Powered by System Center
// Main banner ad on homepage
Posts tagged Windows 8
Windows Server 2012 is RTM
Aug 2nd
Jeffrey Snover of the Windows Server team has announced that Windows Server 2012 is RTM! He has made this announcement yesterday on the Windows Server Blog.
Windows Server 2012 will be general available on September the 4th. Microsoft will celebrate this milestone with an online launch event. Take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/new.aspx for more details.
For Windows 8 Microsoft announced that this version will be general available on October 26th. However for those lucky people who have a MSDN subscription they can get the bits on the 15th of August. For more details you can take a look at The Windows Blog.
Keep in mind that Hyper-V Server 2012 is not RTM yet.
Mike Kolitz’s SuperDuper Windows 8/Server 2012 Deployment cmdlet
Jun 1st
Updated June 7, 2012
I have already blogged several times about how to create a Boot from VHD installation for the Developer and Beta versions of Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 Beta.
Now that the Release Preview version of Windows 8 and the Release Candidate version of Windows Server 2012 have been released, it is a good occasion to revisit this very flexible boot method.
My first assumption this time is that you already have a system running PowerShell 3.0 which is the case if your machine runs an earlier version of Windows (Server) 8. This blog you will learn how to configure Native VHD without touching diskpart for preparing the VHD file. In fact we are going to create a VHDX file which is recognized by Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 machines.
A second assumption is that you have the Hyper-V role installed. This is required because we need the Hyper-V PowerShell module which comes with the Hyper-V role.
To fully understand what is going on, I suggest you first run the classical route and then be surprised by the simplest of deployment methods which has much less requirements [See update and comments Mike Kolitz below) compared to the Classical Route. More on this later on in the blog!
The Classical Route
Let’s start creating a 60GB dynamic VHDX file named ws2012rc.vhdx in a directory we shall name D:\VHDX. A downloaded ISO image file of Windows Server 2012 should be copied to D:\Download.
New-VHD -Path d:\vhdx\ws2012rc.vhdx -Dynamic -SizeBytes 60GB
Once the VHDX file is created, it can be mounted as follows:
Mount-VHD -Path D:\vhdx\ws2012rc.vhdx –verbose
As you can see in the next screen, the newly mounted VHDX has a RAW partition style, so we need to find a way to only initialize the mounted virtual hard disk.
VHDX Specification Now Available
Apr 30th
Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V support the new VHDX Virtual Hard Disk format. If you are interested in the technical details just became available and you can download the VHDX specification:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29681
This specification is released under the Microsoft Open Source Promise (OSP) initiative to help guide development of VHDX virtual hard disk format implementations that are compatible with those provided by Microsoft.
Windows 8 Storage & Hyper-V part 4 – Offload Data Transfer (ODX)
Apr 11th
This is another installment in my series on Windows 8 Storage & Hyper-V. Previous blogs in the series can be found here:
Part 3 – The Art of Creating a VHD
Another promising new storage functionality that can be found in Windows Server 8 is the new transparent fast copy feature called Offload Data Transfer or ODX. If you know VMware’s vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI), you probably know where to place ODX because it is more or less in the same league.
What’s the Challenge?
If you have a large Hyper-V guest with multi-Terabyte VHDX files, it depends on the amount of memory, the activity of the VM and the available bandwidth how long it takes to Live Migrate that VM to another node in your Hyper-V cluster. However, it is an entirely different story if you also need to move these very large VHDX files from one disk to another, from one array to another, from one cluster to another or even from one cloud to another. It would take ages doing this the classic way. Every read and every write including its confirmation would have to go through the sending server and the receiving server. Even if there would only be one Hyper-V server involved (copying between two CSV’s on the same server) this is highly inefficient. After all the VHD(X) is already on the storage array. Why let the data travel all the way from CSV1 through server A to server B and then back to CSV2 again? Why would the data have to leave the storage array at all?
Windows 8 Storage and Hyper-V – Part 3: The Art of Creating a VHD
Apr 10th
In the last blog in my series on Windows 8 storage I already touched upon creating a VHDX with PowerShell 3.0 in Windows Server 8. In this blog I will focus on the subject a little bit more, showing the myriad ways of creating VHDs and show you some powerful commands to create multiple VHD files in Windows Server 8.
Here are a number of methods for creating a VHD:
-
WMI
-
Diskpart
-
Disk2VHD
-
VHD Tool
-
Disk Management
-
Hyper-V Manager
-
PowerShell 3.0
The WMI Method
Three years ago Taylor Brown in his blog “Hyper-V WMI Using PowerShell Scripts” demonstrated how we could create a VHD using a Hyper-V WMI method. Back then we did not have a Hyper-V PowerShell module as we now have in Windows 8. Borrowing from his work this is how we could accomplish our goal:
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
Analysis of Hyper-V.nu blog statistics
Apr 1st
Exactly one year ago Jaap Wesselius and I decided to give our Hyper-V.nu site a new look and we started to combine our blogs. On April 1st, Peter Noorderijk and Maarten Wijsman joined the team and started writing their blogs for Hyper-V.nu. Jaap is primarily occupied with Exchange but writes an occasional blog. We all have busy jobs in IT and sometimes find it hard to find the time to not only do research but also write a good blog. Nevertheless we find blogging very rewarding.
Personally I have spent most of my time in the previous 8 months focusing on my new consultancy job at INOVATIV and writing my chapters for Microsoft Private Cloud Computing which will be released shortly after final release of System Center 2012. Expect the book to show up towards the end of May 2012. Now the majority of this work is finished I promise to start blogging again.
Even though our contributions have been minimal in the last few months, the site has received a very warm welcome from you. I am happy to share a few statistics with you.
In the past year Hyper-V.nu attracted over 180,000 visitors responsible for just under 500,000 pageviews. In the last months alone we have attracted 30,000 visitors with an average of 1,000 visitors per day.
The Hyper-V.nu team is very fortunate with this overwhelming interest from you. It is a sign that Hyper-V is picking up tremendously. Therefore – on behalf of the team – I’d like to thank you for your support!
Dual boot Windows 7 / Windows 8
Mar 22nd
Hans Vredevoort already blogged about how to boot from VHD with Windows 8 Developer Preview. While this is certainly worth a try I installed Windows 8 (Consumer Edition) on another partition.
This is relatively simple. Suppose your Windows 7 is running from partition1 and you want Windows 8 to be installed on partition2. Boot the computer from the DVD and install Windows 8 on partition 2. When done you’ll notice that it only boots into Windows 7 and there’s no option to select another Operating System.
In Windows 8, request the properties of the computer object, select Advanced System Settings, select Settings under Startup and Recovery and select the default Operating System (Windows 7 or Windows 8 Consumer Preview)
Please note that the OS selection will be shown during the boot process, so don’t panic if you miss the text screen.
Early test version available for System Center 2012 SP1 and Windows Server ‘8’ Beta
Mar 10th
I expect many of you have tried out the new version of VMM 2012 that will be generally available before long. It is an incredible piece of software that I have blogged about several times just after the first general beta since it arrived about one year ago. But there is one thing it cannot do: manage Windows Server ‘8’.
Now that the bits of Windows Server 8 are available to everyone, it is very good news that Microsoft has released the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of System Center 2012 for Windows Server ‘8’ Beta support. The focus of this CTP is on VMM and DPM in combination with Hyper-V and is therefore not aimed to work with all the other System Center 2012 modules. It essentially focuses on managing the fabric of your private cloud including Windows Server ‘8’.
These are the capabilities you can try out:
- Hyper-V Network virtualization
- Hyper-V VM’s on an SMB2.2 file share (on a Windows 8 file server or scale out file cluster)
- VHDX format
- Live Storage Migration
- Live Migration without shared storage
- VM protection on CSV 2.0 volumes
- VM protection on remote SMB2.2 file shares
- Protection of de-dup enabled file share volumes
System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server ‘8’ Beta Support can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29099
Remember that this CTP is not even beta so only run this in a test environment!
How To Boot From VHD with Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Feb 29th
[Update: I have verified this procedure to also work with Windows 8 Consumer Preview]
Back in September I wrote a quick guide explaining how to boot from VHD from Windows 8 Developer Preview. This turned out to be a very popular blog that attracted thousands of viewers.
Today we can expect Windows 8 Consumer Preview and although I have not yet been able to test the procedure with this build, I am pretty confident that the following guide will work as well. As soon as I have the ISO I will proof these steps and change my blog if necessary.
Twitter
RSS