What to expect from 2011

The summary of 2010 would definitely include ’Cloud Computing’.

I guess that 2011 would include the term ‘Cloud Computing’ also, and perhaps people would talk about that term in a more accurate way – since we now have some understanding for what it actually means and does.

With the Server Application Virtualization coming up along with the next version of SCVMM – I`ll guess we`ll have a very exiting and interesting year ahead us.

We would have more of Private Clouds, and far more businesses would evaluate the Public Clouds available.

Maybe the IT-Pro should have a decent understanding of coding and development in the future – because it may be expected from us?

A Power Point presentation will be available on this blog early in 2011 – containing ‘IT-Pro`s and Windows Azure’

Some stuff about the MCITP: Virtualization Administrator 2008 R2

Microsoft has 3 available MCTS exams for the MCITP track.

70-669 – TS: Windows Server 2008 R2, Desktop Virtualization

70-659 – TS: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization

70-652 – TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring

And the PRO exam: 70-693 Windows Server 2008 R2, Virtualization Administrator

I took 70-659, 70-669, and 70-693 in August this year.

I`ve taken some certifications and exams before and have a couple of books from Microsoft Press. But for the Virtualization exams – there are no official material from MS press. Challenging!

(The only available relevant book from Microsoft Press for the Virtualization exam is the 70-652 which covering Hyper-V R1 with a lot of update alerts about Hyper-V R2 J )

Anyhow, I wanted to get certified on this technology.

It was quite interesting to seek all the knowledge by myself, and not get it presented piece by piece from a book that was supposed to cover every part of the skills that should being measured.

So with a bit experience, some HW and SW – I was ready to go.

From my perspective, I think this is the right way to do it in the future also. I feel that I have learned a lot more than I would from reading a book and doing the exercises there.

Summary of the exams:

PRO: 70-693 – Mostly about designing Hyper-V and HA. Many questions about Failover Cluster, Migration (Quick, Live, SAN), CSV vs. LUN (R2 vs. R1). And also some questions about Remote Desktop Services that you should be familiar with. The PRO exam is not ‘easier’ than the other, only different since it`s more like a ‘why and why’ exam, rather than a ‘how to’ like the MCTS-exams.

MCTS: 70-669 – This one was really quick. The exam tested you to see if you knew what to use and when (MED-V, App-V, VDI, Remote Desktop Services). Pay some attention to the different settings in MED-V, App-V (sequencer, client, and different servers). But again: Know what to use and when.

MCTS: 70-659 – Along with the PRO exam, this one was the most interesting. It covered every part of Hyper-V – similar to the PRO exam but only more technically. Know the different Windows Server versions that run Hyper-V (core, Hyper-V 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role installed) and how you could configure each of them. You should expect some questions about host/child settings, Failover Clustering, AzMan, snapshots, backup, and last and very important: SCVMM with the different conversions. A lot of the questions were based on Migrating from x to y, with the different Windows Server versions involved with different SP installed.

You may also get some questions about RDS in this exam.

Feel free to ask me if you intend to take this certification, and I will try to help.

(You`ll end up with a Certificate similar to this one)

Hyper-V and separate Active Directory Domain

Most of the time, I get my inspiration from the forums, where some interesting people asks a interesting question. Today, there was a thread about Hyper-V on separate domain, and what our recommendation was.

You may think that there is a good practice to make your Hyper-V host part of an AD DS directory. Yes, it is. AD DS centralize all access rights to servers and support the delegation of administration services. Especially when it comes to Failover Cluster, the Hyper-V nodes require an Active Directory domain. (Important: You can off course run your Hyper-V hosts in a workgroup (not domain joined) and have VMs that belongs to the domain. But you can`t use Failover Clustering with this configuration).

But sometimes you want to live in an ideal world and separate the Hyper-V hosts with the rest of your domain and create a ‘Utility Directory’ which contains only the Hyper-V hosts. The security and identity context for the networked services in your production domain would remain the same as it was, but the security context for your Hyper-V hosts becomes an independent directory.

But when is this necessary?

It depends. It`s really a question about security, policy, and the size of your network. Remember that you would need additional servers as well to manage this domain. This configuration ensures that end users not lives or operates in the same security context as your Hyper-V hosts.

Any thoughts?

Prepare your ISCSI disk for use

When you want to run a HA solution with Failover Cluster using ISCSI, you need to prepare the disk for use. You need to initialize and format the disks presented by the ISCSI target form one of the nodes in the cluster. You do this on only one node in the cluster.

1.       In Server Manager select ‘Disk Management’. It should show the connected ISCSI-target disks as offline

2.       Right click each of the drives and select the Online option to bring them online. Right click again and select Initialize Disk.

3.       When the initialization is done, right click the unallocated space on a disk and select Create Simple Volume. Make the selections in the wizard to format the disk in the manner you want to formatted. Disks MUST be formatted as NTFS for use in a Failover Cluster. (You don’t need to assign a drive letter). Repeat these steps for every disk you want to use in your cluster.

4.       Right click each of the created disks and select Offline

Congrats. You`re now done. In addition: also follow these steps when creating a Guest Cluster using ISCSI.

Questions and Answers in 60 seconds (Part 2)

-Does R1 allow more than one VM per LUN (and/or didn`t support live migration)?

You could have many VMs per LUN in R1. But when migrating a VM, you actually moved the storage (LUN), which contained the additional VMs. So that would result in some downtime for every VM on that LUN.

In other words: the disk resource was the unit of failover. By this I mean that all VMs stored on a given LUN had to be moved or failed over together.

R2 introduced a significant change in the way storage volumes can be accessed for VMs, and this feature (CSV) is available only for Hyper-V 2008 R2 VMs. CSV functions as a distributed-access file system for access to VHDs. Other cluster technologies from other vendors have accomplished a similar function by creating proprietary cluster file systems. These cluster file systems provide a locking mechanism shared among all the hosts in the cluster that limits access to the disk to a single node at a time, but all nodes have read/writes access. CSV does not use any proprietary volume format, it uses the standard NTFS that Windows has used for years :-). Also: CSV enables all Hyper-V hosts to have full read/write access to the VHDs of the VMs they are hosting. 

CSV is a option that you could turn on in a Failover Cluster that is built with Hyper-V R2 hosts. 

It`s implemented by creating a directory on the C: volume of each node in the cluster.

Example:

C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1

C:\ClusterStorage\Volume2

In this case, two shared disks in the cluster are assigned to CSV. The first volume has 4 VMs stored on it, and the second volume has 5 VMs stored on it. Only one node of the cluster will own the physical LUN of the shared volume, but each volume can be owned by different nodes of the cluster. CSV provides the ability for each node to have full read/write access to the individual VHDs that are used by different VMs.

-Does CSV do anything for performance?

The most impact would be the disk type of your VHDs. Fixed VHDs provides almost the same performance as pass-through disk, but again: gives you the most flexibility. We recommend not to use Dynamic VHDs. Especially in production environment. 

Another thing is to group CSV volumes with similar disk types (as I stated in my previous post. Group SAS disk for one CSV, and SATA for another etc.)

-Where can I get more detailed info on CSV?

Technet is a great source of knowledge: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd630633(WS.10).aspx

Also: Do not hesitate to post things around at the forums. Many people has a lot of experience with Hyper-V, CSV etc.

-Does the hartbeat NIC need IP configured? Can it be on the same switch as the iscsi network?

The hearbeat NIC should as I stated - in an ideal world, have it`s own network. But you could have it over shared networks as well. (Also ISCSI).

Connect to your SQL server

A simple script that enables connection to your default SQL server on port 1433. Works on XP, Vista, Win 7, 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2

Copy the content to notepad and save the file as .bat

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@rem Easy Firewall-script for enabling connetion to default SQL

@echo = SQL Server Ports =
@echo SQLServer default instance port 1433
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1433 "SQLServer"

@echo Dedicated Admin Connection port 1434
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 1434 "SQL Admin Connection"

@echo SQL Server Service Broker port 4022
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 4022 "SQL Service Broker"

@echo Transact-SQL Debugger/RPC port 135
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 135 "SQL Debugger/RPC"

@echo = Analysis Services Ports =
@echo SSAS Default Instance port 2383
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2383 "Analysis Services"

@echo SQL Server Browser Service port 2382
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 2382 "SQL Browser"

@echo = HTTP, SSL, Browser, and Multicast =
@echo HTTP port 80
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 80 "HTTP"

@echo SSL port 443
netsh firewall set portopening TCP 443 "SSL"

@echo SQL Server Browser Service's 'Browse' Button
netsh firewall set portopening UDP 1434 "SQL Browser"

@echo Allowing multicast broadcast response on UDP (Browser Service Enumerations OK)
netsh firewall set multicastbroadcastresponse ENABLE


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Remember to use the built-in support for mounting VHDs (2008 R2)

Scenario: You have a lot of VMs running in your environment. You protect these VMs in some way, either with Windows Server backup, DPM 2010, Symantec, etc. If you primary take backup of the entire VHDs, you have two options when it comes to restore:

1-      Restore the entire VM

2-      Mount the VHD in Windows Server 2008 R2

Number 2 will save your time if you only need to restore some of the files from that VHD.

How to:

1.       Open Computer Management

2.       Select Disk Management

3.       ActionàAttach VHD

4.       Browse to the location of the VHD you want to restore from (check Read-Only)

5.       Mount the VHD

6.       Browse the VHD from your server, and copy the files needed

7.       Detach the VHD