Microsoft released Windows Server 2016 TP4, making lots of exciting new features available to the public. How to access all the different versions of free Hyper-V Server and Windows Server Core if you need to maintain older versions on site? Managing everything from a command line is very time-consuming.
The easiest way to manage multiple versions of Hyper-V is to use vtUtilities.
vtUtilities support multiple versions of Windows Server which means you can run WinServ 2016 TP3, WinServ 2008/2008R2, WinServ 2012/2012R2 side by side.
One of the greatest advantages of vtUtilities is that you can manage Windows Server 2008R2/2012R2 as well as Windows Server 2016 (now available as Technical Preview) from Windows 10 as well as from Windows 7 and Windows 8. Please note, what Windows Server 2016 is still under development and thus technical support is not available for this version of Windows.
Here are configurations supported by vtUtilities :
Hypervisor version Windows version
WinServ 8R2 Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1
WinServ 2012 Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10
WinServ 2012R2 Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10
WinServ 2016TP4 Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10
vtUtilities present a number of capabilities what go far beyond the basic maintenance tasks such as creating or removing virtual machines and managing them locally and/or remotely.
The tool offers a unified GUI console that provides centralized administration of Hyper-V hosts, virtual networks & clusters and can replace such tools as Hyper-V Manager, Failover Cluster Manager, PowerShell and RSAT.
vtUtilities can be installed locally on Hyper-V host allowing to troubleshoot and fix network connections and related problems what cannot be resolved via remote management.
vtUtilities designed to provide the GUI for
- Replication, including support for extended replica
- Guest migration
- VHDX
- Virtual Fibre Channel Adapters
- Virtual Network Management ( including the management of virtual connections and bindings)
- Advanced Virtual Switch Management (including port-level access control)
- File system views and operations
- Guest configuration management (including support for Gen 2 virtual machines)
- Server manager view
- New virtual machine wizard, Import virtual machine wizard
- Hyper-V settings management
- Diagnostic and troubleshooting (including real-time performance monitoring of host and guesta, access to Hyper-V event log and asynchronous Hyper-V tasks history)
- Failover Clustering for high availability
The latest version of vtUtilities features a GUI with integrated Cluster Management.
Hyper-V clustering is supported on Widows and Hyper-V Servers 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2 and features support for cluster summery information (including failover clustering events) and
cluster nodes management.
You can connect to the existing clusters by using vtUtilities 'Select View' dialogue:
Discover all Hyper-V clusters in AD:
Overview cluster summery information and get easy access to the selected Windows failover cluster events
View and manage status of cluster nodes
View and fully manage cluster roles
Virtual Machines result view in vtUtilities Cluster Manager displays a list of all VMs configured for high availability with a possibility to start/stop a corresponding cluster node, move VM or its storage to a different cluster node, configure (add) another VM from any cluster node as highly available or remove cluster role for highly available VM.
Hyper-V Replica Broker
Installation of vtUtilities
The product requires a 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10 and any version of Windows Server you're intending to use: Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2 and the latest Windows Server 2016 TP3.vtUtilities also can be used on 64-bit versions of Windows what don't support Hyper-V role.
Other prerequisites include x64-based processors and .NET 3.51 or later.
See our getting started guide for instructions.