Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Microsoft Virtual Machines and Hyper-V

The Windows Server family has continued to advance far beyond what was available just a few years back. Hyper-V has now outperformed many competing virtual platforms (such as VMware). This has also firmly established virtualization for both development and production environments and allows entire application and database stacks to run on a completely virtual operating system footprint that will never bring down the physical server. As shown in Figure 39.15, the host operating system—Windows Server 2012 in this case—manages the host system (at the bottom of the stack).

FIGURE 39.15 Microsoft Virtual Machines ...