Month: March 2009

On The Road This Week

I’ll be hitting the road tomorrow, starting my Microsoft TechDays tour of Ireland.  I’ll be doing a little road trip with fellow VMP and the “Queen of Deployment” Rhonda Layfield.  We’ll both be speaking at TechDays in Galway tomorrow night.  I’ve a meeting down the country on Wednesday and I’ll be back at TechDays in Cork on Thursday night.

There’s some special incentive to go to the events in Cork and Galway.  Both events will have prizes of an X-Box Elite and a pair of TechNet subscriptions.  Registration is free – but please on register if you intend to go.  And the prizes are only for people who attend.  The sessions will have plenty of good content too.

VMM 2008 R2 Beta Has Started

The beta testing program for Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 has started.  You can apply for entry on Microsoft Connect.  Here’s what is said about the new release on the site:

“System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for managing virtualized infrastructure running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMware ESX through Virtual Center.  Recently, Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta was released which included significant feature improvements to Hyper-V—the underlying hypervisor platform.  A corresponding beta version of VMM R2 – the next version of VMM – is due for release shortly.  VMM R2 Beta  leverages the new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008. This overview highlights the most important new and significantly enhanced features in the VMM 2008 R2 Beta:

Support for new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

  • Live Migration: – Seen through the VMM console, this enables administrators to move virtual machines from one machine in a virtual host cluster to another with no downtime. This allows administrators greater flexibility in responding to planned or unplanned downtime, provides higher machine availability and more robust fault tolerance within virtualized infrastructure. The basic requirements for Live Migration are that all hosts must be part of a cluster and host processors must be from the same manufacturer.  Additionally all hosts in the cluster must have access to shared storage.  No changes are required to existing virtual machines, network, or storage devices in moving from Quick Migration to Live Migration other than upgrading to beta versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2.
  • Hot addition/removal of VHDs:  Allows the addition and removal of new virtual hard disks (VHDs) on a running virtual machine.  This enables storage growth in virtual machines without downtime.  Additionally, ‘live” VHD management allows administrators to take advantage of additional backup scenarios and readily use mission critical and storage-intense applications (eg: SQL Server and Exchange).
  • New optimized networking technologies: VMM 2008 R2 Beta supports two new networking technologies – Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney – providing increased network performance while demanding less CPU burden.  NICS that support VMQ, create a unique virtual network queue for each virtual machine on a host that can pass network packets directly from the hypervisor to virtual machine. This speeds throughput as it bypasses much of the processing normally required by the virtualization stack. With TCP Chimney, TCP/IP traffic can be offloaded to a physical NIC on the host computer reducing CPU load and improving network performance.

Enhanced storage and cluster support

  • Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV): Provides a single, consistent storage space that allows virtual hosts in a cluster to concurrently access virtual machine files on a single shared logical unit number (LUN). CSV eliminates the previous one LUN per virtual machine restriction and coordinates the use of storage with much greater efficiency and higher performance. CSV enables the Live Migration of virtual machines in and out of the shared LUN without impacting other virtual machines. Enabling CSV on failover clusters is straightforward and easy to monitor through the VMM administrator’s console; many storage configuration complexities prior to CSV have been eliminated.
  • SAN migration into and out of clustered hosts: This allows virtual machines to migrate into and out of clustered hosts using a SAN transfer, which automatically configures the cluster nodes to recognize and support the new workload.
  • Expanded Support for iSCSI SANs:  Previously, only one LUN could be bound to a single iSCSI target whereas now — with VMM 2008 R2 Beta — multiple LUNS can be mapped to a single iSCSI target.    This provides broader industry support for iSCSI SANs allowing customers more flexibility in choosing storage providers and iSCSI SAN options.

Streamlined process for managing host upgrades:

Maintenance Mode:  Allows administrators to apply updates or perform maintenance on a host server by safely evacuating all virtual machines to other hosts on a cluster using Live Migration or putting those workloads into a saved state to be safely reactivated when maintenance or upgrades are complete. Maintenance mode is enabled for all supported hypervisor platforms on Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta.

Other VMM 2008 R2 Beta enhancements

  • Support of disjoint domains:  Reduces the complexity of reconciling host servers with differing domain names in Active Directory and DNS.  In these situations, VMM 2008 R2 Beta automatically creates a custom service principal name (SPN) configured in both AD and DNS allowing for successful authentication. 
  • Use of defined port groups with VMware Virtual Center:  On installation, VMM 2008 R2 Beta will present available port groups for VMM’s use with VMware Virtual Center thus allowing administrators to maintain control over which port groups are used”.

Forrester Survey on Virtualisation

There’s some interesting findings in this survey by Forrester.  It talks about “enterprise” adoption of virtualisation and interest in associated problems/solutions.  I’ve no idea how they define an “enterprise”, e.g. size?, or what country they did the survey in, e.g. USA only?

  • 54% have deployed machine virtualisation.  Hmm, Gartner reckoned 1 year ago that only 10% of servers worldwide were virtualised.  If sales were that good then Microsoft, Citrix and VMware would be letting us know.  However, CPU and server sales have plummeted despite stable storage sales, e.g. right what you’d expect with virtualisation.
  • 81% are interested in reducing the costs of power and cooling.  18% are seriously interested.  To me, that means 81% of those surveyed don’t really care or understand.  Did you know your computer room doesn’t really need to be 18 or 21 degrees Celsius?  You can safely run it at 30 degrees Celsius and your servers will still be happy.  So will your operators who won’t have to bring an Arctic coat to work in the Summer.
  • “Firms are feeling real pain over the costs of maintaining PCs”.  You’re still going to have to manage your user working environment, e.g. OS deployment, s/w deployment, AV, patching, upgrades, etc.  There’s still printers and peripherals.  From what I can see, the technologies you can use now to optimise PC management will be the same ones you can use in VDI or Terminal Services.  Also from what I’ve seen, most businesses have failed to adopt the correct strategies or invest in hiring the right staff to manage these technologies which will vastly reduce costs and complexity.  The cut one small corner to create a costly huge detour.

Credit: www.ideationcloud.com

KB958807 Breaks VMM 2008 Ability To Manage Hyper-V Cluster

I deployed KB958807 to our Hyper-V cluster nodes yesterday.  The result was that VMM 2008 is no longer seeing that we have a Hyper-V Failover Cluster in place.  When I try to move a VM from one node to another it seems to think that the nodes are standalone. 

NOTE: Failover Clustering is still fine so the VM’s are still fault tolerant.  I’ve tested this thoroughly.  VM’s are happily managed by Failover Clustering.

The patch in question is a pre-requisite for OpsMgr monitoring of Failover Clusters, i.e. the recent new management pack.  It appears to affect how you can interact with Failover Clustering via WMI – and breaks VMM management while it’s at it.

I’ve opened a C-Level Premier call to MS on the issue, i.e. I could have opened a higher B-Level call but Failover Clustering is keeping things fault tolerant despite VMM’s sudden blindness.  My advice to anyone is DO NOT DEPLOY THIS UPDATE until there’s a fix from MS for the issue.

EDIT #1:

PSS confirmed there’s an issue.  In fact, the patch was withdrawn by MS.  The engineer was curious about how I got it.  I downloaded it using information from the Failover Clustering management pack documentation on 23rd Feb 2009, about 2 weeks ago.  I was instructed to uninstall the patch which I’m doing now.

EDIT #2:

Everything is back to normal after my reboots and the VM’s refreshed.  I kept everything online by moving VM’s around in Failover Clustering.  As I posted yesterday, I kept the noise to zero by putting everything in question into maintenance mode.  VMM is now able to migrate VM’s around.  Hopefully MS’s teams will blog something about this issue so others won’t fall into the same trap I did.  The patch is no longer available – it must’ve been taken offline after I downloaded it.  Thanks to Vikrant in PSS for getting back to me quickly on this one.

EDIT #3:

The PSS engineer in question rang me to confirm the case was being closed (with a bug being listed as the cause).  MS are working on a replacement for KB958807.

Microsoft BPOS Available For Trial Internationally

A set of countries outside of the USA now has access to trial Microsoft BPOS for 30 days (for free) before the official launch.  Ireland has the launch even on April 2nd.  Business Productivity Online Suite is a part of the new Microsoft online services.

The sign up process was pretty simple.  It ties to a MS Passport.  You then create user accounts in a simple admin portal.  You can email activations and passwords to the new users.  This is not based on Passport which is perfect.  If you have a domain you can tie it to your service – it must be validated to prove that you own the domain name you enter.

In the trial I set up Exchange (limited because I don’t have a domain), SharePoint and Live Meeting.  SharePoint runs really fast on my ADSL line.  SharePoint allow you to set up sites in your collection using the different default templates.  You can customise the sites to a limited extent.  LiveMeeting integrates nicely with the admin portal.

Each user can install a desktop client for automatic sign-in into BPOS.  This gives them links into each of the services.  It’ll also auto-configure their Outlook to connect to the hosted Exchange service.  There’s a link to fire up LiveMeeting.

If you haven’t used LiveMeeting then here’s the short story: It’s a conferencing tool.  It allows video and audio.  You can schedule events (sets up calendar entry in Outlook) or just do an impromptu session where people are sent an email with a URL and password.

I see BPOS as being an alternative solution to Small Business Server for anyone who doesn’t need the customisation or needs physical control of the data locally.  It’s also a good branch office solution – you can integrate it with your Active Directory or with your Exchange infrastructure. 

I’m impressed so far.

Patching Hyper-V Cluster Nodes

I’ve just gone through this for the first time in production with OpsMgr Failover Clustering and VMM 2008 management in place.  It was … interesting to say the least.

First bit of advice … put _everything_ into maintenance mode even if you’re only patching one node:

  • Cluster
  • All nodes
  • VMM server(s)

If you don’t then you will get flooded by alerts from the cluster, cluster resources, agent heartbeat (no avoiding that one I’m afraid – wish MS would sort this old one out) and VMM resources.

Next up, have the Failover Clustering MMC handy.  If you patch one node and not the other (you’re prone to do one at a time in production) the your VM’s will refresh and come up with “unsupported cluster configuration”.  This means the VM’s become unmanageable in VMM.  To patch the nodes they’re on you’ll have to migrate them manually using the Failover Clustering MMC instead of VMM.  Once they’re on the “up-level” patched host they’ll go back to green.  You can then patch the down-level host.  Repeat this for each host in the cluster.

EDIT #1:

Tip: when a VM is sitting in "unsupported cluster configuration" even after all your work is done, you can wait for a VM refresh or force one with a "Repair-Ignore".  It should return to green status after the job.

EDIT #2:

I asked MS about VM’s becoming unmanagable when a host node is offline, i.e. "unsupported cluster configuration”.  The answer I got from MS was that this issue will be fixed in VMM 2008 R2 and as such, they wouldn’t fix it in the current release.

Dear Irish Government: Please Join Us In the 21st Century

[RANT WARNING]

I heard on the radio that one of our ministers, Martin Cullen (the dude responsible for buying the disastrous E-Voting machines that we’re paying to store because they can be neither used nor sold) was in a near helicopter accident.  You see, Martin wanted to travel 190KM (around 120 miles) from his native Waterford to Killarney to hang out with some bigwigs at a mini conference.  He didn’t want to drive because he wanted to attend a meeting in Dublin afterwards.

The Irish Aer Corps (our budget air force) provided the helicopter.  Our Aer Corps flies turboprop planes and very often the choppers are grounded because of the lack of spares to certify them.  It appears that when the chopper was in the vicinity of Killarney with our *insert sarcasm here* beloved minister and his secretary on board a door fell off!  The pilot managed to make an emergency landing without the minister falling out.  *insert more sarcasm here* What a relief!

Note: I have the greatest respect for our military.  On a very limited budget, equipment and with little fanfare or pay, they put their lives on the line for our nation while serving in peace keeping action in very dangerous places.  They don’t get the headlines or praise they deserve when they are involved in action.

Today we were told that unemployment in the Republic of Ireland has hit 10%, it will likely hit 500,000 by the end of the year (population of 5.9 million according to Wikipedia), the budget deficit is growing by billions and that there will be an emergency budget to raise taxes after a recent one in October.

Also in the papers today was the bill to the tax payer so Martin Cullen could have his little chopper flight: €8,000.  We already pay for this guy to have an S class Mercedes and a police driver.  And this is just Cullen.  Mary Harney has been doing this a lot, e.g. her trip to the beautician in Florida (“one miracle, please!”), her trip to the Superbowl last year (for cancer research?!?!?), etc.

What’s really getting me is that these guys have a “let them eat cake” attitude.  We saw how in the USA there was uproar in the press when the big 3 auto CEO’s flew on private jets to The Hill to beg for a tax payer bailout.  Why isn’t that happening here?

Cullen said that he needed to get to Dublin to have a meeting with another minister so he couldn’t drive.  What is this, 1930?

Please join us in the 21st century.  You can easily have a secure conversation using the myriad of technologies that are available right now with people who are even on different continents.  Let me introduce you to Unified Communications.  You can chat via instant message, phone and do video chats.  You can even interact with applications!  What’s more, all it costs you is an internet connection because you probably already have the licensing.  Imagine: no more expense to us tax payers when you need to talk to someone when physical presence isn’t important.  Wouldn’t that be more efficient?  Heck, I can even introduce you to an Irish company that specialises in this stuff.  If it’s good enough for private business then it must be good enough for a cowboy operation like the Irish government?

I’m begging someone in MS to make this sale.  I know you’d love to 🙂  MS is the only one in Ireland trying to help the small business.  Imagine if they were to also stop this waste by the Irish Government?  I think I’d have to write in Paul Rellis for a vote in the next election!!

[/END RANT WARNING]

Hmm, MS Ireland as our government?  It could be worse.  They are regularly selected as one of (if not the) best companies to work for in Ireland.  Employees seem happy there.  They get cheap X-Boxes and games in the company store.  My only concern would be that they might convert the outside lane on motorways and dual carriage ways into "Software Assurance only commuter lanes" 😉