How many virtual machines can I put on a Hyper-V R2 host?

How many virtual machines can I put on a single Hyper-V host in a cluster?  Microsoft has increased the number to 384 virtual machines per host, with a maximum 1,000 virtual machines per cluster.  The previous number was 64, with the same maximum per cluster.   What does this mean?

• You can have 384 machines on any node in a cluster.
• You need to have capacity within the cluster so that no node has more than 384 at any given moment.
• You cannot exceed 1,000 virtual machines in a cluster.
• Continued 16 nodes per cluster

  How does this affect planning?

• You still need to do appropriate consolidation planning to ensure that your virtual machines have the resources they need (esp. CPU cores, RAM, etc.)
• You will have a supported scenario for high consolidation of VDI and low utilization servers.
• Growth models should still follow a N+1 capacity pattern, regardless of whether you purchase a small number of larger host servers or a larger number of moderate host servers.

  The new supported consolidation model will position Hyper-V to serve high-capacity server environments, VDI, or large numbers of low utilization virtual machines.  To see the official document on the topic, please see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee405267(WS.10).aspx Happy virtualizing! Nathan Lasnoski