XenDesktop Service Template for SCVMM 2012 R2

This is just a heads up to show you some amazing work by a fellow MVP, Brian Ehlert.

Let me first spend some time to explain what Brian does.

Brian is probably one of the most skillful IT-pro I know, and was actually the individual who inspired me to become a Microsoft MVP.

By sharing his deep technical insight through forums, blogging and so on, he simply sets a standard that is hard to achieve.

If you have searched through the internet looking for answers related to Hyper-V/VMM, Brian and myself, are moderators in the VMM forums. And by looking at Brian’s score, you know that he shares a lot with the community.

One of the latest work by Brian, is that he has created a Service Template for SCVMM 2012 R2 that helps organizations to deploy XenDesktop with the service model in VMM.

Microsoft has just released several service templates for you to simplify the deployment process of server applications like SQL, Sharepoint, Lync and much more (more to come!)

Get your hands on the template – and read more about this at Brian’s blog:

http://itproctology.blogspot.no/2013/11/deploying-xendesktop-using-scvmm.html

Welcome to the "Switch to Hyper-V Conference"

This autumn will be loaded with speaking engagement, and together with Niklas Åkerlund in Sweden, I will have two days early in October where we will talk, demonstrate and show the beautiful journey from VMware to Hyper-V.

The reason why we are arranging such an event should be clear by now.

More and more often, we are meeting customers and partners who are seeking for advice when it comes to internal strategies regarding their datacenters. Cost is (obviously) a major factor in this calculation, but management and tools are very important too.

As you may be aware of, we are all waiting for the R2 release where we are moving towards a consistent platform with our Cloud OS.

As part of that, we will focus on things you might normally miss during a normal “Hyper-V vs. VMware” discussion.

Generally speaking, we are constantly focusing on features, licensing and costs when discussing the comparison of these vendors. However, we are taking this to the next level and will focus on the real ‘battle’, the battle the IT pro's are facing each and every day when working with their management tools.

What are the real capabilities of both vCenter and SCVMM?

Are you planning for a solution that is working today with specific thirds party vendors, or are you brave enough to look at this at a higher level?

We will definitively show you that virtualization is a lot more than just virtualization(!).

Remember that to fulfill your datacenter dream, we must include both storage, network, HA, DR and much much more.

Here’s the agenda, and if you are nearby one of these days, I would be glad to see you.

Agenda:

09.00 – 10.00
–What have happened with virtualization lately, and why we are here— (Level 200)
Let’s forget about features in the hypervisors for a second, and climb out of the box to get a better perspective on things. In this session we will look at the entire datacenter and explore what have happened, and where we are going.
This session will focus at the business level and help you to choose a strategy for your investments..

10.00 – 10.45
– Building your Hyper-V Private Cloud with System Center—(Level 400)
System Center 2012 R2 – Virtual Machine Manager may be the best example to show datacenter abstraction layer in real life. This session will focus on Fabric management in VMM 2012 R2, and show how you can integrate, abstract and manage the datacenter pieces. All within a single console.
Network management, storage management, multi-hypervisor management, automation, anf life-cycle management.

11.00 – 11.40
– Performing the switch from VMware to Hyper-V— (Level 400)
There are several tools available to help you with the conversion from VMware to Hyper-V.
This session will show you how you easily can do this manually, automated and simplified with existing tools.

11.40 – 12.00 Lunsj

12.00 – 12.45
–Lessons learned from early switchers—(Level 300)
Many customers and partners have already made the switch, consulted by Lumagate. In this session, we will share the common pitfalls, best practice and what benefits we are seeing at both a short and long term.

12.45– 14:00
Discussion and Q&A
Make the most of it and ask the experts about anything about cloud computing and virtualization and get assistance and guidance before you continue on your journey.

BIO:

Kristian Nese
CTO at Lumagate, Microsoft MVP and Infrastructure Ranger at Microsoft Norway.

Kristian Nese is an experienced speaker, author and evangelist in the cloud computing space, and have implemented private clouds and service provider clouds for some of the largest organizations globally. He’s been working with Hyper-V and System Center since the early beta days back in 2007, and this has led to several books on the subject.
Kristian is an experienced speaker, delivering both keynotes and highly technical sessions (level 400) on subjects like Windows Azure, System Center, Windows Server and Hyper-V, and often used by Microsoft nationally and globally, both as a speaker and writer
To stay sharp, he spend a lot of time in the TechNet forums as well, trying to help the community so they can get the most out of the technology, and deliver training world wide.

Kristian is known for his subject matter expertise within cloud and his heavy coffee consumption.

Niklas Åkerlund
Niklas Akerlund is the Product Manager for Private Cloud at Lumagate. Niklas has been working with Microsoft infrastructure solutions since 1998. He has quite some experience in virtualization projects with consolidation planning and migrations from physical to virtual. Niklas have done both project management and technical design in Hyper-V upgrades and new installations. Niklas started working with Hyper-V at a former Employee in the TAP program for Windows Server 2008 and has a big interest in automation and optimization of virtual machines and hosts. He was also responsible for the TAP program engagement for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 at RTS. Niklas has been speaking on Technet Sweden events and continuously as a MCT at a local learning center. He is also an VMware vExpert 2013 as well as VCP 5. Niklas writes blog articles at vniklas.djungeln.se with automation and virtualization as a focus area. You can find him on twitter where his handle is @vNiklas

http://lumagate.no/switch-from-vmware-to-hyper-v-seminar

Microsoft Service Template Explorer Beta Program

Microsoft Service Templates for SCVMM 2012

If you are into System Center and want to stay ahead, please join the Beta program for Microsoft Service Templates. You can join the program with this link: https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/MicrosoftCloudPack

So what’s the Microsoft Service Template Explorer Beta program?

To get you started, get some insight to the service concept in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 - http://kristiannese.blogspot.no/2012/02/getting-started-with-services-in-vmm.html

This new cool concepts let you deploy scalable, multi-tier applications in your private cloud.

The Service Template Explorer Beta program is an add-in to your VMM server, so that you can explore, download and import service templates directly to your VMM infrastructure, and leverage pre-configured templates from Corp.

Why do we need this?

If you have been exploring the massive service concept, you have probably seen that it may be complex to deploy all the wide diversity of server roles, applications, and to select the proper deployment order and so on. The service templates from Corp is already configured so that you can deploy them into your environment, ready to be used.

Currently available in the Service Template Explorer:

 

·         Windows Server 2012 with Active Directory Domain Services

Since Hyper-V and System Center now supports network virtualization, you would probably think this is great. Customers, application owners etc, can now deploy their own domain controllers through service deployment in an isolated network. Maybe they have an application that requires domain access, or just simply wants to deploy an infrastructure in a quickly and reliable manner. Oh, and remember. If you touch some of the advanced OS configuration in a VM template, like server roles and features, the template will be deployed as a Service instead of a virtual machine – or else these options would be ignored during deployment.

 

·         Windows Server 2012 Domain Name System (DNS)

A service template ready to serve the need for a DNS infrastructure with all the required roles and features enabled for install.

·         Windows Server 2012 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

This service template will include the DHCP role, but if your VMM server will manage the IP addresses and configuration in your virtual environment – also for your VM networks, you might leave this one alone.

·         Windows Server 2012 File Services

Personally, I find this template quite useful in my demo and lab environment, where I can quickly show off the SMB3.0 enhancements to simulate continuously availability and virtual machines over a network share. A lot of other scenarios will require file services too, so this is a good template.

·         Windows Server 2012 Internet Information Services

A lot has been done with IIS in Windows Server 2012, and this template will let you benefit from it all. If you are deploying traditional service templates – which has native support for Server App-V, web applications and dacpacs, this one is very handy.

Getting started with Service Template Explorer Beta

1.       Install the .msi file to a preferred destination.

2.       Go to settings in your VMM console and click ‘Import Console add-in’

3.       Navigate to where you installed the .msi file

4.       Once the import has completed successfully, go to ‘VMs and Services’ workspace in VMM.

5.       Click on ‘Service Template Explorer’

6.       You’ll be presented to the available templates from Corp and you can download these bits to your library.

Once this is completed, you can import the templates into your VMM library server(s) and map them to your resources (networks, VHDs).

The screenshot below is an example of a service deployment in my environment, using the Active Directory service template. As you can see, the service is installed with AD DS and is ready to be promoted as a Domain Controller.

The real deal - Services (Part Two)

If you have tested the deployment of services in VMM 2012, you`re most likely familiar with the Stock Trader Service. You`re able to import this service into your VMM Library. (Check this blog post)

Instead of just deploying this service and show you some screenshots, I`ve de-coupled the service so I`m able to create it from scratch using VMM 2012 and explain the details and see how the Stock Trader service is built and designed.

Remember that VMM 2012 has native support for Web applications, Server App-V applications and SQL data-tier applications.

Creating and deploying a multi-tier service

Let`s pretend that we`re working close with some of our developers and actually know how this application is meant to work.

We also know that this application would require a SQL database server, two middle-tiers and a web-tier. The web-tier should also be able to scale out since it`s stateless and would therefor need a load balancer.

Step 1 – Creating the VM templates

The big hitch in cloud computing is the software dependencies. But with VMM 2012 you`re able to have loosely coupled services like web applications and Server App-V applications. To summarize, you only need a sysprep`d VHD with for example Windows Server 2008 R2 installed.

The SQL Database server requires a Microsoft SQL Server and VMM supports SQL Server Profiles in the Library (containing SQL configuration, service accounts, defines SQL Authentication or/and Trusted Authentication, installation media, TCP/IP and Named Pipes ++) which means we can deploy SQL server as part of our service during the deployment. However, the VHD-file that is used must be sysprep`d with a sysprep`d SQL server as well. (Check this blog post)

To summarize again: Sysprep 2 Windows Server 2008 R2 VM`s where one of them also have a sysprep`d SQL server. Right click your VMs in the VMs and Services view in VMM and click ‘Create’ and ‘VM Template’. VMM will now sysprep your VMs and place them in the library share that you specify.

Step 2 – Preparing the applications

Ok, our developers have sequenced the applications for our middle-tiers by using Server App-V.

If we take a closer look at the packages, we can explore the manifest.xml-files.

These files will show which server roles, server features and any other components that`s required for our VM template to work. The good news is that VMM is able to detect this when you add the application to the template.

Tip: if you know exactly what you`re doing when you`re sequencing your applications, you can have a package ready in a couple of minutes and you`re good to go. However, you`ll most likely have to test the sequencing process again and again and again to be sure that you have done everything correctly. In some cases, your applications are not suited for the Server App-V. But since this would require some testing (I guess) you should create a VM, install the Server App-V sequencer agent – which is included in your VMM setup and available in the library, and use checkpoints/snapshots during your testing. This is a scenario where snapshots are very neat and helpful.

VMM also includes WebDeploy so that you easily can import web applications to your IIS servers. For more information about WebDeploy, click here.

Basically, you install the WebDeploy kit on your web servers, export the application in IIS, and then you`re able to import these applications in to another web server (IIS). In some cases, you can also virtualize these applications by using Server App-V.

Our applications would also require some data-tier applications as well, and VMM has support for this too. A data-tier application (DACPAC) is an entity that contains all of the database and instance objects used by an application. A DAC provides a single unit for authoring, deploying and managing the data-tier objects instead of having to manage them separately. A DAC allows tighter integration of data-tier development with the development of the associated application code. It also gives administrators and application level view of resource usage in their system.

You can extract the data-tier applications by using SSMS 2008 R2.

For more detailed information about SQL data-tier applications, check this site.

Step 3 – Working with Application Profiles

Some new improvements in VMM are related to the Library. When it comes to your applications, you can create application profiles that are loosely coupled with your virtual machines, so you`re able to use them over and over again, with no need for sysprepping your VMs with the applications already present and installed.

Your application packages must be stored in the library and indexed by VMM. The default refresh interval is set to 1 hour but you can do this on demand manually by right clicking your library server/share and click refresh.

So since the service we`re about to deploy is based on the native applications that VMM supports, we will create some application profiles that will install the Server App-V agent and WebDeploy.

WebDeploy and Server App-V is stored default in the library, and when you add a new library server, you have the option to import the default Application Frameworks into the library (which contains Server App-V sequencer and agent, WebDeploy and scripts that would install this automatically during service deployment.

To install these components, you must add a script to the application profile.

Since you would require either WebDeploy or Server App-V agent to be installed prior to the applications, you would normally create a Pre-install script.
Specify the executable and the parameters, and browse to the package located in one of your libraries. Select a Run as Account with proper permissions to install the package in the virtual guest OS.

In addition, you can specify advanced scripting logging for troubleshooting in case the deployment fails.

Once this is configured, you may add the applications and applications scripts required to get the applications up and running. It really depends which application you`re dealing with, and you should work closely with your developers/application owners to get this correct, and fill in the required parameters and instructions for the installation of the applications.

The example above shows the deployment of WebDeploy and a web applications with application scripts.

The same rules apply for the Server App-V applications and SQL data-tier applications.  

Step 4 – Working with the Service Template Designer

We`ve now got our application profiles and the VM templates configured and stored in the Library.

Navigate to the Library workspace and select Service Templates, right click and click Create Service Template.

This will launch the service template designer.

VMM ships with some patterns to get you started really quick. Either a single-tier template or a multi-tier template.

We will start from scratch in this example.

As you can see, you can drag your VM Templates into the designer. We need four VMs for this service, and will therefor use a VM template which contains the sysprepped SQL server, and an empty sysprepped VM for the rest of our tiers.

Let`s start by configuring our SQL Server VM.

This tier would require a SQL server and the SQL data-tier applications. From the service canvas we`re able to click on the ‘Add application’ button and select profiles and applications from our library. (You can also configure the HW and OS profiles for your VMs – directly from this view).

Now, let`s do the same for our middle-tiers and add the Server App-V applications

Now, we have to add our web applications to our web tier.

Since our web-tier should be able to scale out, we must also configure a load balancer. The good news is that Microsoft NLB is integrated into VMM by default, and the only thing you have to do is to create a VIP Template. In this example I`ve created a HTTP VIP Template and associated it with the NLB load balancer in Network in the Fabric view. Once you have done this, you only have to add the NLB feature in the OS configuration on your VM template – along with any other required Web-roles/features to get your web-tier up and running.

VMM knows immediately that this tier should be able to scale out, and during the deployment installs and configure NLB automatically, after you have added the load balancer into the service canvas and defined the connectivity, and set the scale limit.

After you have added all the required profiles, applications and configured the VMs, you should ask yourself: how would I normally deploy this service if I did it manually?

Eventually, this leads us to the Application Deployment order.

In this example, I want my SQL server to be deployed first so it`s able to receive connections and data from the other applications, since they rely on this tier. Second, I want my web-tier to be deployed, and my mid-tiers as number 3 and 4.

Once you have configured all this and feel quite satisfied, you can save and validate the configuration. If there are any errors related to the configuration, VMM will notice you before you go any further.

If everything seems fine, click Configure Deployment, give your service a name and place it either on a host group or a private cloud.

Once you click ‘OK’, intelligent placement will kick in and check where the service should be able to run. If everything is OK, you can start the deployment of your service.

I will most likely create a webcast that demonstrate the entire process in the near future. Please give me a note if you have any questions etc or want me to cover.

The next blog post will focus on the service lifecycle in VMM.

The real deal - Services (Part One)

I was wondering if I should try to create a white paper about «Services» in VMM 2012. But I found out that a bunch of blog post would be more suitable, and also less formal than a white paper.

What is a Service?

From the early beginning of Microsoft Private Cloud, they stated very loud and clear that they were able to focus on the real deal, - services.

If you`re familiar with Windows Azure, you may recognize the term ‘Service’ as in hosted services in the Windows Azure portal. It can be a VM Role, Web Role or a Worker Role. But that`s for Azure. There are some architectural differences between the service concept in Microsoft Private Cloud (VMM) and in Microsoft Public Cloud (Windows Azure).

Let`s talk shortly about both of them before we go any further.

In Windows Azure, you can create hosted services. These services are created in Visual Studio 2010, and as mentioned earlier, either a VM Role, Web Role or a Worker Role. For the Web and Worker Role, you`ll get a configuration file and a package. Upload these files to the Windows Azure portal (or you could simply use System Center App Controller for that) and you`re good to go. Prior to this, you must have signed up and created a Windows Azure Subscription.

The beauty of the Platform as a Service model is that Windows Azure will take care of everything. Define how many instances you`d like and Azure will configure the required VMs, and eventually place them behind a load balancer and a VIP template.

-          Ok, brilliant. But what about the storage?

That`s a very good question Kristian.

When you`re working with Windows Azure – think stateless, stateless and stateless. Also when it comes to the VM Role. You should use one of the storage options in Windows Azure, and there`s several options here as well. Binary Large Objects (Blobs), Queues, Tables and SQL Azure. Now, if you plan for a massive scalable storage solution, use Blobs. This is the cheap storage solution for you hosted services, and if you`re creating an application that will not update the content quite frequently, you can also take advantage of the Content Delivery Networks (CDN) – so that you`re closer to your users, which gives them a better user experience. If your applications require some sort of relational data storage, use SQL Azure.
That was a really short summary of the service architecture in Windows Azure.
And since I`ve got your attention: if you`re an ISV and have not considered Windows Azure as a platform for your developer projects in the future: shame on you. J

In the private cloud where Virtual Machine Manager 2012 plays the most important role, there is also a service concept.
Actually, I`ve blogged about this before. Get a quick introduction by reading this post first: http://kristiannese.blogspot.com/2011/07/understanding-service-concept-in-vmm.html

Welcome back.

As you can see, there are some similarities in both clouds. Reminder: think stateless!

If you plan to scale out, scale out the tiers that`s suitable for this scenario. Stateless!

In VMM 2012 – you can create Virtual Machine Templates, but also Service Templates. A service template is the starting point for your services where you configure virtual machines and connectivity requirements. The service template is more than just a template, because VMM is able to support the life cycle of your applications. So every deployed services are always linked to their templates so you can do servicing of the instances.

Now, what`s an instance?

An instance could be groups of machines that work together which includes machine definitions as well as applications. There is support for these native applications types in VMM: Web Applications (WebDeploy), Virtual Applications (Server App-V packages) and Database Applications (SQL DAC). You can create application profiles in the library so that you can use them over and over again.

For more information about the new improvements in the library of VMM 2012: http://kristiannese.blogspot.com/2011/04/sorting-things-out-in-library.html

So before we go ahead and look closer at the service concept in VMM 2012, why would you consider using services in the first place?

A service can be a single tier service or a multi-tier service. And you are able to configure and manage multi-tier applications as a single entity.

Example, you may have an application that your organization has developed, or you are testing and doing some research on an application from a software vendor. Anyhow, this particular application is comprised of a web server, a database server and an application server which should be considered as critical for your business. Call it a line-of-business application – the one that your CEO really cares about.

Since this one is important, you want this application to be alive and kicking 24/7 – no matter what happens related to traffic and peaks. VMM enables you to handle fluctuations in capacity for your application, allow you to easily add or remove virtual machines (hey – please think ‘stateless’) needed to support the application.

This is the beauty of cloud computing, the cloud workload patterns:

The next blog post will discuss the service designer in detail.

Cheers,