John Howard - Senior Program Manager in the Hyper-V team at Microsoft : Blogcasts

ISA Server 2004 SP2 Availability

jhoward — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 20:18:00 GMT

You may have spotted I haven't posted for a few days, but I've been off ill with the 'flu. Hence, my excuse for not having spotted the availability of ISA Server 2004 SP2 last week. It's also worth mentioning Maartens excellent blogcast on the features.

ISA Server 2004 SP2 Site (for download links and further information) on microsoft.com

Part 25: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - Integrated Auth

jhoward — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 11:45:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

The final part to the RPC/HTTPS series shows you how to alter the configuration we have such that Outlook 2003 can move seamlessly between external and internal connectivity through the use of integrated authentication. To do this, we need to change both the ISA server and the Exchange server. The overall end user experience, as you will see, is far better.

So over the Christmas break, I'll get round to recording a few more parts to the series, including VPN connectivity.
Click here to view.

Series Index:

0. Network configuration and series background.
1. Getting started
2. ISA Server configuration to allow basic web browsing capability
3. ISA Firewall Client basic configuration
4. ISA Firewall Client auto-detection through WPAD configuration
5. Configuring an Exchange mailbox and Outlook profile
6. Fixing 0x8004010F on Outlook send/receive
7. Installing our first Certificate Authority
8. Publishing OWA through ISA using Forms Based Authentication
9. OWA /exchange redirection
10. OWA nearly goes SSL - we have a certificate
11. OWA is available over SSL/HTTPS
12. Sending external email - Configuring outbound SMTP
13. Mail retrieval through POP3 polling
14. Preparations for Email retrieval through SMTP Transfer
15. Completing Email retrieval through SMTP Transfer
16. RPC/HTTP: Overview and installing RPC Proxy component
17. RPC/HTTP: IIS Config and a bit on certificates
18. RPC/HTTP: Exchange IIS Config completion
19. RPC/HTTP: Working from internal network
20. RPC/HTTP: Revisiting our ISA rules
21. RPC/HTTP: Outlook working externally. OWA still requires more work
22. RPC/HTTP: Bounce OWA through localhost
23. RPC/HTTP: OWA Back to HTTPS
24. RPC/HTTP: RPC Publication

Blogcast: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering How To - Part 5 of 5

jhoward — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:08:00 GMT

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it.

The last part of this mini series is where we setup the networking on the Virtual Machine guest we are making highly available through host clustering. In my scenario, I deviate from the whitepaper on host clustering as the network cards between my two hosts are different. In the whitepaper, you place the .vnc file for the network on the shared drive. I also show you once more what happens during unplanned downtime by power-cycling one of the nodes in the cluster.

So that's all you need to know about host based clustering using Virtual Server 2005 R2 in conjunction with Windows Server 2003 Clustering Services. Have fun, and please let me know if you found this useful!

Click here to view part 5.

Previous parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Blogcast: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering How To - Part 4 of 5

jhoward — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 19:14:00 GMT

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it.

In part 3, the new cluster group for the virtual machine was created. In the penultimate part of this mini-series, we place the VHD and VMC for a virtual machine on our shared drive and examine the configuration after adding it to the Virtual Server 2005 R2 admin interface on Node 1 of the cluster. For now, we don't configure the network (that's for part 5). We fail the virtual machine cluster group across to Node 2 and repeat adding the machine through the Virtual Server admin interface. We perform a critical step from the command line to set a private variable for the cluster script to work correctly. This absolutely must be done before the script is brought online in cluster administrator. The command takes the following format:

cluster res "<HA scriptname>" /priv VirtualMachineName=<Name of VM>

With that done, we are ready to bring the script online in the cluster group and watch the Virtual Machine starts up. Once booted, we log on and start working. In cluster administrator, we then proceed to move the cluster group across to the other node, verifying we are able to continue working on the guest now running on the other cluster node. This is an example of "Planned" downtime.

The final part of thi series is where we setup the network for failover, but in an atypical configuration to that described in the whitepaper - in the environment I have, the network cards used by the guest are different between the two hosts. However, it's good to know that this is possible. Stay tuned tomorrow to find out how :)

Click here to view part 4.

Previous parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Blogcast: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering How To - Part 3 of 5

jhoward — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:58:00 GMT

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it.

Part 3 of 5 gets into the "nitty-gritty" of the configuration. We create a new group in the cluster for the guest virtual machine and create the script necessary for the high-availability failover of Virtual Machines in a cluster. We add this script as a generic resource to the cluster.

Click here to view part 3.

Previous parts:

Part 1
Part 2

Part 24: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - RPC Publishing

jhoward — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:48:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

In the last part, forms based authentication for Outlook Web Access was back running again, bouncing through the localhost listener. In this part, we put RPC/HTTP back into place. We create a publishing rule for the Exchange Virtual Directory being published (/rpc). We also create a publishing rule for the RPC server. However, since recording this blogcast a couple of months ago now, this step is actually not necessary - I recommend you do not do this part of the configuration.

Click here to view.

Blogcast: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering How To - Part 2 of 5

jhoward — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:10:00 GMT

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it.

Part 2 of 5 performs a similar configuration to what we did in the previous part on Node 1, but on Node 2 of our cluster - we configure the iSCSI Initiator and add Node 2 to the cluster. We create the second iSCSI target disk for the shared data drive to hold the data for the virtual machines. We add a shutdown script through local machine policy to ensure the cluster service is stopped cleanly.

Click here to view part 2.

Previous parts:

Part 1

Blogcast: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering How To - Part 1 of 5

jhoward — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:57:00 GMT

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it.

So, another blogcast series starts, but only 5 parts this time. This first part configures the shared iSCSI target machine for the Quorum disks required by the two-node cluster. The iSCSI Initiator on Node 1 is configured to point to the iSCSI target and the Quorum partition is created/formatted. After this, a new cluster is created and brought online with the first node as a member.

Click here to view.

Blogcast: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering Walkthrough

jhoward — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 17:03:00 GMT

With Virtual Server 2005 R2 just a few days away from public availability, many of you will want to know more about Host Clustering - a new capability supported with this release - what better way to find out than with a live on-demand demonstration, so read on....

Some of you may have been fortunate enough to see the demonstration of Host Clustering during the keynote presentation by Bob Muglia and Josh Cohen at IT Forum. For those that weren't that fortunate, I spent a significant chunk of the weekend building a poor-mans reproduction so you can see it in action any time you like through a simple blogcast.

This is what you might call a "Poor-mans version" of the IT Forum demo - here's a couple of photos of what my home office looks like right now :) Please don't take this as a physical version of what you should replicate in your production server room - I don't recommend using laptops for production servers! I also don't have WS-Management capability in my Virtual Server hosts (a desktop and a laptop) as was demonstrated at IT Forum where Bob & Josh show fans being pulled out to demonstrate the complete integrate capabilities with MOM....

Host Clustering allows two types of failover for guests running on Virtual Server hosts: Planned and Unplanned downtime.

Planned downtime is where you want to take one node of a cluster offline for some reason - patching, disk failure etc, but want your users to continue working throughout this. Hence, you move the guests from one node to another.

Unplanned downtime is where there is a catastrophic error of some kind, and similarly, you want to ensure that the guest operating system remains available.

Note that for both planned and unplanned downtime, the solution is guest operating system agnostic - in other words, I could have easily been running Linux as a guest, and the same results would be seen.

The blogcast walks you through the environment I created and demonstrates both planned and unplanned downtime. Click here to view. In the next part, I'll walk through how the environment was configured from the ground up.

Links:
View blogcast of Host Clustering
Virtual Server 2005 R2 and iSCSI whitepaper
Virtual Server 2005 R2 Host Clustering configuration whitepaper
How to upgrade to Virtual Server 2005 R2
Virtual Server 2005 R2 Release Notes

NB When running the webcam simultaneously with a MOM virtual machine, an NT4 virtual machine and Windows Media Encoder from a single laptop, things unsurprisingly slow down. Hence a little of the recording is garbled near the start so for reference:

From left to right in the physical environment:

Node1, a desktop machine running WS2003 EE and VS2005 R2
Two network switches for public and private cluster networks
XP Professional laptop running Virtual Server 2005 R2 with a single guest:
- Guest is ClusterDC
- Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
- WinTarget iSCSI target hosting Quorum and Shared disk for cluster
- Domain Controller & DNS for democluster.com
Monitor for Node 1
Node2, a laptop running WS2003 EE and VS2005 R2, hosting:
- Virtual Machine running WS2003 EE and MOM2005 monitoring the cluster nodes

Part 23: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - OWA back to HTTPS

jhoward — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:51:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

We now move Outlook Web Access back to HTTPS, and we correct a naming error on the Network Listener "FBA LocalHost 443" in the last part (it's actually listening and remains listening on port 80). After having ripped things apart over the last few parts to this series, we piece things back together by updating the publishing rule "ExternalBasic-LocalHost (OWA)" for redirection of https://mail.contoso.com to https://mail.contoso.com/exchange

Only two more parts to go for a fully configured ISA Server publishing Exchange OWA and RPC/HTTP. Stay tuned.

Click here to view.

Part 22: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - Bounce OWA through Localhost

jhoward — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:29:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

To make the next steps clearer, here's a picture of what we're trying to achieve in combining Forms Based Authentication with RPC/HTTP, and the routes through which traffic will flow. Hopefully a picture speaks a thousand words - the blogcast goes through configuring ISA to bounce OWA traffic through our Localhost listener. As you watch, you'll notice that no-one is infallible (and especially count myself in that list), but it was only a minor mistake :)

Click here to view.

Part 21: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - Outlook OK, OWA needs some work

jhoward — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:10:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

With our new rule in place on the ISA Server, this sixth part of configuring TPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 first takes a quick look at the effects on Outlook Web Access - we now get a basic authentication challenge instead of Forms Basic Authentication. However, we can still log on. We'll come back to that in a few parts time.

Our Outlook profile still has the internal name of our Exchange Server configured for the Exchange Proxy Server, so we alter that to point to the external name, mail.contoso.com. On restarting Outlook with the rpcdiag switch, we see that it connects using RPC over HTTPS through our ISA Server correctly from the Internet. Result!

We put our Outlook profile back to a more "normal" RPC/HTTPS configuration by connecting using TCP/IP on fast networks first, and HTTPS on slow networks first. We then take a look at what happens when we switch our client from internal to external to internal networks. Perfect!

Click here to view.

Part 20: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - Start External Config

jhoward — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:44:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

This fifth part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 changes direction in getting RPC/HTTPS available from the Internet now that it is working internally. We backtrack on our ISA Server configuration as we can't (easily) have forms based authentication and basic authentication listening externally on port 443. Hence, we delete our old rules for publishing Outlook Web Access and new rules for our first stage in getting RPC/HTTPS available from the internet.

Click here to view.

Part 19: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - Completing internal config

jhoward — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:07:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

This fourth part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 moves us on to ensuring that RPC/HTTP works internally from our Outlook 2003 client to our Exchange 2003 Server. First though, we correct a typo in the registry settings from the previous blogcast part (sorry!). One thing that is critical is to correctly configure our Outlook Profile for RPC/HTTP connectivity. We walk through the settings and change them, take a look at the "/rpcdiag" switch when starting outlook and end up with Outlook talking to our Exchange server through HTTPS internally.

Next week, we'll start tackling the ISA Server configuration to get RPC/HTTPS available from the Internet.

Click here to view.

Part 18: Infrastructure essentials Blogcast - RPC/HTTP for Outlook & Exchange - Initial Setup

jhoward — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:09:00 GMT

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials.

The third part of configuring RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 configures the registry on Exchange 2003 and ensures that IIS is correctly configured on our Exchange server. This is a critical step in ensuring that internal problems are non-existant before continuing on to external publication.

Click here to view.