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SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Support for System Center 2012 SP1 products

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:48:22 GMT

During my project I tried to find out which System Center 2012 SP1 products support SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn functionality . I took me quite some time after browsing all products for supported configuration I finally found following technet article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj628198.aspx which provides exactly the information I was looking for.

SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Support

In System Center 2012 SP1, SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn is supported in the following components:

App Controller
Operations Manager
Orchestrator
Service Manager
VMM

SQL Server AlwaysOn is not supported with Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Configuration Manager.

A Word document describing SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn can be found at SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn: Multisite Failover Cluster Instance.

Hope this helps saving some time

Willy

How to design a Microsoft Private Cloud in a predictable and supported way

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:54:42 GMT

A Product Line Architecture (PLA) is a set of rules and architectural patterns that provide a method for predictable and supportable deployments

Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Architecture Guide - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38817
Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Management Architecture Guide - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38813

These documents provides specific guidance for developing fabric architectures (compute, network, storage, and virtualization layers) of an overall private cloud solution. Using PLA allows you to have a clear decision path across the full scope and will avoid running into some unknown or new issues during the deployment. These PLA delivers the highest quality deployment by following proven design principles. The

Benefits of using the PLA include:

Proven deployment model
Deployed right the first time
Reduced time to deployment
Predictable and achievable SLA’s
The best user experience
All workload capabilities realized

Where can I find information about Security for Microsoft Private Cloud

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:41:53 GMT

As I am working for large National Cloud project for a Government very high Security standard and a lot of requirements for security, compliance and auditing coming up every day.

As Microsoft we are using following building blocks to build an Architecture for a Microsoft Private Cloud

Security components for Private Cloud can be found under following link

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6642.a-solution-for-private-cloud-security.aspx

TechEd Europe - Speaker–“Envisioning the Modern Datacenter”

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:25:16 GMT

Are you struggling to keep critical services running in your Datacenter in accordance to agreed upon SLAs? Are you finding it difficult to control and manage various and heterogeneous environments and keep them from growing out of control? If so, how would you like to learn how Microsoft manages its own Datacenter which host over 400 services accessed by millions of customers daily?

Join Wilfried Schadenboeck (Datacenter Solutions Architect) from Microsoft's World Wide Cloud Center of Excellence for Modern Datacenter as he discusses how Microsoft approached running some of the largest Datacenters in the World. He covers the principles that govern the management and operations of these Datacenters and how these learning's drive innovations within the Microsoft System Center family of products. Now is the time to rethink your approach to managing Datacenters to leverage the capabilities that not only enhance IT Service Management but Infrastructure Deployment and Application Management as well.

Looking for Standards how to design Datacenters?

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:26:16 GMT

Beside the approach Microsoft takes to design Modern or Modular Datacenters which is very advanced and innovative, there exists some de-facto standards from the industry.

BICSI 002 (www.bicsi.org) , updated in 2011, sets forth requirements, recommendations and additional information that should be considered when working with critical systems, like the electrical, mechanical, and telecommunication networks, as well as other significant needs, such as site selection, security, and building needs.

To accomplish the delivery of these diverse subjects within a single volume, BICSI 002 integrated the key concepts and requirements from other documents and standards, from ISO, IEC, TIA, ASHRAE, NFPA and others, while providing reference to specific documents where more considerations or information is available. This feature, unique to BICSI 002, provides a comprehensive document, which covers following areas on datacenter design:

1 Introduction
2 Scope
3 References
4 Definitions, Acronyms, Abbreviations, And Units Of Measurement
5 Space Planning
6 Site Selection
7 Architectural
8 Structural
9 Electrical Systems
10 Mechanical
11 Fire Protection
12 Security
13 Building Automation Systems
14 Telecommunications
15 Information Technology
16 Commissioning
17 Data Center Maintenance
Annex A: Design Process (Informative)
Annex B: Reliability And Availability (Informative)
Annex C: Referenced Documents (Informative)

Re-Activating my Blog

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:28:16 GMT

After some break I am planning to re-activate my blog. So in the near future you will see here entries on daily learning's and issues on designing a Microsoft Private Cloud platform based on real life experience from one of the biggest National Cloud projects these days. So stay tuned and learn with me

Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals - Jump Start (free online training)

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:57:08 GMT

The IT Pro Evangelism team, Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft Virtual Academy are pleased to announce the next Jump Start course Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals on Wednesday, January 30^th from 8am – 5pm PST.

This live online event is designed for IT Pros that are evaluating different hypervisors or are experienced in VMware looking to get up-to-speed on how Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 SP1 compares with VMware vSphere 5.1 and VMware’s Private Cloud.

Join Microsoft virtualization experts and VMware Certified Professionals Symon Perriman & Matt McSpirit in a demo-rich learning experience with a live Q&A.

Even if you cannot make the live event, sign up so that you receive a notification when the recordings are posted to the Microsoft Virtual Academy in a few weeks.

Topics include

· Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V vs. VMware vSphere 5.1

o Introduction & Scalability

o Storage & Resource Management

o Multi-tenancy & Flexibility

o Backup & High-Availability

· System Center 2012 SP1 vs. VMware’s Private Cloud

o Introduction & Overview of System Center 2012

o Application Management

o Cloud on your Terms

o Foundation, Hybrid Clouds & Costs

WINDOWS SERVER 2012 HYPER-V SCALE FINAL

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 04:27:39 GMT

Yesterday during the official launch of Windows 2012 Server , we announced the final scalability details on Windows 2012 and Hyper-V 3.0.

===========================================================================

Windows Server 2012 Standard/Datacenter Editions with Hyper-V Enabled

===========================================================================

	Windows Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2012	Improvement Factor
Logical Processors Per Host	64	320*	5x
Physical Memory per Host	1 Terabyte	4 Terabytes*	4x
Virtual Processors per Host	512	2048*	4x
Virtual Machines per Host	384	1024*	2.7x

Virtual Processors per VM	4	64	16x
Memory per VM	64 Gigabytes	1 Terabyte	16x
Maximum Virtual Disk	~2 TB	64 TB*	32x

Nodes in a Cluster	16	64*	4x
Virtual Machine in a Cluster	1,000	8,000*	8x

*= Industry Leading

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 7.0 Now Available

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:06:14 GMT

Get ready for Windows Server 2012 with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 7.0. The latest version of the MAP Toolkit adds several new planning scenarios that help you build for the future with agility and focus while lowering the cost of delivering IT. Download MAP 7.0 and begin planning your server deployments today!

New capabilities allow you to:

· Understand your readiness to deploy Windows Server 2012 in your environment

· Determine Windows 8 readiness

· Investigate how Windows Server and System Center can manage your heterogeneous environment through VMware migration and Linux server virtualization assessments

· Size your desktop virtualization needs for both Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and session-based virtualization using Remote Desktop Services

· Ready your information platform for the cloud with the SQL Server 2012 discovery and migration assessment

· Evaluate your licensing needs with usage tracking for Lync 2010, active users and devices, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012

For a comprehensive list of features and benefits, click here.


	Key Features

Assess Windows Server 2012 readiness

MAP 7.0 assesses the readiness of your IT infrastructure for a Windows Server 2012 deployment. This feature includes 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 your planning efforts.

Determine Windows 8 desktop readiness

MAP 7.0 assesses the readiness of your IT environment for your Windows 8 desktop deployment. This feature evaluates your existing hardware against the recommended system requirements for Windows. It provides recommendations detailing which machines meet the requirements and which machines may require hardware upgrades.

Key benefits include:

· Assessment report and summary proposal to help you to understand the scope and benefits of a Windows desktop deployment.

· Inventory of desktop computers, deployed operating systems, and applications.

Virtualize your Linux servers on Hyper-V

MAP 7.0 extends its server virtualization scenario to include Linux operating systems. Now, MAP enables you to gather performance data for Linux-based physical and virtual machines and use that information to perform virtualization and private cloud planning analysis for both Windows and Linux-based machines within both the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track scenario, as well as the traditional Server Virtualization and Consolidation scenario.

Key features allow you to:

· Incorporate non-Windows machines into your virtualization planning.

· View consolidation guidance and validated configurations with preconfigured Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track infrastructures, including computing power, network, and storage architectures.

· Get a quick analysis of server consolidation on Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track infrastructures to help accelerate your planning of physical to virtual (P2V) migration to Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track.

· Review recommended guidance and next steps using Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track.

More features and benefits.

Download MAP 7.0.

Technet Windows Server 2012 Virtual Labs

WIlfried Schadenboeck — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:36:28 GMT

under http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/hh968267.aspx you can find a lot of Virtual labs for:

1. Active Directory Deployment and Management Enhancements

2. Configuring a Highly Available iSCSI Target

3. Configuring Hyper-V over Highly Available SMB Storage

4. Getting Started with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Replication

5. Implementing Storage Pools and Storage Spaces

6. Introduction to DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012

7. Introduction to IIS 8

8. Introduction to iSCSI Diskless Boot Deployment

9. Introduction to Windows PowerShell Fundamentals

10. What’s New in Windows PowerShell 3.0

11. Managing Branch Offices

12. Managing Network Infrastructure

13. Managing Windows Server 2012 with Server Manager and Windows PowerShell 3.0

14. Managing Your Network Infrastructure with IP Address Management

15. Online Backup Service

16. Using Dynamic Access Control to Automatically and Centrally Secure Data

Enjoy !