Simplifying Windows

Bye Bye Microsoft! Moving to a new blog!

Ranjana1 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:14:55 GMT

This is my last day with Microsoft India. I must admit that I really enjoyed my role as an IT Pro Evangelist here and loved to interact with a huge audience throughout the country.

I will continue to blog and dive deeper into technology with my new blog at : http://ranjanajain.wordpress.com or

simply www.ranjanajain.com .

I do hope that I will have the support of my blog readers and subscribers in future also.

HYPER-V CAPABILITIES – LIMITS for Virtual and Physical Machines

Ranjana1 — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:51:00 GMT

The accurate, authoritative source for this is located at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee405267(WS.10).aspx.

Technorati Tags: virtualization,hyper-V,windows server 2008 R2,limits,capabilities

VMWare Certified Professional now!

Ranjana1 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:00:00 GMT

I am also a NOW! on VMWare VSphere 4

Just added the VmWare Certified Professional certification to my certifications today. The exam per say wasn't that easy, but what was tougher was to gain that level of expertise on a compete product as much as you have on your own (Hyper-V and System Center).

Virtualization with Hyper-V – Know the basics

Ranjana1 — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:43:00 GMT

Hyper-V Terminology

Term	Functionality
Windows Hypervisor	Windows Hypervisor is a software interface that sits between the physical hardware and one or more Operating Systems. It controls access to a core set of hardware and guarantees isolation between the partitions, enforces policy restrictions for hardware access, and monitors the partitions.
Partitions	Partitions are containers isolated from each other by Hypervisor. A partition consists of Virtual memory address space, one or more virtual processors, worker processes, and communication interfaces. The virtual memory address pace of a partition is mapped to the physical memory address space of the physical server. There are two types of partitions in Hyper-V: Parent and Child. Hyper-V contains one parent partition and one or more child partitions.
Parent Partition	Parent partition is the first partition that is created. Although it is technically a virtual machine, it has unique features. It owns all of the resources not owned by the hypervisor. It manages the creation and operations of the child partitions.It controls access to the shared resources and defines whether they can be shared by the child partitions or are restricted to a single child partition. It is in-charge of power management, plug-and-play, and hardware events.Whereas a child partition sees emulated or synthetic devices, the parent partition sees the real hardware.
Child Partition	Child partitions are software-based representations of physical hardware and are also referred to as Virtual Machines. They have no direct access to the real physical hardware of the server. Each child partition sees the same exact base virtual hardware: motherboard, serial ports, video card, PCI bus, and so on and additional hardware can be “plugged into” the virtual motherboard.These include, virtual network adaptor cards, virtual SCSI adaptors, virtual hard disks, virtual CD/DVD drives and memory.
Virtualization Stack	The Hyper-V virtualization stack is a collection of software components and virtual devices that work together to support the creation and management of virtual machines. There are components of the stack that work in parent and the child partitions. The virtualization stack includes the following major components: -Worker process -Configuration Component -Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Interfaces -Virtual Machine Management (VMM) Service -Virtualization Service Provider (VSP) -Virtualization Service Clients (VSC) -Virtualization Interface Driver (VID) -Virtual Stack Memory Manager (VSMM) -Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus) -Emulated Devices -Virtual Motherboard -Integration Services
Virtual Machine Management Service (VMMS)	It is a collection of components that work together to manage virtual machines. It is implemented as a single executable service module, VMMS.exe, under the name Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management. (This is different from System Center Virtual Machine Management service). The Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) maintains a list of virtual machines defined in Hyper-V, creates worker processes, manages the Virtual Machine configuration and addition or removal of devices.
Configuration Component	The configuration component provides the creation, management, modification and destruction of child partition configuration settings. Configuration settings are stored in an XML file. By default, the configuration file is created at the root of the directory where the virtual machine is created and assigned the filename GUID.xml, where GUID is the Globally Unique identifier of the child partition.
Virtualization Service Providers (VSPs)	These are software components that run in the parent partition and handle Input/Output (I/O) requests on behalf of the virtual machines. VSPs provide the interface via the VMBus to Virtualization Service Clients (VSCs). VSPs also communicate to the physical hardware, via the Windows Driver stack or device driver, to handle I/O requests.
Virtualization Service Clients (VSCs)	These are synthetic drivers that run within the child partition and communicate across VMBus to corresponding service Virtualization Service Providers in the parent partition.
VMBus	VMBus is a high-speed interpartition communications mechanism that is made up of multiple components or technologies. VMBus is designed to provide point-to-point communications between child partition and parent partition over a dedicated channel. Each VSP provides a dedicated channel for child partition VSC. A single VSP can communicate with multiple VSCs.
Virtualization Infrastructure Driver (VID)	It is the parent partition kernel level interface to the Windows Hypervisor using defined API interfaces called hypercalls. The VID provides service to the worker and administrative management interface running in the user mode and communicates with Windows Hypervisor to coordinate execution of Virtual Machines.
WMI Interfaces	WMI Interfaces exist to allow for the remote management and operations of Hyper-V. WMI Interfaces consist of WMI service, WMI clients and WMI providers. The Hyper-V Virtual Management Service (VMM) implements the primary providers that allow the management of child partitions.
Worker Process	A Worker process is created for every virtual machine that is running or being configured. The job of the worker process is to manage the running state of the virtual machine and its devices, manage remote RDP sessions, and communicate with the integration services running in the child partitions.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Windows Server 2008,R2,virtualization,architecture

Back Live on Zeollar from Today!

Ranjana1 — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 05:31:00 GMT

Thanks for the fantastic participation in Tech Ed India 2010 in Bengaluru!

I am right back LIVE on ZEOLLAR.com from today. Watch my live demo sessions on ZEOLLAR.com :

Technorati Tags: Zeollar,security,RODC

How LIVE MIGRATION works in Hyper-V R2

Ranjana1 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:58:33 GMT

The live migration process moves a running VM from the source physical host to a destination physical host as quickly as possible. A live migration is initiated by an administrator through one of the methods listed below. The speed of the process is partially dependent on the hardware used for the source and destination physical computers, as well as the network capacity.

Three methods can initiate a live migration:

Using the Failover Cluster Management console, an administrator can initiate a live migration.
If Virtual Machine Manager is managing physical hosts that are configured to support live migration, the Virtual Machine Manager administration-console can be used to initiate a live migration.
A WMI or PowerShell script can be used to initiate a live migration.

Any guest operating system supported by Hyper-V will work with the live migration process.

After initiating a live migration, the following process occurs:

1. Live migration setup

During the live migration setup stage , the source physical host creates a TCP connection with the destination physical host. This connection transfers the VM configuration data to the destination physical host. A skeleton VM is set up on the destination physical host and memory is allocated to the destination VM.

Stage 1: Live Migration Setup

2. Memory pages are transferred from the source node to the destination node

In the second stage of a live migration, the memory assigned to the migrating VM is copied over the network to the destination physical host. This memory is referred to as the working set of the migrating VM. A page of memory is 4 kilobytes.

For example, suppose that a VM named SERVER2 configured with 1024MB of RAM is migrating to another Hyper-V physical host. The entire 1024MB of RAM assigned to this VM is the working set of SERVER2. The utilized pages within the SERVER2 working set are copied to the destination Hyper-V physical computer.

In addition to copying the working set of SERVER2 to the destination physical host, Hyper-V on the source physical host monitors the pages in the working set for SERVER2. As memory pages are modified by SERVER2, they are tracked and marked as being modified. The list of modified pages is simply the list of memory pages SERVER2 has modified after the copy of its working set has begun.

During this phase of the migration, the migrating VM continues to run. Hyper-V iterates the memory copy process several times, each time a smaller number of modified pages will need to be copied to the destination physical computer.

After the working set is copied to the destination physical host, the next stage of the live migration begins.

Stage 2: Memory pages are transferred from the source node to the destination node

3. Memory pages transferred

Stage three is a memory copy process that duplicates the remaining modified memory pages for SERVER2 to the destination physical host. The source physical host transfers the register and device state of the VM to the destination physical host.

During this stage, the network bandwidth available between the source and destination physical hosts is critical to the speed of the live migration and using a 1 Gigabit Ethernet or faster is important. The faster the source physical host transfers the modified pages from the migrating VMs working set, the more quickly the live migration will complete.

The number of pages transferred in this stage is dictated by how actively the VM is accessing and modifying memory pages. The more modified pages, the longer the VM migration process takes for all pages to be transferred to the destination physical host.

After the modified memory pages are copied completely to the destination physical host, the destination physical host has an up-to-date working set for SERVER2. The working set for SERVER2 is present on the destination physical host in the exact state it was in when SERVER2 began the migration process.

Note: You can cancel the live migration process at any point before this stage of the migration.

Stage 3: Memory pages transferred

4. Move the storage handle from source to destination

During the fourth stage of a live migration, control of the storage associated with SERVER2, such as any VHD files or pass-through disks, is transferred to the destination physical host.

Stage 4: Storage Handle Moved

5. The VM is brought online on the destination server

In stage five of a live migration, the destination server now has the up-to-date working set for SERVER2 as well as access to any storage used by SERVER2. At this point SERVER2 is resumed.

Stage 5: VM Resumed

6. Network cleanup occurs

The migrated VM is running on the destination server in the final stage of a live migration. At this point a message is sent to the physical network switch causes it to re-learn the MAC addresses of the migrated VM so that network traffic to and from SERVER2 can use the correct switch port.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2008 R2,Hyper-V,virtualization,Live migration,VHD

File Classification Infrastructure in Windows Server 2008 R2

Ranjana1 — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 06:17:33 GMT

The built-in solution for file classification provides expiration,custom tasks, and reporting. The file classification feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 provides a fantastic and much sort after mechanism to automatically assign classification information to files on file servers and apply policy to them based on that information…..

Watch my video on http://edge.technet.com home page today to know more about the features and capabilities of File Classification Infrastructure in Windows Server 2008 R2….

Technorati Tags: windows server 2008 R2,file classification,FCI,file server

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Architecture explained

Ranjana1 — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:29:02 GMT

A virtual hard disk (VHD) is a file that encapsulates a hard disk image. VHDs can be used in new and interesting ways. VHDs first were created to be the storage media for virtual machines (VMs). Today, VHDs are used to ship trial versions of software, used in backup solutions, used for bug triage (e.g. customers can convert a physical disk to virtual and share it), and even used to store multiple boot environments. VHDs are a very flexible storage container and are not tied to any single file system format. Since June 2005, Microsoft has made the VHD Image Format Specification available to third parties under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP).

Microsoft began using VHD technology in Microsoft Virtual PC around 2003, and then continued its use in Microsoft Virtual Server release in 2005. The next major release happened as part of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008. Currently VHD support is made as part of Windows Server 2008 R2 and high-end client SKUs of Windows 7. VHDs were limited to use by virtual machines running in Virtual PC/Virtual Server/Hyper-V and loopback mounting of VHDs in the parent partition sometimes referred to as the management operating system. The integration of VHD support into the operating system was drastically improved in Windows Server 2008 R2 which added native support. Native support means the technology is integrated into the operating system and no longer requires a virtualization solution such as Hyper-V to be available. Native support added the following features:

Boot from VHD
Integrated support for attaching and detaching VHDs via inbox APIs (virtdisk.dll) and the “Disk Management” control panel (diskmgmt.msc or command line tool DiskPart (“attaching” is the term used to describe the action of mounting a VHD so it can be used by Windows directly, or as a disk in the guest operating system of a virtual machine).
Attaching VHDs from inside VHDs, and many performance improvements.

There are three VHD formats each with different performance characteristics. The three formats of VHD are fixed, dynamic and differencing.

A fixed sized VHD uses a file in which the space to store the file is allocated on the physical storage when the virtual hard disk is created. The file size is the same as the size specified for the virtual hard disk. As their name implies, fixed sized VHDs occupy the same space on the underlying physical storage device as their specified size. However, once a fixed sized VHD is created, the size can be increased when the disk is offline by editing the disk to expand it. Reducing the size is not supported. Because the physical storage required for a fixed size VHD is allocated when the VHD is created, there is a better chance at optimal placement and organization on-disk which yields the best performance. The disadvantage is the space is committed even if it is not used.

A dynamically expanding VHD is a file that at any given time is as large as the actual data written to it plus the size of on-disk meta-data. Dynamically expanding disks are useful because they do not require all the storage needed to contain the maximum size of the disk to be reserved up front. The VHD file starts quite small (e.g. 42KB is a typical physical size of an empty 20GB disk) and grows as new blocks in the disk are used. There are a number of optimizations around dynamically expanding disks that improve performance; however, in general their read/write performance is slower than fixed disks. One optimization is the selection of data block size which can be either 512KB or 2MB; another is skipping allocation of all-zero blocks.

A differencing VHD is a file representing the current state of the virtual hard disk as a set of modified blocks in comparison to a parent virtual hard disk. Differencing VHDs can be associated with either a fixed sized or dynamically expanding VHD. Differencing VHDs can also be associated with another differencing VHD but they cannot be associated with a physical disk. Differencing VHDs are used to prevent changes from being made in their parent VHD to which they are applied and are used to implement a number of additional features. In Hyper-V, differencing VHDs are also created automatically whenever snapshots are taken of a virtual machine. Note differencing VHDs used for snapshot purpose are named with an AVHD file extension to help users easily distinguish them from regular differencing VHDs. Differencing VHDs may also be used to deploy a “golden” or “master” image, because you can associate multiple differencing VHDs to one parent VHD. Some disadvantages of differencing VHDs are increased caching needs and the inability to grow or shrink the VHD size. You can however compact differencing VHDs to reclaim physical space usage.

There are several important limitations for VHDs:

VHDs can be mounted only on NTFS volumes (although you can still save a VHD file on FAT/FAT32 assuming the maximum file size limit is not violated). For example, if you have a differencing VHD chain, then every VHD along the chain must sit on an NTFS volume to make VHD attaching work.
VHDs cannot be mounted within a compressed folder in Windows Server 2008 R2. This was possible in Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008, but this capability was explicitly blocked in the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 since the compressed file size limit is relatively small. A dynamically expandable VHD can easily outgrow that limit and get corrupted.
In addition to the maximum file size of NTFS, dynamic or difference VHDs cannot exceed 2040GB. The reason for the 2040G limit is the length of each Block Allocation Table entry is set to 4 Bytes and the maximum valid value is 0xFFFFFFFE (0xFFFFFFFF means an unused entry). If you multiply that value by 512B sector size and then subtract the overhead of on disk meta-data structures, 2040G will be the maximum size of dynamically or differencing VHDs.

Technorati Tags: VHD,Windows 7,Windows Server 2008 R2,performance,disk

Windows Activation Technologies update for Windows 7

Ranjana1 — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:47:42 GMT

Each year as more and more software products are released into the market, the issue of software piracy becomes larger and more critical. Software piracy in India is prevalent both in the public and private sectors.

The use of such software makes businesses more vulnerable to deliberate cyber-attacks, as well as viruses and malware ("malicious software") that can enter a computer’s operating system without its user’s consent.

Software piracy is an increasingly common way for hackers to install malicious software on your machine, exposing you to potential identity theft, system failure and data loss. Microsoft’s anti-piracy technologies are constantly evolving to counter these increasingly sophisticated threats.

Also, counterfeit software delivers a poor customer experience and negatively affects customer satisfaction with our software. And customers would like to know that they received what they paid for.

We realize that combating software piracy is a journey. We continue to invest in both technology and customer education and have improved the activation and validation process in Windows 7.

On February 23 this year, Microsoft released an update to Windows 7 that will detect more than 70 known and potentially dangerous activation exploits. The update will check for new activation exploits every 90 days.

If any activation exploits are found, Windows will alert the customer and offer options for resolving the issue. In many cases resolving the issue will take just a few clicks.

If a user is running genuine software with no activation exploits, they will never see anything – the update runs politely in the background protecting their system

This update does not cause any reduced functionality in Windows 7. Even if an activation exploit is found, users have full and complete access to their PC, all programs, and all data.

This update is voluntary and complies with Microsoft’s privacy policy.

In case you the notification alert is erroneously identifying your genuine copy of Windows 7 as counterfeit please call 1800 102 1100 or 1800 111100 to report the matter and get it addressed.

how windows 7 enables work from anywhere and faster network access

Ranjana1 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:49:00 GMT

DirectAccess overcomes the limitations of VPNs by automatically establishing a bi-directional connection from client computers to the corporate network……..

Depending on where the cache is located BranchCache will operate in one of two modes: Distributed Cache or Hosted Cache. The cache is kept on peers under the same subnet in Distributed Cache mode……

Attend this LIVE session tomorrow (Time: 1315 – 1415 IST) to know more…..

Attend more sessions by me on Virtual tech Days:

Session Title	Abstract	Date	Time
Microsoft Online Services – What and How	Rather than debate whether to deploy software on-premises or host it online, we show you how you can take advantage of the marriage of the best of software with the best of services. Learn how you can have consistent, seamless experiences across multiple PCs and devices. Enjoy a choice of on-premise, partner-hosted or Microsoft-hosted delivery, federation between enterprises and cloud services, to create a composition of multiple applications and services, enabling you to use of multiple business models. All this and much more..	March 18, 2010	1030 – 1130 IST
See how Windows 7 lets you reduce costs, work from anywhere, get Fast Access	See how new networking enhancements like Direct access, Branch cache and Mobile broadband in Windows 7 allow you to optimize WAN bandwidth, have faster access to internal network, and work from anywhere. You simply cannot afford to miss this session.	March 18, 2010	1315 – 1415 IST
Managing Mobile PCs in the Enterprise	Mobile PCs need reliable, persistent, high-speed network connections to our intranets, adding to the management and operations challenges. Learn how you can control mobile PCs while allowing mobile users to perform their job functions efficiently? This session helps you know just that.	March 18, 2010	1545 – 1645 IST

Attend them LIVE

Technorati Tags: Virtual Tech Days,VTD,Zeollar,Windows 7,Performance,Directaccess,Branchcache,Mobile PC