Andreas Rynes' Blog about Private Cloud and Datacenter Management

Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud

2012-01-25T15:12:52Z

Hi everyone,

just in case you missed the online event last week about “Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud” with Satya Nadella and Brad Anderson, here is the link for watching it on demand:

http://aka.ms/transform

Hear from other senior IT professionals about how cloud computing can help
you gain maximum competitive advantage with minimal risk.

Learn
about Microsoft cloud offerings, including private, public, and hybrid cloud
models.

Experience
Microsoft private cloud solutions through the Microsoft Technology Center.

Cheers,

Andy

IDC study about Cloud Computing (in Germany)

2011-12-20T09:08:45Z

A IDC study "Cloud Computing in Deutschland 2011" from mid 2011 shows that 70% of the companies in Germany are working or planning a cloud strategy (29% are looking for a cloud strategy in all aspects and areas, whereas 41% are more conservative and plan only moving specific parts of their IT into the cloud).

The study also showed that companies tend to go into a Private Cloud than to Public Cloud model, so overall it might be very likely that a lot of hybrid models will be established.

So what are the main reasons for Private Clouds:

More efficient use of their IT infrastructure with cloud services (35%)
Reduce costs (35%)
Rapid implementation of new solutions/services (30%)
Higher standardizations (29%)
Use of newest technolgies with cloud services (28%)
Improvement of IT security (23%)

Another very interesting question is why companies might not implement Private Cloud scenarios:

Missing skills within the company (32%)
Company not cloud-ready yet (27%)
Lacking IT security of the datacenter (26%)
Lacking of customizations of the solution (25%)
Concerns about availability/performance (24%)
Missing visibility of processes and applications (24%)
Lacking maturity of cloud offerings (23%)

You can find more information on that study of IDC on http://www.idc.de/press/presse_mc_cloud2011.jsp

Source: IDC, Transformation der Unternehmens-IT auf dem Weg in die Cloud in
Deutschland, 2011

Customizing Service Manager using PowerShell (SMLets)

2011-12-09T09:14:47Z

This is another article that I've wrote for the Service Manager Product team showing how to work with the Service Manager Powershell cmdlet to create a customization within Service Manager 2010.

The initial problem is how to surface up the contained activity details to the change request level. This makes it easier to format/send notifications and such things. I've wrote a blog post about this solution which uses the SMLets PowerShell module (a CodePlex solution) to get the activity and update the parent change request description.

The overall solution is using custom activity class, custom workflow, using the Service Manager Authoring Tool and the Powershell Cmdlet SMLets from Codeplex.

Link: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2011/03/15/updating-a-change-request-when-activities-are-updated-using-powershell-in-a-workflow.aspx

Creating a virtual network for Hyper-V using Powershell

2011-11-29T09:12:00Z

Last week I had the following problem: I need to create a private network to create a guest cluster on a couple of Hyper-V hosts which are all part of a Failover Cluster. For that I had to create that private network on all hosts. I was using the Hyper-V Manager console to connect to the Hyper-V hosts remotely. That worked fine for 4 out of 5 hosts. Unfortunately I had an issue connecting to the 5th host to create the virtual network there as well.

There are a couple of reasons for that behaviour: missing port rules in the firewalls, windows remote management not configured, dns issues. Well I've worked on that for a while, but couldn't find the root cause, so I decided to go another way and instead of using the Hyper-V Manager console, I wrote a powershell script that will create the network using WMI.

So I found the class Msvm_VirtualSwitchManagementService (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc136938(v=vs.85).aspx that takes care of that and the method of create a network is called CreateSwitch.

This is the final powershell script for creating a private network on a specific Hyper-V host:

# generate a GUID (this needs to be a unique ID for the switch

$guid = [guid]::NewGuid().ToString()

# set a friendly name for the switch

$switchname = "myPrivateNetwork"

# set the hyper-v host where to create the network on

$hyperVhost = "DCSA04"

# create an instance of the class Msvm_VirtualSwitchManagementService

$vsms = get-wmiobject Msvm_VirtualSwitchManagementService -namespace "root\virtualization" -computername $hyperVhost

# create the switch

$result = $vsms.CreateSwitch($guid, $switchname, "1024", "")

The number 1024 means the maximum number of MAC addresses that the switch can learn.

You can further improve the script to use Read-Host to get data into the script by the enduser in front of the powershell console and of course you can add some error handling routine to it as well.

Microsoft Management Summit 2012 @ Las Vegas (MMS 2012)

2011-11-21T18:54:00Z

Probably the most important conference for Datacenter Management and Private Cloud topics, the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2012 will take place in Las Vegas, April 16-20 @ Venetian Hotel.

Registration is already opened, and I'm looking forward to see you there!

http://www.mms-2012.com/

Simple start of using Powershell - AD Manipulation using spreadsheets and Active Directory module

2011-11-16T11:08:00Z

For all of you who need some powershell skills this post is about getting started with Powershell with a simple sample on how to import users from a Excel spreadsheet to Active Directory to a specific OU.

First you need to start a powershell session and you need to load all required modules. There is a module for Active Directory that you need to load using the command import-module. This command loads the specified module in your active powershell session.

Modules are packets of different elements including cmdlets, scripts, functions, variables and other tools and files. After importing a module you're able to use them within your session. In this sample here for example you're able to use New-ADUser which is part of the Active Directory module.

The final command looks like this: Import-Module ActiveDirectory

So after that you need to load the CSV file (comma separeted file). The file itself looks like this (the first row keeps the columns name, which is important as this is will be the source of variable names within the script)

LastName,FirstName,Email,Standard Title,Group

Huber,Andreas,ahuber,Consultant,Group1

Mueller,Wolfgang,wmueller,Senior Consultant,Group2

Bauer,Michael ,mbauer,Consultant,Group2

To load the file enter this command:

Import-CSV filename.csv

After that you can use a general functionality called piping to push the result of the last command to the next command as an input. For that we are using the | and add the next command to it. So we are now going to iterate over all the rows in the file and for each row we are going to create a new AD user account.

The following construct will explain it a little better:

import-csv Userliste2.csv | foreach {}

Within the brakets you're able to create more commands that will be executed for each row within the file. The creation of AD accounts will be done by New-ADUser from the Active Directory module, which we loaded before.

Sample:

New-ADUser -Surname “Rynes” -Name “Andreas Rynes” -SamAccountName “arynes” -GivenName “Andreas” -DisplayName “Andreas Rynes” -UserPrincipalName “arynes@microsoft.com” -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText "pass@word1" -Force) -Enabled $true -Path "CN=Users,DC=dcsat,DC=global" -PasswordNeverExpires $false -ChangePasswordAtLogon $true

Now with that sample we see all the hardcoded values to create a new AD account. The command exists of a couple of parameters, which follows a general syntax within Powershell:

-[name of parameter] value

The name is part of the command within the module, the value itself needs to be defined during the execution. In case you need help for a specific account you're always able to use the Get-Help method to get detailed information about the command and its parameters.

Get-Help New-ADUser

This will list all options that are available for New-ADUser. There are a couple of other ways to get even more help, for example using Get-Help New-ADUser –examples will give you examples on how to use the command.

Das gesamte Skript für unsere Aufgabe sieht letztendlich dann wie folgt aus und muss für den Eigenbedarf natürlich angepasst werden, z.B. Spaltennamen innerhalb des CSV Files und die OU in dem die User angelegt werden (im Parameter Path):

import-module ActiveDirectory

import-csv Userliste.csv | foreach {

$Name = $_.Vorname + " " + $_.Nachname

$princ = $_.email + "@microsoft.com"

New-ADUser -Surname $_.Nachname -Name $Name -SamAccountName $_.email.ToLower() -GivenName $_.Vorname -DisplayName $Name -UserPrincipalName $princ -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText "pass@word1" -Force) -Enabled $true -Path "CN=Users,DC=microsoft,DC=com" -PasswordNeverExpires $false -ChangePasswordAtLogon $true

}

Wie man außerdem im gesamten Skript sieht werden auch noch 2 Variablen definiert, die Vorname und Nachname mit einem Blank zur Variablen $Name vereinen. Des Weiteren wird auch noch der UserPrincipalName aus der Spalte „email“ und dem fixen Wert „@microsoft.com“ zusammengebaut. Diese beiden Variablen werden dann im New-ADUser verwendet um 2 Parameter zu befüllen.

Das Skript kann auch in ein Textfile mit der Endung ps1 gespeichert werden und als solches innerhalb der Powershell ausgeführt werden.

Eine Einführung zu Powershell und ein paar weiterführende Informationen finden sich hier:

http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/scriptcenter/dd742419

http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/dd347730.aspx

Service Manager Customizations using SDK and eMails/Workflows

2011-11-15T16:12:00Z

In this article I'll describe how to customize your Service Manager installation to enable users to take action from an eMail using a web application and web services through the SDK of Service Manager 2010.

In this scenario I'll show a way to enable an end user to receive an email notification when his incident is resolved and then to click a link to either reactivate or close the incident. The link passes the work item ID on the query string and the web page the user is directed to by clicking on the link either updates the incident status to closed or active depending on the link the user clicked.

This article was published on the System Center Product Team blog (find link at the end)

You can go ahead an download the solution from either his blog post or go ahead and see the entire blog post with a very detailed description how I've created the solution at the Service Manager Product blog.

Link to the entire article: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2011/01/25/enabling-users-to-take-action-from-email-using-web-pages-web-services.aspx

How to create an IT Lab for Virtual Machines with Virtual Machine Manager 2008

2011-11-15T16:04:00Z

I recently wrote an Technet Magazine article (published in September 2011 issue) about how to create an IT Lab for Virtual Machines based on Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and Self-Service Portal 2.0 together with my colleage Thomas Vater. This is another idea how to run a simple private cloud scenario within your IT.

This scenario is not related to the high-end solution "Datacenter Services Solution v1.1", but it's an low-cost and easy way to get a lot of the Cloud Computing definitions that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) described at http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/upload/cloud-def-v15.pdf

Link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh395484.aspx

In one of my next article I'm planned to write about the Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1 and show how to add automation using Opalis Integration.

Datacenter Services Solution v1.1 - Training

2011-11-15T14:28:00Z

I'm in the middle of delivering a 5-day training, together with Thomas Ellermann from Denmark, for our colleagues and partners in France about a turnkey private cloud solution from Microsoft.

If you'd like to have a short intro to what is called 'Datacenter Services Solution v1.1', you can watch a webcast I did 2 weeks ago for the community in Austria.

Unfortunately it's in german only, but I'll post another demo video in english in the next 1-2 weeks. So stay tuned!

Demo starts at 6.30min http://katapult.tv/Watch.aspx?webcast=bbeee341-b469-4a4d-b0e4-2a5c0e06f75c