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Hyper-V WMI API's publicly available

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Hyper-V WMI APIs. Hyper-V uses WMI APIs (similar to the Virtual Server COM API) to create, manage, monitor, configure virtual resources.

The Hyper-V WMI APIs are publicly available here:

https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc136992(VS.85).aspx

Important: This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.

Virtual hard disk format. The virtual hard disk (VHD) format is a block based format used to store the contents of a virtual machine. After receiving a few requests from customers, we decided to make the virtual hard disk specification available via a certified license agreement in late April 2005, a FULL YEAR before VMware made their VMDK spec available. Licensing the VHD specification was quite successful, but we knew we could do more. So, October 17th 2006, we made the VHD specification available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP). The timeline looks like this:

  • Microsoft VHD Spec available via certified license agreement: ≈ 05/2005
  • VMware VMDK Spec available: ≈ 04/2006
  • Microsoft VHD Spec available via OSP: 10/17/06

The virtual hard disk format is available here: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/techinfo/vhdspec.mspx

Hyper-V WMI APIs. Hyper-V uses WMI APIs (similar to the Virtual Server COM API) to create, manage, monitor, configure virtual resources. We expect the Hyper-V WMI APIs to be used widely in a variety of ways such as:

  • By third party management vendors who want to write tools to manage WSV (examples, HP Openview & IBM Director)
  • By enterprises who want to integrate with an existing management solution
  • Developers who want to automate virtualization in a test/dev environments through scripts

Important: The WMI APIs are the preferred method to programmatically managing Hyper-V as opposed to the Hypercall APIs…

 

Hypercall APIs. Hypercall APIs are a programmatic interface to the hypervisor. A few of the higher level functions include:

  • Partition management (created, delete, manage partition state)
  • Physical hardware management (system physical address space, logical processors, local APICs)
  • Guest physical address spaces
  • Intercepts. Parent partition may need to handle certain situations on behalf of a child partition
  • Virtual interrupt control.
  • Inter-partition communication.
  • Partition save and restore.
  • Scheduler. (set scheduler policy management for CPU reserves, caps and weights)

 

Microsoft Hypercall Interface:

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=91E2E518-C62C-4FF2-8E50-3A37EA4100F5&displaylang=en

 

Technorati Tags: Virtual Server 2005,Virtualization,Hyper-V,Windows Server 2008

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