Amit Pawar - Infrastructure blog

Hyper-V Unleashed - Online Event on July 21

apawar — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:02:04 GMT

Microsoft Virtualization is a sponsor at this online event, organized by Windows IT Pro. The event is an interactive experience with staffed booths by Microsoft, Citrix, Certeon, and Symantec. The event also includes educational chats to complement each conference session. If you miss the real-time event, the virtual platform will be available on demand for one year.

This event is targeted at IT Professionals who want to learn about virtualization and Hyper-V. During the day's presentations, technical experts Michael Otey, Michael Campbell, and John Savill will discuss:

· Hyper-V architecture

· The differences between Hyper-V and VMware's ESX Server

· Hyper-V high-availability features

· The capabilities of live migration

Microsoft will provide:

· Microsoft virtualization booth featuring product information, presentations, and live booth reps during the live event

· Keynote participation: Co-presentation with Citrix (Dai Vu and Gordon Mangione)

· Virtualization 360 technical webcast with 15 minutes live Q&A (Edwin Yuen)

Make sure to join us at this event and invite customers and partners to check it out!

How much will you pay for a Hypervisor on those cores ?

apawar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:52:22 GMT

Now that 6 core processors are available from both Intel and AMD, the virtualisation team at Microsoft have done some analysis on how much it will cost to run Hypervisors from Microsoft and VMware on these new machines.

Refer to http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/28/Beware-the-VMware-Core-Tax-and-More.aspx

Technorati Tags: Cores,Virtualsiation,Hyper-V,TCO

You can now cluster SQL server in a Virtual Machine

apawar — Mon, 25 May 2009 05:39:37 GMT

Microsoft has updated the support policy for running SQL server in a virtual machine that has been clustered.

Refer to Support policy for Microsoft SQL Server products that are running in a hardware virtualization environment

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Clustering,SQL Server

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-v and Clustering Resources

apawar — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:53:37 GMT

With the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Microsoft has released a lot of documentation that supports Hyper-V and Failover clustering.

For a consolidated list of these resources head on over to http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/04/20/9557017.aspx

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Clustering,Live Migration,Cluster Shared Volumes

Hyper-V growing up to be stronger

apawar — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:10:49 GMT

I wanted to cover the latest announcement around Hyper-V that occurred at TechEd 2009.

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/12/tech-ed-windows-server-2008-r2-hyper-v-news.aspx

Game on – VMware spreads more FUD

apawar — Sun, 10 May 2009 07:45:59 GMT

The past few days there has been an very robust discussion through blogs and videos about how VMware is spreading FUD about Hyper-V.

Refer to

Day 1 - http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/09/hyper-v-winning-daily-vmware-fud-reaching-new-heights.aspx

Day 2 - http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/09/day-two-of-the-scott-drummond-vmware-fud-fiasco.aspx

All I want to add to this is that customers looking to consolidate their workloads on a hypervisor need to do their own testing to validate that Hyper-V will support their requirements.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,VMware FUD,Virtualization

HP publishes 2 whitepapers on NIC teaming support in Hyper-V

apawar — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:34:17 GMT

HP has published 2 whitepapers that talk about NIC teaming support in Hyper-V running on HP hardware.

1. Using HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V – How to

2. HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,NIC teaming,HP,Windows Server 2008

Microsoft and Red Hat support statement for Virtualisation

apawar — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:15:01 GMT

This is great new for customers who have been waiting for Microsoft to support Red Hat operating systems on Hyper-V. For details head on over to http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/02/15/Microsoft-and-Red-Hat-Joint-Technical-Support.aspx

A great free resource - Understanding Microsoft Virtualisation Solutions

apawar — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:52:12 GMT

Author Mitch Tulloch has teamed with the Microsoft Virtualization Teams to write a free e-book that is aimed at IT professionals who want to learn about Microsoft’s virtualisation solutions from the Desktop to the Datacenter. This book covers technologies like:

1. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

2. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

3. Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5

4. Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation

5. Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

6. Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services

7. Roaming User Profiles

8. Folder Redirection

9. Offline Folders

To get this book for free head on over to Free e-book offer on Microsoft virtualization

Virtualisation webcast from Microsoft – Desktop to Data centre

apawar — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:49:27 GMT

Microsoft is creating a raft of webcasts to cover the Virtualisation 360 story that talks about virtualisation from Desktop to Data centre.

Today, Microsoft's virtualization toolset for the data centre includes:

1. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, which consolidates server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical machine.

2. On the desktop side, we offer Microsoft Terminal Services, which virtualizes the presentation of entire desktops or specific applications;

3. Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), which transforms applications into centrally-managed virtual services that are never installed and don't conflict with other applications;

4. Microsoft VDI, which allows customers to centralize the storage, execution, and management of a Windows desktop in the data centre; and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V, formerly Kidaro) which, with Virtual PC, enables client-hosted desktop virtualization, where you can deploy and centrally manage VMs on Windows desktops while providing a seamless user experience.

5. To simplify management of your entire infrastructure, we offer Microsoft System Center, which lets you manage both physical and virtual assets for clients and servers, including multiple hypervisors, all with the same platform.

The webcasts are designed to cover the Microsoft Virtualisation story from Desktop to Data centre

Session List

01/14/2009, TechNet Webcast: Virtualization in a Nutshell
01/16/2009, TechNet Webcast: Selecting the Right Candidates for Virtualization
01/21/2009, TechNet Webcast: Virtualizing Test and Development Environments for a Quick Return on Investment
01/23/2009, TechNet Webcast: Managing the Virtualized Test and Development Environment
01/28/2009, TechNet Webcast: If I Virtualize It, How Do I Manage It?
01/29/2009, TechNet Webcast: Consolidation and Rapid Provisioning
02/04/2009, TechNet Webcast: Building on Your Existing Virtual Environment
02/06/2009, TechNet Webcast: Virtualization Solutions for High Availability
02/11/2009, TechNet Webcast: Client-Side Virtualization
02/13/2009, TechNet Webcast: Using Presentation Virtualization
02/18/2009, TechNet Webcast: Scaling Terminal Services Out (1/2)
02/20/2009, TechNet Webcast: Scaling Terminal Services Out (2/2)
02/25/2009, TechNet Webcast: Running Legacy Applications with Virtualization (1/2)
02/27/2009, TechNet Webcast: Running Legacy Applications with Virtualization (2/2)
03/04/2009, TechNet Webcast: Creating a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
03/06/2009, TechNet Webcast: Securing the Virtual Environments
03/11/2009, TechNet Webcast: Virtualization with Centralized, Policy-Based Management
03/13/2009, TechNet Webcast: Virtualization Solutions in Branch Offices
03/20/2009, TechNet Webcast: Road Map for the Future of Virtualization
03/24/2009, TechNet Webcast: Managing Virtual Solutions

Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer 2008 (VMMCA)

apawar — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:57:35 GMT

Microsoft has just announced the availability of Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer 2008 (VMMCA). Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) is a diagnostic tool that you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that either are serving or might serve Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) roles or other VMM functions.

To download VMMCA 2008 head to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=02d83950-c03d-454e-803b-96d1c1d5be24&displaylang=en

Technorati Tags: SCVMM 2008,VMMCA,Coniguration

SCVMM 2008 error ID: 2916. Details: Unknown error (0x8033810f)

apawar — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:13:30 GMT

If you are getting

VMM is unable to complete the request. The connection to the agent <Agent Managed Host> was lost. Ensure that the WS-Management service and the agent are installed and running and that a firewall is not blocking HTTP traffic. If the error persists, reboot <Agent Managed Host> and then try the operation again.

ID: 2916. Details: Unknown error (0x8033810f)

Make sure you have configure the Virtual Machine Manager Server is configured to have a proxy server and the Bypass proxy server for locall addresses ticked (refer to screen shot )

Technorati Tags: System Center Virtual Machine Manager,VMM,Error

Hyper-V performance some thoughts

apawar — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:07:35 GMT

There is quite a lot of documentation (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794762.aspx) and blogs on how to get the best peformance from Hyper-V. Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Disk: allow separate disks for the parent partition (ie 2008/Hyper-V)
For the VM’s, if you can spread them across multiple disks you will have less contention per VM – something like 4 pairs of RAID1 (1 for OS and 3 partitions for VM’s) might give you better performance than 2 disks in RAID1 (for OS) and 6 disks in RAID5 (for VM’s)

2. Fix Disk (not the default) will give the VM better performance than dynamic as there will be less operations and fragmentation when expanding the disks as they grow.

3. Memory: Ensure the parent partition has sufficient RAM to cope with the workload. Recommend minimum is 500MB, but if you perfmon it’s usage you can see if this is sufficient. Keep perfmon running on the parent partition from the first day, gathering stats every 5 minutes and fixed at 500MB. This will give you a baseline of the server over a 1 to 2 week period. As you grow the VM numbers you can see how the load is impacting the hardware.

4. Processor: ensure you look up the correct logical to virtual processor ratios, also ensure the guest VM’s run with the correct maximum virtual processors

5. Network: Again, it is best to allow the Parent Partition to have its own dedicated NIC, then have another NIC for every 4 VM’s, again perform counters can help determine this ratio of VM's to NIC.

Use the perfmon counters that come with the Vital Signs course, plus add in the Hyper-V counters as stated here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768535.aspx

Some of the other resources that will assist with getting the most from your Hyper-V server

HW Sizing Help

To find the list of supported server configs:
Go to http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/ .
Select the Certified Servers on the right hand side.
Select Windows Server 2008 (x64) on the left hand side.
Select Hyper-V on the left hand side.

The Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 has been updated to include perf guidelines for virtualization servers: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv.mspx

Joeelway's blog links to a handy Hyper-V RAM Calculator you can use to plan your Hyper-V deployment: http://cid-2095eac3772c41db.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Hyper-V%20RAM%20Calculator.xls

Storage Resources

Webcast:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032364834&CountryCode=US

Whitepaper:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/B/5/3B51A025-7522-4686-AA16-8AE2E536034D/WS2008%20Multi%20Site%20Clustering.doc

Jose Barreto's blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/02/14/storage-options-for-windows-server-2008-s-hyper-v.aspx

Hyper-V How To: Shrink a VHD File

Jeremy Hagen's blog post describes some implementation workarounds for shrinking VHD sizes.

http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/10/09/hyper-v-how-to-shrink-a-vhd-file.aspx

Hyper-V How To: Plan HA VMs

Jeremy Hagen's blog post details some planning considerations for high availability VMs.

http://blogs.technet.com/tonyso/archive/2008/10/10/hyper-v-how-to-plan-ha-vms.aspx

Running SQL Server 2008 in a Hyper-V Environment - Best Practices and Performance Recomme...

This white paper describes a series of test results, configurations represented a variety of possible scenarios involving SQL Server running in Hyper-V. It also presents best practice recommendations for configuration.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/9/4/d948f981-926e-40fa-a026-5bfcf076d9b9/SQL2008inHyperV2008.docx

Planning considerations for AD on Hyper-V

Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environ...

KB 888794 is from 2006, but discusses considerations when a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server-based domain controller, a Windows Server 2003-based domain controller, or a Windows Server 2008-based controller runs in a virtual hosting environment. Virtual hosting environments include the following, among others: Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, EMC VMware.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794/en-us

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Peformance,Windows Server 2008,Virtualization

Hyper-V and VHD Performance - Dynamic vs. Fixed

apawar — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:35:52 GMT

If you are in the midst of testing and deploying Virtual machines using the VHD file format on Hyper-V and want the best performance from a I/O performance check out this post by Tim Litton http://blogs.technet.com/winserverperformance/archive/2008/09/19/hyper-v-and-vhd-performance-dynamic-vs-fixed.aspx

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,VHD,Performance,Virtualization,Windows Server 2008

Professional Developer Conference content for Virtualisation

apawar — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:02:25 GMT

Enabling Test Automation Using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

With Hyper-V, you can decrease your software test cycles, improve your test coverage, and provide testers and developers a safe, scalable test bed for applications. In this session we introduce the concepts that can assist you in development of an automation framework that can take advantage of Hyper-V.

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/ES09/

Resources: Powerpoint Deck

Extending Terminal Services and Hyper-V VDI in Windows 7

Come learn about advanced topics in the Windows Graphics remoting architecture (RDP 7).This talk introduces new Windows 7 remoting features, discusses how they are going to be leveraged in Microsoft's Windows 7 client and server products. Finally, this presentation covers how you can integrate well with core remoting infrastructure services to enhance your applications to run from anywhere, so that your applications will be available to end-users when they are on-the-go.

Resources: Powerpoint Deck

Developing Solutions for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Using WMI

Hyper-V provides new capabilities through its WMI APIs. Learn how to apply these APIs while creating your own solutions.

Resources: Powerpoint Deck