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Marc van Eijk
System Center VMM 2012 SP1 High Availability with SQL Server 2012 Always On Availability Groups
May 21st
Introduction
There is a lot to say about System Center VMM 2012 SP1. Some say System Center VMM 2012 is a must for any serious Private Cloud, others say some of its features should have been incorporated into the Windows Server OS. Early adopter of Windows Server 2012 were forced to design their environment without System Center VMM and are facing some challenges when to want to move their management functionalities to System Center VMM 2012 SP1. I did a couple of sessions on networking in System Center VMM 2012 SP1. Most Fabric Administrators find this part of VMM a bit daunting, to put it mildly.
No matter what you think of System Center 2012 SP1, if you decide to use System Center VMM 2012 SP1 to manage your Private, Hybrid or Hosted Cloud (and you should) you will find that with some features will create dependencies on System Center VMM 2012 SP1. A solid basis for your management environment requires redundancy at all levels.
In this blog I will walk you through the step to create a High Available (HA) System Center 2012 SP1 environment. The design exists of a Hyper-V cluster for physical redundancy, a guest based SQL Server 2012 Always On Availability Group for database redundancy, a guest based System Center VMM 2012 SP1 failover cluster for VMM redundancy and a Scale Out File Server (SOFS) for Library redundancy.
The quorum settings for the VMM cluster and the SQL cluster are based on Node and File Majority. In a single location design the preferred additional cluster vote is a quorum disk. The advantage of a Node and File Majority is that you can divide the management environment over two geographical locations without the need for synchronous replication of a SAN based quorum disk. You could use a Windows Azure Virtual Machine to provide the file share for the SQL and the VMM cluster node and file majority.
A Scale Out File Server (SOFS) requires a shared disk for a high available share. Each location will have its own SOFS. This blog describes to steps to configure the SQL Always On Availability Group and the System Center VMM Failover Cluster.
Will Windows Azure for Windows Server replace System Center App Controller?
Apr 12th
The Microsoft Management Summit 2013 just ended and all recorded sessions are already available on Channel9. Whether you are interested in the latest developments, lessons learned by early adopters or in-depth demos these session recordings will provide you with great insight into Private, Hosted and Public Cloud solutions by Microsoft. I did not attend the MMS 2013 and therefore I am very grateful to have access to all this magnificent content online.
As you might have noticed from my previous blogs I have a great interest in Windows Azure for Windows Server. In session WS-B303 Windows Server Virtual Machine: Adding Windows Azure Services Program Managers Marc Umeno and Anjli Chaudhry explain the components, lessons learned (some of them looked very familiar 
) and some demos.
One slide caught my attention.
In this slide Marc Umeno talks about an upcoming development in Windows Azure For Windows Server. In the current version user accounts are stored in an ASP.NET membership SQL database. This is a great solution for Service Providers, but (except for the Admin Site) there is no integration with Active Directory.
The product team is working on Active Directory integration for a future release.
What users will logon to the portal with Active Directory accounts? Users from the internal organization.
If you think about it, it is a logical step. Whether self-service users manage their services in Windows Azure, in a hosted cloud or in their own private cloud, they can access them through a uniform portal. It also fits in the roadmap to drive the adoption of Windows Azure in a great way.
Where does this leave System Center App Controller? Maybe the product team working on Windows Azure for Windows Server might be reinforcement with the System Center App Controller product team. At the end of the session Marc Umeno specifies that at TechEd (taking place June 3-6, this year) more information will be disclosed. So stay tuned.
Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 3
Mar 27th
This blog series on enabling the Cloud OS with Windows Server and System Center for Hosting Service Providers consists of the following parts
- Installing and configuring System Center Service Provider Foundation
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 1
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 2
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 3
- Installing and connecting System Center App Controller to System Center Service Provider Foundation
In the previous part of this blog we prepared the Service Management Portal and API for tenant access. This part of the series covers the experience from a tenant point of view.
Signing up
When a tenant connects to the Tenant Site on the public secure URL (in our example https://portal.hyper-v.nu) the portal presents the login page.
A new tenant can sign up to a public plan by selecting signup in the top right.
When a new tenant selects a plan that was made public, the descriptions we specified earlier are shown. When a new tenant enters an email address, a password and clicks sign up the user account will be created in the SQL database and the tenant logs in to the Tenant Site.
It is possible to create an additional step for a new tenant by specifying an invitation code in the public plan.
When a new tenant selects to sign up to a public plan that has an invitation code specified the user is presented with an additional column Access Code in the portal.
Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 2
Mar 24th
This blog series on enabling the Cloud OS with Windows Server and System Center for Hosting Service Providers consists of the following parts
- Installing and configuring System Center Service Provider Foundation
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 1
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 2
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 3
- Installing and connecting System Center App Controller to System Center Service Provider Foundation
In the previous part of this blog we installed the Service Management Portal and API. This part of the series covers the post-installation steps to prepare your environment for tenant access. Some of these steps are optional but recommended.
Configuring System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 components
The Service Management Portal and API maps its IAAS objects to components in System Center VMM 2012 SP1. Before we can create the required objects in the Service Management Portal we need to configure some components in System Center VMM 2012 SP1.
Cloud
An offering in the Service Management Portal is defined by a hosting plan. A plan has a one to one mapping to a cloud in System Center VMM 2012 SP1. The minimum requirements for a cloud in System Center VMM 2012 SP1 is a Host Group. To create a cloud open the System Center VMM 2012 SP1 management console. Select VMs and Services in the left bottom menu.
In the top menu select Create Cloud.
In the Create Cloud wizard give a description (for example Gold, Silver or Bronze), select a Host Group and finish the wizard. It is possible to configure additional settings in the Create Cloud wizard, but we will skip these for now.
Hardware Profile
The tenant can change the “hardware” properties of a virtual machine. You can define these settings in Hardware Profiles. To create a Hardware Profile in System Center VMM 2012 SP1 open the Library in the left bottom menu.
In the left menu select Profile > Hardware Profiles. On the top menu select Create and select Hardware Profile.
Dutch System Center User Group Event (April 18th, 2013)
Feb 28th
[UPDATE 28-2-2013] The Dutch System Center User Group Event has been rescheduled for April 18th, 2013. This is in the same week as the Dutch Hyper-v.nu Event. Two great event in one week and both for free, what more can you ask for.
On March the 5th the Dutch System Center User Group Event will take place. The event is hosted by HP in Amstelveen. The presentations are in Dutch and I also have the privilege of presenting a session.
In this session I will explain the new networking features of System Center VMM 2012 SP1 (VM Networks and the Logical Switch).
13.00 – 13.15 uur: Welcome
13.15 – 14.15 uur: DevOps with System Center 2012 SP1, an infrastructure perspective (Walter Eikenboom)
14.15 – 14.30 uur: Break
14.30 – 15.30 uur: Mobile Device Management via Cloud Intune and SCCM 2012 SP1 (Ronny de Jong)
15.30 – 15.45 uur: Break
15.45 – 16.45 uur: System Center versus Windows Azure en de Hybrid omgeving (James van den Berg)
16.45 – 17.00 uur: Break
17.00 – 18.00 uur: System Center VMM 2012 SP1 Networking Spaghetti (Marc van Eijk)
You can find more information on the SCUG site. If you like to attend you can register for free by sending an email to info@scug.nl.
Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 1
Feb 12th
This blog series on enabling the Cloud OS with Windows Server and System Center for Hosting Service Providers consists of the following parts
- Installing and configuring System Center Service Provider Foundation
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 1
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 2
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 3
- Installing and connecting System Center App Controller to System Center Service Provider Foundation
In the previous part of this blog series we enabled multitenant access to the Cloud OS through an ODATA web service by installing and configuring System Center Service Provider Foundation.
My previous blog on the technical preview of Windows Azure Services for Windows Server includes an installation guide. The new features and bug fixes in the official release combined with numerous installations resulted in an updated installation and configuration guide.
This blog describes part 1 of the installation and configuration of the Service Management Portal and API.
Scenarios
Single servers or distributed installation
The Service Management Portal and API consist of two sites and three APIs. These web services can be divides into two categories. Services that should be publicly accessible and services that should be secured to internal access only.
- Publicly accessible
- Service Management Tenant Site
- Service Management Tenant Public API
- Secure internal access
- Service Management Admin Site
- Service Management Admin API
- Service Management Tenant API
All the components can be installed on a single server using the Express installer. It is also possible to run a distributed installation and select the location for each individual component. This blog will describe both installation procedures.
Single domain, Workgroup or Multiple Domains
The Service Management Portal and API can be installed in the same domain as System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Service Provider Foundation 2012 SP1 is running in. It is also possible to install the Service Management Portal and API in a workgroup or in a separate (dedicated) domain. This can be useful when you have a single Service Management Portal environment that connects to multiple stamps in different domains. The only connection between the Service Management Portal and API and the System Center VMM 2012 SP1 environment is a local user account on the Service Provider Foundation that is user for registering and authenticating to the Service Provider Foundation ODATA web service.
Installing and configuring System Center Service Provider Foundation
Jan 30th
A couple of months ago I posted a blog about the Technical Preview of Windows Azure for Windows Server. My fellow blogger Hans Vredevoort (MVP Virtual Machine) and I discussed possible configuration scenarios. The Windows Azure for Windows Server development team also provided us with great help. There are a lot of products involved in the setup and this makes a simple walkthrough more difficult. With the experience taken from the Technical Preview and the official release I have created a walkthrough for the end to end solution.
Because there are so many moving parts I decided to split this walkthrough into the following blog items.
- Installing and configuring System Center Service Provider Foundation
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 1
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 2
- Installing and configuring Windows Azure for Windows Server – Part 3
- Installing and connecting System Center App Controller to System Center Service Provider Foundation
This blog is a complete walkthrough on installing and configuring the Service Provider Foundation.
Introduction
The Service Provider Foundation enables service providers to offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The infrastructure of System Center VMM 2012 is exposed through the Service Provider Foundation as an extensible OData web service, that supports REST-based requests. The web service handles these requests through Windows PowerShell scripts. By using this industry standard Microsoft enables Service Provider to leverage their existing investments in custom management Portals.
The Service Provider Foundation is placed on top of a System Center VMM 2012 environment. This blog will not cover the installation and configuration of System Center 2012 VMM. I can advise a great book called Microsoft Private Cloud Computing written by Aidan Finn, Hans Vredevoort, Patrick Lownds and Damian Flynn that I use as a reference frequently.
Prerequisites
The Service Provider Foundation uses SQL server for its database. Depending on the size of your environment you can either use the same SQL server as your System Center VMM 2012 SP1 environment or use a dedicated SQL server for the Service Provider Foundation. The database is supported on SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012.
Before we install the Service Provider Foundation some prerequisites must be installed.
System Center 2012 SP1 Update Rollup 1 breaks Service Provider Foundation connectivity in Windows Azure for Windows Server
Jan 27th
My fellow blogger MVP Hans Vredevoort installed the most recent updates on an operational Windows Azure for Windows Server environment. After applying the updates the connectivity from the Service Management Portal to System Center VMM failed.
In the Service Management Portal the Service Provider Foundation was still registered. The amount of VM clouds returned to zero. Before the updates the amount of VM clouds in the Service Management Portal matched the amount Clouds in SCVMM. Uninstalling the updates from the servers did not resolve the issue.
Applying the most recent updates in my lab caused the same issue. I created a temporary environment for troubleshooting. This test setup consists of five virtual machines.
- dc.azure.lab – Windows Server 2012 / domain controller
- sql.azure.lab – Windows Server 2012 / SQL Server 2012 SP1
- vmm.azure.lab – Windows Server 2012 / System Center VMM 2012 SP1
- spf.azure.lab – Windows Server 2012 / System Center SPF 2012 SP1
- smp.azure.lab – Windows Server 2012 / Service Management Portal Express
The end to end solution for Service Providers can have different designs. This setup is the bare minimum required for troubleshooting the issue. I’m writing a complete guide for all the individual parts, the possible designs and related configuration, which will be posted on www.hyper-v.nu soon.
The installation and configuration of the test setup without applying the updates resulted in a correct functioning connection between the Service Management Portal and System Center VMM through System Center SPF.
The first thing to do is create some snapshots of the environment. The Windows Update feature detected about thirty available updates for each server. I decided to run the updates in batches of ten updates to speed up the process of finding the troublesome update. I starting with the SPF server, since I had a feeling that this server was causing the error.
After installing all the required updates on the SPF server the VM clouds still matched the number of clouds in System Center VMM. I rebooted the SPF server and run IISReset.exe on the SMP server just to be sure. It was still functioning correctly. So far for my hunch.
With the SPF server now fully patched I turned to the VMM server. I repeated the process of installing batches of ten updates. Rebooting the VMM server and running IISReset.exe on the SMP server after every batch. When the VMM server was fully patched the Service Provider Foundation connectivity from the Service Management Portal showed no errors.
I really doubted that the SQL server or even the domain controller were interfering in the issue, so the logical next server to patch was the server hosting the Service Management Portal itself. As you might guess by now, after applying all the critical updates in the SMP server the connectivity to the Service Provider Foundation was still functioning correctly.
Before moving my attention to the SQL server and the domain controller I enabled update support for Microsoft Update. A rescan of available updates on the VMM server displayed two optional updates.
Installing both updates did not cause the issue.
Event 47 WHEA-Logger on a Windows Server 2012 cluster node
Jan 15th
I encountered a pesky issue recently. Before I get into the details, first a quick overview of the setup. A Windows Server 2012 cluster consisting of two cluster nodes. The cluster nodes are brand new HP DL 360 G8p servers with 256Gb Memory and two six-core processors. Networking is based on 10Gb Emulex NICs for converged fabric connected to a HP Procurve 5406zl. The storage for the cluster has two members, an Equallogic 4100E and an Equallogic 4100XV. The ISCSI traffic is on a dedicated network with separate 1Gb NICs in the cluster nodes.
Problem
When I connected to a cluster node the response in the RDP session sometimes had a little delay. Typing in PowerShell for example felt like watching a movie with the audio out of sync from time to time. The first time I thought the lack of sleep was taking its toll. But after experiencing a couple of delays I concluded that I had some troubleshooting to do.
After bypassing the Remote Desktop Gateway that I connected through, I singled out one cluster node having the issue. I looked at the event log, but came up empty handed. My next thought made me look at the networking infrastructure. I checked that both servers had the correct and identical NIC firmware and drivers. I also verified that the switch had the latest firmware applied. I compared the complete converged fabric configuration on both servers. All parts checked out fine. I looked at the task manager and the processor utilization was close to idle.
The next thing to rule out was the NIC hardware. Since only one of the two servers was subject to the issue I decided to swap the 10Gb NICs between the servers. After this swap the issue seemed to have disappeared. I did not experience the issue on the other server.
I am unable to let go of an issue without a proper technical explanation and since the NIC hardware swap seemed to make the issue disappear I run a diagnostic test on both servers. All green checkmarks. Suddenly the delay appeared again on the same server where I experienced the issue before. We can now rule out the NIC hardware.
NIC Teaming, Hyper-V switch, QoS and actual performance | part 4 – Traffic classes
Jan 14th
This blog series consists of four parts
- NIC Teaming, Hyper-V switch, QoS and actual performance | part 1 – Theory
- NIC Teaming, Hyper-V switch, QoS and actual performance | part 2 – Preparing the lab
- NIC Teaming, Hyper-V switch, QoS and actual performance | part 3 – Performance
- NIC Teaming, Hyper-V switch, QoS and actual performance | part 4 – Traffic classes
With the insights from the results of the tests, it is possible to look at multiple scenario’s for the traffic classes live migration and virtual machine.
Live migration
Live migration moves machines from one host to another without noticeable downtime. This can be live migration within a cluster or moving virtual machines with “shared nothing” live migration. Live migrations uses one TCP stream for control messages (low throughput) and one TCP stream for transfer of virtual machine memory and state (high throughput utilization). When live migration includes migrating the VHD, SMB will be used for that. SMB itself will use one or multiple TCP streams depending on your SMB multichannel settings.
Scenario 1 : Server with two quad port 1Gb NICs
If you have invested in new 1Gb hardware before Windows Server 2012 was available, upgrading your NICs to 10Gb hardware is not a requirement. The NIC Teaming functionality allows for teaming up to 32 physical NICs. It is possible to reuse the dedicated 1Gb NICs you used for your Windows Server 2008 R2 or your (obsolete!!) VMware environment and create a single team.
The disadvantage with VMQ and LBFO based on Address Hash is that all the settings for the individual physical NICs in the team must be identical. Whereas NIC Teaming based on HyperVPorts allows for overlapping processor settings.
I have tested with additional live migration networks with the same metric in Switch Independent / HyperVPorts mode. Each live migration network will get its own port on the Hyper-V switch allowing for distribution of the individual live migration networks amongst the team members on a round-robin basis.
I created single NIC team with 8 1Gb team members in Switch Independent / HyperVPorts. After configuring a Hyper-V switch on top of this NIC team, I created six live migration networks with the same metric.
I also adjusting the maximum number of simultaneous Live Migration settings to ten simultaneous live migrations on each cluster node. Running a live migration of ten virtual machines (ten high throughput TCP streams) resulted in only one team member being utilized.
Live migration will use only one available network for moving virtual machine memory and state. Even if other live migration networks are configured with the same metric.
With 2 quad port NICs it is possible to create a different configuration for more live migration bandwidth without losing all VMQ overlapping. Create two NIC teams. One team with four 1Gb team members in Switch independent / HyperVPorts and one team with four 1Gb team members in LACP / Address Hash (you might even configure two team member per quad NIC in a single team for added redundancy).
The Switch independent / HyperVPorts NIC team is configured with a Hyper-V switch for converged Fabric. The LACP / Address Hash NIC team is dedicated for live migration. Since there is no Hyper-V switch on top of this NIC team, RSS is used for load balancing the individual stream.
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