Private Clouds are increasingly important to the efficient operations of your business. The System Center 2012 products provide everything you need to build, secure, maintain and manage your Private Cloud. You can get all of the latest Betas, Release Candidates and Evaluations by clicking one button!
The Imagine Cup is a program designed to get High School and College Students engaged with programming and creating new applications. Students from all over the world create innovate applications around a theme.
Last year, over 325,000 students participated in Imagine Cup. Today, 22 teams from across the country have made it to the Imagine Cup US finals, developing solutions and providing awareness to issues that address environmental stewardship, the worldwide obesity epidemic, and the plight of children in war-torn Africa.
Now it’s up to you!
These teams need your votes to win the Imagine Cup People’s Choice award. The team with the most votes by May 19, 2012 will travel to the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Sydney, Australia this July. Vote now!
Your vote is powerful!
By helping select the Imagine Cup People’s Choice winner, you’ll not only be raising awareness for critical social issues, you’ll also be supporting the future of technology innovation here in the US. Who knows, the team you vote for may very well be the one that goes on to develop the key solution that solves a major issue we are facing today.
And of course there’s something in it for you, too. Every time you vote, you qualify to win prizes like a laptop, an Xbox, or a Windows Phone!
Visit the Imagine Cup US Facebook page to check out our US finalists and vote for your favorite—it’s fast and easy. And remember, the more often you vote, the more often you can win, so stop by every day!
Cheers!
My good friend and co-worker, Harold Wong and I spoke at the Windows Connections conference a few weeks ago in Las Vegas. We had the opportunity to interview some well known folks in the tech industry during that time and those interviews will be posted over the next few weeks and months to the Technet portal. The first of those interviews to post is one between Harold and Scott Guthrie. Harold and Scott talk about the benefits to customers of using Azure, how you can connect your on premise infrastructure to Azure for scalability, and more. Check it out!
The video is also available for viewing and download on Technet.
Microsoft IT Uses File Classification Infrastructure to Help Secure Personally Identifiable Information
Learn how Microsoft Information Technology (IT) used File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) to create a solution to automatically classify, manage, and protect sensitive data, including personally identifiable information and financial information. Using the new FCI-based solution, Microsoft IT can obtain file-level details about content sensitivity while reducing misclassification of personally identifiable information from 30% to 3%. The new solution enables risk mitigation for sensitive data by using automatically applied controls. Ultimately, this solution helped Microsoft IT achieve industry best practices for regulatory compliance.
Technical Case Study | Article | Video | TechNet Radio
Monitoring Applications via Windows Phone 7.5 Devices and the Cloud
Volume Licensing IT Monitor (VLIT) is designed to provide near-real times status on availability and performance for critical apps in the VLIT ecosystem along with their business process mapping. It is difficult for the business and IT leadership to understand which critical business processes are impacted if a system is down or having issues. Previously monitoring would include: email, ping support staff, and get conflicting messages back. Now with VLIT Monitor, monitoring alerts can be sent directly to your Windows Phone 7.5 device wherever you are.
Technical Case Study | Article
We had great success with the IT Camps we started in March! Thank you all for the support of the events. We have a new series of IT Camps coming up in May and June. The will be essentially the same format with a few subtle tweaks:
The events will start at 8:30 AM and end at 4 PM (versus 8 AM – 12 PM) We will have a Hands-On component as part of the afternoon agenda You get to help pick the content / topic of discussion for a good portion of the presentation slots (and maybe even get to present yourself if you want) We will only have two “official” presentations – one from Microsoft and one from Vision (Double-Take)
To participate in the afternoon session, you will need to bring your own computer (laptop preferred) with the following minimum configuration:
•x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology •OS that is either Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server “8” Beta •4GB RAM (8 GB preferred) •At least 40GB of free disk space (75 GB preferred)
•It is also important that the machine you use for the hands on sessions does *NOT* have any encryption enabled (this applies to Bitlocker as well as ANY 3rd party encryption)
Just like the last round, we really want you to dive the open discussion we have at the IT Camps. To effectively do this, we need you to submit your suggestion for topics now. You can either email them directly to me or feel free to add a comment to this post. I look forward to your topic suggestions!
To register, please visit the appropriate links for your city.
Date City MS Evangelist Vision Presenters May 15, 2012 Denver, CO Harold Wong Mike Stewart & David Paquette May 17, 2012 Mountain View, CA Chris Avis & Harold Wong Greg Ross & David Paquette May 22, 2012 Los Angeles, CA Harold Wong Greg Ross & David Paquette May 23, 2012 Irvine, CA Harold Wong Greg Ross & David Paquette May 24, 2012 Portland, CA Chris Avis Mike Stewart & David Paquette May 29, 2012 San Francisco, CA Chris Avis Greg Ross & Doug White May 30, 2012 Phoenix, AZ Harold Wong Greg Ross & David Paquette May 31, 2012 Redmond, WA Chris Avis & Harold Wong Greg Ross & Doug White June 5, 2012 Albuquerque, NM Harold Wong Mike Stewart & David Paquette June 7, 2012 Boise, ID Chris Avis Greg Ross & David Paquette
The Los Angeles Event is showing as full, but don’t despair. The location is in the process of being moved and hence why registration is not actually being accepted at this time. I will update as soon as this is completed.
The Phoenix Date is currently listed incorrectly on the registration page. The correct date is May 30th and the registration page will be corrected.
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Agenda and abstracts of Sessions
8:00 AM – 8:30 AM Check-In and Welcome
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM: Future of Virtualization: What’s new with Hyper-V in Windows Server “8”
As virtualization continues to grow, Microsoft is continuing to grow our capabilities in this space. This session will focus on some key enhancements in Hyper-V in the upcoming version of Windows Server “8”.
9:45 AM – 10:45 AM: Vision (Double-Take) Presentation
Come and see how your organization can benefit from no-downtime physical and virtual migrations. With Double-Take Move, you can migrate from anywhere into Hyper-V while users are online and productive. See how Double-Take provides real-time data movement on any hardware platform into a Hyper-V environment. And this can all be accomplished through the ease of use benefits and integration with System Center 2012. Microsoft and Vision – providing the tools you need for fast and easy migrations.
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Open Topics
12:00 PM – 12:45PM: Lunch
12:45 PM – 2:15 PM: Open Topics
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM: Hands-On-Lab: Configure Hyper-V Settings in Windows Server “8” Beta
With the release of Windows Server “8” Beta, this is a great opportunity to get some hands-on with the new server product and start working the new capabilities of Hyper-V. In addition to this, Vision will also have Virtual Machines (VMs) that you can import and get hands on experience with their products.
Vision / Double-Take Presenters are:
Doug White – Senior Product Manager Double-Take Products David Paquette – Product Manager Double-Take Products Mike Stewart – Solution Architect Greg Ross – Solution Architect
Our next monthly meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 4, 2012 at Lincoln Square Center in Bellevue at 6:00PM.
Session Details Our guest speaker will be Matt Tinney of Windows Management Experts. Matt is a Lead System Center Architect with over 15 years of experience working exclusively in the systems management arena. The topic of his presentation is "An Overview of System Center 2012." Matt will give an overview of Microsoft System Center 2012 which helps you manage your IT environments across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds, client computers, and devices.
System Center 2012 is a cloud and datacenter management solution that provides a common toolset to manage private and public cloud applications and services and:
Matt’s bio is available here.
New Members If you are a new member, directions to the Lincoln Center are available on our Web site, or you can click here. Meeting agenda and other details are available in the Announcements link. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
RSVP Please make sure that you RSVP so we can plan for the meeting accordingly.
We look forward to seeing you at the meeting!
Good Morning Folks!
For those of you that have attended the IT Camps here in the Western United States, we have been doing a hands on lab where we provide you with a VHD file, then walk you through the process of using the BCDEDIT.EXE command line utility to boot into that VHD file. The result is, when you power on/reboot your machine, you now see a Windows Boot Manager Screen with the entry for the VHD file we gave you.
Some people have asked about how to remove the extra item (or items if you had to do it more than once). This post is a walk through on how to use a 3rd party tool to easily clean up your Windows Boot Manager and get back to where you started before the IT Camp.
Step 1 – Figure out where you are
First, boot your system to your normal “host” desktop. This is the desktop you had before you attended the IT Camp. Once you are logged in, Click Start, then type “Advanced System”. You should see a Control Panel item – “View advanced system settings” – Select this
This will open the System Properties window to the Advanced Tab. now click the Startup and Recovery Settings button. you should now see the System Startup screen and a drop down for “Default operating system” click the drop down to see what items you have listed there -
You should see the entry(s) you made during the IT Camp in the list. I know some people had to do the Boot to VHD process more than once so you may have more than one entry. Write down the names of the entries you want to remove.
**Note** For those of you that were already configured to Dual Boot prior to the IT Camp, be sure that you do not write down the names of the entries that you want to keep!! Write down ONLY the items you wish to remove!!
Once you have made note of the items you wish to remove, make sure your original host operating system is set as the default and then OK. I recommend you check the properties one more time before proceeding to ensure you have the correct operating system set as the default.
Step 2 - Download and install Visual BCD Editor
The Visual BCD Editor is a 3rd party, GUI based tool that allows you to view and modify your Boot Configuration Database on Windows systems. I encourage you to check out the other functionality it provides. Please note that this is a 3rd party tool though, and Microsoft does not officially support the use of this tool. At the time of this writing, the current version of VisualBCD is 0.9.3.1 and is what I am using for this walkthrough.
Once downloaded, install VisualBCD to your system. Setup only asks for a path to install to and I selected the default path.
Step 3 – Run Visual BCD Editor
Once the install completes, you well have two icons on the desktop. I have not used the Dual-boot repair so you are on your own with that one. For this walkthrough, launch the Visual BCD Editor.
When VisualBCD starts, you will see a list of entries in the Boot Configuration Database (BCD) store. You should see all of the entries that were in the drop down from the previous System Startup properties screen as well as some entries named “Windows Recovery Environment”.
Step 4 – Cleaning things up
Now refer back to the list of entries you wrote down that need to be removed.
1) Select an entry from your list of loaders on the left 2) Verify the selected entry points to the path of the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file in the “ApplicationDevice” field on the right 3) Right-Click the selected loader entry on the left and Delete Selected Object – Confirm – Click OK ***DO NOT REMOVE the entry for your original host operating system!!***
1) Select an entry from your list of loaders on the left
2) Verify the selected entry points to the path of the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file in the “ApplicationDevice” field on the right
3) Right-Click the selected loader entry on the left and Delete Selected Object – Confirm – Click OK
***DO NOT REMOVE the entry for your original host operating system!!***
If you had to walk through the BCDEdit steps more than once during the IT Camp, repeat the above process for any other entries you need to remove.
Now you should go go back to the System Startup properties to verify that your original host operating system is the default operating system. once confirmed, you can reboot your machine. Your Windows Boot Manager will be cleaned up and you will come back to your original host desktop.
You can now delete, move, copy the IT Camp HyperV.vhd file as you wish!
Here are all of the IT Camps resources bundled into one page. I will get the .VHD file uploaded as well as the BCDEdit scripts and add them to this page as well.
Supplemental Information and Links
Boot to VHD Resources
Veeam Resources from the Redmond/Bellevue and Portland IT Camps
Downloads --
–Windows Server 2008 R2 Eval – aka.ms/Win2008Eval
–Windows Server “8” Eval – aka.ms/WinServer8Eval
–System Center 2012 Eval – aka.ms/SCEvals
First, I want to give a BIG thank you to Eric, Brian, and Chris from Veeam for taking part in the IT Camps with us! They gave some great information during the session and provided some great evaluation virtual machines to the attendees for folks to play with.
Be sure to check out the Veeam Blog for the latest information on what Veeam is doing with Microsoft Hyper-V!
Also, I wanted to remind folks of the Veeam nWorks Management Pack for VMWare that extends monitoring of VMWare ESX Servers within System Center.
Protect your investments in Microsoft System Center and manage your physical and virtual environment from one console with the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware. The nworks Management Pack provides scalable, fault-tolerant and agentless VMware infrastructure monitoring and management directly in Microsoft System Center, eliminating the need for a separate monitoring framework.
Protect your investments in Microsoft System Center and manage your physical and virtual environment from one console with the Veeam nworks Management Pack™ for VMware.
The nworks Management Pack provides scalable, fault-tolerant and agentless VMware infrastructure monitoring and management directly in Microsoft System Center, eliminating the need for a separate monitoring framework.
Finally, I want to give you some additional resources that were provided in the Veeam Sessions and Materials that I wanted to remind you of -
Microsoft Career Conferences and the Microsoft Certified Community Connection
This is a great resource for people who want to learn about Microsoft Private Cloud implementations and virtualization. This includes the 2-Day “Creating and Managing Private Clouds Jump Start” training and the 1-Day “Exam 70-659": Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization Jump Start” course.
Microsoft Virtual Academy
Improve your IT skill set and help advance your career with a free, easy to access training portal. Learn at your own pace, focusing on Microsoft technologies, gain points and get recognition.
Thanks for attending the IT Camps! Keep an eye on my blog for information on future IT Camps in your area!
Microsoft IT uses System Center Operations Manager 2012 to provide the monitoring of their datacenter, to delivering flexible and cost effective enterprise-class monitoring and diagnostics. Operations Manager 2012 reduces the total cost of ownership by leveraging commodity hardware, with standard configurations to monitor heterogeneous environments to ensure the availability of business-critical applications.
Video
Products & Technologies
· System Center Operations Manager 2012
· System Center Suite
· VMM 2012
· SCCM 2012
· DPM 2012
· SCOM 2012
I did get the Boot to VHD image problem resolved! Sometime tomorrow afternoon I will have a post up with a location where you can grab the .VHD file as well as instructions on how to edit your boot up info with BCDEDIT. I will also post information on how to remove that entry from the boot menu to clean things up if you like.
In the meantime, if you want to check out some information on how to Boot to VHD and how to use BCDEDIT, I have some links below -
Video – Adam Bomb - TechNet Edge - Boot from VHD in Win7
Blog Series - TechNet Edge - Windows 7 Boot from VHD
Blog - Scott Hanselman - Less Virtual, More Machine - Windows 7 and the magic of Boot to VHD
Downloadable Demo - Demonstration: Windows 7 VHD Boot
Hello IT Campers! (and everyone else too!). I have compiled a brief list of resources for further reading on the topics we are covering at out on-going IT Camps. As more topics are submitted and discussed, I will add to this list, so please bookmark this post. I will tweet (@chrisavis) when I update.
If you are interested in attending an IT Camp in your area, please check out the info below!
IT Camps are semi-structured, no-fluff events exclusively designed to serve IT professionals. They are a free, in-person learning event for anyone seeking professional development as it applies to IT Professionals. The agenda is intended to deliver a technical overview and hands-on experience that is less formal or structured than traditional instructor-led training. Participants will have a chance to perform hands on activities / exercises individually or as a team. At the end of the day, we encourage everyone to share their thoughts and experiences with the rest of the group. Come prepared to have fun, be excited, and interact in a group.
For more information, check out on the registration links in a city near you!
March 15, 2012 Los Angeles, CA Harold Wong
March 15, 2012 Portland, OR Chris Avis
March 16, 2012 Phoenix, AZ Harold Wong
March 19, 2012 Denver, CO Harold Wong
March 19, 2012 Mountain View, CA Chris Avis
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IT Camp Resources
Migrate Server Roles to Windows Server 2008 R2
DHCP Server Migration Guide
File Services Migration Guide
Print Services Migration Guide
Video: Inside the new Server Migration Portal
Downloads for Private Cloud
System Center 2012 Evaluation
Windows Server “8” Evaluation
Windows Server 2008 R2 Evaluation
Some Network Considerations
For this post, I am going to address a variety of networking features and considerations that you will need to know when configuring your Hyper-V virtualization environment. Some of these items fit nicely together and are easy to group up. Others are somewhat of one-off situations. You won’t even necessarily implement any or all of these in your own network depending on what your infrastructure looks like. Regardless, it is important to understand the concepts to have a good understanding of Hyper-V implementations and of course….to pass the test!
Optimizing Traffic For Virtualization
If you intend to use the Microsoft iSCSI Target/Initiator software (or 3rd party iSCSI options) for connecting to iSCSI based storage, there are some network optimizations you can make to improve network performance. Before you make any changes to your Network based on your iSCSI implementation, I highly encourage you to read the following about Microsoft iSCSI implementations:
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator iSCSI Initiator Info from TechNet Microsoft iSCSI Software Target iSCSI Target Info from TechNet
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
iSCSI Initiator Info from TechNet
Microsoft iSCSI Software Target
iSCSI Target Info from TechNet
Enabling Jumbo Frames for iSCSI performance gains
Enabling Jumbo Frames can dramatically increase network performance and also reduce CPU cycles under certain conditions. This only applies when you are doing large file transfers within your own network and not to/from the Internet.
Be sure to evaluate what kind of workloads you are running on your infrastructure and your host machines as well. Applications that are sensitive to latency issues (VoIP and other interactive real-time applications) can be impacted negatively by enabling Jumbo Frames. Also keep in mind that you can only enable Jumbo Frames on gigabit or faster networks and ALL devices between the source and target must be gigabit enabled.
Most network adapters will default to Jumbo Frames being disabled. The picture below is from my production Hyper-V server with a Realtek PCIe Gigabit Ethernet adapter installed. I do not use iSCSI currently and have no need for Jumbo Frames at this time so it is disabled.
When enabling Jumbo Frames, you will need to determine the maximum frame size you will allow. To determine this you will need to analyze your network traffic patterns and do some experimenting to determine what frame size delivers the best performance. Setting this too low and you will not get as much performance as you can. Set this too high and you will actually negatively impact performance as the frames get dropped and have to be resent.
As this applies to iSCSI and Virtualization – We would typically use iSCSI targets for shared storage of the VHD files used by Hyper-V. Since the files can be hundreds of gigabytes in size, the act of moving or migrating virtual machines means moving very large files. This would also apply to virtualized work loads that have a lot of change like database applications.
Enabling TCP/IP RX and TX Offloading
Many network adapters support IP Checksum Offloading. It may also be referenced as RX/TX Offloading.
When we are using iSCSI and virtualization, we can further optimize network traffic by enabling this on a network adapter. When enabled, the network adapter will take over the responsibility of verifying the checksum on incoming packets and computing the checksum for outgoing packets. This results in less CPU utilization and improved receive/transmit performance.
When the VHD files used for virtualization are stored locally, this option has little impact. When VHD files are stored remotely, such as with an iSCSI storage implementation, there is a lot of network traffic generated anytime there is disk I/O to the VHD file. Again, if you are make a lot of changes to the files/data stored within the VHD file, you will generate a massive amount of network traffic. Offloading the TX/RX checksums can help improve performance.
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Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 1
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 2
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 3
Installing and Configuring Host and Parent Settings
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 4
Creating a new Guest Virtual Machine and available configuration options
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 5
I’m a Developer! Why Virtualize?
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 6
Exploring .VHD configurations and why/when to use them
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 7a – This Post!
Miscellaneous Networking – Part A
Next week is our Bellevue IT Camp followed by Portland a couple of days later! This is going to be a GREAT event with some great content for the community. We have allocated a large block of time for open discussion and I am very interested in knowing what topics you would like to discuss. Please comment here or send to me in email or Twitter.
Also, we want to leverage the community as much as possible for peer-to-peer assistance. if you have an area of expertise that you feel you would like to offer up, please contact me so I can install you as an expert for the open topics discussion.
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March 13, 2012 Bellevue, WA
March 15, 2012 Portland, OR
Join us for our upcoming IT Camp where we are changing the format and structure of our in-person events! We are implementing the following changes:
I encourage everyone to start posting suggestions for topics to be discussed during the Open Topics sections. Also, if you have a topic that you would like to discuss, then please say so when posting your comment to this blog post. I am a firm believer that we can all learn from one another as we all have unique experiences and talents that we bring to the table. I look forward to reading your topic suggestions and then seeing you at the events!!
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM: Get out of Dodge: Migrating to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Is your infrastructure still clinging to the 2003 x86 server architecture? But with every day that goes by, you worry more and more that the other shoe will drop. You know you have to bite the bullet and get these critical services over to more modern hardware paired with the current supported revisions of the server platform. These are the services that keep the lights on, the servers running and most importantly: the users happy! This demo-intensive session covers how to migrate essential services like DHCP, DNS, File/Print, Certificate Services and more.
9:30 AM – 10:30 AM: Veeam Presentation
Discover how System Center 2012 can be leveraged to manage coexisting private cloud technologies from the metal to the app! This session will focus on the following System Center 2012 components: Virtual Machine Manager, Orchestrator and Operations Manager and how each technology can manage both Hyper-V and VMware Hypervisor platforms.
10:45 AM – 12:00 PM: Open Topics
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM: Open Topics
2:45 PM – 4:00 PM: Hands-On-Lab: Configure Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (Free version)
There are many IT Pros who have expressed interest in using the free version of Hyper-V Server. In this hands-on-session, we will demystify the configuration steps necessary to get Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 up and running so you can start using the free tool. As most folks know how to install an OS, we will not bore you with a 35 minute install; instead we will provide a VHD file with the product pre-installed, but not configured. We will help everyone configure their machines to boot to VHD and complete the configuration steps.
Following the configuration of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, you will import the System Center 2012 RC VMs provided by Veeam so you can also get guided hands-on-experience with their management product.
Windows Server “8” Preview is now available to download!
The next release of Windows Server, Windows Server "8", offers businesses and hosting providers a scalable, dynamic, and multitenant-aware, cloud-optimized infrastructure. It securely connects across premises and allows IT Professionals to respond to business needs faster and more efficiently. Windows Server:
I am grabbing the bits now and will have it on a test machine and I a few VM’s today!
-Cheers@!
Once every 4 years, we get an extra day in February. I have always found the hoopla around that extra day to be a bit humorous. Some people make a big deal out of it. For many others it just goes by completely unnoticed. I expect it is just another day to most except those that were born on February 29th and those that get paid on the last day of the month.
I was thinking about the extra day last night and thought “Maybe I should just do something interesting since I won’t get that day back for another 4 years”.
I thought that would be a great day to kick off live streaming.
It is going to be a low key affair. I don’t have a formal plan. I am just going to stream and take questions via email and twitter and comments on this blog post. You are even welcome to call me. If I can figure out on the fly how to stream your audio, we will take questions live.
If no questions come in then you will get the privilege of watching me do work - email, tweeting, reading tech news, loading a certain operating system that might come out today, and complaining about my toothache.
Oh…since the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is live, I will also be downloading and installing it during the day.
How to join the conversation – Send Questions to -
Twitter - @chrisavis
email – chris.avis@microsoft.com
phone – 425-705-8506
Comments on this post
Reference Post – Echoes of Me….
A few weeks ago, one of my peers, Michael Palermo, dared me to swap out my blog profile picture for some of the old pics of me that I showed at a team off-site. I accepted his challenge!
My new Profile pic is from high school ID card from my senior year in 1982-83. More than half my life ago!
In 1982 I was using Commodore Pet computers, Apple ][e, and drove a 1973 Gremlin!
What did you look like in 1982?
Exploring .VHD configurations and why/when to use them.
When it comes to Hyper-V virtualization, the .VHD file is all important. It is the virtual equivalent of your entire physical storage system. Fortunately for us, we don’t have the dizzying array of protocols, devices, and formats to worry about. No debate over SCSI vs SATA vs PATA. No concerns over where this file type or that file type should be stored. It is all stored in one place – the .VHD file. There are of course considerations to be made about where you store the .VHD file itself, but we are going to focus on the .VHD file itself for the time being.
A .VHD file can be created during the create virtual machine wizards in Hyper-V management, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and also through PowerShell. We will mostly limit our discussion to using the Hyper-V manager since it is sufficient to cover all the necessary aspects of the .VHD configurations.
The .VHD is again, the virtual representation of what would be the physical storage on a server or PC. When you create a new virtual machine and begin the process of installing an operating system, all of the files that would normally be placed on a physical drive are stored inside of the .VHD file. It is not unlike a .ISO file in that is essentially a wrapper for a bunch of other files contained therein. In fact, with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2, you can mount a .VHD file in the Disk Management MMC. (you can also create VHD’s here!) Study Guide!
There are several ways you can create a VHD file.
When creating a .VHD, it is important to create the appropriate kind of .VHD file for your needs. There are 3 basic types of .VHD files and 1 special case that we will look at here.
Dynamic –
This is the default disk type that gets created when user the Disk Manager MMC and when using the Create Virtual Machine wizard in the Hyper-V MMC
When you create a Dynamic Disk .VHD, you will specify a maximum size for the Dynamic Disk in the wizard. This the maximum amount of data that can be stored in this .VHD file before you are unable to store any additional data. This is similar to partitioning a physical drive. When partitioning a physical drive, you set aside a fixed amount of space and assign a drive letter. You can then add data up to the maximum size of the partition. A .VHD file is essentially a virtual partition in the form of a file that has a maximum size.
When initially created, they will be very small, usually only 256k in size. As you load an operating system or data to the drive, it will increase in size up to it’s maximum. They do not shrink on their own but can be compacted to reduce the amount of space they take up on the physical location where they reside.
Usually, a Dynamic Disk is selected when storage space is at a premium, or when doing testing. It can be leveraged for production works loads where there is not a lot of disk I/O within the .VHD file itself. For many production server work loads, it may be better to select a Fixed Disk for performance gains.
Fixed -
When you create a Fixed Disk .VHD you will specify a maximum size for the Fixed Disk in the wizard. unlike the Dynamic Disk that starts out small and grows as data is added, a Fixed Disk will immediately be the size the size that you specify in the wizard. Actually, “immediately” isn’t entirely accurate. When you click “Finish” the file will get created and then is essentially “formatted” to the size you specified. The larger the size of the Fixed Disk, the longer it will take for the wizard to complete. You will see a progress bar indicating how far into the process you the system is.
If you anticipate a lot of .VHD based disk I/O, you will likely choose fixed disk for performance.
Differencing -
This is a unique configuration and one that confuses many people. It relies on a parent/child relationship between two or more .VHD files. Special care has to be taken with Differencing disks to avoid rendering data unusable. For this one, I think another video is on order.
I hope this post helps you out with the different .VHD file types you can create and when you will want to use them.
There are a couple of other special disk access options that I will address in a future post (Pass-Through disks, Compact/Convert/Expand)
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 6 – This Post!
The 84th Academy Awards – “The Oscars” – will be on TV this Sunday. Most people are familiar with the drama and suspense around seeing their favorite actors and actresses being nominated for and winning (or losing!) the coveted golden statue. I have watched the Oscars many times since I was a child for that very reason. I used to get frustrated when they would pause and quickly rattle of the winners of the technical awards for lighting, sound, and other obscura that, to me, had nothing to do with the movies that I saw.
But there is so much that goes on behind the scenes of a movie, even decades ago, that make what we enjoy so much even possible. As technology has advanced, more and more really geeky folks have become a required part of movie making that I think they deserve a show of their own now. The Oscars have always recognized them with their own awards ceremonies, they just don’t broadcast them which is a shame. With as much technology that people use now and the vastly greater number of technical folks we have in technical industries than ever before, I believe they would have really good audience. besides, advertisers just might eat it up since those same technical folks make a pretty good living these days.
But until that day comes (I have faith it will!), we can still find out what the Academy is recognizing some very talented technical people for.
Every year now, there is a ceremony that takes places a couple of weeks prior to the televised Oscars that recognize the folks who’s technical achievements, discoveries, and innovations have made it possible for some of the cool stuff we see today. Consider all of the CGI work alone that has taken place in the last decade and I hope you can appreciate what some of these folks have done (I will exclude the CGI work done on the revamped versions of first three Star Wars movies….shame on you George Lucas!)
Here are a few examples of what the Scientific and Technical Awards Oscars recognize – (source)
“The invention and integration of micro-voxels in the Mantra software. - This work allowed, for the first time, unified and efficient rendering of volumetric effects such as smoke and clouds, together with other computer graphics objects, in a micro-polygon imaging pipeline.”
“The development of a unique and efficient system for the reduction of noise and other artifacts, thereby providing high-quality images required by the filmmaking process. - The “Lowry Process” uses advanced GPU-accelerated, motion estimation-based image processing tools to enhance image quality.”
“The design and engineering of the Phantom family of high-speed cameras for motion picture production. - The Phantom family of high-speed digital cameras, including the Phantom Flex and HD Gold, provide imagery at speeds and efficacy surpassing photochemical technology, while seamlessly intercutting with conventional film production.”
That is some pretty nerdy stuff! But modern film making would not be the same without it. Check out more of what goes on behind the scenes at the movies and how us nerds are making it all happen at the Sci-Tech Awards sub-site at oscars.org.
In the US, we are holding a promotion that has two very easy steps and then you receive $20 to use at the Microsoft Online Store. To begin, go visit the Microsoft Private Cloud Offer site.
Offer Period: Now until June 30, 2012
Click the Download button to go to the TechNet Evaluation Center and Download your Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Software. You will need to sign in with your Live ID to initiate the download. Once the download starts, it will probably take about 30 – 60 minutes depending on your connection. (I have Cox and it took me about 37 minutes to complete the download). The nice thing is you don’t actually have to wait for the download to complete before you move onto Step 2.
Click the Explore button and you will be taken to the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Virtual Lab. Currently, you will be taken directly to a Live ID sign in page. Once you sign in and complete the Microsoft Private Cloud Offer page, you will be taken to the final Virtual Lab page where you can Launch the Virtual Lab and complete it.
It is VERY important that you provide valid information with your Live ID sign in as you will receive an email (in about 3 days) with the code to retrieve your $20 coupon for use at the Online Store. You will also be entered to win one of three Lenovo W520s.
Lenovo W520 15.6”
Disclaimer: There are a limited number of $20 coupons available (about 5,000) and are given out on a first come first serve basis and only one per person. This promotional offer is only valid in the United States. Whether you get a $20 coupon or not, you will still be entered into the drawing for the W520. You can enter multiple times for the raffle – you just have to complete the two steps each time. Please read the full Rules on the Microsoft Private Cloud Offer Site as my disclaimer only has a portion of the full rules.
Join us in Redmond for the inaugural Office365 Saturday event! On Saturday, February 25th you can join other business users, administrators, developers, and professionals that work with Office365 and its corresponding technologies: SharePoint, Lync, and Exchange. Office365 Saturday Redmond will be an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of Office365 topics. Office365 Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in Office365!
More Information and Registration here – Office 365 Saturday site!
ps…..I am sorry for all of the posts today folks, but a lot of GREAT stuff hit my inbox while I was on vacation and I want to make sure I get the word out.
I just stumbled on this site last week while I was on vacation. It looks like Tom Shinder, long time Microsoft MVP and now Principal Knowledge Engineer with Microsoft (he is also the man behind the ISAServer.org site!), published the first draft of this back in July of 2011. I read through this information and think it should be required reading for anyone implementing or involved with Private Clouds. Since it is a Wiki, you have the opportunity to contribute!
From the site…..
“The Reference Architecture for Private Cloud wiki site on TechNet is driven by the SCD iX Solutions Group. It is a joint effort with the private cloud community at large. This document set is designed to facilitate an organization’s transformation to private cloud as a service delivery enabling set of processes and technologies. Business decision-makers, technical decision-makers, IT architects and IT Pros interested in private cloud should use relevant documents in this collection to understand the transformation to private cloud in terms of business drivers, potential architectural approaches, and impact on key aspects of IT.”
You can take part in the Wiki at this link – Reference Architecture for Private Cloud
Complete List of Reference Architecture for Private Cloud Documents: Overview of Private Cloud Architecture Private Cloud Technical Overview What is Infrastructure as a Service? Private Cloud Reference Model Private Cloud Principles, Patterns and Concepts Private Cloud Planning Guide for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Private Cloud Planning Guide for Service Delivery Private Cloud Planning Guide for Operations Private Cloud Planning Guide for Systems Management Cloud Computing Security Architecture A Solution for Private Cloud Security
I took some vacation time last week which is why there has been a gap in my 70-659 exam Series. I am quickly sorting through email and other work items and then I will resume my posts. It may be another day or two before you see the next one in the series but I can assure you, they are coming!
In the West Region, Harold Wong and I are hosting a set of events in the March and May / June timeframe.
In November 2011, we tried out a new format for events which we called IT Camps. This new format included the ability for the attendees to select the topics that would be discussed. We are evolving this a bit and holding more of these IT Camp style events in March.
March 13, 2012 Bellevue, WA Chris Avis