More information about System Center Universe DACH/Europe in Bern Switzerland

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

SCU2013

Some days ago System Center Universe DACH/Europe was announced and finally we got more information on the event it self.

Finally the event will be a two day event on September 16th/17th 2013 in Bern Switzerland. There will be sessions in 4 parallel tracks, 2 Keynotes (day 1 and day 2) and approx. 36 Breakout sessions with a lot of System Center and Windows Server specialist, Microsoft MVPs and Microsoft employees as speakers.

Markus Erlacher (CH) General Manager itnetx and former Microsoft Senior Technical Solution Professional http://www.itnetx.ch/ @markuserlacher

Maarten Goet (NL) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://www.opslogix.com/ http://www.inovativ.nl/ @maarten_goet

Thomas Maurer (CH) Microsoft MVP [VIrtual Machine] http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/ @thomasmaurer

Mike Resseler (BE) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://scug.be/mike/ @mikeresseler

Travis Wright (USA) Principal Program Manager for Windows Server & System Center Microsoft Corp / @radtravis

Marcel Zehner (CH) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://blog.scsmfaq.ch/ @scsmfaq

Pete Zerger (USA) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] @pzerger

Philipp Witschi (CH) Virtualization and Fabric Management Subject Matter Expert http://www.itnetx.ch/ @philippwitschi

Carsten Rachfahl (D) Microsoft MVP [VIrtual Machine] http://www.hyper-v-server.de/ @hypervserver

Andreas Baumgarten (D) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://startblog.hud.de/ @abaumgarten

Stefan Roth (CH) Cloud Architect, SCOM Subject Matter Expert http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://blog.scomfaq.ch/ @scomfaq.

Stefan Johner (CH) Cloud Engineer, SCSM Subject Matter Expert http://www.itnetx.ch/ http://scsmlab.com/ @scsmlab

Mike Epprecht (CH) Technical Evangelist DPE Microsoft Switzerland @fastflame

Stefan Koell (A) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://code4ward.net/ @stefankoell

Markus Klein (D) Microsoft MVP [System Center Cloud & Datacenter Management] http://www.ms-privatecloud.info/ @markusklein01

Michel Lüscher (CH) Senior Consultant - MCS Switzerland

http://www.server-talk.eu @michelluescher

Thomas Roettinger (D) Program Manager Server and Cloud Division Microsoft Germany @troettinger

If you need more information about System Center Universe Europe check out the System Center Universe website and checkout the blog post from Stefan Roth: System Center Universe DACH/Europe (SCU DACH) – FAQ

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Configure VM Processor Compatibility for Legacy Operating Systems

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

In Windows Server 2008 R2 you had a setting in the Hyper-V Manager GUI to enable Processor Compatibility for legacy operating systems such as Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows Server 2000. In Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V this setting is gone from the GUI, but you can still change it via Windows PowerShell.

By using the Get-VMProcessor cmdlet you can list the virtual CPU information of your Hyper-V virtual machines.

As you can see you can find a property called CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled which is set to “False” by default and this is okay in 99% of all cases. But even if Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows Server 2000 is not officially supported by Microsoft anymore there are some customers which have to run some VMs with legacy operating systems and by changing this setting via Windows PowerShell and the Set-VMProcessor cmdlet you can allow VMs to run old operating systems.


Set-VMProcessor NT4VM -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled 1

And of course you can also change it back


Set-VMProcessor NT4VM -CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled 0

Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Together with Symantec, Mahmoud Magdy (Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server) and Mikko Nykyri (VMware vExpert) we produced a whitepaper called “Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions”. This whitepaper covers an overview about virtualization and the challenges which come with the new workloads in terms of backup and recovery.

Because of the outstanding economy, flexibility, and service levels it offers, virtualization is transforming data centers at breakneck speed: by 2016, an estimated 80 percent of the world’s x86 servers will be virtual machines (VMs).1 But the speed of this transformation, along with the high resource utilization, ease of cloning, moving workloads, and other ways virtualization works its magic, raise challenges for “traditional” IT services and the teams that deliver them. Nowhere is the complexity that virtualization creates for traditional IT services more apparent than in backup and recovery, which participants in a recent Symantec survey ranked among their least-successful IT initiatives. This paper addresses five critical decisions organizations must make when building a backup and recovery plan to:

Maintain protection, visibility, and control of applications and data.

Maximize utilization of established infrastructure, processes, staff, and budget.

Use virtualization to improve backup and recovery processes.

Create an efficient, scalable, future-prepared backup and recovery environment.

Each issue is presented first in general terms that apply across IT environments, and then add comments for specific platforms, applications, or industries based on our individual experience as VMware® vExperts and Microsoft® MVPs.

You can download the whitepaper here: Symantec Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions

Make also sure you checkout the Google Hangout event on Fri, May 10, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM.

Join a panel of virtualization experts including Microsoft MVPs Mahmoud Magdy & Thomas Mauer and VMware vExpert Mikko Nykyri as they discuss the white paper they co-authored and offer their thoughts on the most important things to consider for a virtualized server environment.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V: Configure VM Processor Compatibility via PowerShell

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

If you have a mixed Hyper-V environment with Hyper-V hosts which have different CPU generations you may cannot live migration Virtual Machines from one Hyper-V host to another without setting the VM CPU Compatibility setting.

Note: I saw a lot of different environments where different generation of Intel CPUs were used, and most of the time Live Migration did still work. I would recommend to set this setting only if you really need it.

If you need to do this for multiple Virtual Machines you may better use Windows PowerShell to do this.

To do this you can use the new Hyper-V PowerShell module and the Get-VMProcessor and Set-VMProcessor cmdlet. With the Get-VMProcessor cmdlet you can get information about the virtual CPU of VMs. You can list this for all virtual machines running on one host by using the following command


Get-VMProcessor *

To change this setting for all virtual machines running on the Hyper-V host you can use the following PowerShell command. This does only working with virtual machines which are not running.


Get-VMProcessor * | Set-VMProcessor -CompatibilityForMigrationEnabled 1

If you want to shut down all the VMs first you can use the following command.


Get-VM | Stop-VM

If you just want to do this for a single VM you can use the following commands.


Get-VM TMG | Stop-VM

Get-VM TMG | Set-VMProcessor -CompatibilityForMigrationEnabled 1

To do a full automation you could do it the following way:


Get-VM * | Stop-VM

Get-VM * | Set-VMProcessor -CompatibilityForMigrationEnabled 1

Get-VM * | Start-VM

As you can see you can also find the “CompatibilityForOlderOperatingSystemsEnabled” property to enable Processor Compatibility for legacy Operating Systems in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V for example Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows 2000.

Cannot remove Hyper-V Host from SCVMM

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

System Center Logo

Today I run in to the problem where I could not remove a Hyper-V Hosts from System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The Hyper-V host was reinstalled before he was removed from SCVMM and the host was showing has HOSTNAME (pending) in the SCVMM Management Console. If you did a right click to remove the host, the Remove option was greyed out.

But don’t worry Windows PowerShell came to the rescue, with the following command you can remove the Hyper-V host from Virtual Machine Manager.


Get-SCVMHost <HOSTNAME> | Remove-SCVMHost -force

Migrate Hyper-V Cluster to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V via Cluster Migration Wizard

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 2012 Logo

If you have already an existing Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster and you want to upgrade to Windows Server 2012 you have two options. The first one is by moving all virtual machines via System Center Virtual Machine Manager from the old Cluster into a new cluster. The second way to do it, is to use the Cluster Migration Wizard which is part of Windows Server 2012.

In my case I have two clusters one “old” Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster and my new Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V cluster. Both Clusters are fully configured and both have access to the same disks/LUNs. The disk and all the VMs are running on the old cluster.

On the new cluster you can start the Cluster Migration Wizard.

This will bring up the Cluster Migration Wizard. The wizard will ask you about the old cluster.

The Cluster Migration Wizard will scan the old cluster for CSVs and Cluster roles. You have to select the Cluster Shared Volume you want to migrate to the new cluster. Note: you can only migrate CSVs including all virtual machines running on this CSV and not just single virtual machines. If you want to migrate single virtual machines you could do a Hyper-V Export/Import or using System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Since the Cluster Migration Wizard detects the roles as Hyper-V virtual machines he also asks for the new Hyper-V Virtual Switch.

You get a quick summary with all the information what the Migration Wizard will do, and you can migrate all roles. This means the Migration Wizard will create all cluster roles on the new cluster but will not take the existing VMs offline the VMs at this point are still running on the old cluster. You also get a Failover Cluster Migration Report at the end.

This report also shows you what’s next:

All the clustered services and applications selected for migration were migrated successfully. You may now take the clustered services and applications offline in your old cluster. Also take offline Cluster Shared Volumes used by any migrated roles, as well as storage pools for virtual disks used by any migrated roles. Then these disks, Cluster Shared Volumes, and clustered services and applications can be brought online in your new cluster.

In the new cluster you can now see the roles which are all turned of because there are still running on the old cluster. And you can also see the CSV which is offline on the new cluster and online on the old cluster.

As already mentioned we had no downtime until now. Now you can go and shutdown all the virtual machines running on your old cluster and take the migrated CSV offline.

Take the CSV offline

On the new cluster bring the CSV online

Bring the virtual machines on the new cluster back online.

And this is more how you can migrate a cluster. Remember there are still some tasks left.

Upgrade the Integration Components of all the virtual machines to the newest version.
Convert all VHDs to the new VHDX format to dynamic disks.
I also recommend that you use CSV Block Cache

There is also a great video from Symon Perriman and Rob Hindman, a Program Manager on the Windows Server Clustering & High-Availability team, in which they explain how you can upgrade to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Windows Azure: General Availability of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Thomas Maurer

Today Microsoft announced the General Availability of the Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service offering. This includes the new Virtual Machine and Virtual Network capabilities. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production apps.

Today’s IaaS release also includes new enhancements:

VM Image Templates (including SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and SharePoint images)
VM Sizes (including Larger Memory Machines)
VM Prices (reduced prices 21%-33% for IaaS and PaaS VMs)

Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service allows you to create Virtual Machine and Virtual Networks hosted by the Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud. I already created a blog post how you can create new Virtual Machines in Windows Azure and how you can connect System Center App Controller to manage your Private Cloud as well as your Public Cloud hosted in Windows Azure.

New Windows Azure Virtual Machine Compute Pricing

Below are the new hourly on-demand rates for Windows Azure Virtual Machines:

Size Name	# of CPU Cores	Memory	Windows VM Pricing	Linux VM Pricing
ExtraSmall	Shared	768 MB	$0.02 per hour	$0.02 per hour
Small	1	1.75 GB	$0.09 per hour	$0.06 per hour
Medium	2	3.5 GB	$0.18 per hour	$0.12 per hour
Large	4	7 GB	$0.36 per hour	$0.24 per hour
ExtraLarge	8	14 GB	$0.72 per hour	$0.48 per hour
A6	4	28 GB	$1.02 per hour	$0.82 per hour
A7	8	56 GB	$2.04 per hour	$1.64 per hour

Note that the above prices are for hourly on-demand usage (meaning there is no commitment to use them for more than an hour and you pay only for what you consume). Complete pricing details for Windows Azure Virtual Machines can be found here.

Commitment Pricing Discounts

You can also optionally take advantage of our 6 Month and 12 Month commitment plans to obtain significant discounts on the standard pay as you go rates. With a commitment plan you commit to spend a certain amount of money each month and in return we give you a discount on any Windows Azure resource you use that money on (and the more money you commit to use the bigger the discount we give).

You can get more information on the blog post from Scott Guthrie or the Windows Azure homepage.