Month: July 2010

PubForum 2010 Berlin Registration is Open

The early bird registration for the virtualization conference is open.  PubForum is doing a second event in 2010, this time in Berlin.

It’s an economic event.  Don’t let the name fool you.  It might be fun but during the event it is serious stuff with some of the big names in virtualization speaking and sharing.

For example, I was at the Frankfurt event a couple of months ago.  I spoke for 2 hours on Hyper-V best practices on the Friday afternoon.  I had a one hour break where I was answering questions and even used RDS Gateway to demo System Center and Hyper-V.  Then I was back in and speaking for another hour on the newer add-ons to Hyper-V.

I strongly recommend attending if you can.  It’s conveniently timed with minimal impact on work.  It is very economic.  Yes, it is fun, but you will learn lots and have a chance to ask the experts the hard questions.

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Documentation

Some documentation has been published by Microsoft for DPM 2010:

Wonder why I post this stuff?  Because I can find it more easily on my blog than I can on the net.  I really do use my blog as my personal notebook.

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Microsoft RemoteFX Documentation

Microsoft has published some documentation for RemoteFX to go along with the Service Pack 1 beta.

Cluster Resource Anti-Affinity

I recently learned from Hans Vredevoort that it is actually possible to define anti-affinity for Hyper-V virtual machines on a cluster.  For example, you might want to force load-balanced virtual web servers to be on different nodes.  You can do this by running commands such as:

cluster.exe group “VirtualWebServer1” /prop AntiAffinityClassNames="NLBCluster1"

cluster.exe group “VirtualWebServer2” /prop AntiAffinityClassNames="NLBCluster1"

This will create an anti-affinity object called NLBCluster1 and try to prevent both of the virtual web servers from being on the same Hyper-V host server in the same cluster.  Sometimes a failover with reduced capacity will override this in order to keep the virtual machines running when there aren’t enough hosts left to meet demand. 

RemoteFX Requirements

To be honest, even though my main interest in the MS world has been Hyper-V and associated technologies, I’ve avoided Remote Desktop Services VDI.  There might be lots of interest but I reckon the cost of it (hardware, licensing, more management systems rather than less) will scare most of that away (and this goes for all the vendors, not just MS).

RemoteFX has stirred up a lot of interest.  Here’s a link to a blog post talking about the requirements to get RemoteFX up and running.

KB982523: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Admin Console Hotfix Rollup Package

Microsoft has released a hotfix rollup for the VMM 2008 R2 Admin Console.  It resolves two problems:

  • If a VM is configured to have 3 virtual processors, the SCVMM Admin Console crashes
  • When you remove a virtual hard disk from a virtual machine in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, the .vhd file on the Hyper-V server is deleted without warning

The rollup is available via Windows Update (WSUS/ConfigMgr … check your approved products) and can be manually downloaded.  The manual installation instructions are:

“To install this hotfix rollup package that can be downloaded from the Microsoft Update Catalog on the Virtual Machine Manager server, follow these steps:

  1. Extract the VmmClient32Update.cab or VmmClient64Update.cab file to a temporary directory.
  2. Open an elevated command prompt, type the following command for the 32-bit package, and then press ENTER to install the update:

    msiexec /update vmmClient32Update.msp BOOTSTRAPPED=1

    Note For the 64-bit package, type the following command:

    msiexec /update vmmClient64Update.msp BOOTSTRAPPED=1”

Back to Blogging Again

It has been nuts for the last 2-3 months.  The book has consumed every hour of almost every day.  The hard part is over, all that remains is the edit reviews which I tend to fly through.  I’ve not been able to keep up with the blogging as much as I used to.  I tried to keep up with the headline stuff but a lot of smaller things will have slipped by.  I’ll be trying to catch up and keep up … at least for a while.  There could be more work around the corner.  Plus I need to do some certification work.

Writing of Mastering Hyper-V Deployment Nearing Completion

I’ve just submitted the last of my content to Sybex for Mastering Hyper-V Deployment.  It’s been a long and tough road.  Early work started on the project in February.  I’ve been doing my normal day job and trying to squeeze in chapters in a rush schedule.  I’ve been working during the morning commute, at lunchtime, the evening commute, into the night, and at weekends.  My co-author is close to finishing his chapters on schedule.  I’ve been doing the first of the reviews as we’ve moved through the project.  I’m probably already a third of the way through the copy edits (2nd set of reviews).  After that comes the final set (I hope) of layout edits.  And then off it goes to the printers for release in November.  I can’t wait!

End of Support: Windows 2000 Server

Microsoft terminated all support for Windows 2000 Server last week (13 July 2009).  That means you get no more bug fixes and no more security fixes.

You really should start looking at doing an upgrade for those machines, pending application support.  And give your application vendors a piece of your mind if they don’t yet have an upgrade path.

MS has provided some help in the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0.  It will assess Windows 2000 environments and produce reports/spreadsheets that you can use in planning for a migration to Windows Server 2008 R2 (no direct upgrade path available, even with hops between because W2008 R2 is 64-bit only).