Clive Watson's Weblog

This is a recent post I missed (thanks for the pointer Julius) from the Remote Desktop Services Team (formally known as Terminal Services).

Basically with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V “We conducted our testing using both non-SLAT and SLAT hardware and found that SLAT enabled processors increased the number of sessions by a factor of 1.6x to 2.5x compared to non-SLAT processors.”

Hyper-V R2 supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), which uses new features on today’s CPUs to improve VM performance while reducing processing load on the Windows Hypervisor and new Hyper-V VMs will also consume less power by virtue of the new Core Parking feature implemented into Windows Server 2008 R2.

Some more detail on SLAT can be found here

This possibly increases your likelihood of being able to virtualise the RDS workload – as always testing is recommended.

Only a few days left now to book a place at iForum http://blogs.technet.com/clive_watson/archive/2009/04/02/uk-event-citrix-iforum-in-june.aspx

64LP and Processor Compatibility Mode were discussed yesterday on the Windows Server blog, AMD have posted a Live Migration demo, what is different about this, is that they do this across CPU families using Compatibility Mode.

So Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available…

As part of today’s news, Microsoft Corp. announced that the company is anticipating that the next version of its client operating system, Windows 7, will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season. In addition, Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (RC) is available today with the final product releasing to market in the same timeframe as Windows 7.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/may09/05-11TechEd09PR.mspx

and SCVMM R2 RC has some new features which you can all about here until then the highlights are:

• Storage Migration
• Queuing of Live migrations
• Rapid Provisioning
• Host compatibility checks
• Support for 3rd party CFS
• Support for Veritas Volume Manager

The Release Candidate (RC) is now available @ http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2008R2 which obviously includes Live Migration & CSV. 

Also released is Microsoft Hyper-V Server R2 RC - the FREE offering: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/06/microsoft-hyper-v-server-2008-r2-release-candidate-free-live-migration-ha-anyone.aspx

John (as usual) has lots of great advise and links to other complimentary tools (such as RSAT)

If you've ever had to follow Cheng’s definitive article on setting up SCVMM tracing you know it’s a reasonably simple process but with lots of steps.

Now you can do all this in 4 easy steps thanks to Jonathan

Reducing costs, improving efficiencies and increasing performance is a challenge for any business…but Microsoft and Citrix can help.

Citrix and Microsoft have decades of experience working together to provide customers a range of solutions which deliver choice, flexibility and cost savings. Our joint solutions to dynamically deliver desktop service and applications to uses wherever they are is based on tight integration of Citrix solutions with Window Server 2008, Hyper-V server virtualisation and terminal services / presentation virtualisation, and with the System Center management tools especially Virtual Machine Manager.

Microsoft is proud to be a platinum sponsor at this year’s Citrix iForum 2009 event taking place in Edinburgh 15^th – 17^th June at the International Conference Centre – so register your place today quoting MSFT1 (or just click this link) and take advantage of the early bird discount that has been extended until the 30^th April www.citrixiforum.com/edinburgh

There are even some free places if you book quickly (and meet the criteria).

All the details can be found on the Official MDOP blog and here on the main virtualization site.

Highlights:

APP-V 4.5 CU1 is now available as part of MDOP 2009.  App-V 4.5 CU1 adds support for Windows 7 beta, so customers can move ahead with application testing in preparation for enterprise deployments. It also contains a few improvements such as instant access or removal of applications assigned to end users.

AIS 1.5 update, now available to all MDOP end users through Windows Update, enhances the license reconciliation feature and the task scheduler. It now provides a detailed report for each application (e.g. whether license type is retail or volume license) to simplify license inventory tasks and to improve licensing compliance. The inventory scan scheduling has been improved to ensure data is collected even from devices that are turned off regularly.

I finally caught up with some reading this week, this was an article I meant to look at when published: How Microsoft Designs the Virtualization Host and Network Infrastructure.

Just as I finish that one, we release; Best Practices for Deploying Virtual Machines by Using Hyper-V Virtualization Technology 

“About 80 percent of server deployments in the Microsoft IT data centers are deployed as virtual servers via Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ technology. To ensure optimal performance, Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) has developed configuration best practices, based on the application workloads or services that the virtual servers provide.”

Now I need to find time to watch the webcast as well – happy reading or watching.

The Hyper-V Security Guide provides IT professionals with guidance, instructions, and recommendations to address key security concerns about server virtualization.

Microsoft Hyper-V technology allows consolidation of workloads that are currently spread across multiple underutilized servers onto a smaller number of servers. This capability provides a way to reduce costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead while creating a more dynamic IT infrastructure.

The Hyper-V Security Guide can help you elevate the security of virtualized Windows Server environments to address your business-critical needs.

This guide focuses on three key areas:

• Hardening Hyper-V
• Delegating virtual machine management
• Protecting virtual machines 

Download it from here, more details at the MAP Team Blog 

Ever run a Linux OS on Hyper-V and wanted mouse support, now thanks to our friends at Citrix you can have it, take a look at this announcement http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/03/24/citrix-project-satori-announced.aspx

or go straight to the download http://www.xen.org/download/satori.html

After more than two years since the last post, Julius (my colleague) is finally blogging!!  He tells me the posts will be more frequent from now on :-)

If you’ve been frustrated at having to type in the same data into the SCOM integrated reports from SCVMM then this post is for you!

To download, simply go to our site on Connect and sign in with your Live Id.

Call to action:

• Download either the Full Software install or the pre-configured VHD from https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=799
• To get assistance with the beta please participate in the public forums for SCVMM. These forums are linked here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/virtualmachinemanager
• To provide feedback on the beta, use the "Feedback" link on the Connect site to log your feedback.

The following significant new features are included in VMM 2008 R2 Beta:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Hyper-V host management
• Enhanced migration including Live and SAN migration in and out of clusters
• Multiple VMs per LUN using Clustered share volumes
• Hot add of VM storage

There is now a solution accelerator for Hyper-V security…something all of you should in interested in :-)

The Hyper-V Security Guide can help you elevate the security of virtualized Microsoft® Windows Server® environments to meet your business-critical needs.  This guide provides IT professionals like you with guidance, instructions, and recommendations to address your key security concerns around server virtualization.

Sign-up to the beta here,

Full details on the Virtualization team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/02/06/Windows-Server-2008-Hyper_2D00_V-Security-Guide-_1320_-beta-now-available.aspx 

Patrick at HP has made public a whitepaper from HP on guidance for NIC teaming and Hyper-V, whilst it doesn’t state that HP support this, it’s a step in the right direction.

Jeremy at HP has also been busy (or should that be busier than usual) and started blogging, lots of SCVMM and PowerShell goodness for you to digest.

Cheers

Clive