System Center 2012 RTM downloads available

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Since last weekend System Center 2012 RTM downloads are ready for Volume License Customer and Monday night the SC2012 downloads are also available for MSDN and TechNet subscription owners.

http://msdn.microsoft.com

http://technet.microsoft.com

Windows Server 8: Enable CSV Cache

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 8

In Windows Server 8 beta, Microsoft released a lot of new features for Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). One of them is CSV Cache. CSV Cache gives you the possibility to allocate system memory (RAM) of the cluster nodes as cache. This can improve the performance of read requests in workloads like Hyper-V.

Now to enable the CSV Cache on a cluster you have to do this with Windows PowerShell.

First open the PowerShell prompt
Set the size of the CSV Cache. The default it 512MB. With this command you will reserve the Memory on all Cluster nodes for caching.
```
(Get-Cluster). SharedVolumeBlockCacheSizeInMB = 512
```

Now you have to enable the Cache on on the Cluster Shared Volumes you want to use.

Get-ClusterSharedVolume “Cluster Disk 1” | Set-ClusterParameter  CsvEnableBlockCache 1

If you want to know more about CSV Cache, you can read this blog post from Elden Christensen on the Failover Clustering and Network Load Balancing Team Blog.

Install Ubuntu 12.04 on Hyper-V

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Some months ago I made a blog entry about “Install CentOS on Windows 8 Hyper-V“. Now with the new Linux kernel 3.0 the Hyper-V Integration Components are integrated in the kernel. Now Ubuntu 12.04 will be based on the new Linux kernel and this is why it should run perfectly on Microsoft Hyper-V.

Download Ubuntu on Ubuntu.com. Until 12.04 is released you can download the daily builds from here.
Start the Hyper-V Manager and create a new Virtual Machine
Install Ubuntu 12.04
after the Installation everything should work fine

Windows Server “8” Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Provides a visual reference for understanding key Hyper-V technologies in Windows Server “8” Beta and focuses on Hyper-V Replica, networking, virtual machine mobility (live migration), storage, failover clustering, and scalability.

You can download the poster on the Microsoft download site

Windows Server 2008 R2 Blackscreen after enabling Hyper-V Role on Cisco UCS

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Hyper-V R2 SP1

Today I had a strange problem on a Cisco UCS installation. After you enabled Hyper-V on a Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1, you will get a black screen.

Cisco fixed this in the UCS Firmware version 2.0.1(t).

“After enabling Hyper-V in Windows 2008 R2 SP1 then rebooting, the server no longer shows a black KVM screen and a failure of windows startup and login.”

Release Notes for Cisco UCS Software, Release 2.0

Setup System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 CTP

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Thomas Maurer

Windows Server 8

This quick how-to blog postshows you how you can setup the new released System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 CTP.

Get software

First download the software:

You also need a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with SQL 2008 R2 and Service Pack 1

Setup SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1

Install a Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1
Install MS SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1
Open SQL Firewall Ports, so SCVMM can access the SQL Server

Setup SCVMM 2012 SP1 CTP

Setup a Windows Server 8 with the latest updates
Install the .NET Framework 3.5 Features with the Server Manager

or with Windows PowerShell:
[Powershell]
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-Features
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework-Core
[/Powershell]
Install The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7
Install the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Native Client
Install the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 Command Line Utilities
Start the setup.exe and click install
Choose VMM management server and click next
Configure the SQL connection to your SQL Server
Configure a service account. The service account you use has to member of the local administrator group on the SCVMM server and it should not be the default domain administrator.Because if you use the domain administrator as service acocunt you can not use it as “RunAs” account in SCVMM.
Configure the Library share
Install