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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!
Jaap Wesselius interviews Hans Vredevoort on Windows 8
Dec 2nd
Just before //build/ NGN invited the Hyper-V.nu crew over for a series of interviews. Jaap Wesselius who originally started the Hyper-V usergroup accepted the role of the interviewer. Peter Noorderijk, Maarten Wijsman and myself were asked to answer Jaap’s questions. Before you start clicking the links …. the interviews are in Dutch, so unless you want to pick up a few words of our beautiful language, head over to some of the other interviews that fellow MVP Carsten Rachfahl held with me this year:
In one of the previous blog you might already have seen the link to the interview with Peter Noorderijk’s on Hyper-V: http://www.ngn.nl/ngn/weblogs/hyper-v-blog/hyper-v-interview-met-peter-noorderijk/?waxtrapp=ybinfpBsHyoOtvOXEGAH
Today also my interview was published on the site of our NGN friends:
http://www.ngn.nl/ngn/weblogs/hyper-v-blog/hyper-v-interview-met-hans-vredevoort/?waxtrapp=okashpBsHyoOtvOXEGAJ
Topics: Windows 8, Hyper-V v3, storage, networking, live storage migration, VMM 2012
We expect the 3rd interview by Jaap with Maarten Wijsman to be published in the near future.
Camera work and editing by Ed Wens
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/
The Experts Conference 2011
Oct 20th
In the past week I attended TEC Europe 2011 in Frankfurt and presented a Hyper-V Storage Deep Dive session for a small but highly specialized audience. TEC2011 is certainly not known for its sheer size but because of its small size it is very easy to get into touch with both other speakers and visitors. My Hyper-V.nu and inovativ colleague Jaap Wesselius was also present and he presented for the third consecutive year. So that must mean something. Jaap presented a number of topics around Exchange, Hyper-V and instructed an Exchange 2010 Availability workshop.
My presentation was part of the Cloud and Virtualization track. This track was a mixture of private cloud management, server virtualization, application virtualization, desktop virtualization, identity, software as a service, infrastructure as a service, PowerShell, etc. I really enjoyed the depth of most presentations and talking to a good number of friends I normally only meet on the social media platforms.
My presentation dived into 10 storage topics related to Hyper-V which were analyzed on both their strengths and weaknesses and compared to what will be available in Hyper-V version 3 in Windows Server 8.
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Hyper-V Virtual Disks
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Hyper-V Shared Disks
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Hyper-V Snapshots
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Cluster Shared Volumes
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Live Migration
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Storage Migration
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Hyper-V Data Protection
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Cluster Storage Validation
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SCSI-3 Reservation/Registration
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Storage Configuration with PowerShell
You can download the PowerPoint including some of the PowerShell 3 scripts I used for configuring in a Windows
Server 8 Hyper-V and File Server Cluster: http://bit.ly/qeO2Z3
My next presentations will be at Experts Live – Cloud Edition on November 22nd, 2011 and our own big Hyper-V.nu event on January 19th 2012
Left to right: @hvredevoort @jaapwess @workinghardinit @hypervserver @rickslager
Installation of Data ONTAP Simulator in a Hyper-V guest (CentOS) and using an SMI-S provider to connect to SCVMM 2012
Aug 19th
Introduction
If you are a NetApp Customer or if you are an Advantage Partner (or if you have good friends among them) you can get access to the NetApp Data ONTAP Simulator. The reason why I wanted to try this out is to have an SMI-S compliant storage device which I could use in my System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 lab. As you may know Microsoft decided to use the SMI-S provider (SNIA Standard) to enable deep integration of storage arrays for Virtual Machine Manager 2012. I wrote a detailed blog about it here.
Getting the simulator was one thing, installing a Linux VM with Hyper-V Integration Components was another. Fortunately it was easy to find some good step-by step guidance by Yusuf Ozturk (1 and 2) and Michel Lücher (3)
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Installing Hyper-V v2.1 IC’s Setting up a CentOS 5.6 Desktop installation on Hyper-V and mouse support – Part 2
Because I don’t expect everyone to be able to read German, I will translate the instructions here and blog about my findings.
By the way, I have a third challenge … I don’t know anything about NetApp either, so this blog really describes my first steps into the Linux and NetApp world. At least the Hyper-V and System Center world is familiar territory.
I will not go through steps 1 and 2 because if you exactly follow Yusuf’s steps, you will end up with a Hyper-V aware CentOS guest. I downloaded the DVD ISO for CentOS 5.6 here.
The Netapp Data ONTAP simulator can be downloaded here.
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/
HP EVA P6000 details live from HP Discover 2011
Jun 8th
This morning I attended a session about HP StorageWorks EVA feature enhancements. I will recap some of the details discussed in that session. After a short introduction by Tom Joyce, VP of StorageWorks Marketing, Joseph Algieri, Master Solution Architect at HP continued the presentation. Also Sheridan Kooyers, Master Firmware Architect for EVA at HP was available for answering questions. Sheridan is responsible for Continuous Access and is now working on VAAI development integration.
EVA has been HP’s enterprise storage flagship it was introduced in 2001, celebrating its 10 year anniversary. Their first models were the EVA3000 and EVA5000. Meanwhile 100.000 EVA’s have been sold to a large and very loyal customer base. HP have been talking to lot of customers and have organized focus groups. HP also learnt a great deal from the engineers of the acquired storage companies LeftHand, IBRIX and 3PAR. The storage engineering team has grown considerably. Large investments have been made in the product to again focus to deliver quality.
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HP Converged Storage
Jun 8th
Here is a video about HP Converged Storage. David Scott is talking.
Also take a look at blog post by @HPStorageGuy on this topic: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Converged-Infrastructure/Converged-Storage-It-s-about-time/ba-p/93565
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How serious is HP taking Hyper-V Private Cloud?
Jun 3rd
As an invited blogger I will be at HP Discover 2011 next week (6-10 June) at the Venetian in Las Vegas. It is HP’s big Enterprise Business event that covers HP’s entire portfolio products, solutions and services. If you want to follow what is going on please follow the hashtag #HPDiscover
Again I will view the presentations, workshops and exhibitions through the eyes of an architect of private cloud infrastructure. I want to find out if HP has discovered there is more than one hypervisor ready for prime business. Of course I will interrogate HP people about their integration with Microsoft Virtualization, System Center, Hyper-V Private Cloud and Azure.
I have been working with HP (and previously Compaq) servers and storage since day one and I’m looking forward to their newest developments and announcements. We have built many server virtualization platforms based on HP ProLiant (BladeSystem) servers, HP EVA, HP LeftHand and HP MSA, now called P6000, P4000 and P2000. I intend to take a closer look at HP 3PAR (and wonder if this storage array gets a P#### number as well).
Let’s see how far HP has progressed with integrating HP and Microsoft technology. Hopefully it is not a VMware only story as it has been in the past, despite HP’s involvement in Hyper-V Private Cloud, the Fast Track program and the reference architecture built for this purpose. The first proof of real involvement was the Hyper-V Cloud HP built for Microsoft Management Summit 2011, the event I attended three months ago. Never thought I’d see Vegas again so quickly. I am not complaining.
Please also view this: http://www.linkcounter.com/go.php?linkid=326371
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