David Ziembicki on Infrastructure Architecture : Windows Server 2008

Everything you ever wanted to know about VHDs

davidzi — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:33:49 GMT

The Virtual Hard Disk Getting Started Guide is 61 pages of great info outlining all the relevant scenarios, configurations, and options for using VHD files. This was release about 3 weeks ago but I missed it at the time due to training and TechReady9. The guide outlines basic scenarios like booting Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 from VHD as well as more advanced scenarios like migrating at VHD between physical and virtual environments, etc. If nothing else this is worth a quick read of the table of contents because you will likely see things in there that you didn’t realize you could do with VHDs.

Here is the official description of the doc:

“Windows Server® 2008 R2 and Windows® 7 is the first version of Windows to provide native support for virtual hard disks (VHDs). This guide describes the scenarios that guided the development of this feature, detailed steps about how to employ the functionality (including image creation, deployment, and maintenance), and the associated tools, scripts, and APIs.”

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=d2afacbb-5af6-45c2-b275-932116e27b0b

New Microsoft Security Site for Governments

davidzi — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:44:41 GMT

A new Security section has been added to the government site on Microsoft.com. The site consolidates a number of relevant tools, solutions, case studies, and links relevant to Public Sector organizations. Several of the solutions call for specific mentions here:

Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC)

Federal Server Core Configuration (FSCC)

Infrastructure Optimization (IO)

Server Virtualization

The site also includes a brief interview with a colleague of mine in the Federal practice, Bill Billings, the Chief Security Officer of Microsoft Federal. In the video Bill discusses some of the cyber security priorities of the Obama administration and the areas Microsoft is working with the administration.

Dynamically Provisioning Customized Virtual Machines with VMM

davidzi — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:46:07 GMT

There’s a good technical post over on Chris Adam’s blog about how to dynamically provision customized virtual machines by using System Center Virtual Machine Manager and unattend.xml. The unattend.xml file is used in combination with a sysprep’d image and applies customization (things like computer name, installed roles, etc) that are specified in the XML file. Chris’s post explains how this can be done very easily in VMM.

This post was timely as I have been working on some unattended installations and other automation for a customer I am working with. With all the focus on the back and forth with competitors at the virtualization layer, it almost seems like the workload and configuration inside the VM is “getting no respect”.

In any event, the unattended installation realm can be intimidating at first. There are multiple ways of accomplishing most tasks, there is an enormous amount of things in Windows that can be customized, etc. Microsoft makes a large number of resources available such as the Windows Automated Installation Kit, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, etc. There are beta updates to these for Win7, R2, etc. that can be found on Bing.com.

For a very detailed treatment on all of these topics, check out the Deploying Vista series over on WindowsNetworking.com Most of the content is the same for Windows 2008 servers as well. This article on Technet is quick and direct step-by-step guide for a basic automated installation. Between the info Chris provided and some of these resources, you’ll be well on your way to dynamic VM provisioning.

Download the Hypervisor Functional Specification v2.0

davidzi — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:46:01 GMT

The Hypervisor Functional Specification v2.0 for Windows Server 2008 R2 has been posted to the web and can be found here. The original v1.0 version for Windows Server 2008 RTM was described in this post.

Here is the overview of the v2.0 version:

This document is the top-level functional specification (TLFS) of the second-generation Microsoft hypervisor. It specifies the externally visible behavior of the Microsoft hypervisor, a component of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server virtualization. The document assumes familiarity with the goals of the project and the high-level hypervisor architecture. This specification is provided under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. For further details on the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, please refer to: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx. The Hypervisor Functional Specifications document specifies the externally visible behavior of the Microsoft hypervisor, a component of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server virtualization. The specifications can be used to understand the functions of the hypervisor and implement a compatible solution.

Networking and Remote Desktop Technical Resources

davidzi — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:15:15 GMT

The links below lead to a series of technical whitepapers on DirectAccess, BranchCache, and Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Networking Resources: DirectAccess and BranchCache

Remote Desktop Resources: Kerberos, User Profiles, RemoteApp

White Paper: Comparing the Power Utilization of Native and Virtual Exchange Environments

davidzi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:07:12 GMT

The Exchange team has published a whitepaper on TechNet comparing the power utilization of a typical 8 server physical Exchange environment compared to a a virtualized environment using the same number of logical processors but on only two Hyper-V host servers. The result: a 50% reduction in power usage (excluding storage). If storage is included it was a 37% reduction.

The purpose of the test was to isolate on power consumption scenarios so other things like cooling and space savings weren’t considered but would also be measurable benefits. There is also a link to general guidance on virtualizing Exchange as it makes sense in a lot of scenarios but not all.

Windows Server 2008 R2 to RTM in July!

davidzi — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:09:14 GMT

The Windows Server Division blog announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 is tracking with Windows 7 and both are planned to RTM in the second half of July with General Availability on Oct 22! That RTM date is earlier than I thought it would be, I was thinking late August. The more I dig into R2 the more impressed I am with how many new features (Hyper-V R2, lots of RDS improvements, DirectAccess, etc, etc) were added in what the product group calls a minor release!

New Remote Desktop Services VDI Step-by-Step Guides Released

davidzi — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:05:55 GMT

New step-by-step guides have been posted for the new Remote Desktop Services (RDS) found in Windows Server 2008 R2 including the new VDI scenarios. These replace the original step-by-step guide from a couple months ago that was basically too big since it included all these scenarios in one and was a bit difficult to follow. I’ve been so focused on the combined Microsoft+Citrix solution lately that I haven’t had time to dig into the RDS-only solution yet. That will change this weekend!

Installing Remote Desktop Session Host Step-by-Step Guide

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working Remote Desktop Services infrastructure in a test environment. During this process, you create an Active Directory® domain, install the Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) role service, and configure the Remote Desktop Connection client computer.

Deploying Remote Desktop Web Access with Remote Desktop Connection Broker Step-by-Step Guide

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working RemoteApp source accessible by using Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access) in a test environment.

Deploying Personal Virtual Desktops by Using Remote Desktop Web Access Step-by-Step Guide

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working personal virtual desktop accessible by using Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access) in a test environment.

Deploying Virtual Desktop Pools by Using Remote Desktop Web Access Step-by-Step Guide

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working virtual desktop pool accessible by using Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access) in a test environment.

Clustering SQL Server Virtual Machines

davidzi — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:00:07 GMT

When planning server consolidation initiatives, particularly if using a structured offering and tools like SVAM and MAP, underutilized database servers are a frequent consolidation candidate. Similarly, if you have already widely implemented virtualization, then virtualizing database servers for new software deployments is also a common desire. As you consolidate and create more VMs, high availability becomes a requirement, particularly for database servers.

Until recently, Microsoft did not support clustering virtual machines running SQL server. You could cluster the hosts underneath of SQL VMs but you couldn’t cluster the VMs running SQL and remain supported. Fortunately, after finishing a large amount of testing that was required, this support policy has been changed and you can now cluster SQL VMs on Hyper-V and SVVP validated virtualization platofrms. See this article for the details: 956893.

The change in support policy opens up many new consolidation and software deployment scenarios. We have a site dedicated to SQL virtualization here and a great whitepaper on virtualizing SQL 2008 here.

Given all that, does it make sense to virtualize SQL (or any database)? The answer is an absolute, definite, maybe! Virtualization fan boys (like me) will say yes in many cases. Traditionalists in high end applications (both Microsoft’s and others) in a lot of cases will say no as they bare the scars of implementations gone bad due to going cheap on hardware or underestimating demand. Their concerns should not be ignored as they are usually based on deep experience with their apps.

What I think is unacceptable are blanket statements that “Product X should never be virtualized” or “never virtualize the database for Product Y”. These are poor excuses for trying to skip proper architecture and design. Just as bad are the vendors that promote “virtualizing everything” without any regard for performance, licensing, cost, or support considerations. This is also poor architecture and design.

Using proper capacity and availability planning practices, it is not that difficult to get to fact-based decisions on whether to virtualize a server workload or not. SQL is one of the more challenging ones as the product itself provides substantial consolidation options by supporting multiple instances and multiple databases per server/cluster. Almost all of our product groups now are releasing specific virtualization guidance (SQL, MOSS, OCS, etc.)

One of the most important considerations in this design process is the maximum size of a single virtual machine supported by your virtualization platform of choice. This will be the scale unit against which your capacity and availability requirements must be compared. If your workload doesn’t scale out well and requires a large single database server with 32 cores, that will not be a good candidate (or even possible) to virtualize as the major hypervisors today only support between 4 and 8 cores per VM. If your workload is able to scale out then this limitation can be worked around by using a greater number of smaller VMs that total up to the required capacity but you must consider the cost and management considerations of doing so (more VMs to manage, more agents, more licenses, etc).

It seems to be my mantra lately but there is no one size fits all when it comes to infrastructure architecture. That’s the fun part of this line of work, the art and science of good architecture which is a process. Beware of architects and vendors showing up and declaring that there is only one true way…

Free eBook: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit

davidzi — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:29:55 GMT

The Terminal Services (now called Remote Desktop Virtualization) team has announced that the Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit eBook is available for free download for a limited time. You can register (LiveID required) here and download the eBook (~30MB). The 2008 resource kit books have been very good. I use them routinely for reference. I’ve also loaded them on my Kindle (blog post coming soon on why I like the Kindle so much) and am looking forward to the big screen Kindle for better readability and native pdf support. Enjoy!