I already posted blog post about What’s new in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and What’s new in Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces, now it’s time to focus on System Center 2012 R2 – Virtual Machine Manager.

System Center - Virtual Machine Manager is used to manage your cloud environment, from compute, storage, networking up to virtual machines and services. So the product focus is on the following points:

• Pool of compute, storage and networking
• Scale – Allocable on demand to your customers
• Automated
• Metered
• Self-Service

This are the same point I already mentioned in my blog post “The Definition of Cloud Computing“.

Fully Manage Windows File Server – In Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 you can now fully manage not only third-party vendor storage over SMI-S you can now manage Windows file shares for a Hyper-V over SMB deployment. You can also manage Storage Pools and Storage Spaces.

Bare-Metal deployment of SOFS clusters – You can now not only deploy new Hyper-V hosts from bare-metal, you can now also deploy new Windows File Servers and create Scale-Out File Server clusters and manage Storage Spaces.

Storage Classification for File Shares - In System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager you could create classifications for classic block storage which was managed by VMM. In System Center 2012 R2 – Virtual Machine Manager you can also create classifications for file shares.

Synthetic Fibre Channel – Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V supported virtual Fibre Channel inside the Hyper-V guest virtual machines. Now System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager can finally manage this. It also allows you to do even more.

VMM library ODX support – In SP1 VMM used BITS to deploy new Virtual Machines from a template from a VMM library. In System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager, VMM now used the SMB to copy templates from the library to the host, which also allows to use ODX (Offload Data Transfer) to offload the copy job to the storage array if this feature is available.

Shared VHDX Support for Guest Clustering – Hyper-V 2012 R2 made a new feature available called Shared VHDX which allows a VHDX to be used by multiple VMs at the same time. This is great for guest clustering inside VMs. VMM does support this features and allows to use this feature in services templates.

Live cloning of Virtual Machines – Since Hyper-V 2012 R2 can finally live clone virtual machines VMM 2012 R2 does support this feature.

Support for differencing VHDs - In 2012 Virtual Machine Manager supported dynamic and fixed VHDs and VHDX files. In 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager also supports differencing disks.

Managing top of the rack switch compliance – System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager can communicate with switches from different vendors and can be used to monitor the ports and VLANs on the switch. This is great for troubleshooting

IP Address Management – VMM 2012 R2 integrates in IPAM which is comes with Windows Server 2012 R2. This allows you to create new Logical Networks inside VMM from IPAM or to get networks from VMM into IPAM.

Deploy Network Virtualization Gateways via Service Templates – Microsoft added a Service Template which allows you to deploy Network Virtualization Gateways to Hyper-V hosts, which can be used to connect VM Networks via the physical hardware or via VPN to other environments.

Hyper-V Recovery Manager – Hyper-V Recovery Manager will allow you to do failover from on datacenter to another using clouds.

System Center Operations Manager Dashboard – Microsoft added a new Cloud Health Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager.

If you want to know more about System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager checkout the latest session from Vijay Tewari at TechEd NA on channel9.

Microsoft announced the next version of the Windows Server platform called Windows Server 2012 R2 at TechEd North America. I already blog about what’s new in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V.

Storages Spaces

First there are new exciting new features in Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces. Microsoft first released there Software Defined Storage solution called Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 and this allows you basically to build your own storage solution based on a simple JBOD hardware solution. Storage spaces is a really cost-effective storage solution which allows companies to save up to 75% of storage costs in compare to traditional SAN storage. I also mention some standard features which are included in Windows Server 2012.

Pooling of disks – You can pool physical disks together and create multiple virtual disks on the storage pool even with different resiliency options.

Continuous availability – Storage Pools and Disks can be clustered with the Microsoft Failover Cluster so if one server goes down the virtual disks and file shares are still available.

SMB copy offload – Offloading copy actions to the storage.

Snapshots – Create Snapshots and  clone virtual disks on a storage pool.

Flexible resiliency options – In Windows Server 2012 you could create a Mirror Spaces with a two-way or three-way mirror, a Parity Space with a single parity and a Simple Space with no data resiliency. New in R2 parity spaces can now be used in clustered pools and there is also a new dual parity option. (enhanced in 2012 R2)

Enhanced Rebuilding – Speed of rebuilding of failed disks is enhanced. (enhanced in 2012 R2)

Storage Tiering – Windows Server 2012 R2 allows you to use different kind of disks and automatically moves “hot-data” from SAS disks to fast SSD storage. (new in 2012 R2)

Write-Back Cache – This feature allows data to be written to SSD first and moves later to the slower SAS tier. (new in 2012 R2)

Data Deduplication – Data Deduplication was already included in Windows Server 2012 but it is enhanced in Windows Server 2012 R2, and allows you to use it together with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and supports VDI virtual machines. (enhanced in 2012 R2)

Management – Complete management solutions with Windows PowerShell, Failover Cluster, Server Manager or new in System Center 2012 R2 – Virtual Machine Manager. Now you can setup new Storage Servers, Storage Pools, Storage Spaces and File Shares directly from Virtual Machine Manager. (enhanced in 2012 R2)

ReFS – The filesystem Microsoft first released with Windows Server 2012 is now also supported for clustering, which means it can be used as a CSV (Clustered Shared Volume). Thanks to Didier Van Hoye (MVP) for adding that to the list

Some days ago I wrote a blog post about the definition of Cloud Computing and of course I mentioned Windows Azure several times. Two days ago Microsoft’s General Manager for Windows Azure, Steven Martin, wrote a blog post which says that now 50 percent of the Fortune 500 companies using Windows Azure. If you think about the volume and size of this company this is a huge achievement.

He also mentioned that Gartner predicted that the public cloud service market will grow 18.5% in 2013 but Microsoft’s Windows Azure seems to grown significantly faster.

He also mentioned why Windows Azure out performances Gartners prediction.

Why is Azure growing so fast? Simply put, we’re delivering what customers are asking for—choice and end-to-end support. We understand the diversity of cloud adoption and the requirements customers have for Hybrid application patterns and deployment scenarios. We also know that customers expect support for the entire stack, not just the infrastructure or the application.

So with the IaaS announcement and the other services Microsoft is adding to Windows Azure, like Online Backup and Hyper-V Recovery Manager, the value for a lot of companies will be much higher in the future, and it’s also important to see that Microsoft is the only cloud provider which provides a real end to end solution for customers, partner and hosting providers.

Just think about a world where your services (not just VMs) can be moved between different private clouds, to your favorite hosting provider or scalable around the world with Windows Azure and of course back to your datacenter. Which not also allows you to choose different services but also grow and scale with the speed you need. This is not something which will be available in the future, this is available right now with Microsoft Hyper-V, Windows Server, System Center and Windows Azure.

Checkout Steven Martins blog post: 50 Percent of Fortune 500 Using Windows Azure

The reason for this blog post was a lecture I had at university where lecturer talked about ERP systems (enterprise resource planning) and a question came up from one of the other students about ERP in the cloud and how Cloud Computing is defined. I am not really happy with the answer he gave, because the answer was totally focused on Software as a Service hosted from a service provider and accessible over the internet. Well this is a part of cloud computing but doesn’t not really cover the real definition.

I know I will maybe get a lot of comments on this post, because there is no official definition of “Cloud Computing” and every company maybe thinks different about it, depending on their product range

As someone who has worked in the hosting business and now is working as a consultant for mostly building private or hosted private clouds the definition looks really different. One important statement first. Virtualization is not Cloud Computing, virtualization is a great enhancement for Cloud Computing and is also a important enabler of Cloud computing because without virtualization Cloud Computing could be really hard to do.

I my opinion Cloud Computing is not a technology, Cloud Computing is a concept you can use to provide access to resources. There are three different scenarios in cloud computing.

Image Source: blogs.technet.com

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service – IaaS basically allows customers to use compute, storage and networking resources and deploy for example virtual machines with full access to the operating system. (Example: Windows Azure, Amazon,…)
• Platform-as-a-Service – PaaS provides customers with a platform for their application, for example Windows Server with IIS where customers can deploy their application but don’t have to think about the server itself. (Example: Windows Azure, Webhosting Providers,…)
• Software-as-a-Service – SaaS allows customer to use just a software without caring about the installation or platform itself. For example hosted mailservers or CRMs (Example: Office365, Microsoft Dynamics Online, Xbox Live, Outlook.com,…)

Well another common mistake is to think cloud is always hosted in the internet. Since Cloud Computing is a concept to deliver services, companies can do this also internally which is mostly known as Private Cloud. The Private Cloud can of course also be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS and could be accessible from the internet, but it could also only be available company internal.

• Public Cloud – The Public Cloud is maybe the Cloud people think of mostly when they are talking about Cloud Computing. This is mostly shared services hosted from a services provider which is accessible from the internet.
• Private Cloud – The Private Cloud is a Cloud made for a just one customer or company for example this could be an on premise Cloud hosted in my own datacenter. In some cases the Private Cloud could also be hosted from a services provider.
• Hybrid Cloud – The Hybrid Cloud model will be the model a lot of companies will go for, or already did even without knowing about it. The Hybrid Cloud is a scenario where I have a Private Cloud hosted on premise in my datacenter but I also extend my Cloud to the Public Cloud by connecting cloud services such as Windows Azure or Office 365 to my Private Cloud.

I already wrote about 500 words, but I still didn’t not really answers the question what Cloud Computing is, so we going to have a look at Wikipedia:

Cloud computing – correctly: a Computing Cloud – is a colloquial expression used to describe a variety of different computing concepts that involve a large number of computers that are connected through a real-time communication network (typically the Internet). Cloud Computing is a jargon term without a commonly accepted non-ambiguous scientific or technical definition. In science Cloud computing is a synonym for distributed computing over a network and means the ability to run a program on many connected computers at the same time. The popularity of the term Cloud computing can be attributed to its use in marketing to sell hosted services in the sense of Application Service Provisioning that run Client server software on a remote location.

So with this definition there are five common properties every Cloud has, doesn’t matter if it’s IaaS, PaaS or SaaS based or hosted in the Private or Public Cloud.

• Elastic and Scalable – I think this is one of the overall parts of a cloud. It’s important to be very flexible to get new resources if your business grows over time or has some special peaks where you need more resources. Resources could be more compute power, more virtual machines, more users, or more mailboxes.
• Pooled Compute Resources – From a cloud provider perspective I want to pool my compute, storage and network resources and share them for different customers or services.
• Provides Self-Service Provisioning – To request new resources (virtual machines, Mailboxes or whatever) over a self-service portal which automatically kicks of the specific tasks.
• Highly Automated Management – Because we want to use Self-Services provisioning and doing this in large scales, it’s important that the environment is highly automated. If you think about a simple example: A new employee starts at your company and you want to create a new mailbox for him, you can create a it over a self-services portal. The creation of the mailbox has to me automated in the background because you don’t want to wait for someone to create the mailbox manually maybe two days later.
• Usage-Based Chargeback – Trough the pooled resource you want to be able to do chargeback based on consumed resources. Even if you do another billing system you still want to know how much resources customers have used. This could be how many mailboxes did I use last month, how many minutes my virtual machines was running this month, or much disk space did I use.

I think this 5 things do cover the properties of Cloud Computing in basically all the common scenarios. This there are a lot of things I did not cover in my blog post but it should help people which are new to cloud computing help to understand the different scenarios.

A few weeks ago I worked with Symantec on a whitepaper called Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery: Five Critical Decisions. After we finished we also had a Youtube Live Stream where we talked about the content of this whitepaper.

You can now watch this video on Youtube:

Just got the information that Cisco made the Nexus 1000v for Hyper-V available for download.

What is the Cisco Nexus 1000v

Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches provide a comprehensive and extensible architectural platform for virtual machine (VM) and cloud networking. The switches are designed to accelerate server virtualization and multitenant cloud deployments in a secure and operationally transparent manner. Integrated into the Windows Server 2012 Extensible Switch, and fully compatible with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1, the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series provides:

• Advanced virtual machine networking based on Cisco NX-OS operating system and IEEE 802.1Q switching technology
• Cisco vPath technology for efficient and optimized integration of virtual network services
• Tight integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1
• Layer 2 Switching with Transmit side Rate Limiting
• Security Policy Mobility, inbuilt support for Private VLANs with local PVLAN Enforcement
• Provisioning Port Profiles with deep Integration with SCVMM
• Traffic Visibility, including VM Migration Tracking, NetFlow v.9 with NDE, Cisco Discovery Protocol v.2
• And more…

You can download the Nexus 1000v from the Cisco Website

Today Microsoft announced the new features which are coming in Windows Server 2012 R2 which will be the next version of Windows Server at Microsoft TechEd North America. By the way just to show you how great Windows Server 2012 was and how great it scaled, Windows Azure uses the same Hyper-V virtualization service built-into Windows Server 2012 and this means complete virtual machine compatibility between on premise Hyper-V and Windows Azure IaaS.

Here the next version names:

• Windows Server 2012 R2
• System Center 2012 R2
• Windows 8.1

Now Microsoft announced a lot of new features especially for Hyper-V, and here are some of them:

• Shared VHDX – a VHDX can now be shared between two Virtual Machine by using the virtual SCSI controller. This is created if you need shared storage for guest clustering inside virtual machines instead of using iSCSI or virtual fiber channel.
• Live Migration Compression – Live Migration traffic will be compressed by the Hyper-V host before it’s sent over the wire. Which does reduce Live Migration time dramatically, up to 50% faster.
• Live Migration over SMB Direct (RDMA) – Live Migration can use leverage SMB 3.0 and this means it can also make use of SMB Direct or RDMA which allows you to do live migration even faster.
• Storage Quality of Service (QoS) – Limit storage IOPS per virtual machine
• Live Virtual Machine Cloning / Exporting – You can now live clone a virtual machines without downtime and also export a running virtual machine.
• Linux Guest OS support enhancements – Support for live backups of linux virtual machines and dynamic memory support for Linux guests.
• Hyper-V Replica 2.0 – Hyper-V replica can now replicate not just two one other host, this replica can also replicate to a third Hyper-V host and the replication time was changed to three different settings (every 30 secs, every 5 minutes or every 15 minutes). Hyper-V Replica also got some background scalability and performance improvements.
• Windows Azure Compatibility – As I already mentioned Windows Azure is running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V which means that Hyper-V virtual machines on-premise are also capable to run in Windows Azure
• Online resizing of VHDX – You can expand and shrink VHDX files during the virtual machine is running.
• Automatic Guest Activation – zero touch activation of virtual machines. Virtual machines automaticly get activated if the Hyper-V hosts is an activated Datacenter edition.
• VM Connect using RDP or enhanced VM interaction – This uses Remote Desktop over the VMBus, which allows you to use full remote desktop capabilities (Shared clipboard, audio redirection, folder redirection, smartcards, USB pass-through enhanced login and more…)
• Generation 2 virtual machines – Gen2 VMs are legacy free and based on UEFI. So this means no more emulated devices, boot from virtual SCSI controllers or synthetic network adapters (PXE boot >100MBit) and enables UEFI secure boot as a standard. Supported guest operating systems: 64-bit versions of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
• Zero-downtime upgrade (Cross version live Migration) - Live migrate virtual machines from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2012 R2 (this also includes shared-nothing live migration).
• Hyper-V Recovery Manager – I already mentioned the new service called Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Windows Azure which allows you to run a orchestrator failover of your virtual machines using Hyper-V Replica.
• Deduplication – Deduplication of VDI Virtual Machines

There are a lot of other cool features in Windows Server 2012 R2 which add other great value to Hyper-V and your Private cloud. I will cover them in some other blog posts in the next days.

I already mentioned the System Center Universe 2013 event in europe. Since last week you can finally register for the event and you can now benefit from the early bird offering. The event will be held in Bern/Switzerland during September 16th and 17th 2013 and will include the latest and greatest information about System Center, Windows Server and Windows Azure in 38 sessions.

Whats included?

• The best of the best speakers from all over the world present Microsoft Windows, System Center and Windows Azure content
• More than 15 Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), Microsoft Program Managers and Microsoft Consultants are presenting content
• 2 days, 2 keynotes and 36 breakout sessions in 4 parallel tracks
• No marketing content but technical in-depth, real-world sessions
• Meet the experts sessions (discussions, Q&A)
• Sessions are presented in German and English
• Networking options with other specialists and speakers
• Sponsoring booths
• Food & Beverages during the whole day
• Exclusive Networking Party on September 16th

So if you want to get some drinks with me, make sure you join the Networking Party. You can find me near the bar

But how much does it cost?

There is only 1 package and a limited early bird special until June 30th, so make sure you get the discount.

• Full 2-day pass (all inclusive), early bird price until June 30th –> CHF 399.00
• Full 2-day pass (all inclusive) –> CHF 449.00 (around ~360 Euros or ~470 Dollars)

Sounds interesting? get more information on www.systemcenteruniverse.ch

Yesterday Microsoft published a new download which is called Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica. The Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica guides the IT administrator to design the server, storage and network infrastructure which is required to successfully deploy Hyper-V Replica.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V administrators can replicate their virtual machines from a primary server/cluster to a replica server/cluster for business continuity and disaster recovery purposes. The Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica provides server, storage and network provisioning guidance which would allow IT administrators to successfully plan for a Hyper-V Replica deployment.

You can download it here: Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica

Thanks to James van den Berg (Microsoft MVP) for the link.

In the past weeks I was giving a Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V workshop to customers and as we went to the Hyper-V host management I talked about how you can update your Hyper-V infrastructure and how you can automatically update your Hyper-V cluster.

If we do not think about System Center Orchestrator we have basically two solutions to fully upgrade our Hyper-V clusters first is the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Fabric Patching which is available since System Center 2012. The second one is a new one called Cluster Aware Updating which is included in Windows Server 2012.

Both solutions do basically the same thing and using the same concept:

1. Scanning the Hyper-V host for updates
2. Putting the first node in maintenance mode and pause the node in the cluster
3. Moving all virtual machines to other nodes of the cluster
4. Installing the patches
5. rebooting the server
6. checking if all services are up again
7. stop the maintenance mode
8. start doing the same with the next node

This is basically what both solutions are doing, but there are small differences between them and both have advantages and disadvantages.

Cluster Aware Updating (CAU)

• Moving not only virtual machines to other nodes, it does also move other cluster roles and cluster disks to other nodes
• Cluster Aware Updating can use different update sources (Windows Update, Microsoft Update, WSUS, SCCM,…)
• You can apply hotfixes via CAU
• Cluster Aware Updating has APIs for third party vendors
• You can do driver or firmware updates via CAU
• You can schedule it via Self-Updating mode
• Run pre- and post-scripts
• Update Approval process over WSUS or SCCM
• Only supporting Windows Server 2012
• Coordination via cluster role

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

• Does only move virtual machines to other nodes
• Needs a WSUS server where the updates come from
• Only updates which can be installed via WSUS
• Virtualization (Fabric) Administrator will create update baselines and approve updates
• Not third-party integration
• Log – logs which administrator approved the updates
• Integration in System Center Operations Manager, sets host in maintenance mode on SCOM so no alerts are generated.
• Role based update management
• Supports Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.
• Coordination via Virtual Machine Manager

Both solution do a great job and can of course be extended by using Windows PowerShell, System Center Orchestrator or third-party products.

The two main differences are Windows Server 2012 Cluster Aware Updating is definitely the newer solution with extensibility for third-party solutions with support for other cluster roles not just Hyper-V. Where System Center Virtual Machine is the clear winner, is where you have security roles in place and you need logs and other security features. And System Center Virtual Machine Manager has also a connection to System Center Operations Manager which lets you set Hyper-V nodes to maintenance mode.