Server Virtualization: You Want to Hot-Add What?! (Part 2 of 20) by Kevin Remde

For those of you who use Hyper-V or are looking to (evaluating it), I’m sure you are curious as to what Virtual Machine settings can be changed or what virtual hardware can be added to a VM while it is up and running. If you haven’t paid attention to this, then you definitely want to take a look as we have made enhancements to these options in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.  In Part 2 of the Server Virtualization Blog series, Kevin Remde looks at each and every setting and documents what is possible and what is not. 

I am including a brief snippet from Kevin’s blog post below, but you will want to go directly to his post to read the full article.

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Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V Server 2012, and Windows 8 allows the addition, removal, or configuration changes of some key aspects of a virtual machine; even while it’s running. Others, however, are still not able to be changed. And often, the ability to make changes may also be determined by the capabilities of the operating system running in the impacted virtual machine.

For Part 2 of our “20+ Days of Server Virtualization” series, we wanted to give you an overview of what is allowed, and what’s not, with regard to making “hot add” or removal (or configuration) of a virtual machine’s settings. To do this, I’m going to use a picture of the Virtual Machine Settings dialog, and walk right down the list…

Item: Hardware: SCSI Controllers, Network Adapters, and Fibre Channel Adapters

Hot-Add: No

Reason: Modern operating systems still don’t know how to adapt to when a new SCSI Controller or NIC suddenly shows up. So, like a physical machine, plugging those in virtually doesn’t make much sense.

Item: BIOS

Hot-Add or Change: Nope

Reason: These are configurations that really don’t impact a machine until it’s being started anyway. So being in an OFF state is no big deal here.

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Harold Wong

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  April 24, 2013
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