NIC adapters are connected to different switches.

Administrators need to create a SET team at the same time that they create the Hyper-V Virtual Switch. Administrators can do this by using the Windows PowerShell command New-VMSwitch.

At the time an administrator creates a Hyper-V Virtual Switch, the administrator needs to include the EnableEmbeddedTeaming parameter in their command syntax. The following example shows a Hyper-V switch named StormSwitch.

New-VMSwitch -Name StormSwitch -NetAdapterName "NIC 1","NIC 2" -EnableEmbeddedTeaming $true

Administrators also have the ability to remove a SET team by using the following PowerShell command. This example removes a Virtual Switch named StormSwitch.

Remove-VMSwitch [StormSwitch]

Storage Quality of Service

Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V includes a feature called Storage Quality of Service (QoS). Storage QoS allows a Hyper-V administrator to manage how virtual machines access storage throughput for virtual hard disks.

Storage QoS gives an administrator the ability to guarantee that the storage throughput of a single VHD cannot adversely affect the performance of another VHD on the same host. It does this by giving administrators the ability to specify the maximum and minimum I/O loads based on I/O operations per second (IOPS) for each virtual disk in your virtual machines.

To configure Storage QoS, you would set the maximum IOPS values (or limits) and set the minimum values (or reserves) on virtual hard disks for virtual machines.

Installing Hyper-V Integration Components

Hyper-V Integration Components, also called Integration Services, are required to make your guest operating system hypervisor-aware. These components improve the performance of the guest operating system once they are installed. From an architectural perspective, virtual devices are redirected directly via the VMBus; thus, quicker access to resources and devices is provided.

If you do not install the Hyper-V Integration Components, the guest operating system uses emulation to communicate with the host’s devices, which of course makes the guest operating system slower.

Exercise 4.5 shows you how to install Hyper-V Integration Components on one of your virtual machines running Windows Server 2016.