Kevin Remde's IT Pro Weblog
Today in Part 17, It’s Brian Lewis’s turn to admit some “Doh!” moments and, more importantly, share what he learned from them during our build-out of our test datacenter in San Jose.
So if you don’t think sysprep is all that important, you should read his post HERE.
And if you have missed any of the series posts, check out my summary post for links to all of the articles available so far at http://aka.ms/cloudseries.
Today I took and passed the VMware VCP5 certification test.
“Wait.. huh?! You got certified on VMware?”
Yes, I did. I am now a VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5.0. The powers-that-be realize, as I and my teammates do, that it’s important to be well-versed in what’s happening in the real world datacenters; especially if we’re going to be comparing and contrasting (and competing) with other solutions. One of the biggest competitors we have is VMware in the datacenter and virtualization space. So we acquired some funds to get trained on VMware, and to get certified if we wanted to take it to that extreme.
So, last week I took the week-long “VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [5.0]” training course. And then this week, aside from preparing for and delivering a talk down in Winona, MN, I spent my days studying, installing, playing-with, and re-studying my class notes and labs. And this morning at 9:00am I took the test. Score: 422 (of 500, I think). Passing is 300. So, with the class and the test out of the way, I expect to hear from VMware soon that I’m “VCP5” certified.
“Wow… Congratulations!”
Aw shucks. Thanks.
“I guess that explains why you’ve been very quiet on the blog here.”
Yeah, that’s right. July at Microsoft is all planning and budgeting and getting geared up for the coming (fiscal) year.. and it’s a good opportunity to get done with some goals for the year that might otherwise be hard to do when we get into full-blown prep/event/travel/launch/IT Camp/Presentation/etc.-mode. In fact, in preparation for the other big certification I want to acquire this year, I’m leaving for Redmond on Sunday for a week of intensive Private Cloud training.
In part 3 of our Windows 8 Tips and Tricks series, Principal Technical Account Manager Lex Thomas and I show some improvements in Windows 8 that will help you be more productive.
Download the Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation today and test your applications, hardware and deployment strategies with Windows 8.
Resources:
Download
What a nice surprise! Today Microsoft announces the availability of the next pre-release of the new client PC operating system: the Windows 8 Release Preview.
More details here:
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What do you think? Let’s talk about your thoughts on this new milestone in the comments.
Y’all heard that we released a new preview for consumers of Windows 8, right?
Windows 8 Consumer Preview
In today’s “31 Days of our Favorite Things” series, Matt Hester is giving away the store.
“Huh?”
Unlike our main competition in the area of virtualization and all things private cloud, Microsoft believes that virtualization is just a ubiquitous part of the datacenter today. And as such, it should be available and optionally installable as a part of our server platform that is Windows Server 2012. So.. everything you can do, and no matter how big you want to scale or be flexible on our virtualization platform, you can do with what is simply included in Windows Server.
Can you say “64 virtual procs in a single VM”? I knew you could.
How about handling up to 8000 virtual machines in failover cluster of 64 nodes? Or a no-additional-cost platform that does live migration, live storage migration, and even shared-nothing live migration (which is the LIVE move of a virtual machine between to virtualization hosts with no shared storage… just a network path between them. Yeah.. you heard me right. I move a VM from the C:\ drive of one Hyper-V host to the C:\ drive of another host, and the VM never goes down or loses connectivity)? I could go on and on.
But…
“Ah ha! There’s a catch!”
Hold on there, buckaroo. No catch. I was just going to say: But if you want all of that scale and all of those same capabilities supported by a FREE hypervisor without having to purchase Windows Server for the virtualization host OS, you can get it all in Hyper-V Server.
“But seriously.. your competition has a free hypervisor, too.”
Does their free hypervisor do everything that their top-of-line hypervisor does? Can you do every form of vMotion..er.. Live Migration imaginable with it? Or do they require you to buy their super-ultra-mega-enterpri$e-plu$ edition?
“Um..”
Exactly. Hyper-V Server is full-featured. Anything you can do with Hyper-V as a role on Windows Server 2012, you can do with Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
Make sure you CHECK OUT MATT’S ARTICLE on the subject. And then download the free Hyper-V Server and give it a try.
Are you interested in this? Have any concerns or questions? That’s what the comments are for.
“It’s been said that the secret to a good marriage is to understand that ‘it must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.’ Microsoft has 20 years of expertise in the enterprise arena, and the release of Office 365 a year ago only extends that commitment. Our commitment to our customers is both total and permanent. What’s more, it is equal, meaning that we’re always listening and will continue to evolve to meet our customers’ needs and desires.” “By contrast, it’s hard to determine whether Google’s commitment to its enterprise customers is either total or permanent. Google Apps for Business (GAFB) grew out of a consumer offering and does not generate a significant portion of Google’s overall income. Not surprisingly, Google once again showed a lack of innovation and investment in Google Apps for Business at its recent Google I/O conference.”
“It’s been said that the secret to a good marriage is to understand that ‘it must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.’ Microsoft has 20 years of expertise in the enterprise arena, and the release of Office 365 a year ago only extends that commitment. Our commitment to our customers is both total and permanent. What’s more, it is equal, meaning that we’re always listening and will continue to evolve to meet our customers’ needs and desires.”
“By contrast, it’s hard to determine whether Google’s commitment to its enterprise customers is either total or permanent. Google Apps for Business (GAFB) grew out of a consumer offering and does not generate a significant portion of Google’s overall income. Not surprisingly, Google once again showed a lack of innovation and investment in Google Apps for Business at its recent Google I/O conference.”
That quote is from an excellent article posted recently on the “Why Microsoft?” blog, summarizing and celebrating the successes of the first year of Office 365. I highly recommend you read the full article, and the 7 “successes” during the year that was. If you’re in the process of considering the productivity suite for your business, and you are deciding between Google and Office, you really need to understand who has the most experience in the enterprise, and who really has the full solution in place. Not doing so would be like jumping into shark infested waters with a steak strapped to your chest.**
**Okay.. perhaps that’s a bit dark. But you get my point.
In this final day of Shark Week! on Full of I.T., we will do a quick comparison of storage capabilities between Hyper-V and VMware’s vSphere 5.0.
Hyper-V 3.0 in Windows Server 2012 and in the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 have some new capabilities and new capacities in the storage arena.
“’Arena’? Shouldn’t that be ‘Shark Tank’?”
Ah yes, right. In the shark tank. Capabilities such as support for direct connections to Fibre Channel storage for virtual machines, like 4KB disk support, and natively supporting Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX), are now just included for no additional cost with Hyper-V.
And how big of a disk do you think you need?
“Pretty big.. and getting bigger all the time.”
And that’s the key point, right? 2 terabytes of disk-drive space for a single virtual machine is probably enough for now – but why stop there? And if I decide to use a virtual disk to hold data for a very large database, what if I need more than that? So now the new .VHDX format disks, among other improvements, now support growing up to 64TB in size.
TRY THIS AT HOME: On your Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 test machine, open up Storage Manager, and create a new disk. Create it as dynamically expanding, and create it as a 64TB (or 65,535 MB) size disk.
“Oh wow! It works! I actually have 64TB of space!”
Not so fast!… remember, that’s a dynamically expanding (“thin provisioned”) disk. It will only expand as far onto your physical disk as the space you actually have.
So to summarize, here’s a handy chart comparing** VMware’’s free vSphere Hypervisor, vSphere 5.0 Enterprise Plus, and Hyper-V 2012.
Want more details?
**I realize that things change. VMware will likely soon improve their capabilities to better compete with Microsoft’s Hyper-V. As they should. These numbers come from an excellent talk given by Matt McSpirit at TechEd North America 2012. I highly recommend viewing the recording of his session HERE.
Yes indeed! It’s SHARK WEEK on FULL OF I.T.! This is the week of the year that we get aggressive here on the blog! We stir up the waters and bait the hooks with tasty I.T. goodness! We rip our competitors to shreds! We…
“Hey Kevin… Aren’t you just stealing this idea from the Discovery Channel?”
Huh? They have a Shark Week, too? No.. they probably stole it from me.
“25 years ago?”
And besides, this is completely different. I don’t have a big car company sponsor like they do.
Anyway, this week I’m going to be commenting on and linking to resources that compare and contrast Microsoft’s solutions to our nearest competitors, as well as adding some of my own commentary. (Carefully worded, of course. I don’t want to be fired.) And I invite you to join the discussion if you completely disagree with me; or if you just want to add a “yeah!”… either way is perfectly fine with me.
“So, what’s the topic today?”
I have a lot to say with regard to VMware in comparison to Hyper-V in the soon-to-be-launched Windows Server 2012. And I know two things for sure about this topic:
So today I thought I’d throw a few quick stats into the water, to whet your appetite and get you thinking about how Hyper-V compares** to VMware…
Notice that we’ve included a comparison with both the free vSphere Hypervisor as well as the not-so-free top-of-their-line vSphere 5.0 Enterprise Plus version.
“But why didn’t you include the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server in this chart?”
I did. Everything you see here in terms of capability, you get with both the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server as well as Hyper-V that is included in Window Server 2012. There is no additional cost associated with capacities that will allow you to run the biggest, baddest, great-whitest workloads you can imagine.
“Great-Whitest?”
Okay.. it was a stretch.
**I realize that things change. VMware will likely soon improve their capabilities to better compete with Microsoft’s Hyper-V. As they should. These numbers come from a good talk given by Matt McSpirit at TechEd North America 2012. I highly recommend viewing the recording of his session HERE.
What do you think? What else would you like me to compare? Point me to the shark-infested waters, and let's see if I can tread water!
As the title of this posting suggests – or rather says flat out – the beta of System Center 2012 SP1 is available for your downloading and testing/trying pleasure.
“Why? What do I need an SP1 for? Didn’t System Center 2012 just come out earlier this year?”
Absolutely. But what has since been released?
“Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.”
Right. And does System Center 2012 support managing Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8?
“Does it?”
No. At least not fully. And as you are probably already aware by now, there are a lot of new capabilities that it would be nice to manage along with the rest. So the service pack will add that functionality. For example: Virtual Machine Manager can handle new options for migrations. Plus create and manage virtual “VM” networks.
Get it HERE!
Have you tried it yet? What do you think? Share your thoughts or questions in the comments.
Microsoft has just made available the new pre-release of Windows Server 2012!
GET IT NOW!
Gee.. you go out to the gym for a couple of hours and come back and lo-and-behold the Windows 8 released (RTM) bits become available for download for TechNet and MSDN subscribers! So if you subscribe, go to the site and get ‘em while they’re hot!
“What about other folks? When can I buy it?”
If you’re a Microsoft Software Assurance customer, you’ll be able to download the bits on August 16, 2012 (yes.. tomorrow). If you’re a Volume License customer without Software Assurance, you’ll be able to purchase Windows 8 through your Microsoft Volume License Resellers on September 1st, 2012.
“And what about the rest of us?”
October 26th. That’s when it will hit store shelves, and also become available on new and exciting hardware such as the Microsoft Surface.
BONUS for you developers: Visual Studio 2012 is also now available for MSDN download.
I’m pretty sure that if you have been following my (or any of my teammates) blogs recently, you know a little something about Windows Azure. You probably also know that you can get a free 90-day trial of Windows Azure very easily, with no obligation. The benefit of that is that it becomes very easy to use hosted resources to build networking and virtual machines in an environment that can be used for testing and training, without actually requiring any additional local hardware.
“Build it in the cloud?”
Build it in the cloud!
In part 15 of our “Migration and Deployment” series, my friend Brian Lewis describes some of his experiences in doing just that. In fact, he takes it a step further in describing a way to build, configure, and then store virtual machine hard disks in Windows Azure Storage, and then grant the ability copy those into many student accounts for use as pre-built lab machines.
“Hey! You guys could use that for your Hands-on-Labs at your IT Camps, couldn’t you?”
Stay tuned. And in the meantime, READ BRIAN’S EXCELLENT ARTICLE HERE
Today in our "31 Days of our Favorite Things", my friend and colleague Matt Hester has posted an article about a little-known improvement in the newest version of PowerShell: Script Snippets
“PowerShell Script Snippets? It’s fun to say. But I’ve never heard of these before. What are they?
That’s what Matt is going to tell you. But if I were to summarize what they are for you here, I’d borrow these two sentences from his article:
“The Integrated Script Snippets are stored in the Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE) and are designed to help us learn to PowerShell as well as write proper scripts. When you access the snippets you can select from a list of script templates, select the appropriate template, and have partially completed script inserted into the editor. By default ISE ships with several script snippets to ease creating the commonly used programming syntax patterns.”
“So.. it’s like inserting proper code into a script based on what you’re trying to accomplish?”
Exactly.
CHECK OUT HIS ARTICLE HERE
Do you wield the power of the shell? Or are you just getting started?
DirectAccess is not new, but it is improved in Windows Server 2012.
For those of you who are not familiar with DirectAccess, let me briefly describe a scenario that I live every week (or three)…
It’s time to fill out and submit expense reports for my many travels and the associated costs to the company. To do this, Microsoft has an internal tool that is lovingly called “MS Expense”. It is a browser-based application that requires me to know an internal address. So.. the address to this web site, plus many of the other internal resources such as HR / Benefits, News, SharePoints.. they’re all at named resources that don’t (and can’t) exist on the Internet. I need to be on the corporate network. But… I’m at home. Or in a hotel / airport / coffee shop.
“So yeah.. big deal. It’s called a ‘VPN’, Kevin.”
Ah.. but that’s where our experiences diverge. You (and I, in the past) have had to first make that connection happen as an extra step. But , with DirectAccess, all I need is to be on the Internet. Those internal resources are as readily available to me as any Internet resource. I simply go to “MS Expense”, and start lying. ..er… start filling out and submitting my expenses accurately and honestly.
And for IT Organizations, an added benefit is that the PCs you’re responsible for are also accessible by you. Inventories and updates and pushing policies or software works as easily as if those machines were on the corporate network, because, in a sense, they are.
Today’s “31 Days of our Favorite Things” article is provided by Sumeeth Evans (@sumeethevans). He’s going to tell you all about how making DirectAccess happen with a foundation of Windows Server 2012 is so much better than the original.
HIS ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE.
Does this sound useful? Have you been using it in Windows Server 2008 R2? Have any questions? That’s what the comments are for.
Why not?
We’ve shown you how easy it is to create your own servers in Windows Azure, and there’s no reason one of those machines couldn’t be running Microsoft SQL Server 2012. In fact, we’ll even provide an evaluation image that you can start with.
In today’s Part 22 of “31 Days of Servers in the Cloud”, my floridated friend Blain Barton provides you a detailed step-by-step on how it’s done.
READ HIS ARTICLE HERE
“Floridated?”
He lives in Florida. I know.. the word is “Floridian”, but he’s not originally from there… so at some point he got “floridated”.
In this, the first of Eight Windows 8 tips and tricks sessions, I welcome Principal Technical Account Manager Lex Thomas to the show. Tune in for part 1 as we show you around the new modern user interface in Windows 8.
In Windows Server 2012 Microsoft includes many improvements, but also many new capabilities “in the box”. One of the new things we’re including is built-in support for data deduplication.
“Wait.. you mean like when a process makes more efficient use of the space used on a storage volume by finding all blocks of data that are the same, just one copy of what will be used for more than one file, thereby freeing up disk space?”
Congratulations. I couldn’t have said it better myself. But here’s an even better description of the feature from the TechNet page on the subject:
“Data deduplication involves finding and removing duplication within data without compromising its fidelity or integrity. The goal is to store more data in less space by segmenting files into small variable-sized chunks (32–128 KB), identifying duplicate chunks, and maintaining a single copy of each chunk. Redundant copies of the chunk are replaced by a reference to the single copy. The chunks are compressed and then organized into special container files in the System Volume Information folder.”
In today’s installment of our “31 Days of our Favorite Things”, we are fortunate to have our former teammate Chris Henley (currently of Veeam) doing the writing for us.
Something important to be aware of when you’re using Windows Azure is: How much is this costing me? And in particular, which items cost me what amount?
One of those items that might be easy to overlook is the amount of storage you’re currently using. If you’ve got a lot of old .VHD files that were formerly being used as OS or data disks, but they’re now just sitting there doing nothing – that’s still costing you something.
Today in part 18 of our “31 Days of Servers in the Cloud” series, my friend from just-over-the-boarder Brian Lewis gives us a couple of useful methods for deleting those old-and-no-longer-needed .VHD files from your Windows Azure storage.
http://bit.ly/24hipc
Get yourself 5 of those “5 Hour Energy” drinks, set your alarm clock, and join the WORLD for this amazing opportunity to learn all about the Private Cloud solutions from Microsoft.
Here’s the description from the registration page:
Every organization has the power to employ cloud technologies in their own way, at their own pace and with their own terms. The use of private cloud technologies help transform how organizations manage infrastructure resources, provision applications and automate services for their business. It also helps them leverage and manage public cloud services that expand their current infrastructure and application capabilities. As an end result, organizations increase IT operational agility, improved business focus and achieve value-add economics that evolves their IT infrastructure into a strategic asset. Over 24 hours, you will hear from top industry and technical professionals from around the world to help you better understand the private cloud technology solutions that are available today. You will hear from industry organizations about how they view the public cloud and how the role of the IT Professional will evolve as more and more organizations begin a private cloud transformation. Listen to the number of technical professionals who will be on hand talking about the required components to simplify private cloud creation and management. Talk with them and your peers about the numerous operational efficiencies that come from deploying a private cloud with the reduction of servers and the benefits of provisioning and managing virtual applications across multiple platforms. We hope that you will come away from this event with the knowledge and experience to help you in your private cloud infrastructure decisions and be prepared to have thought-leadership based discussions focused on building and managing your organization’s agile and efficient private cloud environment.
Every organization has the power to employ cloud technologies in their own way, at their own pace and with their own terms. The use of private cloud technologies help transform how organizations manage infrastructure resources, provision applications and automate services for their business. It also helps them leverage and manage public cloud services that expand their current infrastructure and application capabilities. As an end result, organizations increase IT operational agility, improved business focus and achieve value-add economics that evolves their IT infrastructure into a strategic asset.
Over 24 hours, you will hear from top industry and technical professionals from around the world to help you better understand the private cloud technology solutions that are available today. You will hear from industry organizations about how they view the public cloud and how the role of the IT Professional will evolve as more and more organizations begin a private cloud transformation. Listen to the number of technical professionals who will be on hand talking about the required components to simplify private cloud creation and management. Talk with them and your peers about the numerous operational efficiencies that come from deploying a private cloud with the reduction of servers and the benefits of provisioning and managing virtual applications across multiple platforms.
We hope that you will come away from this event with the knowledge and experience to help you in your private cloud infrastructure decisions and be prepared to have thought-leadership based discussions focused on building and managing your organization’s agile and efficient private cloud environment.
Event Start: May 10, 2012 8:00AM GMT (that’s 4:00AM Eastern US, 1:00AM Pacific) Event End: May 11, 2012 8:00AM GMT (that’s 4:00AM Eastern US, 1:00AM Pacific)
REGISTER HERE
Today we have a guest author!
“Oh yeah? Good. I’m getting tired of you same bunch writing everything.”
Um.. okay… well, then you’ll be happy to see that today’s author is Bill Wilder…
“Bill Wilder is a hands-on developer, architect, consultant, trainer, speaker, writer, and community leader focused on helping companies and individuals succeed with the cloud using the Windows Azure Platform.”
And his article – part 21 of our “31 Days of Servers in the Cloud”, is a very good answer to the ultimate question.
“I thought the answer to the ultimate question is ‘42’.”
No.. that’s the answer to the ultimate question “of life, the universe, and everything”. Bill answers the ultimate question: Why is the cloud something I should consider as my platform (or infrastructure) of choice? And in his answer, he does an excellent job of defining the question and the implications such a decision will entail.
READ HIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE HERE
And thanks, Bill, for contributing to the series!
In today’s installment of our "31 Days of our Favorite Things" in Windows Server 2012, Matt Hester summarizes the key benefits, plus a couple of really slick improvements available with PowerShell in its newest form. He specifically focuses on just a couple of his favorites: PowerShell History, and the new Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), and then concludes with some useful related resources.
CHECK OUT PART 3!
And the answer to the question I pose in the title is: YES! Yes you can!
In today’s part 7 of our “31 Days of Servers in the Cloud” series, Keith Mayer walks you through a detailed step-by-step of how to build virtual machines in Windows Azure that serve as a solid test and learning platform running SharePoint 2013.
“Seriously?”
Yes.. you can do that! If you don’t already have your 90-day free trial started, you can get it here: http://aka.ms/90DaysofAzure
READ KEITH’S EXCELLENT ARTICLE HERE
As we’ve shown in previous articles of our series, Windows Azure is a very useful tool for setting up a testing and training environment.
Today in part 29 of “31 Days of Servers in the Cloud”, Don Noonan (guest writer) shows us how to set that up and take advantage of it.
FIND HIS ARTICLE HERE
Richard Fichera of Forrester Research had recently written up and posted his initial impressions of Windows Server 2012, and his related recommendations.
Here’s my super-ultra-brief summary:
1. Here’s why Windows Server 2012 is really great, and
2. You should start considering it NOW, even if you’re also still just rolling out Windows Server 2008.
In all seriousness.. read his article: Microsoft Announces Windows Server 2012.