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Counting down for August 15th…Windows 2012 #Hyperv. Reasons to upgrade…
It is next week : August 15th that Windows 2012 will be available for download for MSDN subscribers. Are you ready to deploy it?
Enhancements in Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 , on network (Teaming, Hyper-V Extensible Switch), multi-tenancy security, higher performance and flexibility.
The performance improvements in Windows Server 2012 over the Server 2008 R2, are huge :
- Increases in the number of logical processors on server hardware, to 160 from 64;
- Increases in the amount of physical memory, to 2TB from 1TB;
- Increases in the number of virtual processors per host server, to 1,024 from 512;
- Increases in the number of virtual processors per virtual machine, to 32 from four;
- Increases in the amount of memory per virtual machine, to 1TB from 64GB;
- Increases in the number of active virtual machines, to 1,024 from 384;
- Increases in the maximum number of virtual nodes in a single server cluster, to 64 from 16;
- Increases in and in the total number of virtual machines, to 4,000 from 1,000
- New virtual disk version : VHDX ( with a built-in feature for preventing data corruption)
- Virtual fiber channel ( making possible to offer the HBA in the host as a virtual HBA to the Virtual Machines)
- SMB file shares to store Virtual Machines
- Hyper-V Replica ( makes possible to create a replica of VMs on other Hyper-V hosts, even in – remote locations ) – ESSENTIAL in DR solutions.
Plus, true live storage migration, shared-nothing live migration, improvements in Dynamic memory… and counting.
Windows Server 2012 will also be available in the desktop version : Windows 8. You can install the Hyper-V on Windows 8 by navigating to the Control Panel and selecting Turn Windows features on or off and select the Hyper-V Platform option.
Note: One of the requirements of running Hyper-V on the Windows 8 edition is that the processor needs to support SLAT (Second Level Address Translation), otherwise Hyper-V will not available.
Resuming, Windows Server 2012 has a lot of improvements and quite a lot of new functionality as well! So, enjoy the upgrade!
Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Help SQL Server Workload
One of the most important system resources for SQL Server is memory.
Lack of memory resources for the database engine results in increased I/O that is orders of magnitude slower than accessing memory.
One of the key benefits of leveraging dynamic memory is the flexibility to respond to the needs of a particular workload that would benefit from additional memory resources and make the most use out of all physical memory resources on a system.
VERY IMPORTANT : The benefit of additional memory depends on your workload.
The main highlights of using DM are:
– Without Hyper-V Dynamic Memory the virtual machines would have to be sized with a specific amount of static memory to ensure that all virtual machines could run on a single node in the case of a failover.
– The additional memory provides significant reduction in the number of I/O operations needed to support the same workload throughput.
– It should be noted that the benefit depends on your workload.
To read the complete review: :Running SQL Server with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory – Best Practices and Considerations
SQL Server with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory – Best Practices and Considerations
The SQL Server team published a whitepaper about considerations for Dynamic Memory in SQL Server VMs.
Dynamic memory enables virtual machines to make more efficient use of physical memory resources. Hyper-V Dynamic Memory treats memory as a shared resource that can be reallocated automatically among running virtual machines. There are unique considerations that apply to virtual machines that run SQL Server workloads in such environments .
To review the document, please download the Running SQL Server with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory – Best Practices and Considerations Word document.
24 Hours in the Cloud : Live on June 1st
The GITCA “24 Hours in the Cloud” round-the-world virtual event focusing on Cloud Computing is scheduled for June 1st. The speakers will be available via twitter to answer questions . Please visit http://sp.GITCA.org/sites/24Hours to find out more.
This is a very important community project and GITCA, supported by Microsoft, is acting as the enabler. So this is the community helping the community which is the way it should be. We have a great selection of presentations from experienced speakers from around the world. Please go to http://sp.gitca.org/sites/24hours/ugpages/FinalSpeakers.aspx to
view the list of speakers and http://sp.gitca.org/sites/24hours/ugpages/FinalSessions.aspx to view the list of sessions.
The first session, keynote by Doug Terry of Microsoft Research, will start at 9am Pacific Daylight
Time [UTC -7]. Please note the start time was incorrectly shown as UTC-8 in previous messages. The event can be accessed via http://vepexp.microsoft.com/24hitc which will go live on June 1st.
Hyper-V : Best Practices and Supported scenarios regarding Exchange Server 2010
The following are the supported scenarios for Exchange 2010 SP1 :
- The Unified Messaging server role is supported in a virtualized environment.
- Combined Exchange 2010 high availability solutions (database availability groups (DAGs)) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root servers
HyperV Guest Configuration
Keep in mind that because there are no routines within Exchange Server that test for a virtualized platform, Exchange Server behaves no differently programmatically on a virtualized platform than it does on a physical platform.
Determining Exchange Server Role Virtual Machine Locations
When determining Exchange Server Role virtual machine locations, consider the following general best practices:
- Deploy the same Exchange roles across multiple physical server roots (to allow for load balancing and high availability).
- Never deploy Mailbox servers that are members of the same Database Availability Groups (DAGs) on the same root.
- Never deploy all the Client Access Servers on the same root.
- Never deploy all the Hub Transport servers on the same root.
- Determine the workload requirements for each server and balance the workload across the HyperV guest virtual machines.
Guest Storage
Each Exchange guest virtual machine must be allocated sufficient storage space on the root virtual machine for the fixed disk that contains the guest’s operating system, any temporary memory storage files in use, and related virtual machine files that are hosted on the root machine.Consider the following best practices when configuring Hyper-V guests:
- Fixed VHDs are recommended for the virtual operating system.
- Allow for a minimum of a 15-GB disk for the operating system, allow additional space for the paging file, management software, and crash recovery (dump) files. Then add Exchange server role space requirements.
- Storage used by Exchange should be hosted in disk spindles that are separate from the storage that hosts the guest virtual machine’s operating system.
- For Hub Transport servers, correctly provision the necessary disk space needed for the message queue database, and logging operations.
- For Mailbox servers, correctly provision the necessary disk space for databases, transaction logs, the content index, and other logging operations. .
Guest Memory : Dynamic Memory should be disabled
Memory must be sized for guest virtual machines using the same methods as physical computer deployments. Exchange—like many server applications that have optimizations for performance that involve caching of data in memory—is susceptible to poor system performance and an unacceptable client experience if it doesn’t have full control over the memory allocated to the physical computer or virtual machine on which it is running.
Many of the performance gains in recent versions of Exchange, especially those related to reduction in input/output (I/O) are based on highly efficient usage of large amounts of memory. When that memory is no longer available, the expected performance of the system can’t be achieved. For this reason, memory oversubscription or dynamic adjustment of virtual machine memory must be disabled for production Exchange servers.
Deployment Recommendations
When designing an Exchange Server 2010 virtualized environment, the core Exchange design principles apply. The environment must be designed for the correct performance, reliability, and capacity requirements. Design considerations such as examining usage profiles, message profiles, and so on must still be taken into account.
See this article (Mailbox Storage Design Process) as a starting point when considering a high availability solution that uses DAGs.
Because virtualization provides the flexibility to make changes to the design of the environment later, some organizations might be tempted to spend less time on their design at the outset. As a best practice, spend adequate time designing the environment to avoid pitfalls later.
Group the Exchange Server roles in such a way that balances workloads on the root servers. Mixing both roles on the same HyperV root server can balance the workloads and prevent one physical resource from being unduly stressed, rather than if the same roles were put on the same hosts
The updated support guidance applies to any hardware virtualization vendor participating in the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
Best Practices for Virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-Vwhitepaper. This whitepaper is designed to provide technical guidance on Exchange server roles, capacity planning, sizing and performance, as well as high availability best practices.
Complete system requirements for Exchange Server 2010 running under hardware virtualization software can be found in Exchange 2010 System Requirements. Also, the support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software can be found here.
SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 : available for download. Support for DM and Remote FX
With support for new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
- Dynamic Memory: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V supports Dynamic Memory enabling customers to better utilize the memory resources of a Hyper-V host. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines onto Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts and will report on the memory currently in use for these VMs where Dynamic Memory is enabled. Using Dynamic Memory for supported VMs allows for more efficient utilization of memory, with consistent performance, and higher consolidation ratios.
- Microsoft RemoteFX: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 introduces a new set of end user experience enhancements with Microsoft RemoteFX. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines with RemoteFX enabled to qualified Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts. This enables a rich, local-like desktop environment over the network.
SCVMM 2012: Private Cloud Management. Got it!?
It’s great pleasure to see how far Microsoft SCVMM went with the SCVMM 2012.
Belevie me, it’s a whole new product.
So, if you are seriuos about Private Cloud Management, that’s the product you will look into.
•Fabric Management
◦Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
◦Third Party Virtualization Platforms – Add and Manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
◦Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
◦Storage Management – Classify storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
•Resource Optimization
◦Dynamic Optimization – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
◦Power Optimization – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed.
◦PRO – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors.
•Cloud Management
◦Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
◦Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
◦Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
•Service Lifecycle Management
◦Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, os images and application packages
◦Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
◦Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
◦Service performance and health monitoring integrated with System Center Operations Manager
◦Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing.
◦Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V
Note: The SCVMM 2012 Beta is NOT Supported in production environments.
Download SCVMM 2012 Beta Now
Hyper-V Integration Services should be updated after applying SP1 on Virtual Machines
Now that you installed SP1 on Hyper-V/Windows 2008 R2 servers, you should upgrade the Integration Services in all virtual machines or have the SP1 installed on the VM’s also.
To do this using the Virtual Machine Manager, connect to the VM :
1. Click in ACTION,
2. Click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk
3. Click Install Hyper-V Integration Services
4. Click OK, when a message informing about a previous installation show.
To check the Integration Services version, look at the Driver version of the Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Network Adapter in Device Manager
Windows 2008R2/Windows 7 SP1: Changes common to both client and server platforms
Here are the changes common to W2008R2 ad Windows 7, after applying the SP1:
1. Change to behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality
SP1 changes the behavior of the “Restore previous folders at logon” function available in the Folder Options Explorer dialog. Prior to SP1, previous folders would be restored in a cascaded position based on the location of the most recently active folder. That behavior changes in SP1 so that all folders are restored to their previous positions.
2. Enhanced support for additional identities in RRAS and IPsec
Support for additional identification types has been added to the Identification field in the IKEv2 authentication protocol. This allows for a variety of additional forms of identification (such as E-mail ID or Certificate Subject) to be used when performing authentication using the IKEv2 protocol.
3. Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
There has always been a growing need for ever more computing power and as usage models change, processors instruction set architectures evolve to support these growing demands. Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) is a 256 bit instruction set extension for processors. AVX is designed to allow for improved performance for applications that are floating point intensive. Support for AVX is a part of SP1 to allow applications to fully utilize the new instruction set and register extensions.
4. Improved Support for Advanced Format (512e) Storage Devices
SP1 introduces a number of key enhancements to improve support of recently introduced storage devices with a 4KB physical sector size (commonly referred to as “Advanced Format”). These enhancements include functionality fixes, improved performance, and updated storage drivers which provide applications the ability to retrieve information as to the physical sector size of storage device. More information on these enhancements is detailed in Microsoft KB 982018.
Changes specific to Windows 7 with SP1
Here are the specific changes for Windows 7 SP1
1. Additional support for communication with third-party federation services
Additional support has been added to allow Windows 7 clients to effectively communicate with third-party identity federation services (those supporting the WS-Federation passive profile protocol). This change enhances platform interoperability, and improves the ability to communicate identity and authentication information between organizations.
Improved HDMI audio device performance
A small percentage of users have reported issues in which the connection between computers running Windows 7 and HDMI audio devices can be lost after system reboots. Updates have been incorporated into SP1 to ensure that connections between Windows 7 computers and HDMI audio devices are consistently maintained.
2. Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents
Prior to the release of SP1, some customers have reported difficulty when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents (documents containing pages in both portrait and landscape orientation) using the XPS Viewer, resulting in all pages being printed entirely in either portrait or landscape mode. This issue has been addressed in SP1, allowing users to correctly print mixed-orientation documents using the XPS Viewer.
Recommended Books
System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Cookbook
Cloudtidings.com 