Larry Doyle from Netforce in Dublin has been deploying Hyper-V. This is worth sharing:
"Windows Server 2008 is an awesome product and I am super excited about it!
I have been testing Windows Server 2008 since beta release and implemented the eagerly anticipated Hyper-V on our test network as soon as it was available. I was so impressed with Hyper-V that we have rolled it out in a live client production network to consolidate their servers into a single server (Dell 2900, 2 x QuadCore 2.33ghz, 16GB RAM, 4 x gigabit NIC, RAID 1 (2 x 400GB SAS), RAID 10 (6 x 146GB SAS), Dual PSU) running 4 virtual machines - SBS 2003 Premium, Windows Server 2008 64-bit running SQL 2005 64-bit, Windows 2008 64-bit Terminal Services with RemoteAPP (another awesome feature) and a Windows 2003 32-bit Application Server. Snapshots of the VMs and Microsoft System Center DPM 2007 running on their existing Windows 2003 Server provides the Disk to Disk to Tape backup solution while utilising their existing investment in hardware. This has been a total success, delivering a cost effective solution to a small growing business that provides them with the ability to effectively manage and grow their IT infrastructure on a cutting edge technology platform. As the entire solution has been built using Microsoft products, integration is seamless. This is the future of virtualisation and now truly brings enterprise technology to the SMB market."
I can only agree with Larry - Hyper-V is a great solution (especially when implemented with System Center).
Dave
Anytime I do a demo that requires a SAN, I use the Microsoft iSCSI Target software. I'm lucky, I get to install it onto my demo machines. If you want it, you need to ask your OEM (the one that sold you your Windows Storage Server) - it's just an add-on.
I'm frequently asked how I use it and set it up. So, here goes:
This ten minute demo is broken down into three sections (Setting up the Target, Setting up the Initiator and Setting up the Initiator using the command line in Server Core).
Click to start, double click anywhere to play it in Full Screen and move your mouse over it to get the Player Controls to pop up.
Here's the commands I used towards the end (I just modify and use this for each Server Core machine I need to configure) - democore is the local iSCSI Initiator (the one I'm configuring) and daven-2008 is the iSCSI Target machine. So just replace every instance of each with your own server names.
sc \\democore config msiscsi start= auto net start msiscsi
iscsicli QAddTargetPortal daven-2008 iscsicli QAddTarget iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:daven-2008-daven-2008-target daven-2008 iscsicli QloginTarget iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:daven-2008-daven-2008-target iscsicli PersistentLoginTarget iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:daven-2008-daven-2008-target T * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 0 iscsicli BindPersistentVolumes iscsicli ListPersistentTargets iscsicli ReportTargetMappings
The iSCSI Initiator is already in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. You can download it for 2003, 2000 and XP from here. There's also a very detailed User Guide (which explains why I have fifteen stars in my PersistentLoginTarget command).
Enjoy,
Dave.
Once a month for the last six months or so, I've been getting seven emails in my inbox entitled:
Technical Rollup Mail - SQL
Technical Rollup Mail - Security
Technical Rollup Mail - Manageability
Technical Rollup Mail - Unified Communications
Technical Rollup Mail - Internet
Technical Rollup Mail - Platforms
Technical Rollup Mail
The last one is just the previous six in one email.
Each email is nothing more than a list of URLs with a short sentence or paragraph about the content, sorted into groups (News, Documents, Downloads, Events/Webcasts and A.O.B). I've been finding these mails invaluable - not that I'd read any of them in detail and click on all the links, more that I'd scan through them and click on the odd link of interest (the paragraph explaining the content helps here). I also save them away and use them as a searchable reference.
It's very hard to keep on top of what's going on with regard to technology and Microsoft, this is a fantastic monthly update, that I use to attempt to keep my head above water.
Anyway, turns out that ALL of the content is posted here: The Technical Rollup Mail - There was me thinking I was on the inside!
Enjoy your monthly Technical Rollup Mail,
Eduardo Shanahan from Customer Minds Ltd has deployed his new application on Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V.
"Our application was developed from the start with Visual Studio 2008, and the sole existence of LINQ saved me months of work. Now that the first version is ready, we went in production with all the datacenter running Windows Server 2008, and Hyper-V on the application servers. Being a company where the system administration is done by developers, we need the simplest tools to get the job done, and W2K8 is cleaner and easier to have up and running. Virtual machines management is not a pain anymore :)"
Great to hear.
I know Carmel Gunn from Prodata pretty well by now, I was asking her how she's been getting on with Windows Server 2008 - she had this to say:
“We saw the demonstrations of Windows Server 2008 and clustering at the community previews and at the launch. It was hard to believe, so we put it into a virtual environment to assess, and it has really impressed me with both the ease of creating a cluster, and the simplicity and speed of failover. We have been assessing it for the past 3 months now, and think it’s great. It is hard to believe that such a complex process executes so simply. We’re very excited by the new features, and look forward to using them.
We are really looking to Hyper-V to reduce the complexity of the many copies of client sites we have to maintain, and reduce the cost of provisioning complex test or pre-production environments for our projects”
Well, you won't have to wait too long (if the rumours are anything to go by).
I've been working with Willie O’ Connor (Computer Science Dept, Trinity College Dublin) for ages now. I was asking him about his plans to deploy Windows Server 2008 - he had this to say:
"Windows Server 2008 is a great product. We’ve been testing Server 2008 since Beta 1 and we are currently in the process of upgrading our current Server 2000/2003 systems to Server 2008. The new version of IIS7 will allow our students a better and more reliable experience in developing for the platform and allows us to delegate control of their projects to the individual students themselves. We are also actively testing Hyper-V on Server Core 2008 with plans to put it into production as soon as possible, with the intentions of complete deployment of Server 2008 by August on all our systems."
I'll be getting an update from Willie in August then!