A blog covering Azure, Hyper-V, Windows Server, desktop, systems management, deployment, and so on …
DPM 2007 is Microsoft’s second version of their backup suite. The first version didn’t really go down well in the market because it was only good for file servers. DPM 2007 now adds support for system state, Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. I had a quick play with the beta last Summer and I did like how simple it was to configure and roll out. There isn’t native support for non-MS products so there will be limited acceptance for it in the market.
Microsoft has released some documentation:
ENN is reporting that IANA has launched their first IPv6 name servers. You can run, you can hide, but there is no getting away from the fact that IPv6 is coming. It’s a whole new world.
BTW, the new generation TCP stack in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 feature IPv6 as a native component. Legacy operating systems can be patched with IPv6, which obviously won’t perform at the same levels.
Times are interesting when it comes to power consumption and hardware disposal. We’ve got all sorts of "green" concerns. We’re got pressure to reduce our carbon footprints to reduce CO2 emissions. Even if you’re part of the GWB camp and don’t believe in CO2 related global warming then you can’t argue against the need to conserve resources, e.g. avoid wasteful trashing of hardware which contains precious (yes!) and toxic materials. And even if you don’t care about your environment, I bet you care about your bank account. It is inevitable that we will see regulations tightening on the consumption of power and disposal of hardware. There will be costs for needless wastage. There’s some things we can do to limit our exposure here.
I’ve previously mentioned that you can recycle your old hardware. There are charities that will gladly take your old servers and PC’s, even those 8 year old ones, recondition them and send them off to the farthest reaches of the planet with Ubuntu Linux on them for use in charities and schools. Some charities will even securely wipe your hard disks for you. You can make sure you limit your risk here by using a free secure wiping tool like DBAN. There’s a few advantages to using a recycling solution like this. You get to give your hardware away and probably take some sort of tax break. You get to dispose of your hardware for free. Normal legal disposal actually costs a bit of money these days and that’s likely to increase in price per unit. Finally, you get to feel good about doing something that will benefit someone in need.
What about operating costs of current infrastructure? Hosting data centers have already started moving in the direction of a solution. Companies like IBM are making big claims about the power consumption and heat generation levels of their Blade servers. Think about this. You get a denser CPU per Rack U infrastructure, e.g. the HP C class can have 64 dual CPU servers (equivalent of a 2 disk slot DL360) in a 42 U rack. That’s less real estate being used. OK – it’s not all that much less but it sure is if you fill a row of racks. Power consumption over a long period is claimed to be reduced. That means you’re getting a lower hit from any potential carbon emission related charges. We all now that power costs are one of the big operating costs right now and that they are only going to get higher. Heat generation is a big concern too because it requires some sort of cooling mechanism which can consume a great deal of power. If you can reduce your server related heat then you can reduce that cost. Once you install an operating system onto your powered on blades, the do become pretty efficient. Just don’t get confused by standing behind a rack of powered on blades that don’t have an operating system. It can get pretty hot back there because there is no management software installed.
Hardware virtualisation such as VMware Virtual Infrastructure (ESX, etc) or Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V also brings something to the table. Think about all of your servers. How many of them need all of the resources they have? Your only hardware bottlenecks are typically memory and disk. CPU is probably rarely above 10% on the majority of servers. Why not consolidate that resource and save on server real estate? Virtualise only those servers that are candidates. Don’t be fooled by some consultant into virtualising everything. I worked on a site where they did and their server services performance levels were horrific. A thing to consider here is tha your abstraction of hardware makes your virtualised servers mobile so hardware is not a concern during hardware failure (VMware VMotion or Windows 2008 clustering) and hardware replacement becomes easier. On the green side, you have less server hardware so you have less green related charges when disposing of server hardware. You’ve also got even denser server per Rack U installations which reduces real estate costs, power consumption and cooling related costs.
We can take this a step further with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Why have 500 desktops when you can virtualise those onto 16 servers as virtual machines? You’ve not only reduced hardware ownership and disposal costs but you’ve also minimised those green costs too. Not to mention you’ve got a simple to manage and deploy infrastructure using solutions such as a VDI broker.
IT staff of SME’s are reading this thinking "how the hell a I going to afford a blade and SAN infrastructure?". Simple … outsource! You don’t have to outsource your staff … just the hosting of your servers. You save in loads of ways. Look at the big room hosting your servers right now. It’s consuming lots of space and increasing your rent costs. You have to buy and maintain cooling and fire suppression systems. Why not share all those costs and your new blade and SAN infrastructure costs by outsourcing the hosting of your servers?
I’ve probably given you a few things to think about there. Whether you like it or not, green related costs are going to increase. Acting now could prevent or minimise those cost impacts on your organisation.
EDIT:
I realised there was some more I could talk about on power conservation. We’ll never 100% remove desktops and laptops from the network. VDI isn’t for everyone either. We have all seen company emails instructing us to turn off our PC’s and monitors when we go home in the evening. Almost no one does it. If you have Windows Vista deployed then you can use group policy to manage power settings of those machines. Consider that a desktop should be powered off 98 hours of the week then you can see how you might save some money by upgradig to Vista!
Steve Riley has posted links to video recordings of a bunch of his presentations at TechEd conferences. Steve is a serious security expert. Don’t let his employment by Microsoft prejudice your opinions. He’s pretty open, honest and has well thought out reasoning for all of his points. Steve is also one of the best speakers I’ve seen. He can make a very entertaining presentation out of what is normally a very stuffy subject. The presentations include:
Check them out!
MS have released more reading and watching for you:
More and more people are deciding to use SharePoint (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007). I love it as a sharing and collaboration solution. I presonally love the free template for project planning! It beats using MS Project any day of the week and saves on licensing too 🙂
MS has released a capacity planning tool for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007.
The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool is a set of free models of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). The two models use the analysis and simulation features of System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) to help you explore suitable IT infrastructure options for your SharePoint deployment, based on the SharePoint usage requirements for your organization that you provide to the tool. It can give you a head start on planning your SharePoint topology by producing a first approximation of the topology your organization needs. Architects, systems integrators, and deployment engineers will find it to be a valuable starting point for further refinements of the topology.
Feature Bullet Summary
The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool depends on System Center Capacity Planner, which is available as a free download from Microsoft (see Related Resources).
WAIK has been updated to support Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. I recently worked with the RC1 release and there were no surprises. It’s nice to see that MS has copped on and left the file extension as an ISO to stop confusion – the previous version was an IMG file.
You will use WAIK to generate automated or customised installations of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista. The primary tools are ImageX (to work with WIM images), Windows System Image Manager (WSIM: to create XML unattended answer files) and to create customised WindowsPE boot images.
I covered it a little in my WDS whitepaper and Rhonda Layfield did a great job on describing a Vista unattended installation in one of Mark Minasi’s newsletters. You’ll also find WAIK is covered in two of the Mastering Windows Server 2008 books ("Essential Technologies" and "Enterprise Technologies").
As I broke earlier, Windows Server 2008 did in fact RTM today. Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x64) is available from TechNet and I have read of people downloading from MSDN as well. You’ll probably have to wait another month until it is on shelves.
Also available now are WAIK for all platforms and MUI for x64. Lanugages for all packages at the moment are English, French, German, Japaneses and Spanish. Other platforms and languages are expected over the coming days. Versions with RTM Hyper-V are not expected for six months.
Windows Vista SP1 has also been announced as RTM. Unlike Windows Server 2008, you’ll have access to it from March onwards. The initial public release will be via Windows Update. It’s gonna be a big download so you might want to think about whether you’ll download that automatically or not if you have nested WSUS servers across your WAN – you probably shouldn’t have automated approvals anyway!
Probably because of my involvement with the "Longhorn" Academy and Windows Server User Group Ireland, I was called by one of the MS marketing folks looking for quotes on Windows Server 2008 for a press release – the server OS is being released to manufacturing later today according to her.
What does that mean? It means that MS subscription holders with rights to download Windows Server will soon be able to download it ina few days. MSDN and TechNet customers will be able to download it in a few weeks.
The timing is nice because Windows Vista SP1 was strongly rumoured to be going live today too. Both of these SP’s go hand-in-hand.