What you need for this book

The hardware and software requirements are covered in the following sections.

Hardware requirements

To complete all of the recipes in this book, you will need five computers capable of running Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V each with at least 8 GB RAM. Please ensure that your hardware meet the minimum requirements for Windows Server 2012 R2 and for Hyper-V. Please refer to the TechNet article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj647784 for more details.

In addition, you will need a switch capable of IEEE 802.1q VLANs. The following diagram shows you how the hardware should be connected:

In addition, you will need some shared storage for the Management Hosts and Tenant Hosts to be able to create Hyper-V clusters. The NAT Device / Firewall does not have to offer DHCP addresses, as System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager will be responsible for distributing IP addresses for use on this network by Hyper-V Network Virtualization.

Software requirements

All of the recipes in this book are based on the following software:

• Windows Server 2012 R2
• System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager
• SQL Server 2012 SP1 Enterprise Edition

It is advisable to ensure that you install the latest Update Rollup available for all products. Microsoft is continually refining the products involved, and it is highly recommended that you have the latest updates installed, the exception being SQL Server 2012. It is advised to install the latest Cumulative Update of Service Pack 1 and not to install Service Pack 2.

The Fully Qualified Domain Name for the Active Directory domain in this book is ad.demo.com and the NetBIOS name is DEMO. The functional levels of the Forest and Domain are both Windows Server 2012 R2.

You do not require SQL Server 2012 SP1 Enterprise Edition for Hyper-V Network Virtualization. However, it offers the AlwaysOn High Availability Group function, which offers significantly faster failover in the event of a SQL Server failure. System Center 2012 includes a license for SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition, which is sufficient for most installations.