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Archive for January, 2012
Altaro Starts New Blog for Hyper-V & Windows Administrators
Jan 31st
New Hyper-V Blog
Altaro who introduced an easy to use backup product for Hyper-V in 2011, informed us they have just launched a new Hyper-V blog. Their first article goes into good detail about Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and can be found here: http://www.altaro.com/blog/hyper-v-dynamic-memory-explanation-and-recommendations-2/
Version 3 of Altaro Hyper-V Backup
We can also announce that version 3 of Altaro Hyper-V Backup will be released on February 7.
Some of the new features are:
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Central Management console on CSV Cluster
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Increased backup performance with ReverdeDelts V2
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Great new ‘Schedule Groups’ – allows easier backup scheduling
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Live backup of Linux VMs
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5Drive Swap / Rotation.
Currently beta 2 is available here:
Hyper-V.nu event videos
Jan 30th
Carsten Rachfahl en Jan Kappen were two of the many visitors of the Hyper-V.nu event on the 19th of January. But these guys have done a very good job during the event and especially afterwards. They’ve recorded all sessions and have done some nice video editing. You can view the results over here:
Keynote – by Jaap Wesselius and Peter Noorderijk
Windows Server 8 Hyper-V networking – by Aidan Finn
Windows Server 8 Hyper-V storage – by Hans Vredevoort
Windows Server 8 DDDD – by Ronald Beekelaar
SCVMM 2012 – by Maarten Wijsman
These videos are uploaded to the youtube Hypervcommunity channel from our German friends:
http://www.youtube.com/user/hypervcommunity
Again thanks for the really nice job!
Hyper-V.nu event – review
Jan 24th
On the 19th of January we organised our first Hyper-V.nu event for the year 2012. After the registration opened we were over booked within two days and had to disappoint a lot of people, sorry for that!
But…. This meeting was really, really great! With a fully loaded room (people were even sitting on the stairs), great speakers with great sessions and a very satisfied crowd we must be very happy and satisfied, and we are!
Specials thanks to our sponsors: Altaro, VEEAM, Inovativ, PQR, Wortell and Microsoft! Without their support it was not possible to organise this event. Also a special thank to our German friends Carsten Rachfall en Jan Kappen who have recorded all sessions. These video’s will be published very soon, so keep an eye on www.hyper-v.nu for links to these recordings.
We will also thank our guest speakers Aidan Finn and Ronald Beekelaar. Both of them were from overseas! They both have given a great session with a lot of immersion into Windows 8!
Last but not least we will thank the visitors for attending this event. We hope that you all come again to our next event!
Here are the presentations of this great event:
Keynote – Jaap Wesselius and Peter Noorderijk
Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Networking – Aidan Finn
Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Storage – Hans Vredevoort
Windows 8 DDDD – Ronald Beekelaar
Cheers, Peter
Windows 8 Storage and Hyper-V – Part 2: VHDX and PowerShell
Jan 24th
This blog is part of a series that started with Windows 8 Storage and Hyper-V Part 1 – Introduction:
http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2012/01/windows-8-storage-and-hyper-v-part-1-introduction/
VHD HISTORY
If you have been working with any of the Microsoft virtualization products, you are familiar with the Virtual Hard Disk format. VHD was introduced with Microsoft’s acquisition of Connectix and their Virtual PC product in 2003. Seven years ago Microsoft decided to make the VHD Image Format Specification available to third parties under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.
In June 2005 Microsoft promised that the VHD file format would have a future well beyond the then prevalent virtualization products ….. and boy did they keep their promise!
The Microsoft VHD file format specifies a virtual machine hard disk that can reside on a native host file system encapsulated within a single file. The format is used by Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V and the format will be used by future versions of Microsoft Windows Server that includes hypervisor-based virtualization technology. Beyond that, the VHD format is broadly applicable, because it is agnostic to the virtualization technology, host operating system, or guest operating system with which it is used.
Customers and partners who invest the VHD file format will have a clear path forward to future Windows virtualization technologies. In addition, Microsoft plans to design its systems management tools around the VHD file format for improved patching and manageability.
Since the release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the VHD format became even more versatile when Microsoft promised not only to standardize the variety of container files, but also introduced native VHD. This technology made it very easy to boot from VHD and have multiple operating systems on one machine. Since then VHD’s could not only be created via the Hyper-V manager but also via the inbox Disk Manager and Diskpart. Because the VHD format was opened up a multitude of VHD tools surfaced (vhdtool, disk2vhd, wim2vhd and many more). There was no easy way to just mount the VHD from the command line so 3rd parties jumped on this as well. I should not forget to mention James O’Neill’s awesome Hyper-V PowerShell Management Library which he created when he still worked for Microsoft.
The VHD related commands in that library are:
Get-VHDDefaultPath, Get-VHDInfo, New-VHD, Compact-VHD, Test-VHD, Convert-VHD, Merge-VHD, Mount-VHD, Unmount-VHD
VHDX
During the \\build conference we learnt that Microsoft will introduce a new advanced version of the Virtual Hard Disk format called VHDX in Windows 8 (both client and server). What do we currently know about this VHDX?
Windows 8 Storage and Hyper-V – Part 1: Introduction
Jan 21st
If you are a server, storage or network vendor, please also read the last section.
Now that the Windows Server 8 beta can be expected any time now – but promised before the last week of February 2012 – it might be a good idea to start looking at several of the groundbreaking storage related technologies that could turn up in Windows 8. I stress the word could because we must always be careful since functionality shown in Pre-RTM builds is never guaranteed to be in the GA release.
I am planning to write a couple of blogs about Windows 8 Storage which in many cases is related to the new version of Hyper-V.
If you are running a SAN but also if your company simply can’t afford a SAN, chances are that you will see significant performance increases when reading, writing, copying, moving data with Windows Server 8. In-box storage manageability with PowerShell will strongly contribute to making Windows 8 Storage one of the major pillars of the Microsoft Private Cloud Fabric. As I have looked at it so far, storage is handled extremely well in Windows Server 8. Mind you this is only what I have determined based on what I have heard and seen on \\build and have personally tested since September 2011 with the Windows 8 Developer Preview.
This edition is not at all intended to be stable and testing with de Developer Preview is a true challenge. As a preparation for the Hyper-V.nu event with several sessions on Windows Server 8, I wanted to try out and show some unique new functionality for moving living Hyper-V guests between different types of storage. I had time for building up the pre-requisites and was able to successfully show a Live Storage Migration of a guest between two SMB2 shares on a ScaleOut File Cluster. But there were several other Live Storage moves that I tested but also want to explore further:
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Live Storage Migrate a guest from USB disk to a local disk
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Live Storage Migrate a guest from a local disk to a new Windows 8 Pool and Spaces virtual disk
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Live Storage Migrate a guest from local disk to shared storage on a single host
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Live Storage Migrate a guest from a shared disk on a single host to a shared disk on a Windows 8 Hyper-V cluster
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Live Storage Migrate a guest from a shared disk on a cluster to a CSV version 2 volume on the same cluster
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Live Storage Migrate a guest from any location to an SMB2 file share on a ScaleOut Fileserver with Continuously Available Shares
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Live Storage Migrate a guest between two SMB2 file shares on the same Windows 8 Hyper-V cluster while the ScaleOut Fileserver cluster is moved between nodes.
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Live Storage Migrate a guest between an SMB2 file share used by one Windows 8 Hyper-V cluster to another Hyper-V cluster or even to another SMB2 file share on another server.
Am I now running out of options? On the contrary, I have only just started!
Microsoft Private Cloud Computing Book
Jan 17th
Today – during the announcement of System Center 2012 RC availability) – seems the perfect occasion to announce our book called Microsoft Private Cloud Computing. Mid-2011 four MVP’s decided to make a joint effort at writing a practical book on deploying a Microsoft Private Cloud. The four authors are:
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Aidan Finn (MVP Virtual Machine @joe_elway)
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Patrick Lownds (MVP Virtual Machine @patricklownds)
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Damian Flynn (MVP System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management @damian_flynn)
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Hans Vredevoort (MVP Cluster @hvredevoort)
Aidan writes the introductory chapters on Private Cloud, Hans deals with the Fabric Management (Servers, Storage, Network), Patrick explains the Service Management (VMM Library, Service Modeling) and Damian focuses on Private Cloud Solutions (VMM Services, Self-Service, App Controller).
Kristian Nese (@kristiannese) who is also MVP System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management accepted the role of technical reviewer. Kristian has also written a book on Cloud Computing in Norwegian.
Recommended post W2K8R2 SP1 Clustering and Hyper-V Hotfixes
Jan 12th
LAST UPDATE: 12-01-2012
One of the visitors of this blog asked the question if we could publish a list of recommended post Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 hotfixes related to either Clustering or Hyper-V. Well here it is!
For a complete overview of what was rolled-up in SP1 take a look at the Excel sheet (Updates in Win7 and WS08R2 SP1.xls) which can be found on here.
Note I. Microsoft will release hotfixes if an issue occurs that needs to fixed before releasing a roll-up update or a service pack. However, the hotfix in question is intended to correct only the problem that is described in the article. Apply the hotfix only to systems that are experiencing the problem that is described in the articles. The hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next software update that contains this hotfix.
Note II. Updates can be applicable to Windows Server 2008 R2 (RTM) and/or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
Big day for System Center and Microsoft Private Cloud
Jan 4th
Don’t miss the big public webcast about System Center 2012 & Microsoft Private Cloud with Satya Nadella (President of Server and Tools) and Brad Anderson (CVP of System Center and Management).
The new System Center 2012 vision will be laid out in full detail!
Register for it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/business/events/en-us/PrivateCloudExec
Date: January 17th 2012
Time: 17:30h CET
Release Notes Important Issue – Hyper-V Replica
Jan 3rd
In the release notes available via this link there is an issue explained regarding Hyper-V Replica.
Hyper-V Replica
While configuring replication that uses certificate-based authentication on servers joined to a domain, if you provide a short name for the primary server while adding authorization entries, enabling replication will fail. To avoid this, identify servers using their fully qualified domain names.
While configuring replication on servers joined to a domain, if you provide a short name for the Replica server for certificate-based authentication, enabling replication will succeed, but the pre-requisite check prior to a planned failover will fail. To correct this, update the Replica server name with the following Windows PowerShell cmdlet:
Set-VMReplication -vmname "<Name of VM>" -recoveryservername "<FQDN of replica server>"
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