virtualboy

Hat-tip to the RDS Team Blog for this one.

One of the biggest requests I’m hearing around RDS in 2008 R2 and Windows 7, is for RDP performance information and benchmarks.  For those interested, it’s a close call on requests for this information, or for RDS Sizing guidance.  The sizing guidance is coming soon, trust me!

So, back to the RDP Performance Improvements, to quote the RDS Team…

“As with Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2, virtual machine-based desktop virtualization faces increasing performance challenges when enterprises attempt to use this technology to support a globally distributed workforce. A key consideration of performance relates to Remote Desktop protocol efficiency which continues to present an issue for bandwidth constrained environments. This limitation can manifest itself by limiting the number of users who can access virtualized desktops (user density) over available bandwidth, and with a degraded user experience. Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 7.0, similar to previous RDP versions, provides a competitive experience for low bandwidth (e.g. 56 Kbps) connections. After bandwidth requirements, network latency is the second fundamental challenge for customers and partners that wish to deploy virtualized desktops for a broad range of end-users and applications”

Very true indeed.  If you’d have said, 18 months ago, you can play a rich multimedia video over RDP, and it wouldn’t be jerky, out of sync etc, people would have laughed at you, yet that laughter would have been mostly based on older iterations of RDP, and it’s traditional, functional use within an infrastructure.  Fast forward to now, with RDP7, that kind of experience is a reality, but would I expect that level of rich experience over all connectivity types, fast and slow?  No, inevitably not.  As you’d expect, the experience would degrade, especially over the WAN, which could, as the paragraph above suggests, degrade the experience for others too.  Therefore, understanding the RDP protocol in the latest release is pivotal when evaluating an RDS infrastructure.

So, back to the whitepaper…

“With the release of the Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 operating systems, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is more feature rich, enabling new presentation and remote-oriented functionality such as accelerated bitmap rendering, multi-media redirection streaming, and network topology awareness. As these features become integrated in the enterprise environment, it is important to analyze and understand their impact on your current network infrastructure and the end-user experience. This paper details the various RDP features and the potential improvements to usability and quality of the end-user remoting experience, as well as system deployment metrics. To test the impact of different features and compare RDP 7.0 to the previous RDP 6.1 version, we performed a variety of tests by using automated and simulation tools to demonstrate the user scenarios outlined in this white paper. These tests are broken down into two broad groups: a set that simulated a user working with actual Microsoft® Office applications at realistic speeds, and a set of multi-media scenarios that simulated a rich media environment commonly expected by today’s and tomorrow’s users.

To test the impact of different features and compare RDP 7.0 to the previous RDP 6.1 version, we performed a variety of tests by using automated and simulation tools to demonstrate the user scenarios outlined in this white paper. These tests are broken down into two broad groups: a set that simulated a user working with actual Microsoft® Office applications at realistic speeds, and a set of multi-media scenarios that simulated a rich media environment commonly expected by today’s and tomorrow’s users. In addition, some of the scenarios have been run at increased network latencies to demonstrate the viability of using RDP in distributed environments, such as in Branch offices or telecommuting scenarios where broadband capabilities exist”

There’s actually some very useful information in the whitepaper, particularly around what tweaks you could make to your user experience to optimise the bandwidth utilisation.  One thing I found useful, is the frame-rate achieved with Silverlight content, versus Flash, at different colour levels:

I really didn’t know that!

This, and other useful bits of info, are available in the whitepaper.  Check it out now!

If you have a look around the web (using your favourite Bing search engine), for virtualising/virtualizing SAP, you’ll find a lot of links for virtualising that workload on VMware, but what about Hyper-V?  Do SAP support Hyper-V as a platform?  Are there any recommendations if they do?  Yes, and yes, and with the latest announcement, they now support Hyper-V R2 as the virtualisation platform, which brings in significant advantages around Live Migration, Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) support, and improved networking capabilities to name but a few.

Last year, there was a best practices white paper released, which detailed optimum configurations for SAP virtualised on R1 of Hyper-V, so this is still going to be relatively useful for R2, especially when combined with the Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 R2 that I blogged about a few weeks back.

If you head on over to the SAP Community, and look at the Virtualisation on Windows page, you’ll see the statement of support front and centre, however one thing to be aware of, is that SAP will support Hyper-V R2 as the platform, but the guest OS that SAP runs on has to be Windows Server 2008, or 2003.

If you’re interested, there’s more guidance here:

• Virtualising SAP applications on Windows
• Support prerequisites for running SAP on virtualised hardware (SAP Note 1409608 - Login Required)
• Virtualisation on Windows: Enhanced Monitoring (SAP Note 1409604 - Login Required)
• SAPOSCOL: Detailed virtualization data (SAP Note 1260719 - Login Required)
• High Availability in Virtual Environment on Windows (SAP Note 13746711409604 - Login Required)
• Hyper-V Configuration Guide (SAP Note 1246467 - Login Required)

If you’re thinking about virtualising SAP, ESX isn’t the only hypervisor in town…

If you’ve been following my coverage of DPM 2010 over the last few months (here, and here), you’ll be pleased to learn that the Release Candidate build has been declared, and released to the web, on the Microsoft Connect website.

If you’re interested in downloading and evaluating this release (which I’d strongly recommend!), you can grab all the bits here.

This is a combination of technology that I’m starting to see on a pretty regular basis.  People looking at virtualisation, are typically weighing up new hardware, and from a server perspective, it makes sense to go for the latest and greatest CPUs (from both Intel and AMD) because of their virtualisation optimisations.  When it comes to storage however, more and more customers are learning to appreciate the performance that iSCSI can bring, yet at a great price point when compared with Fibre implementations.  This isn’t obviously correct for all scenarios, but, typically the rule holds.  Stephen’s got a great example of this here.  Stephen’s also got a link to a test performed back in March last year where Microsoft and Intel, combining the technologies above, pushed over 1 million IOPS.

If you are thinking of going down this route, combining these technologies, then I’d advise you to have a look at recent information produced by Microsoft and Intel around this very combination.  The stuff has been floating around the web on various blogs, news sites and so on, for a good few while now, but today was the first time I’ve had chance to have a look in more detail, and the results are very encouraging indeed.

In terms of resource and information, firstly, let’s get the marketing document out of the way.  This brief highlights the key benefits when you go down the ‘combination’ yet doesn’t go into the nuts and bolts like some of the other resources do.  Among other things, it highlights technologies like Microsoft’s VMq and Intel’s VMDq and how this combination can accelerate network traffic, including iSCSI.  It’s a useful starting point though.

Going back to what I said earlier about the 1 million IOPS, if you look at Stephen’s post, one of the comments is around the fact that it’s 1 million IOPS with 512 byte blocks, which isn’t reflective of applications like Exchange and SQL, which have larger recommended block sizes, and as you increase the block size, the number of IOPS will decrease.  This isn’t to say the test is flawed, nor is it marketed to hit the headlines.  What it proves is, iSCSI is ready for the big time, provided it is specced accordingly, and when I say that, don’t instantly think “This must be the highest-end SAN, and the highest-end iSCSI HBA’s” to achieve anything near those levels – if you read Stephen’s post carefully, you’ll find that the test was run using the in-box Windows Server 2008 R2 iSCSI initiator, on an Intel 5500 (which ships as standard in most boxes now), and it ran over a regular 10GbE Intel Ethernet NIC.  Sure, 10GbE is expensive, compared with 1GbE, but if you need that level of performance, achieving it with iSCSI is a very valid alternative to the Fibre approach and gives you more options around passing iSCSI traffic into VMs than Fibre will.

To quote Stephen

Performance is not an issue for iSCSI – Sure, not every iSCSI stack can handle a million IOPS, but the protocol is not the problem. iSCSI can saturate a 10 GbE link and deliver all the IOPS you might need.

Performance is not an issue for software – Today’s CPUs are crazy fast, and optimized software like the Windows Server 2008 R2 TCP/IP and iSCSI stacks can match or exceed the performance of specialized offload hardware.

Storage vendors need to step up their game – Whose storage array can service a million iSCSI IOPS? Raise your hands, please! I can’t hear you! Hello? Anyone there?

Fibre Channel and FCoE don’t rule performance – I don’t know of a Fibre Channel SAN that can push this kind of throughput or IOPS through a single link. Even FCoE over the same 10 GbE cable can’t quite do it. If they are to stay relevant, they had better come up with a compelling advantage over iSCSI!

What you’ll also find from Stephen’s post, is that Hyper-V also performed admirably, with performance remaining similar to native throughout.

If you can, watch this webcast.  It’s available on demand, and presents to you, first hand, the results that Stephen has referenced above.

Hat-tip to Ben for this one.

If you’re interested in the kind of things that can impact performance within Virtual Machines, from a networking perspective, and how you can optimise accordingly, this article may be of use to you.  In a nutshell, increasing the VMBus buffer size within the VM, can increase network throughput to guest VMs, in some cases, very significantly indeed.  Obviously it relates to your environment, and the workloads generating the network loads, but it’s definitely worth a read.

There are a number of useful suggestions in the article, along with how to make the changes.

That’s the networking done, but don’t forget about the Performance and Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 R2 that I told you about a week or so back too.  All useful stuff!

Anyone who’s seen my present Microsoft’s Virtualisation & Management story, will know I spend quite a bit of time focussing on System Center Operations Manager.  For me, I think it’s the mission control of the System Center Suite, where, typically, IT Admins’ would spend the majority of their time.  Whether it’s proactive monitoring and alerting, or reporting through Service Level Dashboards, Operations Manager gives us excellent insight into the environment, whether it’s physical, or virtual.

How does Operations Manager get it’s knowledge about Technology-X?

Simple.  Management Packs.  Important to note, MP’s are not written by the Operations Manager team.  They are written and developed by the team (Microsoft or 3rd Party) that makes that respective technology.  Exchange MP is written by the Exchange team, SharePoint MP by the SharePoint team, and so on.

Where do you get these Management Packs?

Well, with Operations Manager 2007 R2, you can search and import MP’s right into the Operations Manager interface, however, those who’ve used Operations Manager for some time, will know you have to visit the MP Catalogue.  If you’ve not used the MP Catalogue for a while, the first thing you’ll notice is that the site has been moved into the PinPoint set of sites, and in my view, isn’t quite as easy to find the MPs as before, but I’m sure it’ll get better with time.  Don’t shoot the messenger on that one!

New Management Packs?

Well, a few highlights for me include:

Operations Manager Management Pack for Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 (Download)

This MP monitors Forefront TMG and includes monitors and rules to track the deployed topology & features, performance, availability, and reliability of Forefront TMG components. With detailed alert information, you can quickly identify and troubleshoot Forefront TMG issues, minimizing time-to-resolution when problems occur. You can collect and analyze performance trends and metrics, and obtain performance information that allows you to manage bottlenecks, identify capacity requirements, and proactively manage your Forefront TMG deployment to resolve issues before problems occur.

• Topology and feature deployment
• Events indicating service outages
• Alerts indicating configuration issues and connected data source changes
• Verification that all dependant services are running
• Configuration storage synchronization

Operations Manager Management Pack for Windows 2008 R2 Direct Access Server (Download)

Through Operations Manager, the Direct Access Server Management Pack supports the following features:

Automatic discovery of the Direct Access Server and its components, including:

• IP-HTTPS Gateway
• ISATAP Router
• Network Security Component
• 6to4 Router
• Teredo Relay
• Teredo Server

Monitors that identify:

• Status of DA Server and its components
• Denial of service (DoS), spoofing, and replay attacks
• ICMP and data traffic queue overflows
• Utilization of available IPsec states on the DA Server

Operations Manager Management Pack Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (Download)

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 management pack is designed to be used for monitoring Exchange 2010 events, collecting Exchange component-specific performance counters in one central location, and for raising alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically correlating critical events, this management pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage Exchange servers and identify issues before they become critical. The management pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, and health monitoring.

The Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack includes rules and scripts to monitor and report on performance, availability, and reliability of all Exchange 2010 server roles including.

• Mailbox Server Role
• Client Access Server Role
• Hub Transport Server Role
• Edge Transport Server Role
• Unified Messaging Server Role

Operations Manager Management Pack for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (Download)

The Management Pack for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE) allows you to discover FPE installations and components and to monitor them within System Center Operations Manager 2007. When there is an issue that may impact the availability, configuration, or security of your FPE deployment, Operations Manager uses the management pack to detect the issue, alert you to its existence, and facilitate diagnosis and corrective actions.

• Support for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE)
• Discovery and monitoring of key FPE services
• Monitoring of product license status
• Monitoring of the availability and configuration of scan jobs
• Monitoring of scan engine and definition updates
• Diagnostic and recovery tasks related to engine updates and service recycling
• Performance views of message scanning rate across scan jobs
• Discovery and monitoring of FPE running with an Exchange CCR cluster

Operations Manager Management Pack for SharePoint 2010 Beta (Download)

This System Center Management Pack is for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products Beta, which includes monitoring for:

• SharePoint Server 2010
• Project Server 2010
• Search Server 2010
• This Management Pack monitors important Events, Performance Counters, Services, and SharePoint Health Analyzer Rules found in SharePoint 2010 Products.
• This Management Pack lets operators know when incidents occur which could endanger the health of the SharePoint farm; notifications can either be:
• Components displayed in a red unhealthy status in the System Center Operations Manager diagram view.
• Alerts sent directly to the Operator (this notification happens only for critical incidents).

Operations Manager Management Pack for Windows Power Management (Download)

The Power Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 enables you to monitor and manage the power consumption of computers running Windows Server 2008 R2.

This management pack provides:

• Visibility into power consumption
• Visibility and control of power policy
• Ability to lower power consumption during non-business hours to reduce overall power consumption
• Ability to limit power consumption
• Ability to detect excessive power consumption

These are just a few of the MP’s available, however, don’t just import them all and expect everything to be perfect.  Importing of MP’s should be phased, otherwise, as expected, you’ll get a lot of alerts, as the thresholds won’t be ideal for your environment in every case.  So, import, tweak and tailor, a few at a time, and what you’ll end up with is a more tailored, more relevant, monitoring environment.

These, and all other MPs, can be found on the Management Pack website (or downloaded with Operations Manager 2007 R2).

For those of you interested in backup, and in particular, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, the guys over at ZDNet Australia have written an interesting review of the beta release (Release Candidate coming soon!).

The review focuses on a few key areas, such as general usability improvements over DPM 2007, scalability improvements, automation improvements, client protection, protection around Virtualisation, SharePoint and Exchange 2010, along with improvements in DPM chaining and non-domain protection (great for hosting/managed services).

You can read the whole review here.

The thing that stood out most to me, was the bolt-on technology appliance, namely the EVault Backup and Recovery Appliance, produced by i365, which helps DPM 2010 become a more-heterogeneous protection tool, protecting UNIX, Linux, Novell Netware, VMware, IBM System i, and Oracle.  It also provides the capability to protect up into the cloud, and it’s powered by Seagate.  Useful stuff, I’d say.

Read all about that, here.

Anyone who’s deployed Hyper-V as part of either Windows Server 2008 R2 Core Install, or, through Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, will know that changing certain settings requires a bit of work in the command line environment.  For some people, easy peasy, but for others, it was a step too far, and back to the GUI they went.  Then came Core Configurator, which bridged the gap between command line and GUI, without sacrificing reduced footprint, patching, services overhead etc.

Even with Core Configurator, there were still some bits that couldn’t be performed.  Take Network Adaptor Protocols.  How can you turn them off, turn them on, make changes, change orders etc?  If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, I effectively mean:

How do you get these tick boxes from a command line?

John Howard, Senior Program Manager in the Hyper-V team, has blogged about a tool, developed by our very own Keith Mange, called NVSPbind, which gives users easier, granular control over network items they want enabled for their physical NICs and helps fills a gap in troubleshooting, optimising and hardening networking configurations on Server Core or Hyper-V Server.  You can get all the info here.

As John says, with all utilities which change network configurations, you have to be extremely careful as you may disrupt or even lose network connectivity if you are managing a machine remotely. It may be handy to have Keith's other utility around just in case. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/nvspscrub.  NVSPscrub is a tool for removing Hyper-V Virtual Networking Configuration from the parent partition. It is especially useful in Server Core environments when the Hyper-V UI may not be available, and if you’ve fiddled with NVSPbind, and things have taken a turn for the worse!

For those of you in the know, you’ll be aware that, for some time now, we’ve supported SUSE Linux on Hyper-V.  Through our ongoing work and collaboration with Novell, focused on interoperability, joint customers can safely, and in a performant manner, run Novell SUSE Linux on a Hyper-V platform, and Windows Server OS’s, on a SUSE Linux platform.  To enable a more performant, and optimised experience for the Linux OS on Hyper-V, Microsoft and Novell have worked together to produce Integration Components that, once installed within the VM, optimise it’s performance and give a much better experience overall.

The big question is, is how do you install them, and configure them?  How to you optimise that VM on Hyper-V?  I’d love to show you myself, but the guys from Microsoft in the US have saved me a job!  So far, a 2-part video series has been produced, focusing on the install, configuration and more.

Here’s Part 1:

Here’s Part 2:

Definitely worth a watch if you’re thinking of installing and configuring SUSE on Hyper-V, and make sure you make them full screen to make all the detail out!

I’ve had a number of requests for this type of documentation, and it seems like it’s released under the radar, without a fanfare of sorts, however this could be one of the most important sets of documentation that you read around Hyper-V R2.  Obviously, this information should be combined with any storage-vendor-specific information, such as that from NetApp.

Firstly, what is Cluster Shared Volumes?

“Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) is a feature that simplifies the configuration and management of Hyper-V virtual machines in failover clusters. With CSV, on a failover cluster that runs Hyper-V, multiple virtual machines can use the same LUN (disk) yet fail over (or move from node to node) independently of one another. CSV provides increased flexibility for volumes in clustered storage—for example, it allows you to keep system files separate from data to optimize disk performance, even if the system files and the data are contained within virtual hard disk (VHD) files. If you choose to use live migration for your clustered virtual machines, CSV can also provide performance improvements for the live migration process”

‘Simples’, right?  Yes, in concept, but planning the layout and sizing of your disks is a more complicated proposition.  Thankfully, here’s the guidance:

• Requirements for Using Cluster Shared Volumes in a Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Includes Network Requirements, Redirected Mode Info, Node Requirements and more…
• Recommendations for Using Cluster Shared Volumes in a Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Includes planning the arrangement, sizing and numbers of disks for CSV/non-CSV.
• Backing Up Cluster Shared Volumes in a Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Includes VM based backup, and host based backup.

Hopefully that helps with any storage questions you may have around CSV!

If I said there was a tool that could accelerate fixed-sized VHD copies by 10 times, would you be interested?  If I said you could instantly provision and boot a new VM from a currently copying VHD file, would you be interested?  Well, if the answer is yes, to either of those questions, then I have a couple of tools that you may find useful.

Hat-tip to Dilip, one of our MVPs for File Systems/Storage and author of ‘Inside Windows Storage, for providing the link to VMUtil.

VHDCopy

When you think about it, a fixed-sized VHD, typically, contains a lot of nothing.  What I mean by that is, think about it, if you have a 100GB fixed-size VHD, and inside that VHD, you’re only using say, 30GB, why should you have to transfer (for whatever reason) the full 100GB, when only 30GB is actually useful stuff?  You could apply the same example to a backup drive – if I had a new backup drive of 1TB, and I’d only backed up 50GB so far, and I needed to move the files somewhere else, what would be quicker to transfer, 50GB or 1TB?

This is just one of many inefficiencies that exist within a file copy of a VM, that VHDCopy solves, by refraining from copying the meaningless portions that exist within a VHD.

Advantages include:

• Significant reduction in disk I/O - typical savings may range from 20% to 90% reduction in disk I/O - your mileage will vary
• Significant reduction in file copy time - typically order of 2X to 10X faster - your mileage will vary
• Scriptable command line tool that requires no installation
• Use VHDCopy to migrate from Windows Server 2008 based Hyper-V to Windows Server 2008 R2 based Hyper-V and its Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)

There’s a datasheet here for more information, and you can always head over to the VHDCopy page for more stuff, including download links.

VHDCopEE

Building on VHDCopy, but providing more functionality, particularly around network transfers, as you can see from the table below:

Although it’s not quite clear from the website, depending on the page you’re looking at, both VHDCopy and VHDCopEE do run on the latest Windows OS’s, both Server and Desktop, yet VHDCopy will only accelerate local transfers, rather than network transfers, for which you’ll need VHDCopEE.

Advantages include:

• Significant reduction in disk I/O of up to 90% depending upon VHD contents
• Significant reduction in file copy time - up to 10 X faster based on VHD file contents
• Scriptable command line tool that requires no installation
• Use VHDCopy to migrate from Windows Server 2008 based Hyper-V to Windows Server 2008 R2 based Hyper-V and its Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
• Use VHDCopEE with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and its Rapid Provisioning feature
• Get SAN storage features such as Instant Clones and Instant Provisioning while using low cost non SAN storage

More on the ‘bolded’ ones later…

Again, there’s a datasheet here, and you can head over to the VHDCopEE page for more info.  You can grab the download here.

VMProv

This one’s pretty darn clever too.  Think about it, you want to create a VM from say, a VHD that already exists.  So, you copy, and past the VHD, and it takes x-minutes to copy.  Using the above technologies, it’ll be quicker, but we’re still going to have to wait until the copy has finished to start the VM, right?  Wrong.

VMProv allows a VM to be provisioned and available for use within seconds, well before the accelerated file copy has finished. Once the file copy finishes, the provisioned VM is no different than if it had been utilized after the file copy operation had finished. While the file copy is happening, the VM is fully available, and you may install any updates or new software. All changes made to the VM while the file copy is happening are preserved.

Cool hey?

On top of that, and going back to the bolded points under VHDCopEE, VMprov is designed to be used with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager R2 and its Rapid Provisioning feature.

Think about using SCVMM – whenever you’re sending out a VHD from the library, it’s typically going to be a file copy process, and the bigger the file, the longer it will take.  Using VHDCopEE will speed up the transfer, and combining that with VMProv will mean you can start the VM up without waiting for the VHD to finish copying.  Combine that with a Rapid Provisioning PowerShell script, found here, and you’re going to accelerate stuff considerably.

You can read the VMProv datasheet here, and check out the VMProv page for further info.  If you want to download it, you can, here.

That’s all from me – make sure you check out the tools if you get chance!

Had a few cracking documents sent across to me from Steve Winfield, NetApp Consulting Systems Engineer in the UK, (and member of the Curry Council) which are particularly useful if you’re scoping out a Hyper-V & NetApp combo, and also if you’re planning on running Exchange, SQL and SharePoint on Hyper-V with a MetroCluster stretched across the WAN!

Now, although these documents are obviously aimed at NetApp Storage backends, some of the best practice hints and tips will be applicable to Hyper-V on other platforms too, however, if you’re using NetApp and Hyper-V, you’ll find this info spot on.

• NetApp Storage Best Practices for Microsoft Virtualization
• NetApp Implementation Guide for Microsoft Virtualization
• Solution Guide: Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint Server Mixed Workloads Running within the Virtual Machines hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V within a NetApp MetroCluster environment

One of the key contributors to these documents (at least 2 of the 3!) is NetApp’s Chaffie McKenna, who is also one of the authors on the NetApp MSEnviro blog, which provides a number of useful pieces of information around the 2 vendors’ technologies.  One for the RSS reader I believe!

Have a good weekend!

Earlier today, I was having a brief conversation over email with one of the chaps over at Intel UK, who had a question around Windows Server 2008 R2’s use of Turbo Boost, which is a capability of the Xeon 5500 (Nehalem), that allows those processors to achieve additional performance when it is most useful.  Some of you may relate this almost to a controlled, automated overclocking as and when necessary.  Now, although I’d say my knowledge of Windows Server 2008 R2 is pretty good, I didn’t know the answer to this little belter, so I bing’d.

The Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2008 R2 is what I found.

Aside from answering the question around Turbo Boost (see pages 14-16 of the doc if you’re interested in tweaking Turbo Boost in R2 to kick in on the ‘balanced’ power setting, as usually, by default, it’s only applicable on High Performance), I found there was a wealth of info on Web, RDS, Hyper-V and more.  If you want a more exhaustive list:

• Choosing and Tuning Server Hardware
• Performance Tuning for the Networking Subsystem
• Performance Tuning for the Storage Subsystem
• Performance Tuning for Web Servers
• Performance Tuning for File Servers
• Performance Tuning for Active Directory Servers
• Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Session Host (formerly Terminal Server)
• Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Gateway
• Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers
• Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (NetBench)
• Performance Tuning for Network Workload (NTttcp)
• Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Services Knowledge Worker Workload
• Performance Tuning for SAP Sales and Distribution Two-Tier Workload

Very useful indeed, and at just over 90 pages, we’re not talking a novel here.  If you’re interested, grab it here.

Some of you may already be aware of this, but for those of you interested in keeping technologies like AD, System Center Operations Manager, and Hyper-V running smoothly, the first in a series of MOF Reliability Workbooks may be of use.  If you’re not au-fait with MOF (a bit like me!)…

Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0 incorporates the core requirements of industry best practices and frameworks into one free, easy-to-understand set of guidance. MOF 4.0 delivers practical guidance for everyday IT practices and activities, helping IT professionals establish and implement reliable, cost-effective IT services. It integrates community-generated processes; governance, risk, and compliance activities; management reviews; and Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) best practices. MOF 4.0 is a framework that provides guidance across the IT service lifecycle

As I said, the current guides available address AD, SCOM and Hyper-V, but there are more to come.  In a nutshell, this series of workbooks provides the knowledge, specific tasks, and schedules needed to keep technologies running smoothly so you can deliver the services your organization expects. Each workbook includes maintenance and monitoring tasks, common risk areas, and standard changes for the ongoing care of specific technologies. The series also includes an administrator’s guide for customizing these technologies for your organisation.

If you’re interested, and would like to download the free guide (currently in beta), you can grab it from here: https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1880&InvitationID=SAMI-HWK9-XB3Y&SiteID=14

Back in October 2008, I was in the North-West with one of our Virtualisation Partners, Nviron, with, at the time, a prospective customer; Chester Zoo.  When you think of Chester Zoo, or, any zoo in fact, the last thing that typically springs to mind is IT, especially virtualisation.  When you think zoo, you think monkeys, zebras, and occasionally, the odd giant wildebeest, but not Live Migrating VMs and High Availability along with more acronyms than you can shake a stick at.

Anyway, Chester Zoo, like many organisations, were evaluating virtualisation platforms, and at the time, we discussed the Microsoft virtualisation options that were on the table.  Namely, a released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, and an upcoming R2.  We also went into a fair amount of discussion around the management of said virtual estate, and the value of the System Center management suite.

Zoom forward a few months, and Chester Zoo, along with Nviron, were part of the Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for R2, and deploying, with Microsoft/Partner support, pre-released code into production.

Zoom forward to November 2009, and Phil Morris, Chester Zoo’s IT Chief, is on stage at TechEd Europe, in the keynote, talking about how Chester Zoo benefited from the R2 technologies.  Awesome stuff, and you know what they say…from small acorns…

If you’re interested in finding out more about their deployment, and their experiences with the technology, and what it’s given them from a technology and business perspective, yet also, explore how they went through the analysis, planning, piloting and roll-out of their virtualisation project, their motivations and most importantly the business requirements which led them to consider virtualisation technology as the answer, then this webcast could be for you.

If you’re interested, head on over to this page on The Register, register (sorry!) and enjoy!  It takes place on the 21st January, at 11am GMT.