Generation 2 VMs

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

Is there any benefit to using Generation 2 VMs, aside from that quoted when setting one up? (Supports secure/SCSI/PXE boot)

 

Do Gen 1 and 2 have the same performance?

[win]

It installs the OS quicker (although that isn't a huge benefit in the long run).

I always go gen 2 now when creating new VMs, no need to use old technology if the new one doesn't cause any issues.

[Arthur]

I always go gen 2 now when creating new VMs, no need to use old technology if the new one doesn't cause any issues.

Ditto.

[Gongalong]

Have you noticed it booting the OS more quickly? I find Gen 1 VMs at least can be very slow sometimes to boot, leaving a worrying looking black screen for a minute or two.

[DJ-1701]

Gen 2, at least for Windows 2012 R2 appears to boot and reboot pretty fast. Certainly supprised me first time I installed and used it.

[rrrrr]

I think gen2 are more protected against corruption if the host server occurred power failure.

 

Does anyone have the issue when doing windows updates on a 2012 vm and you restart, when the server is shutting down all you can see is the start screen with the clock? There is no way of seeing the progress of the configuring updates at shutdown. Sometimes can take a while and im wondering if its stuck or not!

[Arthur]

gen2 are more protected against corruption if the host server occurred power failure.

That's more to do with VHDXs being used instead of VHDs for the virtual disks.

[themightymrp]

Support for larger VHDX files maybe, all depends on what size of drives you want to be adding to your VM. They also support more RAM. Also I don't think a Gen 2 is able to access a physical DVD drive in the server if you ever needed it to. You'd have to use network/ISO mounting to get to them.

[IanT]

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/dn282285.aspx

[Arthur]

Support for larger VHDX files maybe

 

www.thomasmaurer.ch/2012/11/windows-server-2012-hyper-v-virtual-disk-vhd-vhdx-recommendations/

 

VHDX is a new virtual hard disk format introduced in Windows Server 2012, which allows you to create resilient high-performance virtual disks up to 64 terabytes. Benefits of this format include:

 

• Support for virtual hard disk storage capacity of up to 64 terabytes.
  
• Protection against data corruption during power failures by logging updates to the VHDX metadata structures.
  
• Ability to store custom metadata about a file, which a user might want to record, such as operating system version or patches applied.
  

The VHDX format also provides the following performance benefits (each of these is detailed later in this guide):

 

• Improved alignment of the virtual hard disk format to work well on large sector disks.
  
• Larger block sizes for dynamic and differential disks, which allows these disks to attune to the needs of the workload.
  
• 4 KB logical sector virtual disk that allows for increased performance when used by applications and workloads that are designed for 4 KB sectors.
  
• Efficiency in representing data, which results in smaller file size and allows the underlying physical storage device to reclaim unused space. (TRIM requires trim-compatible hardware).
  

When you upgrade to Windows Server 2012, we recommend that you convert all VHD files to the VHDX format due to these benefits. The only scenario where it would make sense to keep the files in the VHD format is when a virtual machine has the potential to be moved to a previous release of the Windows Server operating system that supports Hyper-V.