Creating a Hyper-V 2016 Virtualization Lab Environment

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to create a virtual lab environment for introducing Windows server 2016 Hyper-V server role and its new features to the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk) students. The practical part was completed by using the WMware workstation player. Created lab tasks for educating students are based on material found on official Microsofts information sources.

The lab environment is hosted on one of Xamk university computers. Using WMware workstation player virtual machine with Windows server 2016 was created. For domain services, an already existing virtual machine with Windows server 2012 was utilized. To test more advanced virtualization techniques an extra nested virtualization host virtual machine was deployed.

The end result of this thesis work was a functional and tested lab environment introducing students new important virtualization features such as nested virtualization, virtual machines groups and collections, Windows PowerShell direct and live migration without failover clustering. In addition to the virtual lab environment, an educational document was created, it contains tasks and instructions that help to gain valuable experience with Windows server 2016 and new Hyper-V virtualization functions. Lab tasks encourage students to use Windows PowerShell framework that is essential for successful computer network administrator.