Host computer components

The next concern is designing and sizing the host computers that will run Hyper-V Server. You now have some idea of the load your virtual machines will need, so you need to understand what the requirements are to fit those needs.

Hyper-V Server requirements

The hypervisor itself doesn't require much in terms of hardware. It shares an official requirements list with the full Windows Server 2012 product, which is as follows:

• 64-bit CPU (x64, not Intel Itanium) running at a minimum of 1.4 GHz
• 512 megabytes of main system RAM
• 32 gigabytes of available hard drive space

Hyper-V's requirements extend beyond these to the following:

• The CPU's options for hardware-assisted virtualization support must be enabled in the BIOS
• CPU support for Data Execution Prevention must be enabled in the BIOS (NX on AMD chips, XD on Intel chips)

While not required for the Server edition of Hyper-V unless you intend to use RemoteFX, second-level address translation (SLAT) can greatly...