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Archive for November, 2011
The private cloud explained
Nov 28th
Everybody is talking about the cloud these days. However the term Cloud is completely over-hyped! Suppliers rebrand their products into cloud products even when it has not only one Cloud property. People say that they are using Cloud computing, but they mean virtualization… and so on.
In this article I’ll try to explain the Internal Cloud and what you need for the Internal Cloud. We also will take a look if we can build an Internal Cloud with Hyper-V and System Center.
Let’s first take a look at the Wikipedia definition of Cloud computing:
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).
When you look at this definition I can imagine that you say: Hey we’re already doing this for a couple of years and that can be true. Cloud is just a marketing term!
Ok now we’ve clarified the term Cloud let’s take a look at the difference between an internal cloud and a public (external) cloud. The main difference is that an internal cloud is only dedicated to your company and a public cloud is shared with many. An example of a public cloud service is Office 365. Many companies share this platform with other companies and it’s not possible to get a dedicated Exchange server or Sharepoint server within this service. The opposite is true for a private cloud service. Within a private cloud you can get dedicated servers or dedicated hardware.
However, the question is: when are we talking about a private cloud? Well Gartner made a nice model with required en preferred components for a private cloud:
When any of the required components is missing we’re not talking about a private cloud.
Hyper-V interview video’s in cooperation with NGN
Nov 23rd
A couple of weeks ago the Hyper-V.nu team visited the Netwerk Gebruikersgroep Nederland (NGN) to record some interviews about Hyper-V. The NGN record and edit the video’s. Jaap Wesselius interviewed Hans Vredevoort, Maarten Wijsman and me. The first of the three video’s is just published online at the site of NGN.
You can watch the video here
Checking VM Additions in SCVMM 2012
Nov 11th
Before, the only way to check what the version of the “VM Additions” of a VM were was to fabricate a script and run it remotely or on the VM locally. Luckily the people at Microsoft have integrated a column in SCVMM 2012 in the “VMs and Services” section where you can now select “VM Additions” to show the version number of the “VM Additions”.
Hyper-V community event – Sold out!!
Nov 10th
Let’s start with the good news: The Hyper-V.nu event is completely sold out! The bad news is that you cannot register anymore. For this event we’ve decided not to watch for another location then the planned location @ Microsoft. For the next event we will look for a place with more capacity so that we’ve more seats available.
We are very proud that the event was sold out within one week! Thanks to everyone who has registered….We’re looking forward to see you at the event!
All sessions for this event will be in English.
I’ve you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me: peter@hyper-v.nu
Regards, Peter
How to Bare Metal Deploy a Hyper-V server via VMM2012 and HP iLO
Nov 8th
Some time ago I did a series on Bare Metal Deployment of Hyper-V servers with Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta. Back in March I tested with HP BL460 G6 servers which have an Insight Lights-Out (iLO2) Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). This time I was able to test with the RC build and HP BL490 G6 blades as well as DL360 G7 rack servers (which have a newer iLO3 onboard).
For beta there was a possibility to generate a customized Out-of-Band (OOB) protocol for HP iLO. Unfortunately that is not supported anymore and Microsoft advised me to use the IPMI protocol. After some experiments I figured out that this required a recent firmware (v2.07 of iLO2 to be precise). So after updating the firmware I was able to discover my physical servers via their iLO IP address combined with the right account/password combination which I saved as a Run As Account.
As you can see – when using IPMI with iLO2 (in this case) — there is a limited set of information returned. It lacks Manufacturer, Model, Serial Number, etc. What is worse … it returns an SMBIOS ID that is different from the one VMM2012 expects when you perform a Bare Metal Deployment of one or more Hyper-V R2 servers.
When you continue the Add Resource Wizard, the bare metal server will boot from the PXE server. This is where things go wrong.
Video: Interview with Hans Vredevoort at TEC2011 on Hyper-V V3 and Storage
Nov 4th
Carsten Rachfahl took another opportunity to interview me after my presentation Hyper-V Storage Deep Dive at The Experts Conference 2011 in Frankfurt.
The subject: Hyper-V V3 and Storage
Carsten’s blog can be found here: http://www.hyper-v-server.de/videos/videointerview-with-hans-vredevoort-about-hyper-v-v3-and-storage/
HTML5 Video: http://www.it-cast.de/alle/videointerview-hyper-v-3-and-storage-hans-vredevoort/
Monitoring a Hyper-V environment – Part 2
Nov 2nd
In my previous article about ‘Monitoring a Hyper-V environment we’ve looked at two tools: HyperV_Mon and the Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool. Both tools can be used to monitor the performance of a Hyper-V environment. But as I said earlier a monitoring tool needs to do more than that. I think a monitoring tool needs to do end-to-end monitoring of the whole chain of components which are needed to deliver a service to an end user. Performance statistics are not competent in this situation, configuration errors, product updates/ patches and best practices must also be verified by the monitoring tool. System Center Operations Manager is such a tool.
In this blog we will take a look at the Microsoft Windows Hyper-V management pack and some additional tooling for System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr). We will not take a look at the PRO management pack for System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
The Microsoft Hyper-V Management Pack
Management packs can be directly downloaded from the OpsMgr console. OpsMgr will connect to the Management Pack Catalog website and from here you can search for the management pack that you would like to install. So let’s search for ‘Hyper-V’…. and the result is:
Hyper-V community event–Update
Nov 2nd
As we announced in this blog the seats at our Hyper-V community event on the 19th of January are limited.
Today we received the message that all seats are assigned! This means that you get an error/ message when you try to register for this event.
The Hyper-V.nu team is considering what to do with this situation.
Sorry for the inconvenience. We will give you an update as soon as we’ve any information about the subscriptions.
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