Hyper-V Extensible Switch in Windows Server 8

Mike Neil has blogged about the Hyper-V Extensible Switch in Windows Server 8 over on the Server and Cloud Platform blog (here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/11/08/windows-server-8-introducing-hyper-v-extensible-switch.aspx).

This is something that I am actually quite excited about.  Specifically – I am really interested to see what ideas other people are able to come up with around extending the capabilities of virtual networking.

As Mike mentions – we talked about this at //BUILD/ and you can watch the recording of the session here: SAC-559T

The highlight of this session for me was the number of partners that we already have looking for ways to build in new functionality here.  Some of the partner solutions that were presented in this session include:

• Support for the Cisco Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V, in addition to the Cisco VM-FEX extension with direct I/O (SR-IOV).
• Inmon with their traffic capturing &analysis and their sFlow product.
• 5Nine showed their Virtual Firewall.
• Broadcom demonstrated a DoS Prevention extension.
• NEC demonstrated an extension that converts Hyper-V to an OpenFlow virtual switch and integrates it with their Programmable Flow product.

And this is just the beginning of what people are going to build here.

Cheers,
Ben