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Jun302017June 30, 2017June 30, 20170Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure Stack Administration and Operation

Interview: Microsoft Azure Stack – An Introduction

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Nano Server, Powershell, Virtualization, Web, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Work

Back at Experts Live Australia 2017 I had the chance to talk to Veeam’s Senior Technical Evangelist Clint Wyckoff about the upcoming Microsoft Azure Stack Solution.

Veeam’s Senior Technical Evangelist Clint Wyckoff and Thomas Maurer, Cloud Architect at itnetX and Microsoft Cloud & Datacenter MVP discuss the upcoming Microsoft Azure Stack Solution.

If you want to know more about Azure Stack: Check out my blog post: Microsoft Azure Stack – Azure Extension in your Datacenter


Jun132017June 13, 2017August 3, 20170Commentby Thomas Maurer
AzureStack Admin Portal

Microsoft Azure Stack – Azure Extension in your Datacenter

Posted in Active Directory, Cloud, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Nano Server, Powershell, Private Cloud, Server Core, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Work

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to attend the Microsoft Azure Certified for Hybrid Cloud Airlift in Bellevue WA, which is close to the Microsoft campus in Redmond. I had the chance to spend the week there and talk with the Microsoft PG about different Azure Stack scenarios. Most of the discussions and presentations are under NDA, but there are a few things I can share, since they are publicly announced. I prepared this blog post already a couple of months ago, when I was talking to a lot of different customers about Azure Stack, and since then Microsoft also shared some new information about the release of Azure Stack Technical Preview 3.

The Azure Stack Announcement

Azure vs Azure Stack

Microsoft announced Azure Stack at Microsoft Ignite in May 2015. Back at this time Microsoft did only mention about the vision of Azure Stack and that Azure Stack will bring cloud consistency between the Microsoft Azure Public Cloud and your Private Cloud. But Microsoft did not really announce exactly what Azure Stack will be and how it will be implemented in your Datacenter.

During the Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference (WPC 2016), Microsoft announced more information about the availability of Azure Stack. For more information, you can read the Microsoft blog posts, but I tried to summarize the most important parts.

Building a true Hybrid Cloud and Consistency with Microsoft Azure

Azure Stack

This is probably the most important part about Azure Stack today. Microsoft Azure Stack will bring Azure consistency between the Microsoft Azure Public Cloud and your Private Cloud or your Hosters Service Provider Cloud using the Azure Resource Manager. So you will be able to not only operate an Azure-like environment, like you could with Windows Azure Pack and System Center, you now get real consistency between Azure and Azure Stack. You not only get the exact look and feel from the Microsoft Azure Public Cloud, you also can use the same Azure Resource Templates and deployment methods as you can in the Public Cloud. This allows customers to really operate in a Hybrid Cloud environment, between the Microsoft Public Cloud, their own Private Cloud and also local Service Provider Clouds.

Bring the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to your on-premises environment with Azure Stack. This extension of Azure allows you to modernize your applications across hybrid cloud environments, balancing flexibility and control. Plus, developers can build applications using a consistent set of Azure services and DevOps processes and tools, then collaborate with operations to deploy to the location that best meets your business, technical, and regulatory requirements. Pre-built solutions from the Azure Marketplace, including open source tools and technologies, allow developers to speed up new cloud application development.

The Integrated System Approach

Azure Stack Integrated System

(picture by Microsoft)

Microsoft announced that Azure Stack will be available as an appliance from different hardware vendors in Mid 2017. The confirmed hardware providers delivering Azure Stack Appliance at this point in time will be: Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo and later in 2017 we will also see an appliance from Cisco, Huawei and Avanade.

The big difference here is that Microsoft delivers the Azure Stack platform first in an appliance way, which is really different from the way they delivered Windows Azure Pack. Windows Azure Pack was based on System Center and Windows Server and every customer could design his own environment based on their needs.

This was great, but also had some huge challenges for customers. Clouds needed different designs, this ended up in very complex design workshops where we basically discussed the customer solutions. The installation and configuration of a Windows Azure Pack platform was also very complex and a lot of work which needed a lot of resources, knowledge and of course a lot of project costs. Before customers could start saving money, they had to invest money to get things up and running. Of course, system integrators like itnetX and others, built automation to spin up clouds based on Windows Azure Pack, but still the investment needed to be done.

The use of an appliance approach not only helps to spin up clouds faster, but also build environments on tested hardware, firmware and drivers. Another point here which makes a great case for an appliance solution, are management and operations. Management and operation of a cloud-like environment is not easy, doesn’t matter what software you are using. Keeping the platform stable, maintained and operational will end up in a lot of work, especially if every cloud looks different. The last thing I want to mention here is upgrading, if you want real Azure consistency, you need to keep up with the ultra-fast pace of the Azure Public Cloud, which is basically impossible or extremely expensive. An integrated system scenario can really help you keep things up-to-date, since updates and upgrades can be pre-tested before they are released for you to deploy. This will help you save a huge amount of testing since every environment looks the same.

Operating Azure Stack

Azure Stack Administration and Operation

As already mentioned, Azure Stack will be delivered as an integrated system. OEMs, will help you to setup and install your Azure Stack appliance in your datacenter, but they will not fully manage the Azure Stack environment. You will need to have some Cloud Operator managing and operating your Azure Stack. With this all the host will be sealed and administrators do not have access to the hosts or Hyper-V Manager or Failover Cluster Manager to mange the systems. Instead, Administrators or Cloud Operators will manage the system for a management portal.

Azure Stack Platform

Since this is an integrated system, you don’t even need to care what it is running in the background. But still for a lot of us it is still very interesting to see how Azure Stack is built. In the back Azure Stack runs on “common” rack mount servers from HPE, Dell, Lenovo and Cisco, for HPE this is the DL380 Gen9. From the software stack it is running Windows Server 2016, and the Software Define Datacenter features such as Storage Spaces Direct, the new Windows Server 2016 Software-Defined Networking Stack an Hyper-V. In the release version of Azure Stack we will see a Hyper-Converged Storage Spaces Direct architecture starting from 4 nodes. On top of this Microsoft used code from Azure to bring the Azure Resource Manager, Azure Resource Providers and the Azure Portal to the Azure Stack.

Azure Stack POC – Microsoft Azure Stack Development Kit

Azure Stack Development Kit

Very early in the development process of Azure Stack, Microsoft releases Technical Previews to customers, so they could test Azure Stack on one node deployments. This is called the Azure Stack POC and you can download it today on a single physical server, and it was only designed for non-productive, non-HA environments. Microsoft officially announced that they will rename the Azure Stack POC to Azure Stack Development Kit after the General Availability of Azure Stack Mid 2017. This is really a great solution to quickly spin up a test environment of Azure Stack without having to invest in hardware.

Azure Marketplace Syndication

Azure Stack Marketplace Syndication

You will be able to create your own Marketplace items in Azure Stack, building your own templates and images and offer them to your customers. One of the greatest editions Microsoft made in the Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 is the Azure Marketplace Syndication. This allows you to get Marketplace items from Azure and offer them in your Azure Stack offering to your customers. With that you don’t need to build all Marketplace items by yourself.

Azure Stack Identity Management

Azure Stack has to be integrated into your datacenter. In terms of Identity, Microsoft allows you to use two ways to integrate. First, and from my site the preferred option, is Azure AD (AAD) which allows you to integrate with an existing Azure Active Directory. Azure AD can be synced and connected with your on-premise Active Directory and this will allow you to login to Azure as well as Azure Stack. The other option Microsoft is offering is using ADFS to bring identities to your Azure Stack.

The Azure Stack Business Cases

Since Azure Stack is consistent with Microsoft Azure, the question comes up, why are we not just using Azure. There are many good reasons to use Azure, but there are also some challenges with that. Azure Stack can make sense in a couple of scenarios.

  • Data Sovereignty – In some cases data cannot be stored outside of a specific country. With Azure Stack, customers have the option to deploy in even their own datacenter or on a service provider within the same country.
  • Latency – Even Microsoft offers a solution to reduce network latency to Azure, with using Azure Express Route, in some scenarios latency is still a big issue. With Azure Stack can customers place Azure very close to the location where resources are accessed from.
  • Disconnected Scenarios – In some scenarios you really want to benefit form the consistent deployment model, and for example use Azure Resource Manager (ARM), but not everywhere on earth do you have access to Azure or sometimes you have a very bad connection. Think about cruise ships or other scenarios where you need to run IT infrastructure but you are not able to connect to Azure.
  • Private Instance of Azure – For some companies shared infrastructures can be challenging, even security standards in Azure are extremely high, it is not always an option. With Azure Stack, companies can basically spin up their completely own instance of Azure.
  • Differentiation – Service Providers or even Enterprise companies cannot only use the Azure Marketplace, but they can also build their own solutions for the Azure Stack and make them available to their customers.

Pricing and Licensing

As mentioned Microsoft will offer Azure Stack from 5 different OEMs. HPE, Dell and Lenovo will deliver a solution at Azure Stack GA in mid-CY17, Cisco and Huawei will be available later. The hardware needs to be bought directly from the OEM or Partner. Some of the also offer a flexible investment model like the HPE Flexible Capacity. For the pricing model of Azure Stack software, Microsoft decided to deliver the licensing of Azure Stack on a pay-per-use base. This meets of course the cloud economics and there will be no upfront licensing costs for customers. Services will be typically metered on the same units as Azure, but prices will be lower, since customers operate their own hardware and facilities. For scenarios where customers are unable to have their metering information sent to Azure, Microsoft will also offer a fixed-price “capacity model” based on the number of cores in the system.

Azure Stack will be offered in two different models, Pay-as-you-use model and Capacity model. The pay-as-you-use model is licensed by Microsoft via the Enterprise Agreement (EA) or Cloud Service Provider (CSP) programs. The capacity model is available via EA only. It is purchased as an Azure Plan SKU via normal volume licensing channels. For typical use cases, Microsoft expects the pay-as-you-use model to be the “most economical” option.

The Azure Stack pricing models

Azure Stack will be offered in two different models, Pay-as-you-use model and Capacity model. The pay-as-you-use model is licensed by Microsoft via the Enterprise Agreement (EA) or Cloud Service Provider (CSP) programs. The capacity model is available via EA only. It is purchased as an Azure Plan SKU via normal volume licensing channels. For typical use cases, Microsoft expects the pay-as-you-use model to be the “most economical” option.

Azure Stack Pay-as-you-use model

For the pay-as-you-use model you will you can take advantage of the cloud economics and only pay for resources which are actually consumed, plus additional costs for the Azure Stack hardware and the operations.

Service prices:

  • Base virtual machine $0.008/vCPU/hour ($6/vCPU/month)
  • Windows Server virtual machine $0.046/vCPU/hour ($34/vCPU/month)
  • Azure Blob Storage $0.006/GB/month (no transaction fee)
  • Azure Table and Queue Storage $0.018/GB/month (no transaction fee)
  • Azure App Service (Web Apps, Mobile Apps, API Apps, Functions) $0.056/vCPU/hour ($42/vCPU/month)

Azure Stack Capacity model

For the capacity model, two packages are available which makes you license the physical cores of your Azure Stack system via an annual subscription. The packages are only available via Enterprise Agreement (EA).

  • App Service package ($400/core/year)
    Includes App Service, base virtual machines and Azure Storage
  • IaaS package ($144/core/year)
    Includes base virtual machines and Azure Storage

You will also need additional licenses if you deploy Windows Server and SQL Server virtual machines, like you would do if you are using your traditional Hyper-V servers.

What else will you need

  • Integrated System (hardware) – you will need to purchase the Azure Stack hardware from one of the OEM vendors
  • Support – you will need to purchase support from Microsoft for software support and a support package for the hardware from the hardware provider. If you already have Premier, Azure, or Partner support with Microsoft, your Azure Stack software support is included.
  • Service Providers – Service Provider can also license Azure Stack to others using the CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) channel.

Azure Stack Roadmap

At the Azure Stack GA release this summer, Microsoft will deliver Azure Stack hardware with provides from HPE, Dell and Lenovo. Later in 2017 Microsoft will also deliver Azure Stack with Cisco, Huawei and Avanade hardware. Azure Stack at GA will support 4-12 nodes, 1 single scale-unit and a single region.

Microsoft will also deliver some of the services at General Availability on Azure Stack, and will add more and more services over time. At GA we will see:

  • Virtual Machines
  • Storage (Blob, Table and Queue)
  • Networking (Virtual Networks, S2S VPN, …)
  • App Service (in Preview)
  • SQL (in Preview)
  • MySQL (in Preview)

After GA, Microsoft  will continuously deliver additional capabilities through frequent updates. The first round of updates after GA are focused on two areas: 1) enhanced application modernization scenarios and 2) enhanced system management and scale. These updates will continue to expand customer choice of IaaS and PaaS technologies when developing applications, as well as improve manageability and grow the footprint of Azure Stack to accommodate growing portfolios of applications. Please be reminded that this will not just be a product you purchase, think about it as a service which will add features and functionality over time.

The choice for your datacenter

Windows Azure Pack

Obviously, Microsoft is pushing Azure Stack since it will bring consistency to the Azure public cloud, which means your companies and people need to understand the advantages of using methods like DevOps and Infrastructure in code. This will help you to make the most out of Azure Stack and the Azure Resource Manager. If you already have Microsoft Azure know-how, this is great, because it will also apply to Azure Stack.

No worries, if you are not there yet, or for some reason this doesn’t make sense to you, Microsoft still has a great solution to build traditional Virtualization platforms together with automation using System Center, Windows Server and if needed Windows Azure Pack. Both solutions, System Center and Windows Azure Pack, will be supported in the future and will get updates.


Aug052015August 5, 2015August 5, 20154Commentsby Thomas Maurer
System Center Logo

Summary: Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 R2 and Azure Pack now available

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private Cloud, Service Management Automation, Service Manager, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, VMware, Web, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Azure Pack, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Work

Last week Microsoft released Update Rollup 7 (UR7) for System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack. And as always, Update Rollup 7 does not only include a bunch of fixes, it also includes some new features. This time especially Windows Azure Pack and System Center Virtual Machine Manager got some nice updates. Components that are fixed and updated in this update rollup

  • Data Protection Manager (3065246)
    • Support for Windows 10 Client operating system
    • Ability to use an alternative DPM server to recover from Azure Backup Vault
    • Improvements for backup on Hyper-V Replica VMs
    • Other improvements and fixes…
  • Orchestrator & SMA (3069115)
    • Orchestrator: some small fixes
    • SMA
      • SMA runbook execution fails if a PowerShell execution policy is set to Unrestricted through a Group Policy Object.
      • Fixed an error when you try to save or import a runbook in SMA
  • Operations Manager (will be released later)
    • The rollup is delayed by few weeks, as engineering team is working on recently reported issues.
  • Service Manager (3063263)
  • Service Provider Foundation (3069355)
    • This update includes general API changes to improve product quality.
  • Virtual Machine Manager (3066340)
    • Support for Windows 10 Client Operating System
    • Support for new Linux Operating Systems (Debian 8)
    • Support for VMWare vCenter 5.5 management scenarios (more infos VMWare vCenter 5.5 management scenarios)
    • Support for Multiple External IP Addresses per Virtual Network
    • Option to Reassociate Orphaned virtual machines to their Service or VM role
    • Support for VMM DHCP Extension PXE/TFP Forwarding
    • Some scale improvements if you have more than 50 Hyper-V Hosts
    • Some Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) fixes and improvements
    • Other fixes…
  • Windows Azure Pack (3069121)
    • Tenants cannot delete the checkpoints of their virtual machines
    • Support for VM names of up to 15 characters
    • Displaying VHD items during virtual machine creation when there are no hardware profiles in the plan
    • Incompatible VHDs are offered to the tenant when attaching a VHD to a virtual machine
    • Support for tenant plan viewing and self-subscription permission based on security groups
    • Support for Shielded Virtual Machine Management when it’s run on Windows Server 2016 Preview
    • Virtual Machine performance data displayed in the tenant portal
    • Other fixes and improvements…
  • Windows Azure Pack Web Sites (3069358)
    • Adds support for IPv6 to IP SSL functionality
    • Changes Web Deploy publishing from publish.domain.com to site.scm.domain.com.
    • Other fixes and improvements…

One of the new features I want to highlight is the possibility to add multiple public (external) IP addresses to  Virtual Network (Using Hyper-V Network Virtualization HVN). This means a tenant can assign multiple public IP addresses on his NAT gateway and do port forwarding, for example if he runs multiple webservers in that VM Network. This is a feature a lot of customers especially service provider have missed for a long time.

Another improvement we can see is the support for the next release of Windows Server and also support for Windows 10.

 


Feb232015February 23, 2015February 23, 20150Commentby Thomas Maurer
System Center Logo

System Center 2012 R2 and Azure Pack get supports for SQL Server 2014 in Update Rollup 5

Posted in Cloud, IT, Microsoft, Private Cloud, SQL Server, System Center, Virtualization, Windows Azure Pack, Work

Microsoft just released System Center 2012 R2 Update Rollup 5, which includes a lot of new features and fixes. The update also brings support for SQL Server 2014 as a database server for most of the System Center 2012 R2 components. There will be support for the rest of the System Center components in the Update Rollup 6.

Supports SQL 2014 now:

Operations Manager
System Center Orchestrator
Service Management Automation
Service Provider Foundation
Virtual Machine Manager
Windows Azure Pack

Will support SQL 2014 in UR6:

Service Reporting
Service Manager
Data Protection Manager

For information check out the Microsoft System Center Team Blog.

 


Feb192015February 19, 2015February 19, 20152Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Hyper-V vNext Runtime Memory Resize

Sneak Peek into the Next Version of Hyper-V

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private Cloud, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Work

Back in October Microsoft released the first public Windows Server Technical Preview for the next release of Windows Server. At TechEd Europe Bed Armstrong, Principal Program Manager on the Hyper-V team at Microsoft, talked about a couple of new features which are coming in the next release of Windows Server Hyper-V. This is a quick list of some of the new features we will get in the next release of Windows Server Hyper-V, there is a lot more coming until the release of Windows Server vNext and System Center vNext in 2016.

Virtual Machine Configuration Changes

Hyper-V vNext VM Configuration Files

In the next release of Hyper-V Microsoft will change the Virtual Machine configuration files. Today the Hyper-V VM configuration files had the xml file format. You were able to open the file and check and edit the virtual machine configuration inside that file, even it was never supported. By running more and more workloads virtual and in a dynamic cloud way, scale and performance gets even more critical. In the next version of Hyper-V Microsoft will change the VM configuration from the xml file to a binary file format. The new binary format brings more efficient performance at large scale. Microsoft also now includes a resilient logging for changes in the configuration files so this should protect virtual machines from corruption.

New file extensions:

  • .VMCX (Virtual Machine Configuration) – replaces the .xml file
  • .VMRS (Virtual Machine Runtime State) – replaces .bin and .vsv file

Production VM Checkpoints (Snapshots)

Hyper-V vNext Production CheckPoint

Virtual Machine Checkpoints or in older versions Virtual Machine Snapshots were a great solution to take a state of a virtual machine and save it, doing some changes and if something fails you could simply revert back to the time you took the checkpoint. This was not really supported to use in production, since a lot of applications couldn’t handle that process. Microsoft now changed that behavior now fully supports it in production environments. For this Production Checkpoints are now using VSS instead of the Saved State to create the checkpoint. This means if you are restoring a checkpoint this is just like restoring a system from a backup. For the user everything works as before and there is no difference in how you have to take the checkpoint. Production Checkpoints are enabled by default, but you can change back to the old behavior if you need to. But still using Checkpoints brings some other challenges, like the growing .avhdx file, which still apply.

Hyper-V Replica support for Hot Add of VHDX

Hyper-V Replica was one of the greatest new features in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. In Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, if you have hot added a VHDX file to a Virtual Machine, replication failed. In the next version of Hyper-V when you add a new virtual hard disk to a virtual machine that is being replicated, it is automatically added to the not-replicated set so replication continues to run and you can then online update this set with via PowerShell and the VM will automatically resynchronize and everything works as expected.

Hot add / remove of Virtual Machine Memory

Hyper-V vNext Runtime Memory Resize

In Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V you could decrease the Minimum Memory and increase the Maximum Memory of a Virtual Machine using Dynamic Memory while the VM was running. In the next version of Hyper-V you can now increase and decrease the Memory assigned to virtual machines while they are running, even if they are using static memory.

Hot add / remove of virtual network adapters

Hyper-V vNext Hot Add and Remove Virtual Network Adapters

This was maybe the feature VMware fan boys all over the world have used against Hyper-V. However I didn’t really saw a lot of customers doing this, but it is great that you can now hot add and remove network adapters from Virtual Machines.

Virtual Network Adapter Identification

Hyper-V vNext Virtual Network Adapter Identification

For me more important than hot add or remove virtual network adapters is this feature. When dealing with automation you are always happy you can identify different network adapters. For the Hyper-V hosts we have different solutions such as Consistent Device Naming (CDN), sort by PCI slot using PowerShell and other options to identify network adapters. But we didn’t really have a great solution for Virtual Machines. With Network Adapter Identification this changes. You can name individual virtual network adapters in the virtual machine settings and see the same name inside the guest virtual machine.

PowerShell on the Hyper-V Host

PowerShell in the guest

Hyper-V Manager Improvements

Finally, this is something which is not a problem in most environments , since we know how things work. But a lot of people which are Hyper-V beginners coming from VMware or other platforms, they have some simple troubles with Hyper-V Manager. In the next version there are a couple of create improvements which make things a lot easier.

  • Hyper-V Manager is now connecting via WinRM instead of WMI
  • Support for alternate credentials (Requires that you have CredSSP enabled on the server and client)
  • Connected to Hyper-V Hosts via IP address
  • Mange Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and the next version of Hyper-V from the latest console

Power Management improvements

SleepStudy Report Connected Standby Transitions

Microsoft updated the hypervisor power management model to support new modes of power management. And this is one of the reasons I run Windows 10 Technical Preview on my Surface Pro 3. Surface Pro 3 is a device which can run Connected Standby, but if you install Hyper-V on Windows 8.1 Connected Standby stops working. In the next version of Hyper-V Connected Standby will work.

Rolling Cluster Upgrade

Hyper-V vNext Rolling Cluster Upgrades

With this new feature you are finally able to upgrade a Hyper-V Cluster from Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to the next version of Hyper-V without new hardware, no downtime and the ability to roll-back safely if needed. In Windows Server 2012 R2 you had to create a new Hyper-V Cluster while the old Hyper-V Cluster was still running and migrate a Hyper-V Cluster via Cluster Migration Wizard or Live Migration. You can now have Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Hosts and the next version of Hyper-V running in the same Hyper-V Cluster. To make this scenario possible, the Hyper-V team had to do some changes to the Virtual Machine Upgrade Process

New Virtual Machine Upgrade Process

Hyper-V vNext Update VM Configuration Version

To support Rolling Cluster Upgrades Microsoft had to make some changes to the Virtual Machine Upgrade Process. In the current versions of Hyper-V, Virtual Machines were automatically upgraded from the old to the new version, which means that if you once moved a Virtual Machine to a new Hyper-V host you couldn’t move it back again. In a mixed cluster environment this does not work. In the next version of Hyper-V, Virtual Machines will not be upgraded automatically. Upgrading a virtual machines is a manual operation that is separate from upgrading the Hyper-V host. This allows you to move virtual machines back to earlier version of Hyper-V until they have been manually upgraded.

New way how VM Drivers (integration services) get updated

Since Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, VM drivers (integration services) were updated with each new host release, and it was required that the VM driver version matches the host version. When new Hyper-V integration services were shipped you had to update the Hyper-V host and form there you could upgrade the VM drivers inside the virtual machine. With Windows Server vNext Hyper-V Microsoft brings VM driver updates over Windows Update. This means also that you now don’t have to have the VM integration services matching the host version, you simply need the latest version of the integration services released.

Secure Boot Support for Linux

Microsoft is pushing hard to bring more and more supported for Linux operating systems such as dynamic memory and other features. With Hyper-V vNext Microsoft bring Secure Boot support for Linux which works with Ubuntu 14.04 (and later) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.

PowerShell to enable Secure Boot Support for Linux:

Distributed Storage QoS

Hyper-V vNext Storage QoS

In Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V we got the possibility to limit maximum IOPs for an individual virtual hard disk which was a great feature. Everything worked great when you were running the Virtual Machine on a single Hyper-V host, but when you were running multiple Hyper-V hosts with multiple Virtual Machine against the same storage, the Hyper-V host didn’t know that he had to compete with other servers for Storage IOPs or bandwidth. For example the scenario of a minimum IOPs setting did only work on standalone Hyper-V servers. With the next release of Hyper-V and Windows Server Microsoft adds a lot of new stuff. Together with the Scale-Out File Server and Storage Spaces, Microsoft now allows you to define IOPs reservation for important virtual hard disks and a IOPs reserve and limit that is shared by a group of virtual machines / virtual hard disks. This intelligence, build by Microsoft Research, enables a couple of interesting scenarios especially in service provider environments and large scale enterprises.

Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency

Hyper-V vNext Compute VM Reciliency

Microsoft invested heavily into VM resiliency, especially to hardware failure. One of them is the VM Compute Resiliency feature. This feature allows Virtual Machines to run on a host even if the cluster node is not available to the other nodes in the cluster. For example in Windows Server 2012 R2, if the cluster service couldn’t reach the node in the cluster for 30 seconds, the cluster would failover all the virtual machines to another node. If the same things happens in Windows Server vNext Hyper-V, the node would go into isolated mode for the next 4 minutes (default setting) and when the node comes back in four minutes all the virtual machines will still be running. If it doesn’t come back within four minutes the VMs will failover to another node. If a node is flapping from Isolated Mode to running the cluster service will set the node to quarantined and will move all the virtual machines from the node to another node. This should help keep your workloads running even if there are some hardware or network failures.

Evolving Hyper-V Backup

If you are working in IT you know that Backup is always a issues. And things didn’t really get better by running Virtual Machines running on Storage Systems. With the next release of Hyper-V Server Microsoft will release a completely new architecture to improve reliability, scale and performance of Virtual Machine backups. There are three big changes in the backup architecture:

  • Decoupling backing up virtual machines from backing up the underlying storage.
  • No longer dependent on hardware snapshots for core backup functionality, but still able to take advantage of hardware capabilities when they are present.
  • Built in change tracking for Backup of Virtual Machines

RemoteFX

Microsoft also did some improvements on RemoteFX which now includes support for OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 1.1 API. It also allows you to use larger dedicated VRAM and VRAM in now finally configurable.

Hyper-V Cluster Management

This is maybe something you will never use by yourself but there is another great improvements in terms of automation and development. If you have ever used WMI against a Hyper-V Cluster you always had to run it against every Hyper-V Host in the cluster to get all the information. In the next version of Hyper-V you can finally run WMI against Hyper-V Cluster and it will handle it as it would be a single Hyper-V host, so you get all the information from all hosts in the cluster.

This was a quick overview over just some of the feature and improvements which are coming in the next release of Windows Server Hyper-V which will be released in 2016. There will be much more coming until Microsoft officially releases the next version of Hyper-V and of course some of the stuff I wrote about will be improved as well.

If you want to know more about the next version of Hyper-V checkout Ben Armstrong’s TechEd Europe session or visit some of our TechNet events.

 


Jul302014July 30, 2014July 30, 20140Commentby Thomas Maurer
System Center Logo

Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 available

Posted in App Controller, Cloud, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private Cloud, Service Management Automation, Service Manager, System Center, Virtual Machine Manager, Virtualization, Web, Windows Azure Pack, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

Today Microsoft released Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2. With the release Microsoft did not only fix some bugs they also added some features. Especially Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Virtual Machine Manager got some new features and fixes which will help especially in large scale Cloud and Virtualization deployments.

Data Protection Manager

Features

  • Scalable VM backup
    This update rollup improves the reliability at scale for Virtual Machine (VM) backups on Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 R2 infrastructures. This feature is supported on both Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and scale-out file server (SOFS) storage configurations for VM.
  • Backup and consistency check windowImportant This feature is supported only for disk protection for VM data sources.This feature, configured through Windows PowerShell, enables specific time windows to restrict backup and consistency check (CC) jobs. This window can be applied per protection group and will limit all jobs for that protection to the specified time window.After the backup job has ended, all in-progress jobs can continue. Any queued jobs outside the backup and consistency jobs will be automatically canceled.This feature affects only scheduled jobs and does not affect specific jobs that are triggered by the user.Windows PowerShell script examples
    (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn741303.aspx)

    are available on Microsoft TechNet. These examples show how to use PowerShell cmdlets to create the backup and consistency window.

    Notes

    • This feature is not supported for tape or cloud protection jobs.
    • This feature is not supported for non-VM data sources.
    • Setting these windows is the same as running a Modify Protection Group workflow.
  • Support for synthetic fiber channel-to-tapeThis update rollup introduces support for the synthetic fiber channel-to-tape process. Follow the tape certification process
    (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj733581.aspx)

    for third-party tape devices when you use Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

 

Fixes

  • A backup of a mirrored SQL instance fails if the principal SQL instance that was first backed up is now the mirror.
  • DPM console crashes while a recatalog or “mark as free” operation is performed on an imported tape.
  • The MSDPM service crashes when protected data sources have long names.
  • The DPMRA service crashes during replica creation when the database name on one of the SQL instances matches or is a substring of a SQL instance name that is hosted on the protected server.

More information can be found on the Microsoft Page for: Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

Virtual Machine Manager

Features

  • This update includes a Linux guest agent upgrade to support the following new operating systems:
    • Ubuntu Linux 14.04 (32-bit)
    • Ubuntu Linux 14.04 (64-bit)
  • This update also includes the following:
    • Host DHCP extension driver upgrade
    • Several performance improvements
    • Several Management Pack package improvements

 

Fixes

  • Total storage for a User role is reported incorrectly. For example, the User role can use only half of the allowed quota.
  • A host cluster update fails intermittently because of a locked job.
  • Virtual machine (VM) refreshers do not update highly available virtual machines (HAVMs) after failover to another node.
  • A cluster IP address for a guest cluster configuration in a Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) environment is not updated correctly by using HNV policies during failover. For more information about this issue, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

    2981736

    (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2981736/ )

    The cluster IP address in an HNV environment is updated incorrectly during failover

  • Server Message Block (SMB) shares may not be usable by high availability (HA) workloads if they are also connected to stand-alone hosts.
  • Storage objects discovery does not occur on a Virtual Machine Manager server if the discovery item is too big.
  • A Virtual Machine Manager job that assigns network service backend connectivity fails.
  • Enable maintenance mode fails when you evacuate failed-state VMs.
  • The Virtual Machine Manager service cannot be restarted because of database corruption.
  • The ZH-TW language incorrectly appears in the tooltip of the VM Network icon.
  • Library refresher rewrites the alternative data stream on every file during every update.
  • For iSCSI hardware storage-based array, when the MaskingPortsPerView property option is set to “multi-port per view,” the target endpoint is not obtained as the port address.
  • The virtual hard disk (VHD) is left in the source folder after storage migration is completed.
  • The addition of a bandwidth limitation to an existing virtual private network (VPN) connection is not added to the generated script.
  • A VM that is attached to an HNV VM network loses connectivity when it is live migrated to another node in the failover cluster that is not currently hosting other VMs that belong to the same VM network.
  • VM network shared access is lost after a service restart or an update interval.
  • The Remove-SCFileShare command fails for a network-attached storage SMI-S provider.
  • Setting the template time zone to UTC (GMT +0:00) is incorrectly displayed as “Magadan Standard Time.”
  • The System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager crashes when you add groups that contain the at sign (@) character in User roles.
  • VM deployment fails in a VMWare environment when you have virtual hard disk (.vmdk) files of the same size in your template.
  • Deployment of an application host on HAVMM fails and generates a 22570 error.
  • Live migration of an HAVM cross cluster creates a duplicate VM role in the target cluster.
  • An error occurs when you apply physical adapter network settings to a teamed adapter.
  • A VMM agent crashes continuously when the HvStats_HyperVHypervisorLogicalProcessor query returns a null value.
  • A host refresh does not update the VMHostGroup value of a VMWARE cluster after the cluster is moved from VCENTER.
  • VMM reports an incorrect Disk Allocation size for dynamic VHDs that are mapped to a virtual machine.
  • A VMM service template script application does not work for a self-service role.
  • VM creation fails if Virtual Machine Manager undergoes failover during the creation process.
  • The Access Status value of a file share is incorrect in the user interface.
  • The Virtual Machine Manager service crashes because of an invalid ClusterFlags value.
  • VMs cannot be deployed from a service template to a cloud across multiple host clusters (multiple datacenters).

More information can be found on the Microsoft Page for: Update rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager

Orchestrator and Service Management Automation

Fixes

  • When a runbook calls other runbooks, Service Management Automation (SMA) concatenates all the participating runbooks into a single script and then passes the script to the PowerShell Workflow engine for compilation. The resulting script may contain multiple signature blocks, and SMA receives a compilation error from the Powershell Workflow.
  • When child runbooks contain a signature block, the child runbooks cannot be compiled into inline runbooks. If there is more than one signature block, the resulting runbook will be corrupted.
  • Cmdlets should request information from the server, up to a limit on the number of records that are returned, and then request the next “page” of records, until all records are retrieved.
  • When a Windows PowerShell user uses the Set-SmaCertificate cmdlet, the user cannot receive private key information when he or she uses the Get-AutomationCertificate activity.
  • The Automation menu stops working in Administrator Portal, and you may notice that the Orchestrator ODATA API controller cannot return Modules data. Additionally, you receive the following error message:
    Microsoft.Data.OData.OdataInnerError
    Message: The file exists.
    TypeName: System.IO.IOException
  • Service Management Automation (SMA) resources are paged. The cmdlets have to evaluate the response from the web service for the presence of a continuation token and then make a sequence of ListNext web requests if a continuation token is present.
  • SMA may not return the latest job ID for the runbook. The Invoke-ConfiguratorRunbook activity will have the job ID when it calls the Start-SMARunbook cmdlet, and the job ID should be returned to the caller. This occurs because SMA does not return the most recent job for a runbook. This issue occurs occur in a multiple-run scenario. If the configurator passes the first run, this issue has no effect.
  • The Orchestrator Runbook Service (RunbookService.exe) may crash, and you receive the following error message:
    Application: RunbookService.exe
    Framework Version: v4.0.30319
    Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
    Exception Info: System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException
  • If a runbook is large enough to exceed the default Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) channel size, an exception occurs. This issue causes the job to be stuck in the “New” state.
  • When Update Rollup 2 is uninstalled, the connection properties to the instance of Microsoft SQL Server are cleared.

 

 

More information can be found on the Microsoft Page for: Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator

Service Manager

Fixes

  • The Microsoft Systems Center 2012 Operations Manager configuration item (CI) connector does not retrieve disk mount point information for the Service Manager database.
  • When a service request is created from a request offering in the console and when every user prompt is of the Simple List prompt type, the console shows options from all simple lists in each user prompt.
  • When you try to close a customized change request, you cannot close the change request, the task throws an error, and the close is not actioned.
  • MPSync job failures that are logged to the event log do not contain enough information to allow for a quick diagnosis of the problem.
  • All Service Manager workflows may stall when any invalid XML characters (control characters) are used in a work item property.
  • Using the “Set First Response or Comment” task in a service request creates a “Private” flag that cannot be used for evaluation in a notification action log or a user comment update. This behavior occurs because the private flag is undefined.
  • If the configuration management database (CMDB) is down (that is, if it is offline or unable to connect because of network issues) at the time that the Health service is restarted and if the CMDB continues to be offline for a long time, the Health service may enter an unrecoverable state even if the database comes online again later.
  • Configuration Manager Connector synchronization may stop after Update Rollup 2 for Service Manager 2012 SP1 or Update Rollup 6 for Service Manager 2012 R2 is applied. This issue occurs when the connector tries to synchronize malformed or incomplete software version information from the Configuration Manager database.

More information can be found on the Microsoft Page for: Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager

Operations Manager

Fixes

  • A deadlock condition occurs when a database is connected after an outage. You may experience this issue may when one or more HealthServices services in the environment are listed as Unavailable after a database goes offline and then comes back online.
  • The Desktop console crashes after exception TargetInvocationException occurs when the TilesContainer is updated. You may experience this issue after you leave the console open on a Dashboard view for a long time.
  • The Password expiration monitor is fixed for logged events. To make troubleshooting easier, this fix adds more detail to Event IDs 7019 and 7020 when they occur.
  • The Health service bounces because of high memory usage in the instance MonitoringHost: leak MOMModules!CMOMClusterResource::InitializeInstance. This issue may be seen as high memory usage if you examine monitoringhost.exe in Performance Monitor. Or, the Health service may restart every couple of days , depending on the load on the server.
  • The Health service crashes in Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP) if the RunAs account is not read correctly.
  • Windows PowerShell stops working with System.Management.Automation.PSSnapInReader.ReadEnginePSSnapIns. You may see this issue as Event ID 22400 together with a description of “Failed to run the Powershell script.”
  • The PropertyValue column in the contextual details widget is unreadable in smaller widget sizes because the PropertyName column uses too much space.
  • The update threshold for monitor “Health Service Handle Count Threshold” is reset to 30,000. You can see this issue in the environment, and the Health Service Handle Count Threshold monitor is listed in the critical state.
  • An acknowledgement (ACK) is delayed by write collisions in MS queue when lots of data is sent from 1,000 agents.
  • The execution of the Export-SCOMEffectiveMonitoringConfiguration cmdlet fails with the error “Subquery returned more than 1 value.”
  • The MOMScriptAPI.ReturnItems method can be slow because a process race condition may occur when many items are returned, and the method may take two seconds between items. Scripts may run slowly in the System Center Operations Manager environment.
  • When you are in the console and click Authoring, click Management Pack, click Objects, and then click Attributes to perform a Find operation, the Find operations seems unexpectedly slow. Additionally, the Momcache.mdb file grows very large.
  • A delta synchronization times out on SQL operations with Event ID 29181.
  • Operations Manager grooms out the alert history before an alert is closed.
  • The time-zone settings are not added to a subscription when non-English display languages are set. Additionally, time stamps on alert notifications are inaccurate for the time zone.
  • Web Browser widget requires the protocol (http or https) to be included in the URL.
  • You cannot access MonitoringHost’s TemporaryStoragePath within the PowerShell Module.
  • The TopNEntitiesByPerfGet stored procedure may cause an Operations Manager dashboard performance issue. This issue may occur when a dashboard is run together with multiple widgets. Additionally, you may receive the following error message after a time-out occurs:
    [Error] :DataProviderCommandMethod.Invoke{dataprovidercommandmethod_cs370}( 000000000371AA78 )
    An unknown exception was caught during invocation and will be re-wrapped in a DataAccessException. System.TimeoutException: The operation has timed out.
    at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.DataProviders.RetryCommandExecutionStrategy.Invoke(IDataProviderCommandMethodInvoker invoker)
    at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Presentation.DataAccess.DataProviderCommandMethod.Invoke(CoreDataGateway gateWay, DataCommand command)

More information can be found on the Microsoft Page for: Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager


Jul232014July 23, 2014July 23, 20143Commentsby Thomas Maurer
SCVMM Bare-Metal Fails

Add drivers to SCVMM Bare-Metal WinPE Image

Posted in Cloud, Hardware, Hyper-V, IT, Microsoft, Powershell, Private Cloud, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Mananger 2008 R2, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

A long time ago I wrote a blog post on how you can use System Center Virtual Machine Manager Bare-Metal Deployment to deploy new Hyper-V hosts. Normally this works fine but if you have newer hardware, your Windows Server Image does may not include the network adapter drivers. Now this isn’t a huge problem since you can mount and insert the drivers in the VHD or VHDX file for the Windows Server Hyper-V image. But if you forget to update the WinPE file from Virtual Machine Manager your deployment will fails, since the WinPE image has not network drivers included it won’t able to connect to the VMM Library or any other server.

You will end up in the following error and your deployment will timeout on the following screen:

“Synchronizing Time with Server”

SCVMM Bare-Metal Fails

If you check the IP configuration with ipconfig you will see that there are no network adapters available. This means you have to update your SCVMM WinPE image.

First of all you have to copy the SCVMM WinPE image. You can find this wim file on your WDS (Windows Deployment) PXE Server in the following location E:\RemoteInstall\DCMgr\Boot\WIndows\Images (Probably your setup has another drive letter.

WDS SCVMM Boot WIM

I copied this file to the C:\temp folder on my System Center Virtual Machine Manager server. I also copied the extracted drivers to the C:\Drivers folder.

After you have done this, you can use Greg Casanza’s (Microsoft) SCVMM Windows PE driver injection script, which will add the drivers to the WinPE Image (Boot.wim) and will publish this new boot.wim to all your WDS servers. I also rewrote the script I got from using drivers in the VMM Library to use drivers from a folder.

Update SCVMM WinPE

This will add the drivers to the Boot.wim file and publish it to the WDS servers.

Update WDS Server

After this is done the Boot.wim will work with your new drivers.