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Administration best practices
11 Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series and Microsoft Hyper-V | 3921-BP-WS
3 Administration best practices
3.1 Guest integration services
Guest integration services are a package of virtualization-aware drivers that are installed on a guest VM to
optimize the guest VM virtual hardware for interaction with the physical host hardware and storage. Installing
these drivers is typically the first step for optimizing VM performance. If a VM is not performing as expected
(due to CPU, disk I/O, or network performance), verify that the VM integration services are current.
Installing and updating integration services is one of the most commonly overlooked steps to ensure overall
stability and optimal performance of guest VMs. Although newer Windows-based OSs and some enterprise-
class Linux-based OSs come with integration services out of the box, updates may still be required. New
versions of integration services may become available as the physical Hyper-V hosts are patched and
updated.
With earlier versions of Hyper-V (2012 R2 and prior), during the configuration and deployment of a new VM,
the configuration process does not prompt the user to install or update integration services. In addition, the
process to install integration services with older versions of Hyper-V (2012 R2 and prior) is a bit obscure and
will explained in this section. With Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V, integration services are updated
automatically (in the case of Windows VMs) as a part of Windows updates, requiring less administration to
ensure Windows VMs stay current.
One common issue occurs when VMs are migrated from an older physical host or cluster to a newer one (for
example, from Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to Windows Server 2012/R2 Hyper-V). The integration
services do not get updated automatically, and degraded performance may be encountered as a result, that
may erroneously point the administrator to suspect the storage array as the cause of the problem.
Aside from performance problems, one of the key indications that integration services are outdated or not
present on a Windows VM is the presence of unknown devices in Device Manager for the VM.
Unknown guest VM devices can indicate missing or outdated integration services