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Posts tagged Bare Metal Deployment
Microsoft Private Cloud Computing Book Release
Jun 15th
Monday June 18 2012 will be the big day for us. Our book Microsoft Private Cloud Computing will be officially available and even a little earlier than expected. 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 Virtual Machine @hvredevoort)
Kristian Nese (@kristiannese) who is also MVP System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management kindly accepted the role of technical reviewer. Kristian has also written a book on Cloud Computing in Norwegian.
Learn the foundation of cloud computing and how to build your own Microsoft private cloud
Written by a team of expert authors who are MVPs and leaders in their respective fields, this one-of-a-kind book is an essential resource for IT administrators who are responsible for implementing and managing a cloud infrastructure. You’ll quickly learn how cloud computing offers significant cost savings while also providing new levels of speed and agility.
Serving as a how-to guide, Microsoft Private Cloud Computing walks you through building a secure, internal cloud and delivering it as a service to your company using Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012.
- Walks you through the entire process: understanding cloud computing, understanding the Microsoft concept of a private cloud, deploying a private cloud fabric, deploying services, and building a private cloud, as well as integrating it with Microsoft’s public cloud to create a cross-premises or public cloud
- Discusses fabric management with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012
- Examines how to provide network and storage with VMM 2012
- Looks at the VMM library configuration
- Discusses private cloud and cloud service management with Microsoft App Controller
Microsoft Private Cloud Computing is a must-have comprehensive resource that covers all aspects of implementing a private cloud
Aidan wrote the introductory chapters on Private Cloud, Hans dealt with the Fabric Management chapters (Servers, Storage, Network) including Bare Metal Deployment, Patrick wrote the chapters on Service Management (VMM Library, Service Modeling) and Damian contributed chapters on Private Cloud Solutions (VMM Services, Self-Service, App Controller) including the Cloud Services Process Pack.
If you are dealing with the Fabric part you need lots and lots of hardware. Fortunately one of our great customers at INOVATIV as well as my personal friends from XS4ALL (Joey Hofstede, Alexander Rijnbeek) have helped us tremendously. They offered us a remotely accessible lab including HP Blade Servers, HP EVA storage and lots of capacity to test all new VMM 2012 functionality. XS4ALL is a key Dutch Internet Provider, so you can imagine the download speeds if I ever wanted to grab a few ISO’s.
The book can be ordered here and will hopefully soon be found in most large bookstores.
Here are the (earlier) announcement blogs of my fellow authors:
Aidan: http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=12024
Damian: http://www.damianflynn.com/2012/01/17/microsoft-private-cloud-computing-book/
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.
SCVMM 2012 – Preparing the Host Profile
Apr 18th
In the previous blogs I have explained how to create Run As Accounts & Profiles. I also discussed Out of Band Management and specifically how to Add the HP iLO2 OOB provider to SCVMM 2012. In this blog I focus on another preparatory step before we can start our Bare Metal Deployment and Cluster Creation: Preparing the Host Profile.
The Host Profile is like a combination of the Hardware Profile and OS Profile in SCVMM 2008 R2 but intended for defining the physical server rather than the virtual machine. Again a wizard is available to define such a Host Profile which is relatively straightforward:
- General: Host Profile Name & Description plus location of the VHD file to be used as the base image for the operating system
- Hardware Configuration: Selection of the Management NIC with a choice of DHCP or static IP address; Partition and Disk Configuration and Driver Options (for injection of a specific set of (filter) drivers
- OS Configuration: similar to the OS Profile in SCVMM 2008 R2 describing OS name, Run As Profile, Admin Password, Identity Information, Product Key, Time Zone and Scripts
- Host Settings: for adding the virtual machine placement paths
The preparation of the Host Profile starts off by clicking on the Library wunderbar, expanding Profiles and right-clicking Host Profiles: Create Host Profile.
SCVMM 2012 – Adding HP iLO as an OOB provider
Apr 15th
In the previous post I went into some detail about Out of Band Management (OOB) options in SCVMM 2012 and how bare metal servers can be discovered via an IP range via an OOB provider. After installation of SCVMM 2012 you’ll discover that HP iLO is not a standard option. However a custom OOB provider for HP iLO is offered and can be configured via the following procedure.
First of all we have to download the HP Lights Out Configuration Utility and install it on the SCVMM 2012 server. You can get this utility from HP’s Software and Drivers site and is located under the ProLiant server model and operating system version. If you install this program, take note of the installation directory which defaults to C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\cpqlocfg because next you’ll have to get the HP Lights-Out XML Scripting Sample for Windows. As a third step you must copy the files to same directory where you installed the iLO Configuration Utility.
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