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Archive for July, 2011
Hyper-V Network Optimizations series is complete
Jul 31st
I recently pointed your attention to a very interesting blog series on Hyper-V Network Optimizations.
In the sixth and final blog on this topic Christian Edwards focuses on monitoring network performance of your virtual machines, virtual switches and physical network adapters.
Here’s a link to my blog post listing the blog series:
http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2011/05/definitive-guide-to-hyper-v-networking-optimizations/
Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit and ISA / TMG
Jul 20th
Since the 15th of this month Microsoft Assessment Planning (MAP)Toolkit 6.0 is available for download.
Usually MAP is being deployed in an environment behind a TMG which can include domains and workgroups. The setup of MAP is pretty straight forward. Just read the Getting Started Guide and you are on your way.
But what if you have an environment with a perimeter network which also needs to be assessed by MAP? The Getting Started Guide talks about firewalls but these are the local firewalls on your servers and clients. How will you be able to also assess those computer objects in the perimeter network?
What else did we see at the Windows Server 8 sneak preview?
Jul 19th
Yesterday and today a lots and lots of blogs paid attention to one of the new features which will be build-in to the next version of Windows Server edition, codename “Windows Server 8”. The new feature was shown at the WPC11 and it was mentioned here officially for the first time. Basically this feature, Hyper-V Replica, makes it possible to replicate a business critical VM offsite for e.g. DR without anything else than Hyper-V. No expensive hardware needed! Looks really promising and I can’t wait to play around with it!
But while looking at this footage, click here and fast forward to about 37min., something else caught my attention.
Apparently in codename “Windows Server 8”, within the Hyper-V Manager, the “Virtual Network Manager” has been replaced by a “Virtual Switch Manager” and a new action option has been introduced called “Virtual Storage Manager”.
Hyper-V Mannager Windows 8 Server on the left, on the right a screendump of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
What will be the new features of the “Virtual Switch Manager” be? What we already “know” from screen dumps of Windows 8 Client is that Virtual Switch Extensions and Network Resource Pools are part of the “Virtual Switch Manager”. What else?! And what about the new features for the “Virtual Storage Manager”? Anyone?
All in all we will be looking at our crystal ball for the time being and after the BUILD conference in Anaheim later this year we will probably know more!
Sharing an iSCSI network between the host and a guest
Jul 18th
At one of our customers site we’ve deployed a Hyper-V cluster (HP Proliant BL460c G7 servers) with two HP (LeftHand) P4000 SAN systems (spread over two locations). We’re using iSCSI for SAN connections. Network adapters are configured through HP VirtualConnect. Each server has 8 NICs (4 from LOM1 and 4 from LOM2):
- 2 adapters in a team for the parent partition
- 2 adapters in a team for the CSV nework
- 2 adapters in a team for the virtual machine network
- 2 adapters for iSCSI connections (teamed through MPIO)
SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 hotfix rollup
Jul 12th
Microsoft has today, July 12, 2011, released an hotfix rollup for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM 2008 R2) Service Pack 1 (SP1).
How to obtain this SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 hotfix rollup package
This hotfix rollup package is available from Microsoft Update.
To obtain this update from Microsoft Update, follow these steps on a computer that is running SCVMM 2008 R2:
- Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
- In Control Panel, double-click Windows Update.
- In the Windows Update window, click Check Online for updates from Microsoft Update.
- Click important updates are available.
- Select Update for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 (KB2562466), and then click OK.
- Click Install updates.
Note If the Virtual Machine Manager or Virtual Machine Manager Agent service is running when you install this hotfix rollup package, you must restart the computer.
Hyper-V.nu Maintenance
Jul 11th
On Sunday July 10th we updated the Hyper-V.nu server. Quite a lot of Windows hotfixes, a new version of WordPress and some plug-ins were upgraded. If you experienced any issues during the weekend we apologize for this.
We also suffered from thousands and thousands of fake subscriptions to the site. If you have a genuine account on Hyper-V.nu it might well be deleted due to this. If so please recreate your account. Fill in as much data as possible to prevent your account being deleted by our anti-spam scripts.
Kind regards
The Hyper-V.nu team.
Upcoming Cluster & Hyper-V Training for User Groups
Jul 8th
As we can read on the ‘Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing Team Blog’ there will be a very interesting online training for user groups about Failover Clustering & Hyper-V: Planning your Highly-Available Virtualization Environment. This event will be presented by cluster guru Symon Perriman. The training wil be held on Thursday the 14th of July.
Pagefile setting on a Hyper-V host
Jul 6th
When you install Windows Server 2008 R2 the default page file setting is ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’. Hyper-V hosts are often loaded with a lot of RAM (96GB is not an exception). Because of the ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’ setting your page file will be huge:
May and June – Monthly overview new released KB articles
Jul 4th
Every day Microsoft is releasing knowledge base articles and hotfixes to explain, fix and improve the possible bugs present in their products. This post gives you an overview of all released knowledge base articles and hotfixes for the month(s): MAY & JUNE 2011.
The knowledge base articles and hotfixes in this post are related to Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Updates can be for RTM or R2 versions, with or without SP1.
Third MVP Award for Cluster
Jul 1st
Am I happy? Yes of course! An MVP Award gives unprecedented access to Microsoft, its product and marketing teams, the wealth of information and easy access to all other MVP’s).
I am proud of this award although I realize you have to work very hard to maintain the award. The coming year will be important for Windows, for Virtualization, for Virtualization Management and Storage. These are the subjects I love so much that my work really doesn’t really feel like work.
I will start my new job at INOVATIV on August 1st 2011, which has a fantastic team of Microsoft experts and a record number of MVP’s on board. The future is bright!
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