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Posts tagged Hyper-V 3
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration Book
Mar 21st
If you are in some way dealing with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 and probably now exploring Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, you are by no means able to avoid the blogs, whitepapers, books and tweets written by Aidan Finn. In 2010 Aidan asked me to be a technical editor for his Mastering Hyper-V Deployment which I gladly accepted. It was a great step-by-step for implementing Hyper-V R2 and several of the important System Center components. The book was co-authored by Patrick Lownds, Hyper-V MVP and datacenter expert working for HP in London.
About a year later, Aidan approached me again asking if I would be willing to contribute to another book called Microsoft Private Cloud Computing and I did not think about refusing (or should I have). It was my first experience as an author and I wrote up the Fabric chapters of VMM 2012. Aidan laid a nice foundation with his lucid Cloud introduction chapters, Patrick focused on the service management functionality and the VMM Library while Cloud and Datacenter MVP, Damian Flynn wrote a couple of brilliant chapters on private cloud management and integration with App Controller, Service Manager and Orchestrator. It was a fine job we completed in early 2012, the book was published just before the beta of SP1 was announced. We simply didn’t have the opportunity to wait until SP1 was out and digest and explain all the new features that arrived with Windows Server 2012. Fortunately Damian has joined Nigel Cain (who is a Senior Program Manager for Windows Server and System Center) to write a blog series on Technet in eight installments between Jan 2013 until July 2013, just to explain the new Virtual networking technology in VMM 2012 SP1
Another year came and here was Aidan again, asking me to join him on his new venture: the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Installation and Configuration Guide. Although I really liked the subject and wanted to go into great depth to learn all this cool stuff, I was simply too busy doing all those great Hyper-V and System Center projects for Inovativ. Our family was also heavily burdened by the unfortunate adventures of one of my sons, which more or less influenced me most of 2012.
Writing a book was out of the question.
Convincing as Aidan can be, he said he had his author team complete, again with Damian Flynn and Patrick Lownds plus Michel Luescher, “a virtualization junkie working as a consultant at Microsoft” as he calls himself. The only omission was a technical editor fit for the job. And that’s why he asked me.
I am more than honored to be mentioned quite extensively in the Acknowledgements of the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V book by each and every author. I really felt like being part of the author team but in the role of both learning, correcting but most of all improving. I remember advising Aidan to split one chapter into two because it was approaching 100 pages, more than twice as much as they had anticipated.
Having been the first reader (and I read the chapters multiple times), I can truly say this is a superb book that anyone interested in the technical secrets of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V should buy. I can guarantee you will not one day regret having bought this book. There were moments I wanted to cry out how good these chapters were, thrilled by the sheer excellence of the product and the very talented explanatory writing in the 600 pages of this Must-have-Hyper-V-version-3 book.
The book can be pre-ordered now and will be published on March 25th. The European release will be April 5th. See the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Book Release FAQ.
I will not wait till my free copy arrives (Sybex, hope you are reading this) as I have already pre-ordered it myself, but wouldn’t mind a few extra copies to give away.
Dell Compellent and Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX)
Mar 20th
I just finished a remote support session for a customer in New York. My task was to check a Windows Server 2012 cluster using PowerEdge M620 blades with 4x10GbE connected to a Dell Compellent (6.3.1 firmware).
I just had a small window of opportunity to create a fixed sized VHDX (25GB and 250GB).
new-vhd -path C:\ClusterStorage\volume1\25GB.vhdx -size 25GB –fixed
new-vhd -path C:\ClusterStorage\volume2\250GB.vhdx -size 250GB –fixed
Both completed in under 3 seconds. Wow!!!
ODX in its purest form.
So let me reiterate my advice to new SAN array buyers. The first question you should ask your SAN vendor. Does it support ODX? If the answer is negative or if they promise ODX in their next release, just tell them to take a hike and move on to a capable SAN vendor.
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5Nine Security Manager for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V–part 1
Feb 7th
In this two-part blog article we will take a look at 5Nine Security Manager for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. In the first part I will give a global overview and take a look at the installation of this product. In the second part we will take a look at the configuration of this interesting solution. So here we go…. 
In the ‘classic’ world of physical machines there’s in most cases a lot of attention for a secure server environment. People make their environment as secure as possible with firewalls, intrusion detection systems and anti-virus/ anti-malware protection. These products are working very well in the classic physical server environments.
However the world of IT is changing and virtualization of servers and devices has become common. Although we are using virtualization techniques for a couple of years now we are still using the security solution in the classic way by installing anti-virus/ anti-mallware agents in the virtual machine and try to controll VM traffic through a physical firewall.
These classic ways of securing the IT infrastructure are not efficient and cause unnecessary load inside the virtual machines. This can be fixed smarter, don’t you think so?
In Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Microsoft introduced the extensible virtual switch. The Hyper-V virtual switch is a software-based layer-2 network switch. With built-in support for Network Device Interface Specification (NDIS) filter drivers and Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) callout drivers, the Hyper-V virtual switch enables independent software vendors to create extensible plug-ins (known as Virtual Switch Extensions) that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities.
Announcing Winners of the Microsoft Private Cloud Computing Book
Dec 7th
During the last two months hundreds of Hyper-V users have taken the time and effort to participate in The Great Big Hyper-V Survey of 2012 which closed last week. We cannot share any details about the results just yet as we are still counting and analyzing the results. We’ll let you know as soon as we can. Promise!
As a stimulus for you we offered a couple of Microsoft Private Cloud Computing books. Because Aidan Finn said he would select a winner for the book based on the responses he got on his own blog and on Twitter, I still have two books to give away. One is offered by co-author Damian Flynn and the other by me.
It was quite interesting to see how much attention has been raised on the web, on Twitter, on blogs, perhaps also on Facebook (I can’t tell because I got fed up with FB and closed down my account about a year ago). I bang “The Great Big Hyper-V Survey) and got 15,100 results. I googled and found 72,600 results. Of course Google also placed an ad on top, but please rest assured that this survey has no connection with Microsoft whatsoever. They are probably just as curious as you and me for that matter.
All right, now it is time to pick a winner… (please click on More)
Savision webinar
Apr 5th
On the 11th of April I will present a webinar for Savision about The Top Three Things You Need to Know about Hyper-V in Windows 8. I will address the folowing subjects:
- Storage – We’ll review the new VHDX virtual disk format, Clustered Shared Volumes version 2 and Live Storage migration
- Networking – Learn about the new NIC teaming options and other network improvements.
- Disaster Recovery – is made easy with Hyper-V replica. We’ll look at what it is and what it does!
You can follow the webinar at two different times:
- for Europe – 3PM CET
- for America – 2PM EST
Register now for this outstanding webinar 
Europe: http://www2.savision.com/l/12082/2012-04-02/gtg2
US: http://www2.savision.com/l/12082/2012-04-02/gtgd
Showing “Windows 8” Hyper-V in Pictures
Sep 7th
A perfect storm just very unexpectedly. Sinofsky announced that the “Windows 8” client will have Hyper-V. This video shows the client hypervisor. If you look very carefully you see a lot of interesting details that might point to functionality in the new version of Hyper-V in the “Windows 8” Server edition. Ben Armstrong just confirmed that Hyper-V in “Windows 8” supports sleep/hibernation. I miss that very much on my Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V laptop today.
First troubleshooting step for a lost (CSV) disk in Hyper-V cluster
Aug 18th
Update October 21st, 2011 (see bottom)
Let’s assume the following scenario:
- You have a Hyper-V R2 SP1 cluster that has three or more nodes
- You are using Cluster Shared Volumes
- You learnt about the Cluster Validation problem that was solved by KB2531907 back in May 2011, which prevented the “Failed to get SCSI page 83h VPD descriptors for cluster disk <number> from node <node name> status 2” error after running the Validate SCSI Vital Product Data. It also solved the “Disk with identifier <value> has a Persistent Reservation on it. The disk might be part of some other cluster. Removing the disk from validation set” error when running the List Potential Cluster Disks test. The hotfix resolves an issue in which the storage test incorrectly runs on disks that are online and not in the Available Storage group. The problem can also be caused by other issues such as storage problems or an incorrect configuration which means you have to check your storage configuration and check related events on your Hyper-V hosts.
- You want to add more capacity and add a new Hyper-V host.
The teams that contribute to Hyper-V version 3
Aug 18th
When Sinofsky detailed the different teams that are building Windows 8, I noticed that Storage and File Systems are one and the same group. Beneath you see a list of the most important teams in my opinion that will leverage the Microsoft Private Cloud which is built around Hyper-V and System Center 2012. The release of Hyper-V version 3 in Windows Server 2012 or Server “8” as we still have to call it, will be the cream on the cake and will boost the Microsoft Private Cloud even further. What we have seen so far is much higher virtual CPU’s in guests and awesome Hyper-V Replication technology. Add to that a decent file system and new storage innovations, both in the host and in the guest, we are ready for primetime. What will happen to CSV? What will happen to the scalability of the Hyper-V cluster?
We will soon find out! The Build Windows 2011 developers conference will unveil what all these product teams have invented. I really can’t wait! Because the conference is sold out, I plan to reserve time for the live streams instead.
See: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/ and http://www.buildwindows.com/
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!
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