Paper: Hypervisor Top-Level Functional Specification: Windows Server 2012

Microsoft has released a paper titled: "Hypervisor Top-Level Functional Specification: Windows Server 2012". The paper which contains 375 pages provides a top-level functional specification (TLFS) for the third generation hypervisor by Microsoft. It specifies the externally visible behavior of the hypervisor, which is a component of the Hyper V virtualization role in Windows Server 2012.

The specifications can be used to understand the functions of the hypervisor and implement a compatible solution.

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The paper provides the following sections:

  • Introduction
  • Basic Data Types, Concepts and Notation
  • Feature and Interface Discovery
  • Hypercall Interface
  • Partition Management
  • Physical Hardware Management
  • Resource Management
  • Guest Physical Address Spaces
  • Intercepts • Virtual Processor Management
  • Virtual Processor Execution
  • Virtual MMU and Caching
  • Virtual Interrupt Control
  • Inter-Partition Communication
  • Timers
  • Message Formats
  • Partition Save and Restore
  • Scheduler
  • Event Logging
  • Guest Debugging Support
  • Statistics
  • Booting
  • System Properties
  • Appendix