Altaro who introduced an easy to use backup product for Hyper-V in 2011, informed us they have just launched a new Hyper-V blog. Their first article goes into good detail about Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and can be found here: http://www.altaro.com/blog/hyper-v-dynamic-memory-explanation-and-recommendations-2/

Version 3 of Altaro Hyper-V Backup

We can also announce that version 3 of Altaro Hyper-V Backup will be released on February 7.

Some of the new features are:

1. Central Management console on CSV Cluster
2. Increased backup performance with ReverdeDelts V2
3. Great new ‘Schedule Groups’ – allows easier backup scheduling
4. Live backup of Linux VMs
5. 5Drive Swap / Rotation.

Currently beta 2 is available here:

Keynote – by Jaap Wesselius and Peter Noorderijk

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V networking – by Aidan Finn

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V storage – by Hans Vredevoort

Windows Server 8 DDDD – by Ronald Beekelaar

SCVMM 2012 – by Maarten Wijsman

These videos are uploaded to the youtube Hypervcommunity channel from our German friends:

http://www.youtube.com/user/hypervcommunity

Again thanks for the really nice job!

But…. This meeting was really, really great! With a fully loaded room (people were even sitting on the stairs), great speakers with great sessions and a very satisfied crowd we must be very happy and satisfied, and we are!

Specials thanks to our sponsors: Altaro, VEEAM, Inovativ, PQR, Wortell and Microsoft! Without their support it was not possible to organise this event. Also a special thank to our German friends Carsten Rachfall en Jan Kappen who have recorded all sessions. These video’s will be published very soon, so keep an eye on www.hyper-v.nu for links to these recordings.

We will also thank our guest speakers Aidan Finn and Ronald Beekelaar. Both of them were from overseas! They both have given a great session with a lot of immersion into Windows 8!

Last but not least we will thank the visitors for attending this event. We hope that you all come again to our next event!

Here are the presentations of this great event:

Keynote – Jaap Wesselius and Peter Noorderijk

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Networking – Aidan Finn

Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Storage – Hans Vredevoort

Windows 8 DDDD – Ronald Beekelaar

SCVMM 2012 – Maarten Wijsman

Cheers, Peter

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!

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?

• It can be used in all VHD scenario’s (including boot from VHDX)
• The maximum size has gone up from 2TB (minus 8K) in VHD to 16TB in VHDX (minimum 3MB)
• It will be the default virtual disk format for Hyper-V in Windows 8 (and is not supported by earlier versions)
• It will be convertible to VHD and back to VHDX
• It can be created by the default Hyper-V PowerShell Library in Windows 8
• It has a default larger block size (32MB for fixed and dynamic disks and 2MB for differencing) and aligns at 1MB boundaries (in a range between 1 and 256MB, although this is not a hard limit)
• Its sector size matches the physical sector size and sectors and all internal I/O is 4K aligned working well for advanced format disks like 4K disks
• It is equal to or faster in speed than VHD disks
• It can be mounted, browsed and ejected from Windows Explorer
• It is more resilient to power failures as it uses a log file for metadata changes like block allocations and state changes (the data blocks itself are not logged)

• It accepts user embedded data (key/value pairs)
• It does not accept mixing a VHDX child and a VHD parent.
• It is scriptable (PowerShell, WMI)
• It supports online maintenance/metadata operations (moving, merging, mirroring, re-parenting) greatly enhancing availability.

As you can see there is substantial innovation in the new Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk format which will not only be put to good use in Hyper-V alone. It is one of the great building blocks of the Microsoft Storage story in Windows 8.

CREATING VHDX WITH POWERSHELL

Creating a new VHDX and using it for a new VM is as easy as this:

Import-Module Hyper-V
New-VHD –VHDFormat VHDX –Path D:\VHD\Parent.vhdx –VHDType Dynamic -SizeBytes 50GB

Creating a VHDX with a Parent and Child relationship looks like this:
New-VHD –VHDFormat VHDX –Path D:\VHD\Child.vhdx –ParentPath D:\VHD\Parent.vhdx –VHDType Dynamic
-SizeBytes 50GB

In one of the next parts you’ll see that we can place Hyper-V guests and their VHD(x) files on an SMB2 Share as well.

Creating a VM is child’s play:
New-VM –Name VM01 –Path D:\VHD\Child.vhdx –Memory 6GB

Sources: Wikipedia, SNIA.org, Building Windows 8

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You can follow me on Twitter:  @hvredevoort  and you are welcome to +K me at Klout

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:

• Live Storage Migrate a guest from USB disk to a local disk
• Live Storage Migrate a guest from a local disk to a new Windows 8 Pool and Spaces virtual disk
• Live Storage Migrate a guest from local disk to shared storage on a single host
• Live Storage Migrate a guest from a shared disk on a single host to a shared disk on a Windows 8 Hyper-V cluster
• Live Storage Migrate a guest from a shared disk on a cluster to a CSV version 2 volume on the same cluster
• Live Storage Migrate a guest from any location to an SMB2 file share on a ScaleOut Fileserver with Continuously Available Shares
• 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.
• 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!

While thinking about all these possibilities there are quite a few concepts that need work and further thought. I’d say a perfect topic for a series of blogs on Windows 8 Storage and Hyper-V. If Hyper-V is not directly involved, those topics will be treated as well.

Some of the topics that I can now think of are:

• VHDX and Storage PowerShell
• Windows 8 File Server with Pools and Spaces
• Windows 8 iSCSI Target Server
• Windows 8 ScaleOut File Server
• Cluster Shared Volumes 2.0
• Live Storage Migration
• Offload Data Transfer (ODX)
• Hyper-V Virtual Fibre Channel
• Hyper-V Replica
• Live VHD Merge
• Storage Metering
• Native 4K disk Support
• Backup & Recovery with Windows 8 Storage

Last week I presented Windows 8 Hyper-V and storage and was able to show a few stunning things related to this subject. The slides and videos will be available from this blog shortly.

Further testing and writing good blogs/books are largely dependent on having the right equipment. So I am openly inviting vendors to offer the Hyper-V.nu team possibilities to explore their server, storage and network hardware and software. If you are interested, you can send enquiries to @hvredevoort.

]]> http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2012/01/windows-8-storage-and-hyper-v-part-1-introduction/feed/ 3 http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2012/01/microsoft-private-cloud-computing-book/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2012/01/microsoft-private-cloud-computing-book/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:09:26 +0000 Hans Vredevoort http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/hvredevoort/2012/01/microsoft-private-cloud-computing-book/ Today – during the announcement of System Center 2012 RC availability) – seems the perfect occasion to announce our book called Microsoft Private Cloud Computing. 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:

• Aidan Finn (MVP Virtual Machine @joe_elway)
• Patrick Lownds (MVP System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management @patricklownds)
• Damian Flynn (MVP System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management @damian_flynn)
• Hans Vredevoort (MVP Cluster @hvredevoort)

Aidan writes the introductory chapters on Private Cloud, Hans deals with the Fabric Management (Servers, Storage, Network), Patrick explains the Service Management (VMM Library, Service Modeling) and Damian focuses on Private Cloud Solutions (VMM Services, Self-Service, App Controller).

Kristian Nese (@kristiannese) who is also MVP System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management accepted the role of technical reviewer. Kristian has also written a book on Cloud Computing in Norwegian.

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.

We are still busy writing our final chapters and will soon be starting with the editing process. The release of Microsoft Private Cloud Computing is expected just a few weeks after Microsoft Management Summit (MMS12), in May 2012.

So far writing my first book has been an amazing experience. Very little spare time and hardly any time for tweeting and blogging (which is disastrous for my Klout and PeerIndex rankings).

Before this, I had the pleasure to be the technical editor to Aidan Finn’s successful Mastering Hyper-V Deployment book.

There is a provisional book cover and although currently only Aidan Finn is mentioned, there are three other authors who contribute to the book. Not to worry, that will change some day.

The book can be pre-ordered from here

Related: http://www.microsoft.com/business/events/en-us/PrivateCloudExec/#fbid=IqJgx-M_szS

Here are the 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/

One of the visitors of this blog asked the question if we could publish a list of recommended post Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 hotfixes related to either Clustering or Hyper-V. Well here it is!

For a complete overview of what was rolled-up in SP1 take a look at the Excel sheet (Updates in Win7 and WS08R2 SP1.xls) which can be found on here.

Note I. Microsoft will release hotfixes if an issue occurs that needs to fixed before releasing a roll-up update or a service pack. However, the hotfix in question is intended to correct only the problem that is described in the article. Apply the hotfix only to systems that are experiencing the problem that is described in the articles. The hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next software update that contains this hotfix.

Note II. Updates can be applicable to Windows Server 2008 R2 (RTM) and/or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

If you have any comments or there are hotfixes missing please send me an email at maarten [at] hyper-v.nu.

The new System Center 2012 vision will be laid out in full detail!

Register for it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/business/events/en-us/PrivateCloudExec

Date: January 17th 2012
Time: 17:30h CET

Hyper-V Replica

While configuring replication that uses certificate-based authentication on servers joined to a domain, if you provide a short name for the primary server while adding authorization entries, enabling replication will fail. To avoid this, identify servers using their fully qualified domain names.

While configuring replication on servers joined to a domain, if you provide a short name for the Replica server for certificate-based authentication, enabling replication will succeed, but the pre-requisite check prior to a planned failover will fail. To correct this, update the Replica server name with the following Windows PowerShell cmdlet:

Set-VMReplication -vmname "<Name of VM>" -recoveryservername "<FQDN of replica server>"

MAP is one of the tools provided by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Security Compliance Manager provide tested guidance and automated tools to help organizations plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies—easier, faster, and at less cost. All are freely available, and fully-supported by Microsoft

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