PFE Ireland : Virtualisation

Technology Day – Microsoft Virtualisation (Level: 300)

gmcshera — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:45:26 GMT

We are running an event this December for Microsoft Premier customers. I'm pretty excited about it actually. Premier Field Engineering and Microsoft Consulting Services are teaming up to present real world details on Hyper-V, System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Application Virtualisation. We plan on running as many demonstrations as possible during the event so death by PowerPoint should not be an issue.

This event is only open to Microsoft Premier Customers. Contact your Technical Account Manager to reserve your place. If you are not a Premier Customer we plan on running the event again early in 2009. Drop me an email if you are interested in attending.

Here is the agenda for the event :

Title: Technology Day – Microsoft Virtualisation (Level: 300)

Location

Microsoft Sandyford
Building 3, (Atrium B)
Carmenhall Road,
Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin 18

Training Room 5.41

Date & Time
Fri 5^th December @ 9:15

Breaks

15 mins @ 11:15 am
1 hour @ 1pm – 2pm (Lunch)
15 mins @ 3:30pm

Morning

09:30

Workshop Introduction

09:45

Microsoft Virtualisation @ Nissan Ireland
Rory Donnelly (CIO Nissan Ireland)

10:00

Virtual Data Centre :

Microsoft Server Virtualisation and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager
Gavin McShera, Victor Arzate Rodriguez and David McCormick

This session is aimed at providing skills to deploy and administer a Virtualised Data Centre, using Microsoft Server Virtualisation products and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Content:

Hyper-V Architecture

Understand the architecture behind Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server.
Learn how to increase uptime, by understanding what is happening under the covers of Hyper-V.

Getting to grips with Server Core Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server

Understand the process of enabling Hyper-V on Server Core including enabling remote management.
Understand the best practices for management and delegation.
Learn from our experience of deploying Hyper-V Server Core.

Performance Best Practice & High Availability

Understand Hyper-V Performance Best Practices – The big 4: Disk, Memory, Network & Processor.
Understand Failover Clustering Best Practices, Server Core hosts & Management.

Managing Hyper-V

Learn how to effectively manage Hyper-V hosts in an enterprise deployment using SCVMM 2008.
Understand SCVMM design considerations and best practices.

Deploying and Migrating to Hyper-V

Understand various methods of virtual machine deployment, including with SCVMM 2008.
Learn about some common migration routines.

Afternoon

02:15

Application Virtualisation with Microsoft App- V (formerly Softgrid)
Alan Stone and Paul Devlin

This session introduces Microsoft Application Virtualisation and provides notes from the field with real world scenarios

Content:

An overview of the App-V technology
How App-V can mature the IT Environment

Notes from the Field

How App-V helped a customer overcome application delivery challenges
Benefits to mobile workers
Application Compatibility
Sequencing Recipes best practices

Application Virtualisation 4.5 What does the future hold?

Integration with the System Centre family of products
New Deployment methods for Virtualised applications
Asset intelligence & App-V 4.5

03:45

Open Discussion – Q & A

Virtualisation : Support statements and Licensing

gmcshera — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:38:00 GMT

Over the past week or so Microsoft have clarified the support statement for server products running in virtual environments. The most significant announcement was the Server Virtualisation Validation Program (SVVP). To quote "The Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) is open to any vendor who delivers a virtualization machine solution that hosts Windows Server 2008, Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and subsequent service packs. The virtualization solution can either be hypervisor-based or a hosted solution. The program enables vendors to validate various configurations so that customers of Windows Server can receive technical support in virtualized environments. Customers with validated solutions will benefit from the support provided by Microsoft as a part of the regular Windows Server technical support framework."

The participating vendors (at time of writing are):

Cisco Systems, Inc.
Citrix Systems, Inc.
Novell, Inc.
Sun Microsystems
Unisys Corp.
Virtual Iron Software
VMware, Inc.

The SVVP does not mean that Microsoft support the products from the vendors listed above. The SVVP means the validated third party product provides a suitable environment upon which the Microsoft operating system can run. If you think about it, the SVVP is very similar to the hardware certification for Microsoft operating systems.

Now that you know the supportability of your Microsoft operating systems turn your eyes to the support statements for Microsoft server software. Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments.

You'll find statements for :

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)
Microsoft BizTalk Server
Microsoft Commerce Server
Microsoft Dynamics AX
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Forefront Client Security
Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG)
Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange (FSE)
Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint (FSP)
Microsoft Host Integration Server
Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server
Microsoft Office Groove Server
Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server
Microsoft Office Project Server
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services
Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005
Microsoft Search Server
Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager
Microsoft System Center Essentials
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS)
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
Windows Web Server 2008

Licensing changes:

New Licensing Flexibility : check out the press release http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx

Hyper-V : Link madness

gmcshera — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:15:01 GMT

Need some light reading for the weekend? Have a look at the links below. All part of the growing body of knowledge around Hyper-V.

Websites

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx

Virtualization Case Studies

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/case-studies.mspx

Virtualization Solution Accelerators

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/cc197910.aspx

Windows Server 2008 Virtualization & Consolidation: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx

Hyper-V FAQ

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-faq.aspx

Optimized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI and much more): http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/default.mspx

Virtualization TechCenter:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/default.aspx

How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V RC

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-install.aspx

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Performance Tuning Guide

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv.mspx

MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/05/20/msdn-and-technet-powered-by-hyper-v.aspx

MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V Whitepaper

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/C/5/6C559B56-8556-4097-8C81-2D4E762CD48E/MSCOM_Virtualizes_MSDN_TechNet_on_Hyper-V.docx

Blogs:

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualworld/

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/

http://blogs.technet.com/mapblog/

http://blogs.technet.com/stbnewsbytes/

Webcasts:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032368894&CountryCode=US

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032372420&CountryCode=US

Virtualisation Candidates – How to identify

gmcshera — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:08:07 GMT

In my post yesterday I spoke about virtualisation candidates (amongst other things) and how we now know what loads and systems are viable. Have a look at the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) tool. Its the tool for identifying candidates. There is also a nice video demo from Baldwin Ng, showing the tool in action. The tool will remotely gather information regarding your enterprise without installing agents. The MAP tool then generates a candidacy report(s) that can be used to justify the investment including the hardware requirements for your virtualisation environment.

Note: The RTM version of MAP v3.0 only includes Virtual Server 2005. You will need MAP v3.1 Beta for Hyper-V. Check out this posting for details on joining the beta. It is still worth running the MAP v3.0 against your environments as virtualisation candidates should be the same regardless.

MSDN and TechNet now run on Hyper-V

gmcshera — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:22:00 GMT

I’ve had a lot of interest in Hyper-V from customers and quite a few questions too. One of the most common being, “Who is using it in a production environment?”. Up until now I didn't have an answer. … but now I do.

Microsoft are now running the MSDN and TechNet sites on Hyper-V. So, putting that in context, that’s over 4 million hits a day (1 million for TechNet and 3 million for MSDN). This implementation also puts in context what sort of work loads Hyper-V can support. Granted there was a performance overhead for running in a virtual environment when compared with the loads the physical boxes could handle but that’s part of parcel of virtualisation.

More info can be found on Virtualization.info or indeed on our Virtualisation blog here.

Step-by-Step Guide for Testing Hyper-V and Failover Clustering

gmcshera — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:40:39 GMT

I blogged recently on “How to create a Windows Server 2008 Cluster within Hyper-V using simulated iSCSI storage”. This is enough to get you familiar with how clusters work in Windows Server 2008. The next logical step is to understand the high availability options available for VMs running in your Hyper-V environment. The good news is that Hyper-V is cluster aware allowing you to use the Quick Migration functionality. Check out the Step-by-Step Guide for Testing Hyper-V and Fail over Clustering. It explains the requirements and takes you, as the name implies, step-by-step through the process.

Virtual Domain Controllers and Time Synchronisation

gmcshera — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:33:00 GMT

The question of how to handle virtual Domain Controllers has been around for quite some time. The answer really depends on what product you have decided to use as your virtualisation platform: Microsoft or VMWare. Regardless of the product you have choosen, you will still have to make the same decision when it comes to Domain Controllers: How will I handle Time Synchronisation? Before I go into the details there is one thing that both companies agree on. Do not let your VMs use more than one method for Time Sync as this could lead to numerous time changes ... and you most definitely do not want this happening on Domain Controllers.

Right, so how do the two approaches differ? Well, keeping in mind that both agree you should only use one method for time sync here are the two approaches:

Microsoft: Time Synchronisation from the VM to the host via integration services or VMWare tools should be disabled for all Domain Controllers. Use the normal domain hierarchy for Domain Controllers with the exception of the PDC in the forest root. Configure the PDC to use an external NTP source
VMWare: In general, VMWare recommend disabling W32time (for non DC's) and using the VMWare tools to sync time with the host. For Domain controllers they still say to use VMWare tools but instead of disabling the W32time service they recommend running the Windows Time service in a server-only mode. Additionally, install the NTP Daemon on the ESX host and have it sync with an external NTP source.

Microsoft do not recommend sync'ing with the physical host whereas VMWare recommend that you do. So, from a supportability stance, which option do you choose? No surprise, but I would recommend starting with the Microsoft approach regardless of whether you are using ESX or not. Why? Well, from a support perspective following the VMWare approach means that you have to stop time sync from working as it should in a normal Active Directory Domain. In short, you make your Active Directory more or less unsupportable. If you run into problems and try and open a support case, you are putting yourself at a distinct disadvantage.

References:

Considerations when hosting Active Directory domain controller in virtual hosting environments

Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software

VMware Time Sync and Windows Time Service