Windows Virtualization Team Blog : High Availability

Re-blog: Microsoft Site Recovery Solution Launch

porourke — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:27:00 GMT

I'm re-blogging here. Over at Virt Planet blog, Jim wrote the following:

This week Microsoft is launching a comprehensive solution to help customers implement cost effective, end-to-end site recovery programs. Built on proven capabilities in Windows Server 2008 R2 and the System Center management suite, Microsoft is helping IT Professionals leverage Windows Server Hyper-V and Failover Clustering along with tools like Virtual Machine Manager to deliver cost effective site recovery.

The Microsoft Site Recovery Solution ecosystem is ramping with a broad range of storage replication partners like Double-Take Software, EMC, HDS, HP delivering solutions that take advantage of the Microsoft Cluster Resource DLL. With cluster integration IT Professionals can deploy streamlined and operationally effective site recovery.

You can learn more about the Microsoft Site Recovery Solution by joining the Microsoft team and Enterprise Strategy Group on Thursday, November 5^th at 10:30am Pacific for a webcast Building Effective and Highly Available Disaster Recovery Solutions Using Microsoft Virtualization This webcast looks at key drivers for site recovery solutions and reviews practical deployment considerations (you can view the recorded version of the webcast after the 5^th). Microsoft and select partners will also be demonstrating Site Recovery Solutions at TechEd, so if you plan to be in Berlin during the week of November 9^th, make sure to stop by the Virtualization Solutions kiosk in the Technical Learning Center.

Patrick

Upcoming Webcasts on Best Practices for Virtualizing MS Server Applications

porourke — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:25:00 GMT

We’ve got some great webcasts coming up in the next few weeks to discuss recommendations for virtualizing MS server applications and the benefits of choosing hyper-V + System Center as your virtualization solution. Each technical webcast will focus on a specific server application- Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. Please see below for detailed information.

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SQL Server (Level 300). Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 at 10am Pacific time

Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing SQL Server using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing SQL server for Production and Test/Dev scenarios focusing on consolidation, scale, load balancing, dynamic provisioning and high availability. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for Exchange Server (Level 300) Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 10am Pacific time

Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing Exchange using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing Exchange for various Production scenarios. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.

Guest Post: All Eyes on SteelEye with DataKeeper Support for Hyper-V

porourke — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:10:00 GMT

Hi all,

My name is Dave Bermingham and I’m the director of Windows product management for SteelEye Technology, a provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. I’d like to thank Microsoft’s Virtualization team for the opportunity to guest blog on SteelEye’s continued support for Hyper-V as well as exciting new features coming in support of Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2.

I can’t believe it is almost a year ago since I demonstrated SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition at the Microsoft Virtualization Launch event in Bellevue, WA. In the past year we have seen the interest in our Hyper-V disaster recovery products increase dramatically and with the recent release of Windows Server 2008 R2, I believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg!

SteelEye’s mission is to “Replicate Any Data, Protect Any Application.” We pride ourselves on our commitment to provide the Windows marketplace with flexible, scalable and cost-effective solutions that are enterprise-grade yet customizable for any size business. Most recently SteelEye identified an opportunity to extend Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering (WSFC) by delivering SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition, a real-time data replication solution that integrates seamlessly with WSFC to enable multi-site clusters while eliminating the single point of failure traditionally associated with shared storage resources. A comprehensive and cost-effective disaster recovery solution, DataKeeper Cluster Edition helps supports improved productivity and availability of your Hyper-V VMs.

SteelEye soon will be announcing support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and the highly anticipated “Live Migration”. As our Windows team continues to develop and build additional capabilities for enhanced disaster recovery support of Hyper-V, we welcome your comments and suggestions. To learn more about the latest developments for Hyper-V support, take a look at our FAQs or visit the SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition page on our website.

Thanks,

Dave

Hypervisor Footprint Debate Part 3: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V & VMware ESXi 3.5

WSV_GUY — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:01:00 GMT

In my last two blog posts (Part 1 & Part 2), I started an in depth analysis tackling VMware's claims head on that because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi are single purpose hypervisors, they are therefore more secure. If that's the case, then it stands to reason that ESX/ESXi:

should have fewer patches (they have less code to patch)
patches should be smaller in disk footprint (they have a smaller codebase and you want to keep code churn to a minimum; otherwise one could ship a 1k stub file and claim to be smaller)
should offer higher availability, reliability and uptime

Using VMware's own metrics:

In part 3, lets take a look at VMware's favorite comparison Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to ESXi 3.5. Let's have a look.

Stacking The Deck In VMware's Favor

In this last comparison, I will freely admit that this isn't an apples to apples comparison. In this comparison, I gave ESXi 3.5 a 6 month advantage. Here's what I mean. Specifically, I compare:

VMware ESXi 3.5 from June 30th 2008 to June 30th 2009 (a 12 month period)
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V January 1 2008 to June 30th 2009 (an 18 month period)

Using an 18 month sample set for Windows Server 2008 covers the majority of its time in market and goes to the heart VMware's fundamental claim that because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi are single purpose hypervisors, they are therefore more secure. This tilts the scale in VMware's favor.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to VMware ESXi 3.5

Disk Footprint & Patch Count. Here's what we found:

Windows Server 2008 Full Installation: 32 patches totaling 408 MB of patches
Windows Server 2008 Core Installation: 26 patches totaling 82 MB of patches or (~20% fewer than a Windows Server 2008 full installation)
VMware ESXi 3.5: 13 patches, totaling over 2.7 GB.

Yes, I said over 2.7 GB. To put it another way,

VMware ESXi 3.5 had a 6.6x greater patch footprint than Windows Server 2008 (Full)
VMware ESXi 3.5 had a 33x greater patch footprint than Windows Server 2008 (Core)

So much for the disk footprint argument. Again, how can the ESXi footprint be so huge?

Because VMware releases a whole new ESXi image every time they release a patch. Furthermore, because VMware releases a whole new ESXi image every time they release a patch it also means that every ESXi 3.5 server requires a reboot. At this point, a VMware salesman may actually concede that every ESXi server has to be rebooted for every patch, but they will then state that they have VMotion (Live Migration) so it doesn't affect their uptime.

Except when their own patches cause days of downtime and render VMotion impotent.

Reliability/Availability. With VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2, it included a serious flaw which resulted in two days of downtime for their customers including the loss of VMotion:

"Starting this morning, we could not power on nor VMotion any of our virtual machines," said someone identified as "mattjk" on a VMware support forum. "The VI Client threw the error 'A general system error occurred: Internal Error.'"

It was so bad, VMware's CEO had to apologize on numerous occasions. (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE). VMware then rushed out the VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 3 which introduced instability to VMware High Availability and could cause virtual machines to spontaneously reboot. (HERE & HERE)

Virtual machines that spontaneously reboot due to bugs in VMware high availability.

Now consider the fact that there were two significant quality and reliability issues with two major updates in a row (ESX/ESXi Update 2 & Update 3). While the initial Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V release didn't provide Live Migration (Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R1 had Quick Migration and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 includes Live Migration for free), it didn't include two days of potential downtime and virtual machines unexpectedly rebooting either. For those that track availability in terms of nines (five nines is 5.26 minutes of downtime a year) VMware Update 3.5 Update 2 dropped customers to "two nines" of availability.

Using VMware's own metrics, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is clearly the winner over ESXi 3.5.

The Facts Contradict VMware's Claims

As stated at the beginning of this series, VMware's overarching point is because their disk footprint is smaller and ESX/ESXi is a single purpose hypervisor, they are therefore more secure. While VMware heavily touts this claim (it's in numerous location on their website for starters), the facts from this analysis directly contradict their claims. Specifically:

The platform with the largest number of patches was VMware ESX 3.5 with 85 Security & Critical Patches averaging over a patch per week.
The platform with the largest patch footprint was VMware ESX 3.5 totaling over 3 GB worth of patches followed by VMware ESXi 3.5 with over 2.7 GB. That's right, VMware's single purpose virtualization platforms that claims to have the smallest footprint had the two largest patch footprints by about a mile. (Graph below)
Both VMware ESX & ESXi had a recent case of the most severe virtualization flaw with guest code able to break out of the virtual machine and could potentially:
- Provides administrator access, Allows complete confidentiality, integrity, and availability violation; Allows unauthorized disclosure of information; Allows disruption of service.
VMotion/Live Migration is not a panacea to patching. It can help, but in the case of VMware's own self-inflicted faulty patch, it rendered their advantage impotent.
VMware had not just one, but two significant updates with serious quality and reliability issues with both ESX and ESXi. Specifically, ESX/ESXi Update 2 Issues: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE & ESX/ESXi Update 3 Issues: HERE & HERE.

The Point Of This Series

Say it with me:

> Security is more than just disk footprint. <

Quoting disk footprint size alone is a nice pithy, superficial phrase, but it's also a boat load of bollocks. The next time some VMware representative throws out that argument, point them to this blog and tell them Jeff sent you. If you've ever spent anytime with a security expert, one of the first things they will tell you is that security is not a one time exercise. Security is an ongoing process that should be embedded throughout the entire development lifecycle. It's that belief that drove us to develop the Microsoft Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) and is publicly available.

Microsoft Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL)

The concepts that make up the Microsoft SDL were formed with the Trustworthy Computing (TwC) directive of January 2002. At that time, many software development groups at Microsoft instigated "security pushes" to find ways to improve the security of existing code.

Becoming a mandatory policy in 2004, the SDL represents a major cultural evolution at Microsoft with regards to software security and privacy and has matured into a well defined methodology. A "security process by a software company," the SDL was designed as an integral part of the development process. The development, implementation and constant improvement of the SDL represents a strategic investment for Microsoft, and an evolution in the way that software is designed, developed, and tested.

From a high level, the Microsoft SDL looks like this:

The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle

Benefits of the Microsoft SDL:

Reducing the number of software vulnerabilities
The SDL has played a critical role in embedding security and privacy into Microsoft software and culture, leading to measurable and widely recognized security improvements in flagship products such as Windows and SQL Server and the proof is real. How about:
- Windows XP to Vista a 45% decrease
- SQL Server 2000 to 2005 91% decrease

Windows Server 2008 Full vs Server Core
- Reduction in patches by ~50%

Reducing the total cost of development
The SDL reduces the "total cost of development" by finding and eliminating vulnerabilities early. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), eliminating vulnerabilities in the design stage can cost 30 times less than fixing them post release.

Read that last sentence again.

Thirty times.

I also want to point out that the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle doesn't end once the bits are released. It also means having a well-established response mechanism including:

responding to potential security threats
root cause analysis to understand why the issue occurred and ensure that issue isn't repeated
issuing security patches

The importance of a security development lifecycle cannot be understated. No matter how well you execute, there is no such thing as perfect code. Whether it's Microsoft, VMware, <insert software vendor here>, having a rigorous security development practices in place is imperative. And, in case you think I'm satisfied with our patch numbers above, you'd be wrong. I don't ever want to get complacent and think for a moment that "security is done." Security is never done.

Let he who has written perfect code throw the first stone.

Let's Have A Look At The VMware's Security Development Lifecycle

So, where's the VMware Security Development Lifecycle?

You're guess is as good as mine.

I went to VMware's site and searched for their security development lifecycle. I found their Security Center which lists their patches, but that's just one small aspect to a security development lifecycle. I Bing searched "VMware security development lifecycle" and was returned a sales pitch from VMware to buy something at $1500 per processor.

No, I'm not kidding.

Making The SDL Available To Our Partners

After a significant investment in time, money, manpower we've developed and want to give back to our partners. A great place to start is the Microsoft SDL Homepage. Here you will find whitepapers, best practices, threat modeling tools, process guidance and much more. In addition, we recently released the Microsoft SDL Process Template for Visual Studio Team Systems. This template helps ease the adoption of the SDL, demonstrates security return on investment and provides auditable security requirements and status.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out an excellent book aptly titled, Writing Secure Code Vol. 2 and point to the blog of one of the authors, Michael Howard. More links below.

Microsoft SDL Homepage: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc448177.aspx

Microsoft SDL Process Template for Visual Studio Team System: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/dd670265.aspx

Writing Secure Code Volume 2: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Secure-Second-Michael-Howard/dp/0735617228

Michael Howard's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/

In my next blog, we'll discuss more free tools and programs available our partners.

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey

Principal Group Program Manager

Windows Server, Hyper-V

Windows Server 2008 R2 & Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RTM!!!!

WSV_GUY — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:40:00 GMT

Virtualization Nation,

Today is a really big day at Microsoft and more importantly for our customers. Both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (our FREE standalone Hyper-V Server) have both been Released To Manufacturing (RTM)!! If you haven't seen the announcement on the main Windows Server blog, be sure to check it out. In this blog, I'm going to focus on the Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V release, I will follow-up with a blog on the standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 soon.

These R2 releases continue to highlight one of our core goals for Hyper-V. Simply:

We believe everyone should have access to high performance hypervisor based virtualization. Period.

Virtualization shouldn't only be available to the largest enterprises with the largest budgets and we're delivering on that goal. We're pleased and humbled to announce that in the first 12 months of Hyper-V R1 availability with Windows Server 2008, there have been over 1+ million downloads of Hyper-V R1 Gold (RTM) software, making Hyper-V the fastest growing bare metal hypervisor in x86 history.

To our customers: Our deepest and sincerest thanks. We appreciate your support and are pleased to present Hyper-V R2 based on your input.

Hyper-V R2: Customer Focus

After the initial Hyper-V R1 release, we went back to our valued customers and asked them quite simply, "We have a very long list of potential features, help us prioritize. What are the features you want most?" Here's what our customers told us.

"Keep Reducing Costs"

Server consolidation continues to be the driving force behind virtualization and the fundamental reason is to reduce costs. In this economy, customers need to maximize their investments. Green IT has been important the past few years, but we've seen an even greater focus in the last year. In addition, it doesn't matter how small or how large your business is, everyone pays a power bill, it's a constant cost, so anything we can do to reduce power use has an impact on everyone's bottom line.

With Hyper-V R1, we already help customers reduce their cost for power, here are a few examples:

"With virtualization, we will save about 50 percent of our annual energy budget for cooling and electricity." -Lukoil CEEB

"The work that Microsoft has done in these areas-particularly the ability to shift workloads across CPUs-is doing wonders for reducing our energy consumption." Secure Endpoints

"89% Energy Savings with Microsoft Virtualization" -Kroll Factual Data

With Hyper-V R2, we continue to drive down power usage when servers are idle (usually nights and weekends) AND now we drive down server power usage even under load throughout the day through new enhancements like Core Parking, Timer Coalescing and more.

Bottom Line: Windows Server 2008 R2 continues to drive down power usage and lower power costs.

"Protect Our Investments"

Today, the majority of servers ship with up to 16 logical processors. However, our customers watch the industry closely and point out that AMD and Intel are continuing to increase core counts quickly. In addition, Intel has reintroduced Symmetric Multi-Threading (SMT) with their Nehalem processors which doubles the thread count. As our customers plan their capital investments over the next 12-24 months, they want to make sure to invest in a virtualization platform today that will take advantage of the latest hardware capabilities tomorrow. Hyper-V R2 is that platform.

CPU. From a compute standpoint, Hyper-V R2 scales to run on systems with up 64 logical processors (up to 384 running virtual machines) and takes advantage of the latest processor enhancements such as AMD's Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) and Intel's Extended Page Tables (EPT). This provides performance improvements across the board when these processor capabilities are present. It also means that when folks decide to move up to larger servers with more counts Hyper-V R2 is ready out of the box. No core tax here. (BTW: Let me point out that Hyper-V R2 works with RVI and EPT, but does not require it. If you have older hardware without those capabilities, Hyper-V R2 will run just fine on those too.)

Networking. From a networking standpoint, Hyper-V includes significant networking improvements. For 1 Gb/E networks, Hyper-V R2 now includes Jumbo Frame Support. For 10 Gb/E networks, Hyper-V R2 adds support for Chimney support and Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ). These two technologies allows Hyper-V R2 to take advantage of network offload technologies so instead of a core on the CPU processing network packets, these packets can be shunted to the offload engine on the 10 Gb NIC which helps free up processor usage and improves performance. Support for these technologies ensures the most efficient use of your server resources. For our customers who haven't made the investment in 10 Gb/E quite yet, no worries. Hyper-V R2 is ready when you are.

Storage. In Hyper-V R1, we focused most of our performance efforts for storage on fixed virtual hard disks (VHDs). We did this primarily because fixed disks pre-allocate their storage upfront when you create the disk and help prevent a situation where you could run out of storage at a later time. Because we focused our performance efforts on fixed virtual hard disks, Hyper-V R1 performance for VMs with fixed VHDs was stellar and we recommended using fixed virtual hard disks in production environments. In fact, Hyper-V R1 can achieve as high as ~94% throughput of native.

Because we focused on fixed VHDs in R1 and knew that would be our recommendation for production environments, we didn't spend as much time focusing on dynamically expanding virtual hard disks in R1. While customers understand our recommendation for using fixed virtual hard disks, many of them told us that they'd like to use dynamically expanding virtual hard disks because they are more efficient in terms of storage, only growing as needed.

You got it.

In Hyper-V R2, we spent time analyzing and optimizing the code path for dynamically expanding VHDs and found areas where we could significantly improve performance. In some cases we achieved a 15x improvement for dynamically expanding virtual hard disks. No, that's not a typo. With dynamically expanding VHDs we can achieve up to about ~87% performance of native throughput. While we were at it, we took another look at the fixed VHD code path and improved it further so that fixed VHD performance is now on par with native performance.

In the end, we still recommend fixed disks for production use with Hyper-V R2 because it pre-allocates disk usage upfront, but if you want to use dynamically expanding virtual hard disks and are willing to take a small performance hit, Hyper-V R2 is a must.

"Help Me Find The Right Hyper-V Hardware." Customers told us that they wanted to make sure that they were investing in "the right hardware" to use with Hyper-V. We made that easy with Hyper-V R1, but it's worth pointing out again. There's no special certification for Hyper-V. Just make sure that the hardware you're investing in (servers, storage, etc) have the Windows Server 2008 Logo and now, the new Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo and you're set. You can find certified hardware online at the Windows Server Catalog and the logos look like this:

"Help Us Obtain Broader Support For Our Applications in Virtual Machines"

One customer pain point we hear in the virtualization world is that "ISV X" doesn't support their application in a virtual machine. This impedes adoption and frustrates customers who see the tremendous benefits virtualization provides. We've heard this repeatedly from our valued customers who are trying to convince our ISV partners that virtualization adoption is only rising. As a company, we've been consistently messaging how important virtualization is to our customers and demonstrating that through our significant investments in all areas of virtualization whether it's Hyper-V, App-V, MED-V, Virtualized Desktops, Remote Desktop Services etc.

In response to rapid customer adoption of Hyper-V and the customer requirement that virtualization be treated as the standard way to deploy workloads, not the exception, the Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo program now reflects that customer requirement.

Specifically, for applications to receive the Windows Server 2008 R2 Logo, all applications must be tested and pass the Logo tests when running within virtual machine running on Microsoft Hyper-V.

(Note: If an application cannot be tested in this configuration ISVs must work with a Microsoft approved testing vendor to learn about alternate test paths. For example, an application needs access to a specific hardware device not present in a virtual machine.)

"Continue to Improve Interoperability"

Today, we currently distribute Linux Integration Components (ICs) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP2 x86 & x64 which improves performance when run within a Hyper-V VM. While our customers appreciate SLES support, they have also requested support for Red Hat as a guest OS. So, with the Windows Server 2008 R2 release of the ICs, we're adding support for both SLES 11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 and 5.3 for both x86 and x64.

While SLES and RHEL are the two most requested Linux distros supported within Hyper-V by far, we get requests now and then for other community supported distributions.

We wanted to do more.

Thus, the big Monday announcement. In case you missed it, on Monday, we released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community under GPLv2. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers, has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The drivers will be available to the Linux community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Hyper-V R1/Hyper-V R2.

I've read numerous articles and blogs on the Linux IC GPL announcement (most using phrases like "pigs with wings" or "hell experiencing snow flurries") and while there has been some interesting conjecture out there, let me be clear: Microsoft is committed to interoperability and providing our customers the solutions that meet their needs. Releasing these device drivers for Linux is another example of that commitment.

"Increase Flexibility"

Live Migration. Customers appreciate the flexibility that virtualization provides (deploy virtualized workloads in a fraction of the time versus physical) and wanted us to continue to improve in this area. To that end, the number #1 customer requested feature was Live Migration.

Done. Included. Live Migration Built-In.

We weren't done there. One thing that customers would always follow-up with is, "Do the processors have to be exactly the same? Can you ease that restriction a little?"

You got it.

Processor Compatibility Mode. With Hyper-V R2's new processor compatibility mode, we're able to easily LIVE MIGRATE between four different generations of Intel hardware. From an Intel Pentium 4 VT circa 2005 to an Intel Core i7 circa 2009.

Just by checking a checkbox:

That's flexibility. You can also move virtual machines between different generations of AMD processors as well. Just so we're clear: Processor Compatibility still means AMD<->AMD and Intel<->Intel. It does not mean you can Live Migrate between different processor vendors AMD<->Intel or vice versa. For more info about processor compatibility mode, check out my earlier blog post here.

Dynamic Storage. Another request to increase flexibility from our customers was to be able to hot add/remove virtual storage. Think about it, you're running a virtualized SQL server or file server and you need additional storage, but don't want to bring down the VM. No problem, with Hyper-V R2 you can hot add/remove storage while the VM is running without downtime.

"Virtualized Desktops"

One area of interest that's been percolating the last few years is the concept of Virtualized Desktops. At a high level, virtualized desktops is the concept of using a virtualization server to serve virtual machines running client operating systems like Windows XP or Vista. There are a few reasons customers are interested in this model such as to centralize management operations or to securely manage IP for remote developers. This model is very much like using Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services), except instead of Remote Desktop sessions, users are provisioned virtual machines.

From a Hyper-V standpoint, we've supported Windows XP and Vista as Hyper-V guests since the R1 release and with Hyper-V R2 we've added support for Windows 7 (x86 & x64 with up to 4 virtual processors per VM). However, Hyper-V support for client operating systems is only one piece of the puzzle. To improve this experience for our customers, the Remote Desktop Services team made significant enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2 such as.

Connection Broker. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes a Connection Broker so that when a user logs in they can be brokered to their appropriate Virtual Machine OR Remote Desktop session on the back end. Yes, that's right. The Windows Server 2008 R2 broker actually brokers both Virtual Machines and Remote Desktops! This provides customers the flexibility to choose the solution based on their business requirements as opposed to being shoehorned into one technology.

RDP Protocol Enhancements. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes major enhancements for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) that greatly improve the user experience such as:

Multi-monitor support
Bi-directional audio support (VoIP anyone?)
Aero Glass Support
Enhanced Bitmap Acceleration

Read that again. That's huge.

One big reason is that in the past, RDP was more focused on lower bandwidth connections. Customers have since told us they're willing to use more network bandwidth to provide a richer, greater fidelity user experience.

How good is the remoting? I recently tested the new RDP enhancements by doing the following. I used my three year old laptop running Windows 7 RTM and the built-in Remote Desktop Connection client. I went to the Experience tab and set Performance for WAN settings.

I then remoted into a virtual machine running Windows 7 (the VM was allocated 1 GB of memory) and then fired up three videos running within the VM simultaneously. Specifically,

a TV show streaming over the Internet using the Hulu desktop application (the show was “The Greatest Generation” by Tom Brokaw. Highly recommended.)
a large resolution QuickTime movie preview also streaming
an online Silverlight demo

Here's a screenshot from my laptop running the Window 7 inbox RDP client and this all just worked using my little old 1 Gb/E switch.

These RDP enhancements are big folks. Really big.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

With our customers input first and foremost, we developed Hyper-V R2 to meet their requirements.

Live Migration

#1 Customer Requested Feature
Processor Compatibility Mode

New Processor Support

Improved Performance
Lower Power Costs

Enhanced Scalability (4x Improvement)

Support for 64 Logical Processors
Support for up to 384 Running VMs or up to 512 virtual processors
Greater VM Density
Lower TCO

Networking Enhancements

Improved Network Performance
10 Gb/E Ready

Dynamic Virtual Machine Capabilities

Live Migration
Hot Add/Remove Virtual Storage

Usability Enhancements

SCONFIG for Server Core

In short, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V delivers more of everything:

Capabilities
Efficiency
Performance
Scalability
Flexibility
Ease of use

Windows Server 2008 R2: Customers Win

Ultimately, Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers the richest overall platform by offering:

Hyper-V
Remote Desktop Services
Rich RDP enhancements
Powerful Hardware and Scaling Capabilities
Reduced Power Consumption
Connection Broker for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Ubiquitous Remote Access
Improved Branch Office Performance and Management
Simplified Management for SMBs
Remote Application and Desktop Access

and its numerous roles such as:

Active Directory
Application Server
DHCP
DNS
Fax
File
Network Policy & Access Services
Print
and many more

In the end, Windows Server 2008 R2 delivers in spades and ultimately, our customers win.

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey

Principal Group Program Manager

Windows Server, Hyper-V

Correction: I had a comment stating that VMware View only brokered VMs which was not correct and have since removed it. VMware View does, in fact, broker both VMs and Remote Desktop sessions. -JW

Too many Virtual Iron customers in the fire?

porourke — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:38:00 GMT

With the recent announcement by Oracle to stop Virtual Iron development and sales, the past few weeks have certainly been eventful for Virtual Iron customers. A related announcement came out from VMware about a program to offer Virtual Iron customers discounts to move over. But a closer look at the VMware offer shows some serious limitations. These include:

· Only Virtual Iron 4.0 or newer customers are eligible

· Only those with active support subscriptions with Virtual Iron are eligible

· Customers must buy a VMware license for every socket on their Virtual Iron contract. This effectively locks in the customer to VMware for size of their Virtual Iron contract.

· The discount is 40% off the list price of the product but only 10% on one-year of support and subscription, 0% for more than one year of support subscription.

· The offer isn’t valid on all SKUs. This means for Virtual Iron customers who want to keep their Live Migration and CPU balancing capability, they need to buy vSphere Enterprise Plus, the most expensive SKU.

Even with the discounts, VMware is still very expensive. For vSphere Advanced, the cost after discount is still $1,347 per processor without support, which has a very small discount. For vSphere Enterprise Plus, which is required for DRS and other features, the cost is still $2,097 per processor without support. With two years of support, it’s $3,722.64 per processor.

As noted above, Virtual Iron customers must convert all their sockets to VMware and this can only be done once.

As an alternative, I would recommend Virtual Iron customers try Microsoft solutions. Our Hyper-V solutions are low cost, easy to use, and work well with Xen-based solutions like Virtual Iron. In fact, many Virtual Iron users are already running their VMs in the VHD format that’s used with Hyper-V.

If Virtual Iron customers are running Windows Server 2008 in their VMs, they can leverage Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. For those customers running non-Windows VMs or do not own Windows Server 2008, you can use the new Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 hypervisor. This is our free, standalone hypervisor, which now includes both high availability cluster and live migration at no cost. Both are available for download, a trial for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and a full download for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

Best of all, Virtual Iron customers can just try out the Microsoft solutions, see if it fits their needs, and migrate on their own schedule, all at a much lower cost than the VMware solution.

Edwin Yuen

Hyper-V in WS08 R2 Release Candidate: Bringing More to the Table

porourke — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:43:00 GMT

You'll want to read Isaac's blog post about the RC milestone of Windows Server 2008 R2. His post focuses on 64 LP support and processor compatibility mode for live migration. Read the post here.

Here's an excerpt:

64LP Support

We have seen processors grow from 1, 2, 4, and now 6 cores on a single processor, soon to hit 8. Within the Windows Server 2008 R2 lifecycle, 64 logical processor servers will become commonplace (8 processors x 8 cores). Virtualization is the natural fit for these next-gen servers, allowing them to consolidate a greater number of virtual machines on a single host. Hyper-V is in line with these hardware trends all with an eye towards bringing you greater VM density. The dev team has done a fantastic job in building and testing a platform that can scale.

Let's take a quick look at the history of logical processor support for Hyper-V:

Server 2008 Hyper-V                                         16 LP Support
Server 2008 Hyper-V +update (KB95670)      24 LP Support
Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Original POR           32 LP Support
Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V RC/RTM                   64 LP Support!

Processor Compatibility Mode for Live Migration

Live Migration is the killer-feature in Windows Server 2008 R2! Previous to the RC build of Windows Server 2008 R2, identical CPUs were needed across every node in the cluster in order to perform a live migration. As we came closer to the RC milestone we got feedback from customers and partners asking, "What if I deploy additional nodes that contain newer processors with features not contained in the original nodes?" Well, we've solved that problem due to tremendous effort by the Hyper-V development team.

Processor compatibility mode is very straightforward. It enables live migration across different CPU versions within the same processor family (i.e. Intel-to-Intel and AMD-to-AMD). However, it does NOT enable cross platform from Intel to AMD or vice versa. It works by abstracting the VM down to the lowest common denominator, in terms of instruction sets, which enables live migrations across a broader range of Hyper-V host hardware.

There are a few things to note: Processor compatibility mode is disabled by default but you can configure it on a per-VM basis. There are no specific hardware requirements other than the CPUs must support hardware assisted virtualization (i.e. Intel's IVT and AMD's AMD-V).

Patrick

Online sessions, book and more

porourke — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:56:00 GMT

Admittedly this post is a stew and not a meal (if that metaphor works). But you might be interested in the following items. I'll keep it short:

John Kelbley will host a webcast on Friday, May 8 at 8:00am PDT titled, "Running Linux on Hyper-V." The session will discuss install, configure, run, backup and monitor non-Windows systems. See here.
On May 14, 8am-noon PDT, Edwin Yuen will host a live chat on TechTarget. He'll answer questions about our virt products, be it datacenter, desktop or managemment. See more here.
Wondering what to read when you're flying to TechEd, or your next trip? The Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit book is it. One of the authors, Robert Larson, architect in MS Services and TechNet blogger, told me that the book is in final formatting and some sample chapters are available to download (here). The book will be available via Amazon and Barnes and Noble in June. Read more from one of the authors here.
Finally

Enjoy.

Patrick

Guest post: "Does my enterprise need internal cloud computing?"

porourke — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:45:00 GMT

As the president and COO of a datacenter-based managed server provider, I’m constantly on the hunt for leading edge technology. I peruse every new IT technology announcement for the next cost-effective solution, for both internal needs, and for hosted solutions we can use to help customers.

In my previous blog, I talked about how cool Microsoft’s virtualization turned out to be, saving SBWH, and therefore our customers, time and money. I started my virtualization research with VMware, but quickly became a fan of Hyper-V, ultimately deploying it in many production systems. As a result of my experience, I get asked by industry analysts, press, and investors, “Why not VMware?” With Palo Alto’s latest announcement that I can buy an “Internal Cloud” for only $3,495 per CPU, I figured I’d share my thoughts about the real vs. perceived benefits of this new private compute cloud idea.

Let me say that the private cloud concept seems to be more marketing than architecture. The private cloud has many of the same load balancing, storage management, and provisioning that virtualization already offers. Based on how the private cloud has been described so far, I have to say that the emperor, although not totally naked, seems somewhat thinly attired.

Is this private cloud thing good for IT? The short answer is, money being no object, and assuming private cloud computing actually delivers something unique, maybe. The long answer, based on the cards played so far, is no. SBWH is not a fortune 100 company, and in this economy, we evaluate every cost. We don’t have thousands of physical servers, and we don’t store 10 billion photos. If I read the press release correctly, vSphere’s “private cloud” lets me combine, say, thirty-two 16-CPU servers and $1.8 million dollars in Enterprise Plus licensing, along with abundant training for a new tool set, to achieve “the mainframe of the 21^st century.”

I just don’t think SBWH needs that.

But wait…I’m a service provider and have been told that, over time, VMware will support such provider-centric features as federation between internal and external clouds. However, these are promises and conceptual things, not capabilities delivered. I guess when that time comes, we will see if the private cloud has something special to offer.

For now, SBWH will stick with Hyper-V. We have highly available virtual machine clusters in production that automatically move virtual machines to new hosts if hardware fails, and will have live migration and load balancing in production this year. Oh, and it’s all private. Already.

David Straede, president, SBWH.com

Microsoft case study here

Live Migration and Host Clustering available at no charge in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

porourke — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:13:00 GMT

I’m Zane Adam, senior director of virtualization and System Center. It’s been a while since my last post, and wanted to update you on our standalone hypervisor, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Last Fall we released Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a standalone hypervisor-based virtualization product that is available for free. We continue to add more features and value to this product in the upcoming release, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Our core strategy is to ensure that our customers can virtualize their IT environment in the most cost effective manner, and at the same time, have access to enterprise features like live migration and clustering features for high availability. So in addition to scalability and performance improvements in this version, customers can get live migration and host clustering capabilities and high availability (up to 16 nodes) at no charge.

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 will continue to be free, and now will include live migration and host clustering capabilities. Customers won’t need to pay thousands of dollars for alternate virtualization platforms to get these features. With Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, customers have a solution for both planned and unplanned downtime and can use it for scenarios like server consolidation, branch server consolidation, high availability, and VDI.

These same features also will be available in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-v, which provides our customers with core virtualization features as part of Windows Server offering. With Windows Server 2008 R2, customers also get flexible virtualization rights (e.g., 4 free virtual instances with Windows Server Enterprise Edition and unlimited virtual instances with Windows Server Datacenter Edition).

You can download Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 beta here. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 can be managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. You can download the beta here.

You can find more info on Microsoft’s virtualization products and solutions at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization.

Zane

Series on virtualizing SharePoint

porourke — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:20:00 GMT

The Microsoft-UK services team recently posted an in-depth virtualizing SharePoint series. It is a culmination of their experiences over the last couple years helping customers successfully host SharePoint in virtualized environments.

· Introduction

· Optimizing the performance of a virtualized SharePoint environment

· SharePoint server role recommendations in the virtualized SharePoint environment

· Monitoring and managing a virtualized SharePoint environment

· High availability and disaster recovery, deployment best practices, common mistakes and summary

This is fantastic guidance for those organisations currently running, or thinking of running SharePoint in virtualized environments. Enjoy!

Patrick

March 31 live web chat

porourke — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:24:00 GMT

On Tuesday, March 31, Microsoft's Edwin Yuen will be hosting a live web chat 11am-3pm EST. Edwin is a sr. technical product manager. Edwin came to Microsoft with the acquisition of Softricity (and the SoftGrid application virtualization technology). He now also covers Hyper-V and System Center VMM. Sign up here.

Patrick

HP whitepapers on NIC Teaming for Hyper-V

porourke — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:30:00 GMT

HP has published 2 white papers describing their NIC teaming support for Hyper-V.

First is a 5-page "how to" document specific to HP ProLiant. Here's the abstract:

HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software allows ProLiant systems running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to take advantage of network controller teaming technology. This paper describes, for system administrators and technicians, the method of software installation for implementing network controller teaming and it identifies known issues with teaming and Hyper-V software.

Second is a 59-page whitepaper that:

provides a high- and low-level discussion of the technology behind HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming for HP ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows. HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming is software-based technology used by server administrators and network administrators to increase a server’s network availability and performance. HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming provides network adapter,
network port, network cable, switch, and communication path fault recovery technology, in addition to, transmit and receive load balancing technology.

Patrick

Microsoft customers showcased at VMworld Europe 2009

porourke — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:09:00 GMT

This week at VMworld Europe 2009 we're showcasing a number of European customers who have deployed Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center and App-v 4.5. You can watch two videos below.

One is of Bouygues Construction based in France. Bouygues does civil engineering, electrical contracting, and maintenance, employs 51,100 people and operates in more than 80 countries. This video is in French with English subtitles, and includes discussion of their Hyper-V and SCVMM deployment on Dell servers with EMC storage.

The second is Saxo Bank of Denmark. They’re an investment bank, and they used a Web-based trading platform and excellent customer service to drive rapid growth over 10 years, which in turn has led to a rapid expansion in the number of servers required to handle the bank’s data-intensive operations. Saxo Bank has deployed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to consolidate servers in the datacenter. Saxo plans to virtualize nearly all applications over the next few years, with the project expected to produce a 3-year internal rate of return of 150% and a net present value of 5.8 million Danish kroner (~U.S.$1.2 million).

Enjoy. A bientot.

Patrick

Windows Virtualization Team Blog : High Availability

Re-blog: Microsoft Site Recovery Solution Launch

Upcoming Webcasts on Best Practices for Virtualizing MS Server Applications

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SQL Server (Level 300). Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 at 10am Pacific time

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for Exchange Server (Level 300) Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 10am Pacific time

Guest Post: All Eyes on SteelEye with DataKeeper Support for Hyper-V

Hypervisor Footprint Debate Part 3: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V & VMware ESXi 3.5

The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle

Windows Server 2008 R2 & Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 RTM!!!!

Too many Virtual Iron customers in the fire?

Hyper-V in WS08 R2 Release Candidate: Bringing More to the Table

Online sessions, book and more

Guest post: "Does my enterprise need internal cloud computing?"

Live Migration and Host Clustering available at no charge in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

Series on virtualizing SharePoint

Top 10 VMWare myths video

March 31 live web chat

HP whitepapers on NIC Teaming for Hyper-V

Microsoft customers showcased at VMworld Europe 2009