I once talked to a doctor who told me about a recent patient that had serious medical symptoms for over a year before visiting the doctor.  He said that if the patient had mentioned these symptoms when they first arose, the prognosis was very good but now the patient was in trouble.   That reminded me of some advice I once heard, “Never hold anything back from your doctor”.  Doctors have exactly one job: to help you.  They can only help you with problems that they know about so if you aren’t completely open and honest with them, you are only hurting yourself.  The other thing is that by sharing your situation with a doctor, the doctor gains knowledge and skills to help other people as well.  This model and thinking applies to our Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) for Windows Server 2012 Beta.   That is where we ask you to allow us to collect data about the health and usage of your servers.  We frequently receive questions about CEIP; ‘what is CEIP?’ and ‘how is CEIP data used?’.   In this post, Karen answers these questions along with the most important question ‘why should I enable CEIP?’ 

Karen Albrecht, a Program Manager on the Windows Server Telemetry team, authored this post.

--Cheers!   Jeffrey

When we talk to the server community about the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), most people say ‘Never heard of it’.  Those that have heard of it sometimes don’t enable it because they ‘don’t want to share their data’.  In this blog article we will explore what CEIP is and what benefits you may receive by enabling it on your deployed Servers.  We will also discuss several new features in Windows Server 2012 that make it easier to enable CEIP.

Let’s start by answering the question ‘What is CEIP?’  For those who have never seen CEIP before, using Windows Server 2012 Beta you can get there through Server Manager -> Local Server -> select the Customer Experience Improvement Program link.

CEIP is the program by which we learn how you use Windows Server 2012, in order to improve the product based on your feedback.  You can join the Windows Server 2012 CEIP program in several ways.  First, for pre-release beta software, such as the Windows Server 2012 Beta, CEIP is enabled by default to help us improve the software before its’ final release.  Alternatively, in released products such as Windows Server 2008 R2 we provide notice through the CEIP user interface (shown above) so you can elect to opt-in to the program. 

We know that you need to get the most out of your servers, especially when it comes to server performance and network bandwidth.  The CEIP report collection and transfer process are light weight in order to meet this need.  Windows records CEIP usage information using a high-speed tracing component, Event Tracing for Windows (ETW).  ETW enables Windows Server 2012 to write out CEIP usage data no noticeable impact to server performance.  CEIP usage information is transferred to Microsoft in a two part process using the Consolidator and Uploader scheduled tasks.  The consolidator exports CEIP data into a compressed binary format that is ready for transfer.  The binary is typically less than 1 MB in size so that the transfer has minimal impact to network bandwidth.  The uploader scheduled task runs every once every 24 hours and transfers the CEIP binary data to the Microsoft frontend servers using the Windows Telemetry Protocol. 

Another question we are often asked is ‘What data is collected by CEIP’?  The data consists of basic information about how your server is configured and used; roles installed, features installed, settings used, and information about hardware.  CEIP does not intentionally collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII).   So, CEIP reports do not contain your contact information, such as your name, address, or phone number. This means CEIP will not ask you to participate in surveys or to read junk e-mail and you will not be contacted in any other way.   The Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program privacy statement discusses, in detail, the data collected by CEIP and how we use it.    

Moving on to the heart of the question, ‘What do I get for sending this data to Microsoft?’, you might be surprised in the ways Windows Server uses your data to improve the product.  There are many examples beyond what is listed here.  However we narrowed it down to the following to give you a flavor of some of the ways CEIP data is used to improve the product.

1. Increased server reliability:  In the Windows Server 2012 Developer Preview and Windows Server 2012 Beta pre-release versions, Reliability Analysis Component (RAC) features are enabled to determine the root cause of Windows server crashes, Windows server hangs, and application crashes.  RAC combines CEIP data with Windows Error Reporting (WER) data in order to reconstruct a full view of the system state at the time of the crash or hang.  By analyzing the combined data in these two programs we can identify high occurrence issues in order to triage and fix them so that you have a more reliable platform release over release.  To learn more about the data collected by WER, see the Microsoft Error Reporting Privacy Statement.
2. Improved programmability for server administration scripts:  For large scale deployments, IT administration is often done using PowerShell and WMI scripts because scripting simplifies manageability at scale.  When a commandlet or WMI interface changes or is removed, it can be painful to rewrite scripts to accommodate the platform changes.  In Windows Server 2012 we are using CEIP to address this by monitoring deprecated API usage so that APIs are not removed until it has minimum impact to you.  As an example, in Windows Server 2012 the Win32_ServerFeature WMI interface had been considered to be deprecated and being replaced with MSFT_ServerManagerDeploymentTasks.  (For those who haven’t used it, Win32_ServerFeature detects installed roles and features.) 
   
   As part of the deprecation process, we added CEIP data to record interface usage and based on the latest Windows Server 2012 Beta CEIP data, we found that 47% of customers are using Win32_ServerFeature.  Using this data, we are able to identify migration off of Win32_ServerFeature so that it is not formally removed from the product until migration to MSFT_ServerManagerDeploymentTasks can be done without impact to you. 
   
   

3. Diversity of Windows Certified hardware:  One of the frequently asked questions we get is ‘What CEIP data does Microsoft share with partners?’  There are certain scenarios where a subset of CEIP data (but no PII) is shared with IxVs (independent hardware or software vendors) as part of hardware certification.  An important part of the Windows server offering is supporting high quality drivers for a diversity of devices in market.  The challenge is to understand what devices are most commonly used in market.  CEIP data is used to model hardware profiles and map diversity of different devices in order to inform certification strategy for IxVs.  Using this data, IxVs determine the breadth of drivers to certify (based on what is in market) and prioritize which devices get certified first (based on popularity). 

4. Improved product experiences: CEIP data is used on a day-by-day basis to understand a broad range of feature configurations so that we can prioritize work according to your usage patterns.  For example, in order to reduce the cost to setup new servers, CEIP records what settings you use.  This allows us to refine default settings by tuning them to reflect most common usage patterns so it is faster for you to setup a new server.  Another example of internal usage is in testing.  In order to increase test coverage of real world test patterns, we analyze CEIP data to understand how the product is used.  This ensures that both design and testing are driven with your usage patterns in mind.  There are many, many more examples of how CEIP is used to drive customer feedback into the product but in the interest of time, let’s move on to how to configure CEIP.  

After the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, we did an assessment of CEIP adoption and found that 5-7% of servers in market were reporting CEIP.  While working with customers on CEIP adoption we found that although servers were opted-in we weren’t getting data from them.  We did a root cause analysis and learned that the main reason servers weren’t reporting is because they are deployed in firewalled environments.  To send CEIP data, servers need to be able to communicate over HTTPS (default port 443) and need to have proxy settings configured (if the server is in a network that uses a proxy server).  In working with Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customers, we found that frequently one or more of these settings were not configured, thus preventing CEIP data from reaching Microsoft.

To make it easy to send CEIP data, Windows Server 2012 Beta ships several new features that allow you to get past the blocking issues so you can ‘set and forget’ CEIP.  To participate in the CEIP program, the simplest way to deliver CEIP data to us is to use a new feature called Windows Feedback Forwarder (WFF).  WFF is a service that proxies CEIP data from machines in a domain to Microsoft.  WFF will proxy CEIP data Windows products including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 or higher.  WFF will also proxy data for any Microsoft product that is enabled to ‘send customer feedback’.

The forwarder can sit within the domain or as an edge server.  Machines in the domain are configured to send data to the forwarder via group policy.  When an individual machine is triggered to collect data, it sends the data to the forwarder over HTTP and the forwarder relays the data to Microsoft over HTTPS.

1. To install Windows Feedback Forwarder
1. Using the User Interface (UI)
1. On any Windows Server 2012 machine, launch Server Manager and then launch the Add Roles and Features wizard. 
2. In the Add Roles and Features Wizard, navigate to the Features page, select Windows Feedback Forwarder. 
3. Specify an incoming port number (default port number is 53533).  If the domain has an internet proxy, specify the proxy information.  Finish the install.
4. In Server Manager, select ‘All Servers’ in the left hand navigation pane.  In the ‘Servers’ tile, right click the server that you installed Windows Feedback Forwarder on and select ‘Windows Feedback Forwarder Configuration’.  Keep the dialog open for the next step.
2. OR Using PowerShell
1. Launch PowerShell and run ‘Add-WindowsFeature WFF’
2. In Server Manager, select ‘All Servers’ in the left hand navigation pane.  In the ‘Servers’ tile, right click the server that you installed Windows Feedback Forwarder on and select ‘Windows Feedback Forwarder Configuration’. 
3. Select the ‘Forwarding Settings’ tab and specify an incoming port number (default port number is 53533).  If the domain has an internet proxy, specify the proxy information.  Click ‘Apply’.
4. Keep the dialog open for the next step.
2. To deploy the Windows Feedback Forwarder group policy
1. The easiest way to configure machines in a domain to send CEIP data to your Windows Feedback Forwarder is to deploy a group policy.  There are 2 options to deploy the group policy.  You can either use the Windows Feedback Forwarder configuration dialog or you use the Group Policy Management Console to create and link the group policy object. 
1. Use Windows Feedback Forwarder configuration dialog
1. In the Windows Feedback Forwarder configuration dialog select the group policy tab. 
2. Enter the domain name that you want to deploy the group policy object to and click ‘Find’.  Note: you may have to enter credentials at this step depending on the settings of the current user context.
3. After the list of organizational units is populated, select one or more organizational units.
4. Click the ‘Apply’ button
2. Manually create a group policy object
1. In the Windows Feedback Forwarder configuration dialog, select the ‘Forwarding Settings’ tab.  Copy the Windows Feedback Forwarding URL and store it temporarily.
2. In GPMC create a new group policy object and set:

An alternative method to enable CEIP is the Windows Automatic Feedback dialog, which is a new multi-machine opt-in experience that ships in Server Manager.  It enables you to configure multiple individual machines to send CEIP data within just 3 clicks.

1. Launch Server Manager and select ‘All Servers’ in the left hand navigation.
2. In the ‘Servers’ tile select ctrl+a to select all servers -> right click and select ‘Configure Windows Automatic Feedback’
3. Clicking Enable both Customer Experience Improvement Program and Windows Error Reporting will enable both on all servers connected to that Server Manager console

We would love to know what you think of this program and how we can improve it to provide the best experience for your deployments and Windows Server usage.  Please give us your comments below.

Karen Albrecht
Program Manager
Windows Server Telemetry

The other day I was in a conversation where I drew the distinction between reliable and robust.  I hadn’t really thought about it precisely but when asked to articulate the distinction I said that robust was “reliable across a wide range of conditions”.  A lot of what Klaas describes in his blog about RDS reminds me of that definition.  Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012, is reliable across a much wider range of conditions.  It works better across a wide range of networking configurations, it works better across a wide range of hardware devices and configurations (physical or virtual) and it works better across a wide range of administrative scenarios.  Oh yeah, it also adds a bunch of great new features.  I think you are going to enjoy what you see here.

Klaas Langhout, a Director of Program Management in our RDS team, wrote this blog.

--Cheers!  Jeffrey

For Windows Server 2012 we listened to our customers and partners and added the most desired features and resolved the top pain points in Remote Desktop Services (RDS).   Following a description of RDS, I’ll summarize some of the many dramatic improvements we have made.
 
For those people that are not familiar with RDS, it is the workload within Windows Server that enables users to connect to virtual desktops, session-based desktops and RemoteApp programs.  The key value that RDS provides is the ability to centralize and control the applications and data that employees need to perform their job from the variety of devices that the employee uses.  This provides “work anywhere from any device” while ensuring that your control and compliance needs are met.

In the previous release, we received consistent feedback that:

1. RemoteFX was very popular however its underlying protocol (RDP) did not provide a great experience over Wide Area Networks (WANs)
2. Session and virtual machine infrastructures were complicated and costly and
3. The administration experience was not simple.

Windows Server 2012 addresses each of these issues. 
For Windows Server 2012 we have made RemoteFX dramatically better over a WAN as well as balancing between scale (host side cost) and reduced bandwidth.  Specific improvements include:

• Adaptive Graphics.   We support a mix and match approach, determining and using the right codec for the right content instead of one size fits all.  We included codecs optimized for multimedia, images, and text.  We improved caching as well as added progressive rendering.  Progressive rendering allows RemoteFX to provide a responsive experience over a highly constrained network.
• Intelligent Transports.  We support UDP as well as TCP.  UDP provides a better experience over a lossy WAN network but, is not always possible dependent on the routers, and firewalls involved.  RDP will automatically use TCP when UDP cannot be used to ensure connectivity and the best possible experience.
• Optimized Media Streaming.  We utilize a new codec to reduce bandwidth consumption for media content (in some cases a 90% bandwidth reduction) while also providing a great end user media experience.
• Adaptive Network Auto Detect.   In this release, the end user no longer has to set the network in the Remote Desktop Connection client: the client auto-detects the network type and, also adapts as the network changes.
• DirectX11 Support with vGPU.   In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, we first introduced the RemoteFX Virtual GPU (vGPU), which provided DirectX 9 application support and Aero theming for virtual machines running on Hyper-V servers with physical GPUs.  In Windows Server 2012, the vGPU feature is expanded and all Windows 8 virtual machines can take advantage of a DirectX 11 capable GPU, either emulated in software (softGPU) when no GPU is present in the host or para-virtualized and hardware-accelerated (vGPU) when a DirectX11 compatible video card is present in the host.   We do support multiple GPU’s within one server and are seeing greater engagement with OEM’s to provide systems that support this.
• Single Sign-On.  In Windows Server 2008 R2, it was possible to configure an RDS deployment so that users will need to enter their credentials only once when connecting to RemoteApps and hosted desktops. However, this configuration was very cumbersome. In Windows Server 2012 we dramatically simplified this by eliminating the need to use multiple certificates. We also made it possible to use locally logged on domain credentials so that users connecting from managed devices can connect seamlessly without any credential prompts.
• Email and web discovery of Remote Applications and desktops.  Users now can find the correct remote workspace to connect to by just providing their email address. This removes the requirement to remember a long website URL. In addition, Remote Desktop Web Access now supports other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
• Multi Touch.  We support full remoting of gestures (e.g. pinch and zoom) between the client and host with up to 256 touch points.  This provides for a consistent experience when using a touch enabled device locally or, over RemoteFX.  As more apps are written supporting touch as the primary interface, this will become more important.
• USB Redirection.  In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 we supported USB isochronous remoting only for vGPU enabled virtual machines.   We have added support when using sessions and physical hosts which provides a consistent experience independent of physical, session, or virtual machine based host.
• Metro-style Remote Desktop.  In the app store we have added a new Metro-style application to provide an immersive touch-first remoting experience.  Discoverability of remote resources, touch optimization, easy reconnect to your favorites, are just some of the specific features added.

The second main improvement area is in overall infrastructure simplification and cost reduction.   Cost and complexity is a major roadblock for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and hosted desktop deployments of all sizes. In Windows Server 2012 we made many improvements to address this problem, such as:

• Robust Pooled Virtual Desktop Collection model.  “Pooled virtual desktop collection” model refers to the idea that a large number of virtual machines can be managed as a single entity by using a single virtual desktop template. This model is very attractive in VDI because it allows IT admins to provide a work desktop to multiple users without having to maintain a full OS for each user. In Windows Server 2012 we fully support this deployment model. Virtual machines can be created in batch from a virtual desktop template, patched by only modifying that virtual desktop template, and recreated/refreshed automatically by the RD Connection Broker. This dramatically reduces the cost and complexity of supporting a large number of users.
• User Profile Disk.  A major blocker for the “pooled virtual desktop collection” model has been lack of personalization: Since the pooled virtual desktop collection is based on a common virtual desktop template, the user’s personal documents, settings, and configurations would normally not be present. User Profile Desk was added to solve this problem for either virtual machine-based or session based desktop deployments. As the user logs on to different virtual machines within the pool or different RD Session Hosts within the session collection, his/her User Profile Disk gets mounted, providing access to the user’s complete profile. Since User Profile Disk operates at a lower layer, it works seamlessly with existing user state technologies such as Roaming User Profiles and Folder Redirection. 
• Wide range of high-performance and low cost storage options.  RDS is built on top of Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 storage, so the enhancements made throughout the hypervisor and storage stack in Windows Server 2012 benefit all RDS deployments. To name a few, we support:
• VDI over SMB, SANs, or direct attached local storage
• Pooled virtual desktop collections can be configured with storage tiers to optimize IOPS
• Highly scalable and resilient configurations with Clustering and with Storage Spaces
• All these improvements provide a dramatic reduction in costs while maintaining performance and management benefits of central storage.
• Fairshare of resources in RD Session Host.  In Windows Server 2012, RD Session Host server allocates CPU, Disk I/O, and Network I/O such that a single user cannot consume resources that would negatively impact other users on the same host.  Each user will get a “fair share”.  This is done with minimum overhead so the CPU, disk, and network resources are used to maximum capacity.
• GPU Optional.  In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 we had a requirement on a physical GPU for the new RemoteFX features that shipped in that release.  In Windows Server 2012 the physical GPU is optional for VDI where it provides value if you are running applications that could benefit from hardware offload such as a CAD/CAM application. 
• Removal of a dedicated RD Session Host server running in redirection mode.  We have removed the RD Session Host server running in Redirection mode which was a required component in previous versions. This functionality is now incorporated into the RD Connection Broker. This reduces the number of components to deploy and manage.

The third and final focus area for improvements made in RDS has been in overall management simplification.  This is targeted at improving the E2E management experience as well as enabling partner solution creation.  Improvements include:

• RDS Management Interface integrated into Server Manager.  RDS now includes a single management interface through which you can deploy RDS end to end, monitor the deployment, configure options, and manage all your RDS components and servers. This management interface is built into the new Server Manager, taking advantage of many new Windows Server 2012 management capabilities such as multi-server deployments, remote configuration, and orchestrated configuration workflows. This interface replaces older tools such as Remote Desktop Services Manager, RemoteApp Manager, and RD Session Host Configuration.  The management tools for RD Gateway and RD Licensing are still provided separately since these roles are often deployed independently.
• Scenario-Focused Deployment.  The new Server Manager provides a scenario-focused wizard that dramatically simplifies the task of bringing up a complete RDS deployment. This wizard sets up all the roles needed for an RDS deployment, configures each server role correctly to communicate with the other roles, and walks you through creating your first virtual desktop or session collection as well. The wizard comes in two flavors:
• Quick Start is optimized for deploying Remote Desktop Services on one server, and creates a collection and publishes RemoteApp programs.
• Standard Deployment allows you to deploy Remote Desktop Services across multiple servers, allowing for a more customized deployment.
• Active/Active RD Connection Broker.  In previous releases the RD Connection Broker role service has supported an active/passive clustering model. This provided high availability in the case of component failure, but it did not address high scale requirements. In this release, we have eliminated the need for clustering and switched to an active/active model. With this model, two or more RD Connection Brokers can be combined as a farm to provide both fault tolerance and load balancing.  This prevents the broker from being a single point of failure and also allows ‘scale out’ as load demands.
• PowerShell support.  All platform functions and capabilities can be controlled through a comprehensive and rich PowerShell layer.  IT administrators can use this layer to build sophisticated automation that helps fit RDS into their IT infrastructure and workflows. We also anticipate third-party vendors to use this new extensibility layer to address unique new scenarios and integrate Windows Server 2012 RDS into management tools.

Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012 provides a single infrastructure, and consistently great remoting experience even over WAN while offering three deployment choices: Session, Pooled virtual desktop collection, Personal virtual desktop collection to reduce the cost appropriate to the needs of the user.  The administration is simplified and platform hooks are provided for partner extension to provide additional value and solutions.

Customers are excited about RDS with Windows Server 2012 and some have already rolled out a pre-release version into production taking advantage of these new benefits!   We are proud of the work we have done and look forward to providing more information as we drill into the specific features in blogs posts to come at the RDS Blog.

- The Entire Remote Desktop Virtualization Team

You’ve heard me talk time and time again about how much time we spent with customers and partners during the planning of Windows Server 2012.  Well we didn’t stop at the end of planning.   In today’s blog, Natalia introduces herself, her team and their blog which will document some of the details of our customer/partner engagements and how they are succeeding with Window Server 2012.

--Cheers!  Jeffrey Snover

Hi, my name is Natalia Mackevicius, the Group Program Manager of the Windows Server Partner and Customer Ecosystem. Back in October, I covered my role and outlined how my team has applied the all-important voices of customers and partners to the planning and development of Windows Server 2012: Windows Server 8: Driven by the Voice of the Customer and Partner

Today, I’m pleased to introduce the Server and Cloud Partner and Customer Solutions Team Blog.  Over the coming months, this blog will be used to share examples of how our customers are implementing the new capabilities of Windows Server 2012 and highlight opportunities for partners to develop hardware and software for Windows Sever 2012.  These examples will be tied back to the Windows Server Blog and the Product Team blogs for more detailed technical information on the features themselves.

Here are a few things we are going to include in our blog:

• Discuss how early adopter customers are using Windows Server 2012 technologies to solve current pain points and/or address new opportunities and scenarios
• Provide early information on customer adoption and best practices from the Engineering validation programs we run.
• Discuss the Windows Server 2012 scenarios and the technical integration points for partners, such as API’s, hardware and applications
• Provide an overview of the reference architectures or types of technologies that are being developed by partners to complete and/or extend Windows Server 2012 solutions, as they become publically available.

We hope that you find this blog useful. We will try to provide a regular rollup of what we have covered on the Server and Cloud Partner and Customer Solutions Team Blog from here so that you don’t miss anything.

We welcome your comments and questions. Join the discussion!

Please let me introduce to my team’s first blog post: Windows Server 2012 Technology Adoption Program - TAP

Natalia Mackevicius
Group Program Manager
Partner and Customer Ecosystem

Operating Systems are platforms delivering experiences, features, and APIs that developers can build upon. Today, many developers take already shipping versions of Windows and deliver cloud computing solutions. Windows Server 2012 is a cloud-optimized OS, which means that developers can deliver much better cloud computing solutions with much less effort. System Center 2012 already delivers great cloud computing solutions using Windows Sever 2008/R2. In this blog, Anders Vinberg, a Technical Fellow in our Management Division, describes how the Virtual Machine Manager component in System Center 2012 SP1, now available as a community technology preview, builds on the cloud optimizing features of Windows Server 2012 to take that solution to the next level.

--Cheers! Jeffrey

With the official naming of Windows Server “8” as Windows Server 2012 and the launch of System Center 2012 at MMS a few weeks back, Microsoft has now delivered a solution to our customers for building their private clouds and to hosters for building their own Infrastructure-as-a-Service public cloud offerings. It is instructive to recap the meaning of moving to the cloud model and the core tenets of a cloud as was laid out in the keynote by Brad Anderson at MMS, and then take a look at how this is done with Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1.

The Cloud Model
First off, it is important to note that cloud computing does not necessarily mean that the workload is running outside a customer’s premises. The workloads could be deployed on infrastructure that is on a customer’s premises, or on their partners’ premises but completely controlled and managed by the customer. That is a “private” cloud. Workloads could also be deployed and run on a hoster’s premises on shared infrastructure that is used by other tenants. That is a “public” cloud. In both cases, cloud computing is a way of consuming capacity with the attributes of resource pooling, self-service, elasticity and usage-based metering.

The Cloud Personas
As the cloud model decouples the infrastructure from the services it supports, it also decouples two distinct processes: provisioning and consumption. And there are two corresponding personas:

• Service provider (the datacenter admin)
• Service consumer (an application owner)

These two personas look for quite distinct attributes, each in their domain:

The separation of concerns between the provider and consumer offers great simplicity and agility. It is a foundation for the trend toward democratization of computing. We often hear that the consumer should not have to be aware of the details of the physical infrastructure, but we can make a stronger statement: the consumer is not allowed to be aware of the physical infrastructure, because that would constrain the daily work of the provider. The provider may need to replace an old machine with a new one that is more efficient, and should not have to involve or even inform the consumer, as long as the abstractions and service level agreements are satisfied. This decoupled model does not fit with all existing IT processes or with all existing apps; in a coming blog we will discuss how Windows Server and System Center accommodate a mix of work styles.

Cloud Attributes Realized
Let’s look at each of the four cloud attributes and see what Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 provide customers.

• Pooled resources: This means that we deal with resources at an aggregate level rather than at the level of individual servers. The cloud exposes a pool of capacity for use by services that require the capacity, and this abstraction decouples the virtualized workloads from the physical infrastructure, allowing dynamic workload placement and independent infrastructure management.
     While modern large-scale clouds often use strictly homogeneous hardware and require that software adapts, this is often not practical in enterprise computing where existing software may have specific hardware requirements; our cloud model supports heterogeneous resource pools, where the system automatically matches software requirements to hardware characteristics.
     Having pools of resources implies that multiple tenants (customers) will have their workloads on this environment and the infrastructure must provide the necessary isolation between fenced-off resource pools. Such multi-tenancy is not just for public clouds: even in a private cloud, the self-service model that gives consumers flexibility to deploy services with little oversight requires robust isolation between pools to prevent accidental impact on a neighbor.
• Windows Server 2012 enables resources to be pooled via a variety of capabilities such as the Hyper-V extensible switch, Network Virtualization, Quality of Service (QoS) and network isolation policies. In addition, with enhancements in live and storage migration, the Windows Server platform enables resources to be moved easily across the datacenter, to optimize the use of datacenter resources.
• System Center 2012 through the Virtual Machine Manager component can aggregate compute, network and storage resources and expose them as a construct called a “Cloud”. It supports managing these Clouds at scale, and dynamically placing workloads in them, with role-based access control mechanisms for multi-tenant isolation and delegation of clouds to consumers. In SP1, Virtual Machine Manager uses the platform capabilities of network virtualization and live and storage migration for more flexible pool management and to load-balance the environment so that customers SLA’s are met proactively.
• Self-Service: In the cloud model, service consumers can use a self-service experience, typically a web-based portal, to access the capacity they have been allocated, self-provision workloads from standing up a single VM to deploying a complex service, and manage the life cycle of those workloads.
• Windows Server 2012 goes a long way in enabling full datacenter automation. Self-servicing implies that all datacenter operations must be fully automatable, otherwise manual labor will be required every time a workload is placed on a cloud. Windows Server 2012 is fully automatable via PowerShell and WMI, exposing the necessary interfaces to enable this scenario.
• System Center 2012 builds on the automation capabilities in Windows Server 2012 and provides portals and management capabilities to enable self-service. The Service Manager component provides a service catalog that drives a self-service portal for IT approval workflows such as allocating capacity. The App Controller component provides a self-service experience for administering virtual machines and services, covering both private cloud and the Windows Azure public cloud. The Operations Manager component provides the operational intelligence for the environment, and the Orchestrator component provides run-book automation. Lastly, the Data Protection Manager component of System Center implements business continuity policies.
• Elastic: Cloud Elasticity means that the infrastructure can support the changing needs of the organization, deploying new services as needed, allocating more resources to services that experience heavy load or de-allocating resources to save power when the load is light. With cross-cloud management, workloads can also move between private and public clouds, providing extra capacity, geo-scale reach, or other characteristics as needed.
• From the Windows Server platform perspective, elasticity is enabled by allowing multiple services running on different infrastructures to be interconnected via IPSec VPNs. Windows Server 2012 has new support for IKEv2 VPNs in the box, allowing it to easily interconnect private and public clouds.
     In addition, elasticity also means that it should be possible to easily move any workload across the cloud to public cloud providers. In current technologies, this is very hard to achieve because workloads tend to have a lot of networking assumptions embedded into them, such as fixed IP addresses and subnets. With Windows Server 2012 Network Virtualization, it is now possible to move a workload around while keeping its own IP addresses and decoupling it from the provider’s IP space.
• System Center 2012 SP1 uses a platform capability for network virtualization in its network constructs. When a workload “network” is defined, System Center allows cloud consumers to deploy such networks on any cloud or on any physical network infrastructure that is made available to them.
     VMM not only allows elastic allocation and release of resources to services within a cloud, but also allows adding or removing capacity to the cloud itself, giving the appearance of unlimited capacity of the cloud as viewed by the service consumer. 
• Usage Based: In the cloud model, customers are billed or at least get informed on their cloud resource usage based on their actual resource consumption.
• Windows Server 2012 provides capabilities for detailed and granular metering information for core metrics such as CPU, memory, storage and network. In Windows Server 2012, these metrics follow the VM as it migrates in the environment.
• System Center 2012 aggregates these consumption metrics and allows the cloud operator to show back or bill back based on their policies.

A detailed walkthrough of the various features and capabilities that make Windows Server 2012 a cloud-optimized OS can be found in the white paper Building an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud Using Windows Server 8.

 
Scenarios
As we can see from above, there are many aspects of a cloud. In this blog we will focus on the Service provider persona and specifically on how providers can stand up their private cloud infrastructure as it pertains to using SMB 3.0 as storage for VMs and using Hyper-V Network Virtualization with Windows Server 2012 Beta and the community technology preview (CTP)  of System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). In future posts we will delve deeper into the other aspects of the cloud.

Standing up Cloud Infrastructure with System Center 2012 SP1
Let’s start by looking at how Hyper-V network virtualization is provisioned and managed from VMM. In System Center 2012, VMM introduced Logical Networks which abstracts the various definitions of networks in enterprise datacenters, allowing datacenter administrators to use the vernacular of the application owners who express their connectivity using terms as “I want my VM to connect to the CORP network”. A logical network could be defined differently for each datacenter site and automation in VMM ensures that when the VM is deployed the appropriate configuration is applied. With SP1, we introduce another abstraction over this called “VM networks”. Logical networks now pertain to the fabric networks and VMs and Services now only connect to “VM Networks”. A VM network can be realized by a VLAN, direct logical network or with Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V Network Virtualization.
In the System Center 2012 SP1 CTP VMM only supports creating VM networks with Hyper-V network virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) which is the long term preferred mechanism. In the final release of System Center 2012 SP1, we plan to support creating VM networks using IP Rewrite which is easier to deploy in existing environment and doesn’t require a change of network infrastructure, but does require a provider address (PA) for each customer address (CA) you allocate. I strongly urge you to read the great blog on Hyper-V Virtual Networking to get an understanding of how this technology works.
The PAs are allocated from the Logical network space so you should create a Logical network as you did previously and allocate an IP address pool from which VMM can pull addresses for the PA space. Next you need to create a VM Network, which is the network that will be used by the actual services being deployed. VM networks can be created with just a few clicks from the new node in the VM’s and Services view in the VMM console. A detailed step-by-step guide for this can be found here.

In the example above you can see that both the Tailspin network and the Wingtip Network have overlapping IP ranges. They are realized and automatically provisioned using Hyper-V Network virtualization, providing full isolation without any special hardware or additional software. When creating a VM, it can now be connected to this VM network, thereby allowing it connectivity to other VM’s on the same VM network, while keeping the VM isolated from other VM networks that belong to different customers even though they are using the same subnet.
For service providers who need to provide isolated environments to their service consumers (tenants), this capability is invaluable and provides the flexibility to enable the tenants to bring their own IP addresses to the public cloud environment. In the CTP, if you want the VM on a VM network to communicate with entities not on the VM network you will need to set up a gateway between these networks. This can be done using a Windows Server instance with the appropriate routing rules and you can expect a future guide to walk you through the process of how to set it up. In addition, System Center will allow this to be done seamlessly as we move forward with development.
Storage is another vital component of a cloud and virtualization project. With Windows Server 2012 we now have the ability to use SMB 3.0 file shares for hosting Hyper-V VM’s in a clustered and standalone environment. This helps drive the cost of cloud down while adding flexibility and making management easier. (You can read more about storage for cloud here.) System Center 2012 SP1 makes it very easy to use. The screen shots below depict how you can add a file share as storage for a cluster and for a standalone host, and VMM configures the Access Control Lists appropriately for this configuration.

 Standalone Host

Hyper-V Cluster

Once a VM is deployed onto a host and particular storage sub-system, the service provider desires flexibility to move the workload to different hosts or to use different storage to ensure that VMs are up even when the host needs to be serviced or the storage environment needs to be maintained. With Windows Server 2012 and VMM we now offer multiple options for live migrating the VM and its associated storage. You can:

1. Live migrate the VM within a cluster (which normally has shared block or file storage)
2. Live migrate the VM in and out of a cluster
3. Live migrate the storage of the VM from one storage sub-system to the other
4. Live migrate the VM from one host to the other (with no shared storage)

Just imagine the flexibility that this provides you as a datacenter administrator. The screenshot below depicts these various options from within VMM.

As you can see on the left side of the above screenshot, a VM called Tailspin_VM2 runs on a standalone host HV104. The dialog on the right shows that it can be migrated from this standalone host into nodes of the HVClusterA cluster (hv103n3, hv101n1 and hv102n2) as well as to the standalone HV105. System Center automatically detects there is no shared storage between HV104 and HVClusterA and tags these migrations as “Live (VSM)”, indicating that storage would be migrated too, and not just the virtual machines.

Note that System Center also gives you the option to storage migrate the VM’s storage within the host with no downtime for the VM. This is useful if for example you are running out of local storage on a particular drive and want to move the VM’s storage onto a different drive with more capacity on the host.

Now the perceptive would have noticed that we show only “Live” to HV105! Why is that? No it’s not a bug. To get an understanding of that let’s take a look at the storage property for HV104 (the host the VM is currently on) and HV105. As you will notice, each of these hosts see the same SMB 3.0 share and hence VMM can migrate the VM (without having to move the storage).

Summary
In this blog we discussed the cloud model and the two different cloud personas (“Service provider” and “Service Consumer”). We also described how Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 deliver this model. We highlighted how Windows Server 2012 and the Virtual Machine Manager component in System Center 2012 SP1 provide the ability for service providers to utilize SMB 3.0 storage for VM’s and create isolated networks using Hyper-V Network Virtualization. Over the next few months we will provide additional details of how VMM can facilitate resource pooling and tenant administration, and how it can utilize the plethora of capabilities in Windows Server 2012.

In my last blog, I mentioned that as we progress towards releasing the next version of Windows, many of the details are getting decided and communicated.  Last week we announced our official product name (“Windows Server 2012”) and that the final product will be delivered this year.  Yesterday Steven Sinofsky delivered the keynote at “Windows Developer Days” in Tokyo, Japan where he announced that the Windows 8 Release Preview will be publicly available in the first week of June 2012. You can see the official MSFTNews tweet at:  http://twitter.com/#!/MSFTnews/statuses/194831068422094848 .  We plan to deliver a release candidate of Windows Server 2012 in the same timeframe. 

--Cheers!  Jeffrey