Month: February 2011

Zero Day: A Fictional Novel by Mark Russinovich

You may know Mark Russinovich as that guy with the huge brain that was behind Sysinternals, has done loads of writing and speaking on Windows internals, and is a “Technical Fellow” in Microsoft.

Well, he’s gone and written a thriller, a fictional novel using his experience and knowledge of IT:

“Arab terrorists, with the collusion of Osama bin Laden, are behind the attack, which is supposed to destroy Western civilization. A New York City law firm enlists cyber expert Jeff Aiken to track down a virus that has knocked out the company’s computer network. While working on this problem, Jeff uncovers the larger threat. With the help of “stunningly attractive” Daryl Haugen, an old friend who becomes his love interest, Jeff attempts to warn the authorities, but to little avail”.

You can pre-order the book now on Amazon.com in paper and for Kindle.  The expected RTM is March 15th, 2011.

KB2492980: Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Hotfix Rollup Package, February 8, 2011

Microsoft released a hotfix rollup package for VMM 2008 R2 via Windows Update on February 8th.  This update includes fixes for 5 issues:

  • Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) Tip alerts are not displayed in the SCVMM Admin Console if the alert resolution state is set to a value other than 0 in System Center Operations Manager 2007.
  • If a network adapter for a Hyper-V host uses teaming software, Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) may incorrectly bind the Virtual Switch to the host network adapter.
  • A Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migration to a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) volume fails if the cluster node that owns the volume has insufficient disk space on the system volume. Additionally, you receive an error message that resembles the following: “Error 2606 Unable to perform the job because one or more of the selected objects are locked by another job”.
  • A Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration from a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 fails. Additionally, you receive an error message that resembles the following: “Error 416 Agent installation timed out while waiting on service VMMAgentInstaller on servername.domain.com“.
  • The network migration of a highly available virtual machine to a different cluster fails. Additionally, you receive an error message that resembles the following: “Error (12711) VMM cannot complete the WMI operation on server servername.domain.com because of error: [MSCluster_ResourceGroup.Name=”4168e895-2831-32cf-b4d8-352ac13e28c9″] The cluster group could not be found. (The cluster group could not be found (0x1395))“.

This hotfix rollup package includes also the hotfixes that are documented in the following SCVMM 2008 R2 hotfix rollup packages:

Although the update is made available via Windows Updates, you can also manually download it. 

Note that the update will require you to update the VMM agents on your managed hosts.  And don’t go installing it on any systems where you are testing the VMM 2008 R2 SP1.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 “RTM”

The news has broken that Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 SP1 has been “released to manufacturing”.  In other words, development and testing have been completed.  TechNet/MSDN customers get access to the download on Feb 16th.  It will go GA on Feb 22nd.

Last year I listed the then-included features of the service pack.  The big two are RemoteFX (HD graphics via RDP for Remote Desktop Services Session Hosts and Hyper-V VDI) and, of course, Dynamic Memory for Hyper-V (memory allocated to VMs as required).

Those who are using VMM should know that the changes affect VMM as well.  VMM 2008 R2 RTM will not be aware of the RemoteFX or Dynamic Memory features.  There is a Service Pack 1 on the way (it’s an RC release now) to add support.  Normally, an update for VMM will follow an associated Hyper-V update 90 days.  But the VMM team has shared that you can expect to see Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 within 30 days of W2008 R2 SP1.

I’ve set up a cluster with both service packs.  You need to know that the VMM PRO management packs for OpsMgr also need to be updated in OpsMgr.  You can find them in the VMM SP1 media.  They will require updated dependencies.

You may have noticed that my Hyper-V blogging was a little quiet as of late; that’s because we didn’t have much new stuff to talk about.  I plan to get going again in the near future with these new features arriving on our doorsteps soon.

Have You Any Constructive Feedback for Microsoft’s Virtualisation Teams?

I’m off to spend a few days with the virtualisation product teams in Redmond (Microsoft HQ) at the annual MVP Summit in a few weeks time.  This is our opportunity to learn some new stuff and to give feedback to the program managers of the various products.  In my experience with MS, the virtualisation folks have probably been the most responsive teams to feedback.  And that leads me to the point of this blog post.

What constructive feedback have you got for them?  Are you having issues with CSV?  If so, what are they?  Is networking proving to be a challenge?  Are you having difficulties with support issues?  What’s your experience been with Linux integration components?  Is there anything else on your mind (keep it constructive!)?

Post a comment on this blog post if you’ve got anything that you’d like me to relay to Redmond.  There are no promises but I’ll pass it on.  I did the same last year, and the folks there were interested – in fact, in some cases they were thinking the same things as you. 

And this year … well … it’s no secret that Windows “8” will RTM around mid 2012.  That means a new version of Hyper-V is in the works for the server.  And thanks to the MS France blunder, we know that a version of Hyper-V for the desktop OS is also on the way (after years of begging for it).  This is the year to make an impact on design decisions.  2012 will be way too late – we know that substantial changes don’t happen once a product reaches beta stages.

Community Event: From The Desktop to the Cloud: Let’s Manage, Monitor and Deploy

We’ve just announced the details of the latest user group event in Dublin … it’s a biggie!  I’ll be presenting two of the deployment sessions, on MAP and MDT.

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Join us at the Guinness Store House on February 24th at 09:00 for a full day of action packed sessions covering everything from the desktop to The Cloud, and maybe even a pint of Guinness afterwards.

We have our a fantastic range of speakers ranging from MVPs to Microsoft Staff and leading industry specialists to deliver our sessions ensuring a truly unique experience.  During this day, you will have the choice of attending sessions of your choice, covering topics such as Windows 7/Office 2010 deployment, management using System Center, and cloud computing for the IT pro (no developer content – we promise!).

We have our a fantastic range of speakers ranging from MVPs to Microsoft staff and leading industry specialists to deliver our sessions ensuring a truly unique experience. During this day, you will have the choice of attending sessions of your choice, covering topics such as Windows 7/Office 2010 deployment, management using System Center, and cloud computing for the IT pro (no developer content – we promise!).

We promised bigger and better and we meant it.  This session will feature 3 tracks, each with four sessions.  The tracks are:

  1. The Cloud: Managed by Microsoft Ireland
  2. Windows 7/Office 2010 Deployment: Managed by the Windows User Group
  3. Systems Management: Managed by the System Center User Group

You can learn more about the event, tracks, sessions, and speaker on the Windows User Group site.

You can register here.  Please only register if you seriously intend to go; Spaces are limited and we want to make sure as many can attend as possible.

The Twitter tag for the event is #ugfeb24.

Bye Bye IPv4

Mark Minasi posted on Facebook last night that the very last IPv4 address blocks were distributed to regional IP managers.  That’s it; the last of the IPv4 addresses are now in the control of your local IP managers.

Now is the time to run to the supermarket, stock up on water and canned foods, get as much petrol/diesel as you can, and attend that crash-course survivalist training camp!!!!!!

Oh hold on a sec; Any decent ISP will have a certain allocation to keep them going for a while.  Your internal network is probably NAT’d so you’ve no internal IP issues there.  But where we do have an issue is IPv6.  I can only speak for Ireland but I’m guessing (other than China) most of us are totally unprepared for IPv6.  ISPs have not even started work on it – I’m told by those in the know that they have not taken the problem seriously.  And many network admins (including us server admins) don’t understand IPv6.  It is quite different.  It has different terminology and it works very differently.  For example, asking an end user to ping an IPv6 address will be … different.

My advice is, if you do have an external presence, do your best to stock up on IPv4 addresses now to meet short and medium term requirements.  They may not be there later on, and your local ISPs may not have the alternative IPv6 deployed.  Make sure your network appliances are IPv6 ready.  Start learning.  And put pressure on your ISP.

The Windows Phone 7 “Data Leak”

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that there were reports of some Windows Phone 7 handsets having an issue where the customer’s bandwidth allowance was being eaten up by some app that was outside of their control.  Paul Thurrot has posted a story with the cause of the leak: “an inefficiency exists in the synchronization of email between the Windows Phone Mail client and Yahoo! Mail”.  Oh yeah, Exchange ActiveSync can also cause issues.  Visit Paul’s site for more details and a workaround for the Yahoo! issue.