Today, we are excited to announce the GA for Branch Office and SMB Disaster Recovery to Azure.  Azure Site Recovery delivers a simpler, reliable & cost effective Disaster Recovery solution to Branch Office and SMB customers.  ASR with new Hyper-V Virtual Machine Protection from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Microsoft Azure can now be used at customer owned sites and SCVMM is optional.

You can visit the Getting Started with Azure Site Recovery for additional information.

Last week we began distributing integration components through Windows Update.  In the November rollup, integration components were made available to Windows Server 2012/2008R2 virtual machines along with Windows 8/7 virtual machines running on Windows Technical Preview hosts.

Ben wrote a great blog post outlining how to update the integration components.

Using Windows Update to apply integration components brought to light an interesting set of challenges with our standard servicing tools.  Unlike other Windows Updates, integration components are tied to the host version not just the installed OS.  How should we check that Windows is running in a virtual machine on a Technical Preview Hyper-V host?

We settled on the KVP (Hyper-V data exchange) integration component.  KVP provides a shared registry key between the host and guest OS with some useful information about the VM.

See HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Virtual Machine/Guest/Parameters:

We were particularly interested in the HostSystemOSMajor and HostSystemOSMinor for determining integration component applicability.  Windows version is 6.4 is Technical Preview.

Cool.

So, if KVP is enabled, Windows Update checks the OS version, the HostSystemOSMajor, then the HostSystemOSMinor. If all that checks out, then Windows Update provides the integration components to that virtual machine.

This does have some interesting side effects.

First, if KVP has never been enabled, these keys will not exist and Windows Update will not know the host version and the integration components will not be offered.
Second, these registry keys are all modifiable and thus easy to spoof :).

As soon as we started offering integration component updates through windows update, customers started asking me when they’d be available to VMs running on down-level hosts.  While it is no way supported, you can modify the values for HostSystemOSMajor and HostSystemOSMinor to receive integration component updates through windows update on down-level hosts right now.
The integration component changes we distributed in November are compatible with Server 2012 R2/ Windows 8.1 hosts (in fact, they’re the exact integration components that shipped in Windows 2012 R2/Windows 8.1 hosts).

While I in no way endorse this and it certainly isn’t supported, if one were to run the following:

They may find that Windows Update updates the integration components in their VM to the correct version for Windows Server 2012 R2/Windows 8.1.

Cheers,
Sarah

Starting in Windows Technical Preview, Hyper-V integration components will be delivered directly to virtual machines using Windows Update.

Integration components (also called integration services) are the set of synthetic drivers which allow a virtual machine to communicate with the host operating system.  They control services ranging from time sync to guest file copy.  We've been talking to customers about integration component installation and update over the past year to discover that they are a huge pain point during the upgrade process.　

Historically, all new versions of Hyper-V came with new integration components. Upgrading the Hyper-V host required upgrading the integration components in the virtual machines as well.  The new integration components were included with the Hyper-V host then they were installed in the virtual machines using vmguest.iso.  This process required restarting the virtual machine and couldn't be batched with other Windows updates.  Since the Hyper-V administrator had to offer vmguest.iso and the virtual machine administrator had to install them, integration component upgrade required the Hyper-V administrator have administrator credentials in the virtual machines -- which isn't always the case.　　　　

In Windows Technical Preview, all of that hassle goes away.  From now on, all integration components will be delivered to virtual machined through Windows Update along with other important updates.　

For the first time, Hyper-V integration components (integration services) are available through Windows Update for virtual machines running on Windows Technical Preview hosts.

There are updates available today as KB3004908 for virtual machines running:

• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows 8
• Windows 7

The virtual machine must be connected to Windows Update or a WSUS server.  In the future, integration component updates will have a category ID, for this release, they are listed as Important KB3004908.

Again, these updates will only be available to virtual machines running on Windows Technical Preview hosts.

Enjoy!
Sarah

I am excited to announce the GA of the Disaster Recovery to Azure using Azure Site Recovery. In addition to enabling replication to and recovery in Microsoft Azure, ASR enables automated protection of VMs, remote health monitoring, no-impact recovery plan testing, and single click orchestrated recovery - all backed by an enterprise-grade SLA.

The DR to Azure functionality in ASR builds on top of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Windows Server Hyper-V Replica, and Microsoft Azure to ensure that our customers can leverage existing IT investments while still helping them optimize precious CAPEX and OPEX spent in building and managing secondary datacenter sites.

The GA release also brings significant additions to the already expansive list of ASR’s DR to Azure features:

• ^NEW ASR Recovery Plans and Azure Automation integrate to offer robust and simplified one-click orchestration of your DR plans
  
• ^NEW Track Initial Replication Progress as virtual machine data gets replicated to a customer-owned and managed geo-redundant Azure Storage account. This new feature is also available when configuring DR between on-premises private clouds across enterprise sites
• ^NEW Simplified Setup and Registration streamlines the DR setup by removing the complexity of generating certificates and integrity keys needed to register your on-premises System Center Virtual Machine Manager server with your Site Recovery vault