http://technet.microsoft.com/library/hh831531
Guest operating system (server)
Notes
Windows Server 2012
Integration services do not require a separate installation because they are built-in.
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP 1)
Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard and Web editions. Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows Server 2008 R2
Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard and Web editions. Upgrade the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 (SP 2)
Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard and Web editions (32-bit and 64-bit). Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows Server 2008
Windows Home Server 2011
Edition information is not applicable. Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows Small Business Server 2011
Essentials and Standard editions. Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows Server 2003 R2 with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
Standard, Web, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions (32-bit and 64-bit). Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2
CentOS 6.0 – 6.2
Download and install Linux Integration Services v3.2.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 –6.2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
Guest operating system (client)
Windows 8 Release Preview
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (SP 1)
Ultimate and Enterprise editions (32-bit and 64-bit). Upgrade the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows 7
Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate, including N and KN editions. Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Professional. Install the integration services after you set up the operating system in the virtual machine.
Windows XP x64 Edition with Service Pack 2 (SP 2)
For IT professionals looking for an early, high-level view of Windows Server 2012, there's no better resource than the Microsoft Press e-book. Based on the beta release, this guide introduces its new features and capabilities, with scenario-based insights demonstrating how the platform can meet the needs of your business.
Introducing Windows Server 2012 (Based on Beta)
http://go.microsoft.com/FWLink/?Linkid=251464
if you are a fan of eReaders, you can download this book in ePub and Mobi format for free as well.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2012/06/04/free-ebook-introducing-windows-server-2012.aspx
EPUB
Introducing Windows Server 2012 EPUB ebook
MOBI
Introducing Windows Server 2012 MOBI ebook
The Windows Azure Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs and presentations that are designed to help you learn how to use the latest Windows Azure features and services.
June 2012 Update The June 2012 update of the Windows Azure Training Kit includes over 42 hands-on labs and 18 presentations. Some of the updates in this version include:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8396
You can download CTP2 and the supporting documentation from the following links.
Download
Location
Installation packages for all components
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=254659
Documentation for all components
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=254803
What’s included in CTP2:
Component
What’s New
App Controller
· Ability to migrate a VM from VMM to Azure
· Support for using Service Provider Foundation to create and operate VMs in VMM
· Azure IaaS enhancements: Ability to deploy VMs from an image or disk, start and stop VMs, and add VMs to a service
Data Protection Manager
· Improved backup performance of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V over CSV 2.0 deployments
· Protect Hyper-V over remote SMB share
· Protect Windows 8 de-duplicated volumes
· VM Live Migration: Uninterrupted data protection
Operations Manager
APM enhancements, including:
· Support for IIS8
· Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
· Azure SDK support
Orchestrator & Service Provider Foundation
· Supports existing System Center and 3rd-Party Integration Packs
· Service Provider Foundation, which provides a rich set of web services that manage VMM:
o Create, change, and operate VMs
o Manage VMM Self-service User Roles
o Manage multiple VMM stamps and aggregate results from multiple stamps
o Integration with App Controller to use hosted capacity
Service Manager
· Ability to apply price sheets to VMM Clouds
· Create VM chargeback reports
· Ability to pivot by Cost Center, VMM Clouds, and Price sheets
Server App-V
· Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during the packaging process
· Ability to create virtual application packages from applications installed natively on a remote server
Virtual Machine Manager
· Improved support for network virtualization
· Ability to convert VHD to VHDX and to use VHDX as a base operating system image
· Support for the Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units, and discovery of SAS storage
· You can now create Add-Ins that extend the VMM console.
http://orchestrator.codeplex.com/releases/view/86195
This export includes runbook examples for each of the System Center 2012 components, plus a few generic administrative task runbooks to round things out.
There are 43 different runbooks (master and sub-routine) each tied to a specific global configuration for their respective SC2012 component. You should be able to simply import, reconfigure the global configurations to fit your environment and go. And while they do not solve for any specific solution, they do provide simple example usages of each of the SC2012 component IPs (with many of the activities from each IP leveraged).
Much of the effort put in to these example runbooks was related to input and output mechanisms, leveraging the “Initiate Data” and “Send Platform Event” activities… this way each of these runbooks can be initiated via the Orchestration Console, by each other, or from an external program/web service (to include via Service Manager Connector).
Nexus 1000V and Native Hyper-V Switch Compatibility
Supported – Use of these features is supported in a Hyper-V deployment using the Nexus 1000V switch extension
· Converged Network Architectures (CNA) – There is no particular interaction between converged NICs (e.g. UCS or HP blades) and the 1000V. If the NICs are presented to the OS
· SR-IOV - Not interoperable with the Nexus 1000V and will not shine through the 1000V to the guest, because SRIOV doesn't work with teams underneath. The Cisco VM-FEX extension will support this in the future.
Supported, but Not Recommended - While not prevented, Nexus 1000V switch extension has a built-in mechanisms which mirror these features and shouldn't be configured in two places. The Nexus 1000V features are more advanced, so you should only apply these settings in one place and use the Nexus 1000V settings when configuring these features.
· Port ACLs
· Bandwidth Management (QoS)
· DHCP Guard
· Router Guard
· VLAN tagging - While not prevented in the UI, this is disabled the VLAN handling within Windows and leave this up to the forwarding extension
Not Supported – Use of these features is not supported in a Hyper-V deployment using the Nexus 1000V switch extension
· Windows Network Virtualization
· NIC Teaming (LBFO) - The 1000V creates a team by default. The forwarding extension in the 1000V will not allow you to apply on top of a team and the 1000V should prevent you from applying a team to the underlying NIC.
o Note – Customers could still deploy one LBFO team (e.g. management network) and a separate 1000V team (VM network)
Not Supported in Beta and RC, expected in RTM
· Single-NIC design – This design is not finalized yet. The Nexus 1000V switch extension will still need two NICs for RC. (1 NIC for Nexus team - 1 NIC for host)
· VMQ – VMQ is not supported in the pre-release (Beta and RC) version of the extension, but is planned for the RTM version
The following link provides a document comparing all Virtualization Features of
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/C/A/2CA38362-37ED-4112-86A8-FDF14D5D4C9B/WS%202012%20Feature%20Comparison_Hyper-V.pdf
And there is another great document which compares VMware 5.0 with Hyper-V Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/A/0/5A0AAE2E-EB20-4E20-829D-131A768717D2/Competitive%20Advantages%20of%20Windows%20Server%202012%20RC%20Hyper-V%20over%20VMware%20vSphere%205%200%20V1%200.pdf
The Windows Server® 2012 Hyper-V Network Virtualization Survival Guide is now published at
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11524.windows-server-2012-hyper-v-network-virtualization-survival-guide.aspx
http://www.pcworld.com/article/257028/microsoft_teams_with_quanta_for_private_cloud_in_a_box.html
Microsoft has partnered with Taiwan's Quanta Computer to design a Windows-based system that aims to get business customers up and running quickly on a private cloud.
The effort is part of what Microsoft calls its Private Cloud Fast Track program, in which it works with hardware makers to design private, or on-premise, cloud computing systems. It's already developed similar systems with at least two companies, Dell and Fujitsu.
The Quanta system includes servers, storage and network hardware combined with Microsoft's Windows Server, Hyper-V and other software. The companies design "pre-validated configurations" that customers can then deploy.
"This is the ability to take our server technologies, marry them with the hardware from our ecosystem of providers and build essentially a private cloud in a box," Steve Guggenheimer, the vice president in charge of Microsoft's OEM business, said in a keynote address at Computex Wednesday.
The systems are supposed to make it faster and less risky that assembling a custom private cloud. Private clouds are typically built from virtualized hardware and allow companies to provision new applications and services more quickly than using dedicated hardware.
Microsoft didn't give a price or release date for the Quanta cloud, or provide technical specifications. Quanta is best known as a contract manufacturer of laptops for the big U.S. brands, but it also makes servers and even containerized data centers.
Windows Server 2012 RC brings these capabilities:
More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/2012-server-virtualization.aspx.
Most of you probably already heard about this …
Windows Server 2012 hit RC (Release Candidate) and is available for download.
The enhancements to Hyper-V are amazing. Time to get your Labs ready i will post soon my Lab config and testcases
The new features on Storage management for Servers, bring a few new terms with it. This short article should help to clarify what are these features.
Term
Definition
storage pool
A group of physical disks that can be managed together.
virtual disk
A collection of one or more physical disks from a previously created storage pool.
Storage Spaces
A storage subsystem that lets you group disks (drives) into one or more storage pools. You can then create storage spaces from available capacity (free space) in the pool.
storage space
A virtual disk created on a Storage Spaces storage subsystem.
Below is the current diagram, from the Storage Management Overview topic on TechNet.