Windows Server 2012: Hyper-V Snapshot Reminder

Windows Server 8

Last year I created a Windows PowerShell script for System Center Virtual Machine Manager which checks all the Virtual Machines for Snapshots and if you have any it will send you an E-Mail and it will remind you about that.
It were just some small changes from the SCVMM PowerShell cmdlets to the Windows Server 2012 PowerShell cmdlets.

Hyper-V Snapshots Reminder


# Get Snapshots
$snapshots = Get-VM | Get-VMSnapshot
 
# Check for existing Snapshots
if ($snapshots.count -gt 0){
 
    # Create the List of Snapshots
    $info = $snapshots | Format-Table VMName, Name -auto | Out-String
 
    # Mail Configuration
    # ==================
 
    # Configuration
    $emailFrom = "user@mydomain.com"
    $emailTo = "user@yourdomain.com"
    $emailSubject = "VM Snapshot Reminder"
    $emailMessage = "You have still some snapshots: `n `n" + $info + "`n Greetings your Hyper-V Server"
    $smtpServer = "mail.server.com"
    $smtpUserName = "username" # This could be also in e-mail address format
    $smtpPassword = "password"
    $smtpDomain = ""
 
    # SMTP Object
    $smtp = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer)
    $mailCredentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential
    $mailCredentials.Domain = $smtpDomain
    $mailCredentials.UserName = $smtpUserName
    $mailCredentials.Password = $smtpPassword
    $smtp.Credentials = $mailCredentials 
 
    # Send E-Mail
    $smtp.Send($emailFrom, $emailTo, $emailSubject, $emailMessage)
 }


Windows Server 2012: Doing multiple configuration changes on Hyper-V VMs via PowerShell

Windows Server 8

Over the weekend I was Setting up my lab for the RTM of System Center 2012. I created some Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machines on my Windows Server 2012 beta Hyper-V server. After I had created all VMs and installed them, I realized I forgot to configure the limit for Dynamic Memory for the Hyper-V Virtual Machines.

Now here the new PowerShell module for Hyper-V which comes with Windows Server 2012 helped me save some time.

Hyper-V PowerShell

 

First I check the Dynamic Memory Maximum value for all my System Center 2012 Virtual Machines.

Get-VM -Name SC2012* | ft Name, MemoryMaximum

After that I changed the value from all my System Center 2012 Virtual Machines to 8GB

Get-VM -Name SC2012* | Set-VM -MemoryMaximumBytes 8589934592

btw. if you don’t know that 8GB are 8589934592 Bytes PowerShell can help you, check this out:

Get-VM -Name SC2012* | Set-VM -MemoryMaximumBytes 8GB

Windows Server 2012: Hyper-V PowerShell

Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager, did also a blog post on performing bulk configuration changes in Hyper-V via Windows PowerShell on his blog.

 

The new SkyDrive rocks…

Microsoft SkyDrive

Today Microsoft released some new SkyDrive Apps for Windows and Mac and alos offers 25GB of free online storage. I really love SkyDrive to keep my files in sync and access them everywhere. With the new apps the integration is much better, easier and 25GB of free storage is a fair deal.

Making personal cloud storage for Windows available anywhere, with the new SkyDrive

With the new Apps, SkyDrive is integrated in your operating system. If you need some online Storage, Cloud Sync or you are already using a service like Dropbox or GDrive you should have a closer look at Microsoft SkyDrive.

SkyDrive Explorer

 

New features:

  • SkyDrive for the Windows desktop (preview available now). View and manage your personal SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer on Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista with this new preview app available in 106 languages worldwide.
  • Fetching files through SkyDrive.com. Easily access, browse, and stream files from a remote PC running the preview app to just about anywhere by simply fetching them via SkyDrive.com.
  • SkyDrive storage updates. A new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage as their needs grow.
  • SkyDrive for other devices. We’ve updated the SkyDrive apps on Windows Phone and iOS devices, bringing better management features and sharing options to those devices. We’re also releasing a new preview client for Mac OS X Lion, letting you manage your SkyDrive right from the Finder.

 

Checkout more about SkyDrive

Windows Server 2012 – CDN (Consistent Device Naming)

Windows Server 8

There is a new feature coming with Windows Server 8 called Consistent Device Naming (CDN) which should make life in the datacenter a lot easier.

CDN

It allows to hardware vendors to consistently name NICs in the BIOS which means the Windows Server 8 can read this information and name NICs the same.

That means that the name of the NICs on the chassis can be the same name on the NICs in the OS.

CDN  Consistent Device Naming

If you have ever worked with Hyper-V Clusters you are going love this feature.

Windows Server 2012: SMB 2.2 is now SMB 3.0

Last September at the Build Conference, Microsoft announced a new version of SMB (Server Message Block protocol), at this time the new Version was called SMB 2.2. Now some days ago at MMS 2012 (Microsoft Management Summit 2012) Microsoft announced the new name of the next generation server operating system, Windows Server 2012.

Now with this change and the Windows Server Team announced on their blog that the new name of the Server Message Block protocol will be SMB 3.0.

I think this makes totally sence, because the Team did a lot of work and this Version of SMB is a Major release.

Some of the new function of SMB 3.0 available in Windows Server 2012:

  • SMB for Server Applications
  • Active file sharing with SMB Scale Out
  • Scalable, fast, and efficient storage access with SMB Direct
  • Fast data transfers and network fault tolerance with SMB Multichannel
  • VSS for SMB file shares
  • Transparent Failover and node fault tolerance with SMB
  • Secure data transfer with SMB encryption
  • Faster access to documents over high latency networks with SMB Directory Leasing

You can get more Information about SMB 3.0 here:

News from MMS 2012

Yesterday there was the first Keynote at MMS2012 (Microsoft Management Summit). Microsoft made some really amazing announcements.

Microsoft System Center Logo

First Microsoft announced the General Global Availability (RTM) of System Center 2012. You can now download it here: http://aka.ms/syscntr

Windows Server 8

 

Second Microsoft announced the new Name of the next Server Version with the Codename Windows Server 8. It is Windows Server 2012. You can get the beta Version of Windows Server 2012 here: http://aka.ms/win8server

Windows 8 Logo

 

Microsoft also announced on the Windows Blog which Version will of Windows 8 will be available. There will be 4 Versions:

  • Windows 8
  • Windows 8 Pro
  • Windows RT
  • Windows Enterprise

You can check out more on the Windows Blog.

Yesterday Microsoft also released the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012. You can get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=25175&WT.mc_id=rss_windows_allproducts

Ah and by the way HALO4 is comming!

Thanks to John Weston for  getting all the Information together.