Last updated by Thomas Maurer at March 19, 2014.

Mar192014March 19, 2014March 19, 20140 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Hyper-V Network Virtualization NVGRE: No connection between VMs on different Hyper-V Hosts

Posted in Cloud, Hosting, HP, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private Cloud, ProLiant Server, Server Core, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Windows Azure Pack, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

I have worked on some project with Hyper-V Network Virtualization and NVGRE, and today I have seen an issue with Encapsulated Task Offloading on some HP Broadcom Network adapters.

Issue

I have Hyper-V Hosts running with 10GbE Broadcom Network Adapters (HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 530FLR-SFP+ Adapter) with driver version 7.8.52.0 (released in 2014). I have created a new VM Network based on Hyper-V Network Virtualization using NVGRE. VM1 is running on Host1 and VM2 is running on Host2. You can ping VM2 from VM1 but there is no other connection possible like SMB, RDP, HTTP or DNS. If you are using a NVGRE Gateway you can no even resolve DNS inside those VMs. If VM1 and VM2 are running on the same Hyper-V host everything between those VMs works fine.

If you are using Server Core, which you should by the way, you can use the following command to check for those settings:

Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name &lt;NICNAME&gt;

1	Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name <NICNAME>

Resolution

The Broadcom Network adapters have a feature called Encapsulated Task Offloading which is enabled by default. If you disable Encapsulated Task Offloading everything works fine. You can disable it by using the following PowerShell cmdlet.

Set-NetAdapterEncapsulatedPacketTaskOffload -EncapsulatedPacketTaskOffloadEnabled $false -Name &lt;NICNAME&gt;

1	Set-NetAdapterEncapsulatedPacketTaskOffload -EncapsulatedPacketTaskOffloadEnabled $false -Name <NICNAME>

After that connection inside the VMs started to work immediately, no reboot needed.

Feb222013February 22, 2013February 22, 20130 Commentby Thomas Maurer

The State of Cloud Storage in 2013

Posted in Cloud, Hosting, HP, IT, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Virtualization, Web, Work

Mark Russinovich just posted a tweeted with the Infographic for The State of Cloud Storage in 2013 which compares, Microsoft Windows Azure, Google, Amazon, Rackspace and HP.

Nov282011November 28, 2011November 29, 20111 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Building a new Hyper-V Private Cloud Lab

Posted in Active Directory, Cisco, Cloud, Hardware, Home, HP, Hyper-V, IT, KTSI, Microsoft, ProLiant Server, School, Server, Server Core, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, Virtualization, Web, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 8, Work

Two years ago I created my first real IT Lab with some HP ProLiant ML110 G5. I used this in the past years to test new products and projects. The Lab at this time was very limited, no storage, no cluster, not much RAM and weak CPU performance. Not much help if you work a lot with Hyper-V Clusters and System Center products.

I was looking around for some time now to find a cheap offer for new servers. In the last week I found a offer from Cisco with c200 M2 servers and I couldn’t resist to buy two of the for my Hyper-V Cluster nodes. The offer was a special deal which was even cheaper than building the servers by my own, at this point thanks to my former employer Atlantis Informatik AG.

Now what I will do is creating a new Hyper-V Cluster friendly environment with two Cisco C200 M2 Hyper-V nodes, one HP ML110 G5 as Storage Server and one of my old HP ML110 G5 servers as Hyper-V Server which all my Management servers and Active Directory will run on.

If you want to know more about Hardware you can use for a Hyper-V Lab I recommend the posts of Carsten Rachfahl on hyper-v-server.de (german).

Hardware Configuration

Hyper-V nodes:

2x Cisco C200 M2 – Intel Xeon 5620 2.4GHz Quad Core, 16GB RAM, Remote Management, IPMI, 6 Networkports

Storage Server:

1x HP ProLiant ML110 G5 – Intel Xeon E3110 3.0 GHz Dual Core, 8GB RAM, 4x 500GB Raid 10, 3 Networkports

Management Hyper-V node:

1x HP ProLiant ML110 G5 – Intel Xeon E3110 3.0 GHz Dual Core, 8GB RAM

Oct182011October 18, 2011October 17, 20115 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

HP Microserver N40L Raid Utility and Driver

Posted in Hardware, HP, IT, Microsoft, ProLiant Server, Web, Windows Home Server, Windows Server, Work

Now after setting up my HP Microserver N40L as a Windows Homeserver I had to install the utilities to monitor the Raid and other Hardware. On the HP Support Site you can find a link to the AMD Download page where you can download the Chipset Driver which also includes the Raid Driver and the Raid utility.

Download the AMD Chipset Drivers for the HP Microserver N40L

Oct142011October 14, 2011October 14, 201127 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

WHS with HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L

Posted in HP, IT, Microsoft, ProLiant Server, Software, Web, Windows Home Server, Windows Server

Two days ago my HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L arrived. Since I need more disk space I was looking for a good NAS solution. My first experiences with some of the common NAS vendors were not that great, most of the time the NAS was very very slow. Now this may has changed in the past years but still I prefer a mini server with a Windows OS.

That is where the HP ProLiant MicroServer and Windows Home Server 2011 meet, so I gave it a try. And guess what, it’s a great solution and it does exactly what I need. It stores files with a good performance, it’s quiet, it does not need a lot of power, let me stream content to my Xbox and enables me remote access to my data.