Mark Ghazai's Blog

Microsoft Management Summit 2013 (#MMS2013) - 4.8-4.12 Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas

2013-04-08T07:44:51Z

There are lots of excitements at MMS 2013 (#MMS2013) in Las Vegas. Many opportunities to learn about Microsoft Private and Public Clouds, Cloud OS and celebrate many milestones achieved by Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 SP1, Windows Intune, Windows Azure and Microsoft Cloud Solutions in general.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend, the good news is that you can stream the keynotes live on MSDN Channel 9;

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MMS/2013

Also, don’t miss the opportunity to go back and watch the recording of session you like to know more about during the week.

All About Windows Server 2012

2013-02-16T02:26:23Z

Windows Server 2012 (aka The Modern Cloud OS) has been out for over 6 months now

With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft delivers a server platform built on our experience of building and operating many of the world's largest cloud-based services and datacenter. Whether you are setting-up a single server for your small business or architecting a major new datacenter environment, Windows Server 2012 will help you cloud-optimize your IT so you can fully meet your organization's unique needs. Windows Server 2012 is;

Modern platform for the world’s apps
Transforms the datacenter
Enables modern apps
Unlocks insights on any data
Empowers people-centric IT

Windows Server 2012 Rapid Deployment Program TCO Study Whitepaper

If you are interested to see how Windows Server 2012 has helped reduce Total Cost of Ownership with our customers that already deployed it, please see this whitepaper.

TechNet: Windows Server 2012 Technical Library

This library provides the core content that IT pros need to evaluate, plan, deploy, manage, troubleshoot, and support servers running the Windows Server 2012 operating system.

What's New in Windows Server 2012
Technical Scenarios for Windows Server 2012
Install and Deploy Windows Server 2012
Migrate Roles and Features to Windows Server 2012
Secure Windows Server 2012
Manage Privacy in Windows Server 2012
Support Windows Server 2012
Server Roles and Technologies in Windows Server 2012
Management and Tools for Windows Server 2012

Independent Study: The Total Economic Impact of Windows Server 2012

This study conducted by Forrester Consulting is now available which uses their Total Economic Impact methodology to explore the potential costs and benefits of Windows Server 2012. Forrester also stated in the study that, “The data collected in this study indicates that deploying Windows Server 2012 has the potential to provide a solid ROI through quantifiable benefits, most notably increased scale, performance and flexibility with Hyper-V, the enablement of software defined networking with Network Virtualization, and improved storage integration & management.”

Overall, the study estimates a 6-month payback and 3-year risk-adjusted estimated ROI of 195% for a composite organization of 14,000 employees, which is based on the characteristics of the companies interviewed.

Simplify Deployment of Windows Server 2012 with MDT 2012 Update 1

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Update 1 is now available and expands your deployment capabilities with support for the latest software releases, including Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 Community Technology Preview.

Assess Windows Server 2012 Readiness with MAP

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 7.0 is now available for download with detailed and actionable recommendations, indicating the machines that meet Windows Server 2012 system requirements and which may require hardware updates. A comprehensive inventory of servers, operating systems, workloads, devices, and server roles is included to help in planning efforts.

Configuring and Managing Server Core Installations

This collection of topics provides the information needed to install and deploy Server Core servers; install, manage, and uninstall server roles and features; and manage the server locally or remotely. It also includes a quick reference table of common tasks and the commands for accomplishing them locally on a Server Core server.

Secure your Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 clients with Microsoft Security Compliance Manager

The Security Compliance Manager (SCM) is a free tool from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team that enables you to quickly configure and manage the computers in your environment and your private cloud using Group Policy and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 3.0 is now available for download! SCM 3.0 includes new baselines for Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10, an enhanced setting library, and new functionality to LocalGPO.

What’s New in Windows Server 2012

Find out what's New in Windows Server 2012. This content focuses on changes that will potentially have the greatest impact on your use of this release. I would highly recommend checking out the Hyper-V and Storage new features and improvements.

So, Why Hyper-V? Let’s take a look at Competitive Advantage of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V over VMWare vSphere 5.1

If you’ve ever been curious to see Why Hyper-V is one of the leaders in the Server Virtualization space and how it compares to the latest release of VMWare vSphere 5.1, you’ll enjoy reading this whitepaper.

7 ways Windows Server 2012 pays for itself

I was reading InfoWorld article below and thought you’d also like to see what other people are saying about Windows Server 2012 and how they can go forward with their IT with the speed of tomorrow

Storage Spaces
Hyper-V
PowerShell 3.0
Failover Clusters
Data DeDup
SMB 3.0
Scale-Out File Servers

How would you like to virtualize most business critical applications on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V with confidence?

While Microsoft Virtualization Product team confirmed that now 99% of ClassA applications in the world can be virtualized on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, ESG Labs has also conducted an independent evaluation of Hyper-V and you can find the results here.

The key findings from ESG Labs were:

With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V’s new support for up to 64 vCPUs, ESG Lab took an existing SQL Server 2012 OLTP workload that was previously vCPU limited and increased the performance by six times, while the average transaction response times improved by five times.
Manageably-low Hyper-V overhead of 6.3% was recorded when comparing SQL Server 2012 OLTP workload performance of a physical server to a virtual machine configured with the same number of virtual CPU cores and the same amount of RAM.

Windows Server 2012 Storage Whitepaper

Microsoft is introducing several new storage features and capabilities with Microsoft Windows Server® 2012. These innovative features and capabilities extend functionality in profound ways, including the ability to leverage inexpensive storage to create highly available, robust, and high performing storage solutions. These new Microsoft storage capabilities add dynamic functionality on each server and can work together to further enhance functionality at scale in large enterprise environments. This paper outlines these new features and capabilities and how they integrate, co-exist, and complement one another to extend the capabilities of your entire storage infrastructure. Also, wanted to let you know that a new report benchmarking various Storage features in Windows Server 2012 is now available online. The report can be downloaded here.

So, How about some Trainings?

Windows Server 2012 Technical Overview Courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)

For you IT Admins, these free courses provide lots of value to head start your journey toward adapting Windows Server 2012. This course is designed to provide you with the key details of Windows Server 2012. The seven modules in this course, through video and whitepaper, provide details of the new capabilities, features, and solutions built into the product. With so many new features to cover, this course is designed to be the introduction to Windows Server 2012.

Windows Server 2012 Test Lab Guides

The Windows Server 2012 Test Lab Guides (TLGs) are a set of documents that describe how to configure and demonstrate the new features and functionality in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 in a simplified and standardized test lab environment. There are many different scenarios that you could use to build a test lab in your test/dev environment. If you’re interested in Test Lab Guides for other Microsoft solutions and products, please see here or follow their blog here.

Windows Server 2012 Virtual Labs

Experience Windows Server 2012 firsthand in these virtual labs. You can test drive new and improved features and functionality through deep end-to-end scenarios or specific features, including server management and Windows PowerShell, networking, Hyper-V, and new storage solutions. These are Microsoft Cloud hosted Virtual Labs that you can start from your PC and enjoy the free learning experience without even needing to stand up a lab environment. If you are interested in more virtual labs, please see here. Enjoy!

Free Books

Free Windows Server 2012 (RTM) eBook is Available Now

Mitch Tulloch has updated his very popular free ebook on Windows Server 2012 based on the RTM version of the software. A key feature of this book is the inclusion of sidebars written by members of the Windows Server team, Microsoft Support engineers, Microsoft Consulting Services staff, and others who work at Microsoft. These sidebars provide an insider’s perspective that includes both “under-the-hood” information concerning how features work, and strategies, tips, and best practices from experts who have been working with the platform during product development. If you are into eReaders, you can also download the ePub and Mobi versions for free.

Free ebook: Introducing Windows 8: An Overview for IT Professionals (Final Edition)

Get a headstart evaluating Window 8 - guided by a Windows expert who’s worked extensively with the software since the preview releases. Based on final, release-to-manufacturing (RTM) software, this book introduces new features and capabilities, with scenario-based insights demonstrating how to plan for, implement, and maintain Windows 8 in an enterprise environment. Get the high-level information you need to begin preparing your deployment now.

Topics include:
Performance, reliability, and security features
Deployment options
Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit
Windows PowerShell™ 3.0 and Group Policy
Managing and sideloading apps
Internet Explorer® 10
Virtualization, Client Hyper-V, and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
Recovery features

More Resources

Real impact for lean government

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/guides/Lean-Gov/default.aspx

Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions

http://www.cloudassessmenttool.com

Did you Know these facts?

http://www.didyouknow2012.com

Making government lean with virtualization and private cloud

http://www.microsoft.com/government/ww/public-services/blog/Pages/post.aspx?postID=255&aID=66

Microsoft Government

http://www.microsoft.com/government/en-us/state/pages/default.aspx

Microsoft Government Cloud Computing

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/guides/cloud_computing/default.aspx

Microsoft Government Server Virtualization

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/Server_Virtualization/default.aspx

June 2012 Datacenter Newsletter

2012-06-22T23:36:06Z

Download the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC)

Try the release candidate of Windows Server 2012, a scalable, dynamic, multitenant-aware, and cloud-optimized infrastructure. This section contains information to design, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot technologies in Windows Server 2012

System Center 2012 Extends Client Management and Security to Mac and Linux

Last week at TechEd North America, general manager Garth Fort discussed two key release milestones that will enable organizations using System Center Configuration Manager to extend client management and security to heterogeneous platforms. Both are available for download today.

Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Service Pack 1 for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and Endpoint Protection: an early release that features client management support for Windows 8, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix operating systems.
System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection Client for Mac and Linux: anti-malware protection for unmanaged desktops and servers running Mac or Linux operating systems.

Watch the TechEd Orlando 2012 Keynotes and Other Sessions on Demand

Couldn’t make it to Orlando? Get a taste of TechEd from wherever you are. Watch the keynotes and many technical sessions On Demand. Public Recording from TechEd North America 2012 is available on TechEd Channel 9. Also you are interested to watch Failover Cluster Sessions at TechED Orlando 2012 and TechEd Amsterdam 2012, please see the blog post from Microsoft Clustering and High-Availability Product team here.

Server Roles/Technologies in Windows Server 2012

This collection contains information on how to design, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot technologies in Windows Server 2012.

Competitive Advantage of Windows Server 2012 RC Hyper-V

This document goes through and looks at how Hyper-V on the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate is stacking up against VMware. You’ll be amazed with all the feature enhancements and scalability metrics

What’s New in Windows Server 2012

Find out what's new and changed in Windows Server 2012. This content focuses on changes that will potentially have the greatest impact on your use of this release. I would highly recommend checking out the Hyper-V and Storage new features and improvements.

Let’s Build a Cloud… with PowerShell

You can now use Windows PowerShell to automate all of the IT tasks around cloud datacenter management, starting from deploying your cloud infrastructure servers, through on-boarding virtual machines onto that infrastructure, and ending with monitoring your datacenter environment and collecting information about how it performs.

Windows Server 2012 First Look (free Course)

This course builds on the original Windows Server "8" First Look course with the addition of 4 new modules designed to go into more detail on the core Windows Server 2012 platform capabilities.

Windows Server 2012 Beta Test Lab Guides

The Windows Server “8” Beta Test Lab Guides (TLGs) are a set of rich documents that describe how to configure and demonstrate the new features and functionality in Windows Server “8” Beta and Windows 8 Consumer Preview in a simplified and standardized test lab environment. While these lab guides were published prior to the release of Windows Server 2012, all of them still apply and you can start testing and evaluating these features and functionalities with Windows Server 2012 RC and Windows 8 Release Preview.

Free Books

Free Windows Server 2012 eBook Available Now

Download your free copy of the Microsoft Press eBook Introducing Microsoft Windows Server 2012. Written by Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Windows Server Team, this book explores enhancements and new features in Windows Server 2012 RC. If you are into eReaders, you can also download the ePub and Mobi versions for free.

Free SQL 2012 eBook Available Now

Download your free copy of the Microsoft Press eBook Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Written by Stacia Misner and Ross Mistry, this book explores enhancements and new capabilities, including improvements in operation, reporting, and management.

More Resources

http://www.microsoft.com/government/en-us/state/pages/default.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/guides/cloud_computing/default.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/Server_Virtualization/default.aspx

Differencing Disk or Snapshot Parent/Child Chain

2011-08-02T23:56:17Z

Hyper-V differencing virtual hard disk (VHD) is an interesting and sometimes very useful subject in virtualization world.

As a matter of fact Snapshot AVHDs are also differencing virtual hard disks. My favorite scenarios for using snapshots are stateless VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), training VMs and short term test labs. Differencing VHDs provide us with deployment speed and great storage saving.

If you need to know more about creating Differencing disks, please see the following article;

Hyper-V Virtual Machine (VM) Parent-Child Configuration Using Differencing Disks

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/hyper-v-virtual-machine-vm-parent-child-configuration-using-differencing-disks.aspx

One of my outstanding questions regarding Snapshots and Diff Disks has been walking the chain of child and parents up to the top parent. Off course, you can use Hyper-V Management Console and use Inspect Disk option to find the parent but you might be looking for another method to programmatically walk the chain and show you the relationship of multiple differencing disks in a tree. This made me look at few WMI classes and write few lines of code.

The first step is to find the AVHD (Snapshot) or VHD (Diff Disk) that is the newest one in the directory. A simple dir (PowerShell alias for Get-ChildItem) and Sort-Object will take care of this.

The second step is to inspect the VHD and you can take care of it with GetVirtualHardDiskInfo method of Msvm_ImageManagementService WMI class under Root\Virtualization namespace

Get-WmiObject –ComputerName “Localhost” -Namespace root\virtualization -Class Msvm_ImageManagementService

The output of this method, shows the parent of virtual hard disk being inspected in XML format. You can retrieve the parent virtual disk name and use it as the input for the next round of check. like a recursive loop.

So, I created the following function to take care of this repetitive task;

Function Inspect-DiffVHD([string]$VHDPath,[string]$Server = ".")

    $HyperVNamespace = "root\virtualization"

    $Server = "."

    $ImageManagementServiceName = "Msvm_ImageManagementService"

    $ImageManagementService = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $Server `

       -Namespace $HyperVNamespace -Class $ImageManagementServiceName

    $result = $ImageManagementService.GetVirtualHardDiskInfo($vhdPath)

    $VHDInfo = [xml]$result.info

    $VHDInfo.INSTANCE.PROPERTY[4].value

The attached sample PowerShell script would generate the following output when pointed to a folder containing differencing VHDs (.VHD) or Snapshots (.AVHD). (The sample script assumes the original Child/Parent relationship hasn’t been altered).

Sample output;

Enter Path: D:\Hyper-V\Test

D:\hyper-v\test\test_72A34A5A-0B86-4858-9663-CCE3AD9828A2.avhd

D:\Hyper-V\test\test_9330B5ED-248D-442D-9705-F7A320F7AC62.avhd

D:\Hyper-V\test\test_F6BC8CA6-BC70-4D02-9D6D-5E3C7CAB9D6E.avhd

D:\Hyper-V\test\test_84D8C8BC-1723-49DB-92D8-CEC1752ADC3F.avhd

D:\Hyper-V\test\test.vhd

VHDChain.PS1

Please note that I didn’t get a chance to test my sample script against multiple tree snapshot scenario but you should be able to do this with a simple modification.

Hope you find this post helpful. So long…

What’s the story of Pagefile size on Hyper-V Servers?

2011-05-26T22:05:05Z

This question comes up frequently. So, how do we size the pagefile on Hyper-V host servers and how about Virtual Machines?

Here’s the all you should know;

Paging File Configuration within the VM

Proper paging file configuration is vital to the way DM performs

DM requires that the VM have a PF

So how do you size your Paging File?

The old way doesn’t apply to DM:

Use Peak Commit Charge

Size PF to Peak Commit Charge – Physical Memory + some buffer

To understand how we should size the PageFile (PF), let’s consider an example:

Current Commit: 100 MB

Free Buffer: 20% (this is a new Dynamic Memory Setting)

Target Commit: 125 MB

Paging File: 1MB

Commit Limit: 126 MB

Available Memory: 26 MB (Commit Limit – Current Commit)

What happens when an app allocates 50 MB of memory?

What happens when an app allocates five 10 MB memory chunks?

Guidance:

Minimum PF should be large enough to cover the memory demands of your largest process. In the case of application allocating 50 MB of memory, the allocations request will fail with out of virtual memory error. When application allocates 10 MB chunks, the first two allocations will go through while the rest will fail as there’s no virtual memory (either RAM or PF) to accommodate that.

Maximum PF should be (peak commit charge – maximum physical memory + some buffer)

Paging File Configuration on the host

If you have reserved enough RAM for the host operations and your host is only being used for Hyper-V (plus Fail Over Cluster for HA VMs), you shouldn’t need a large pagefile.

With Dynamic Memory, you have to make sure that your host reserve is set properly

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization

Value Name: MemoryReserve

Value Type: DWORD

Value Data: (Decimal)Memory to reserve in MB

With a properly configured host reserve, if you follow (Peak Commit Charge – Physical Memory + some buffer) formula on the host, you’ll find out that you don’t need a page file.
So, Pagefile size of min= few Gigabyte and Max=2xmin should be sufficient.

Also, there are 2 new performance counter objects available to the Hyper-V host;

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Balancer

Provides counters about the memory balancer running in the parent partition

Counters are focused on:

The memory that is available for the host to use

The add and remove operations performed by the memory balancer

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory VM

Provides counters about memory usage on the guest VMs that are currently running

Each VM has its own set of counters

Counters are focused on:

Memory added and removed from the guest

The memory pressure that the guest is experiencing

Hope this helps! so long…

Case of Hyper-V Role install issue

2011-03-09T19:17:00Z

In this post, we're going to look at an issue that was happened when I was teaching a Hyper-V R2 class few weeks back.

Students were experimenting Hyper-V Role installation options using Server Manager Console, DISM.exe, ocsetup.exe and ServerManager PowerShell Module.

After reboot, we noticed that one of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Full edition hosts (Not Core) didn't have Hyper-V Management Console listed under Administration Tools. In addition to that, there no Hyper-V Role listed under Server Manager Console Roles!

When we tried to select the Hyper-V Role in Server Manager Add Roles Wizard, the following error message surprised us!

Hyper-V cannot be installed

The processor on this computer is not compatible with Hyper-V. To install this role, the processor must have a supported version of hardware-assisted virtualization, and that feature must be turned on in the BIOS.

We verified that hardware-assisted virtualization feature and hardware DEP are enabled within the server's BOIS.

Bcdedit.exe showed Hypervisorlaunchtype was set to Auto

%windir%\logs\CBS.log showed Hyper-V roles is installed and didn't show any errors.

Looking at dism.exe feature query (dism.exe /online /get-features) showed

Feature Name : Microsoft-Hyper-V

State : Enabled

So, comparing with a working Hyper-V R2 (Full Edition) host we found that the following feature was not installed in here;

Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-Clients

So, it turned out the he’d used the following command to install Hyper-V role without installing the management console feature.

This feature is normally being installed on Hyper-V Server Full Edition when using Server Manager Role installation wizard while it needs to be installed separatly if command line tools such as dism.exe, ocsetup.exe are being used.

The command that was used was

Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V

Note: this command works fine on Server Core edition of R2 as it doesn't require management console and there's no server manager console either.

Instead, the following command should've been used on Windows Server 2008 R2 Full Edition;

Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-Clients

Hope this helps you prevent this mystery or solve it! So long...

Error ID:404 while Adding Hyper-V host to SCVMM 2008 R2

2010-11-06T18:06:34Z

Yesterday while working on installing a new SCVMM 2008 R2 server setup, we encountered an issue when tried to add a new 2-node Hyper-V R2 host cluster to the VMM console.

Here’s how we were able to reproduce the error;

In SCVMM 2008 R2 console, select Add a host that is “Windows Server-based host on an Active Directory domain” . Enter the name of the server and choose add. You will get the following error;

Hostname.Hosts.domainname.com cannot resolve with DNS.

Ensure there is network communication with the DNS server. If the problem persists, contact your network administrator.

ID: 404
Details: No such host is known

We researched the issue and saw the following Wiki page that did not resolve this particular problem. (This article addresses similar error message in disjointed namespaces)

A few notes on System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and disjointed namespaces

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/a-few-notes-on-system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2008-and-disjointed-namespaces.aspx

Here’s the TechNet explanation of this error message;

SCVMM 2008 R2 Command-Line Interface Error Messages

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd548296.aspx

404

%ComputerName; cannot resolve with DNS.

Ensure there is network communication with the DNS server. If the problem persists, contact your network administrator.

NSLookup query against all node names and Failover Cluster name proved our DNS was working fine.

The next step was to check the networking and we found that default gateway on the SCVMM Server wasn’t configured properly. Setting the default gateway to the correct gateway resolved this issue.

I’ve also seen other networking problems on SCVMM server could result in the the same error message.

So, here are few troubleshooting steps that might help resolve this;

1- Domain functional level must be at least Windows 2003

2- DNS entries should exist for the SCVMM server and systems that will be added as Nodes and Failover Cluster names if any.

3- Check the network configuration on the SCVMM server such as default gateway and DNS server IP Addresses. Also, if there are multiple NICs on the server, try adding the node while other non-production NICs are disabled.

4- While adding the node to SCVMM, check the “Skip Active Directory name verification” checkbox on the Select Host Servers page where the host name is entered.

So long….

Problem with Compacting VHDs in Hyper-V Management Console

2010-10-23T20:05:38Z

If you are using Hyper-V as your virtualization solution, you might be familiar with expand and compact of VHD (virtual hard disk) process. Few days back when I was trying to compact one of my VM’s Dynamic VHDs (Guest OS: Windows Server 2008 R2), I encountered the following error;

[Window Title]

Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard

[Error Message]

The server encountered an error trying to edit the virtual disk.

[Content]

'The system failed to compact

'D:\HYPER-V\VM001\Virtual Hard Disks\VM001-Disk1.vhd'. Error Code: The requested operation could not be completed due to a file system limitation.

After researching this issue, it turned out that I had some Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) snapshots inside the guest operating system and needed to remove those first.

Normally I would use <vssadmin.exe delete shadows /all> command to do so but this time I received the following error;

Error: Snapshots were found, but they were outside your allowed context. Try removing them with the backup application which created them.

In this case, I had to use DiskShadow.exe tool that is part of Windows Server 2008 (R2) and delete all the existing VSS snapshots. and the steps are;

1- Start the VM

2- Logon with a local administrator account

3- Run the following command from an elevated command prompt:

DiskShadow.exe

DISKSHADOW>Delete Shadows All

This successfully removed all the VSS snapshots.

4- Shutdown your VM and try compacting the VHD again

More Information;

DiskShadow.exe

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772172(WS.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee221016(WS.10).aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2007/11/30/diskshadow-the-new-in-box-vss-requester-in-windows-server-2008.aspx

Vssadmin delete shadows

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788026(WS.10).aspx

Hyper-V Best Practices Analyzer PowerShell Automation

2010-06-09T00:19:00Z

Hi, Mark here today. As you might know, with the release of Server 2008 R2, Server Manger offered Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) for few roles/features such as Web Server (IIS).

The following screen shot shows the Best Practices Analyzer for IIS on Windows Server 2008 R2

Today I’m going to talk about Hyper-V R2 BPA that has been released recently through KB977238

After you install this package (no reboot required), the Hyper-V Best Practices Analyzer will be added to the Hyper- V role page under Server Manager Console. You can now select the Scan This Role option and run the BPA on the server and review the report.

Couple of questions you might ask would be how to run the BPA remotely or on Windows Server 2008 R2 Core?

You can use Server Manager Remotely and connect to another server. If the target server already has Hyper-V BPA package installed, you can scan that machine from inside server manager console and review the report. This applied to both Full and Core editions of Server 2008 R2 as long as Firewall Remote Server Manager connection is already enabled on the target server.

Note: on Server Core R2 please run SCONFIG.EXE

Now, you have another option that is using PowerShell to run the BPA and Save the Results.

For detailed information please see Get-Help about_BestPractices

Here are steps that are needed to be done;

1-	Start PowerShell as administrator
2-	Load Server Manager module	import-module ServerManager
3-	Load Best Practices Module	import-module BestPractices
4-	Run Hyper-V BPA Module	Invoke-BpaModel Microsoft/Windows/Hyper-V
5-	Review BPA’s Report	Get-BPAResult Microsoft/Windows/Hyper-v

Output of Get-BPAResult could be exported as HTML or CSV and the Reports could be saved to an alternative path as you wish.

Using this method, you can write your PowerShell Script to run BPA on multiple Hyper-V R2 server (regardless of Core or Full edition) and save the reports on a centralized location.

You may check out the following sample Powershell script I have put together. It runs Hyper-V R2 BPA and saves the report in CSV format;

Hyper-V_BPA_Sample.zip

The same concept could be expanded for other roles on Windows Server 2008 R2 that already have BPAs available for them.

In order to check the existing BPA for Windows Server 2008 R2 please refer to the following TechNet page;

TechNet Windows Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzers

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd392255(WS.10).aspx

Hope you enjoyed this post. So long….

Windows Server 2008 R2 Highly Available (Clustered) Remote Desktop Connection Broker

2010-05-12T20:53:12Z

Hi Mark here again. I was working on W2K8 R2 RD Connection Broker today (this is an exotic topic as people don’t get lots of queries on it) and thought I could share few notes with you just in case you get to the same situation and wonder how things should work.

With Windows Server 2008 R2 failover clustering, Connection Broker is officially listed as one of the resources that could be made highly available (HA) within Microsoft Failover Cluster Manager (MSFC).

Now, here are the recommended steps for creating a clustered Connection Broker on Windows Server 2008 R2;

Install Failover cluster (MSFC) Feature
Install RD Connection Broker role service under Remote Desktop Service Role (Steps 1 and 2 can be interchanged).
Run through the “Configure Service or Application for HA” wizard in MSFC (to make RD Connection Broker service HA).
In the MSFC UI, failover the service group to the 2^nd node. Fail back the service to the original node.
Complete the configurations (for example: Add RDV Hosts, RDSHs to the broker, create VM pools etc.) on each Broker node.

If you are a fan of scripting and PowerShell, you could use the PowerShell Script from the TechNet Scriptcenter that could help with this process;

PowerShell Script: Manage RD Connection Broker Cluster (Create, Add nodes)

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/en-us/5aca700b-7b70-4d06-9ae3-2cfb4fc027ca

Something you might notice is that if you fail over this highly available resource, it doesn’t show the connection settings on the other node immediately.

The RD Connection Broker uses an embedded database to store the session related information and passes those to RDSHost servers when they query the Connection Broker service.

On Windows Server 2008 R2, this DB is local to each broker node. Thus, each Broker node keeps its own local DB and only 1 Broker node can be active in the cluster at any given time.

When Broker service fails over to another node and the second node becomes the Active node, all the data will be repopulated in the local database. The primary Connection Broker (Active Node) rebuilds user session state (by querying user session information from RDSH (formerly known as Terminal Servers) Servers and VDI Agents.
This could cause a minimal amount of downtime (while session information is being rebuilt on new active node) after the failover.

While there’s no official numbers for the down time after a HA connection broker failover but 100s of RDVHosts & RDSHs should be able to rejoin within couple of minutes.

And please keep in mind that Connection Broker isn’t a proxy server and all the existing sessions will continue to work fine during the database rebuild process.

Here’s the TechNet Step-by-Step Guide;

Deploying Remote Desktop Connection Broker with High Availability Step-by-Step Guide

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff686148(WS.10).aspx