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Microsoft MVP Summit: System Center MVP IT Pro Day
Today I am in Redmond for the Microsoft MVP Summit.
Although is freezing here in Seattle, in fact is quite warm here at the MS Buildings.
I am currently attending the System Center MVP IT Pro Day.
BTW, as we talking about Clould initiative do we really understand what private Clould means? It’s not just about a private virtual environment, it’s more. Let’s talk about more here….
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.
MS Support policy for SQL Server in a virtualization environment
SQL Server 2005/ 2008 / 2008 R2 are supported in the following virtualization environments:
- Windows Server 2008 /R2 with Hyper-V
- Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 / R2
- Configurations that are validated through the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), which includes VmWare and Citrix.
Note The SVVP solution must be running on hardware that is certified for Windows Server 2008 to be considered a valid SVVP configuration.
Restrictions and Limitations
- Guest Failover Clustering is supported for SQL Server 2005 / 2008 / 2008 R2 in a virtual machine provided all of the following requirements are met:
- The OS running in the virtual machine (the “Guest Operating System”) is Windows Server 2008 or higher
- The virtualization environment meets the requirements of Windows 2008 Failover Clustering, as documented in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
943984 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943984/ ) The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters
- Virtualization Snapshots for Hyper-V or any virtualization vendor are not supported to use with SQL Server in a virtual machine. It is possible that you may not encounter any problems when using snapshots and SQL Server, but Microsoft will not provide technical support to SQL Server customers for a virtual machine that was restored from a snapshot.
Is Quick and Live Migration with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V supported with SQL Server?
Yes, Live Migration is supported for SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008 R2 when using Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.Quick Migration, which was introduced with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008, is also supported for SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2 for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, Hyper-V Server 2008, and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
For more information : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956893
Virtualisation:Go beyond doing more with less
Source : Microsoft Technet
Go beyond doing more with less and reducing your carbon footprint; virtualization enables a more agile, responsive infrastructure and lays the foundation for cloud services.
By Mitch Irsfeld
With IT departments wedged between limited budget growth in 2011 and the expectations for new services–especially cloud computing–getting in the virtualization game has become a virtual no-brainer. The reason: Running enterprise workloads on virtual machines not only positions your existing IT infrastructure for cloud services, it delivers substantial savings over physical servers and enables a more agile, scalable and resilient server environment…
To read the comple article go to : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/magazine/gg591293.aspx
SCVMM for VDI deplyoments: tuning
SCVMM as a platform
While most people are aware of SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) being used for managing virtualized datacenters, it’s probably less well known that a number of partners have built products using SCVMM as a platform by using the powershell based API. Products that use SCVMM as a platform include Citrix XenDesktop, Quest vWorkspace and Visual Studio Lab Management (this is not an exhaustive list by any means). Two of those products (XenDesktop and Quest workspace) are VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) management products that can be used to manage VDI desktop VMs.
VDI
VDI management has different usage patterns compared to server virtualization management. For example, VDI VMs are powered on during the morning when the users need to log on to their desktops and they get powered off in the evening after users log off (all this is controllable via policy). So it’s fairly common to power on large number of VMs in a short period of time which causes a spike in load on VMM to handle large number of parallel jobs. These kind of spikes in load can cause the system to become overloaded. While we continue to make improvements in future versions of SCVMM to handle such scenarios, this post is about best practices for configuring SCVMM 2008 R2 for managing VDI environments. The size of the environment is around 1000 desktop VMs, if you have larger environments, you’ll probably need to use multiple instances of SCVMM
to read the full article : http://blogs.technet.com/b/vishwa/archive/2011/02/01/tuning-scvmm-for-vdi-deployments.aspx
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit new version now available
The latest release from the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) team provides organizations with more assessments and reporting for simplified IT infrastructure planning.
Download the MAP Toolkit 5.5:
http://www.microsoft.com/map
Simplify planning for migration to the latest Microsoft products and technologies with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.5. This multifaceted tool is now even better—with assessment for easier migration to theWindows Azure platform,heterogeneous database discovery for SQL Server migration projects, Windows Internet Explorer migration assessment, and much more—MAP 5.5 includes new features to help you streamline planning for your next migration project.
Desktop migration projects are easier with the hardware assessment for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer. The MAP 5.5 Internet Explorer migration assessment inventories and reports on deployed web browsers, Microsoft ActiveX controls, and add-ons—and delivers the findings in a convenient migration assessment report and proposal.
Enhanced server consolidation features help users save time and effort when creating virtualization assessments and proposals. Enhancements include updated hardware libraries with the latest CPU models, data collection and store every five minutes, customized server selection, and greater scalability and reliability requiring less effort and oversight of the data collection process.MAP also helps accelerate SQL Server migration projects with heterogeneous database discovery for MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase instances
Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Dell technology
Curious about Cloud ?
- Should you use public cloud offerings from providers, build your own private cloud, or develop a hybrid of both?
- What cloud-based services are right for you?
- What are the best practices and proven process for implementing cloud technologies that minimize risk and maximize success?
Microsoft in partnership with Dell
Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track is a reference architecture for building private clouds that combines Dell technology, including servers, networking and storage, with Microsoft software, technical guidance and validated configurations.
Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solutions offer a turnkey approach to delivering scalable, preconfigured, validated infrastructure platforms for on-premises private cloud implementations. With local control over data and operations, your IT can dynamically pool, allocate, secure and manage resources for agile IaaS. Likewise, business units can deploy line-of-business applications with speed and consistency using self-provisioning and automated data center services in a virtualized environment.
Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solutions offer:
- Faster deployment — Rich features and support make private clouds easy to deploy.
- Reduced risk — Validated configurations mean you can implement with confidence.
- Dell advantage — Dell provides business-ready configurations for virtualization that are optimized for Microsoft Hyper-V.
Dell Business-Ready Configurations for Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track
Dell offers a range of pre-engineered, business-ready configurations that conform to Microsoft’s Hyper-V Fast Track reference architecture:
- Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Rack Servers, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Internet SCSI (iSCSI)
Designed for large-enterprise deployments using 10 GbE iSCSI storage - Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Rack Servers, iSCSI Storage
Designed for small and medium deployments - Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Rack Servers, PowerVault Internet SCSI (iSCSI)
Designed for small, medium and remote deployments - Business-Ready Configurations: Hyper-V, Blades, Fibre Channel (FC) Storage
Designed for a range of deployment sizes using FC storage
Microsoft MVP Award 2011
It’s just amazing start a new year with that kind of news:
For the 3rd year in a row a got award by Microsoft : Most Valuable Professional in Virtual machine expertise : https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Alessandro
Microsoft Letter: “Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.”
I would like to thank the Microsoft Virtualization Team in Redmond led by Ben Armstrong for the credit and support and also my MVP Lead Nick Ellery and specially to my wife and kids for the unconditional support.
It’s really amazing to be recognized for something you do by pleasure! Being part of the community, sharing knowledge and experience, writing in blogs, helping in forums and speaking in events it’s for real!!!! You can’t imagine how much I learn from doing this!!
Again thank you all for the support
Happy 2011!
SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 RC is now ready to download
For those who are participant in a Microsoft Connect beta program : SCVMM 2008 R2 Beta :
The SCVMM 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate is now ready to download from https://connect.microsoft.com/site799
This release adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC to SCVMM. We’ve added the necessary properties and controls to allow you to create and manage Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX enabled on virtual machines on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts.
Since this is a pre-release version, usage of this is limited to test environments. You’re encouraged to ask questions via theSCVMM forums
Recommended Books
System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Cookbook
Cloudtidings.com 