January, 2012 | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Managing the iPad In The Enterprise

All that kerfuffle last year about Microsoft being late to market appears to have been valid. iPads are turning up in the business. And I don’t mean the MD bringing one in, or one hear and another there. I mean BIG numbers of them are turning up. A well publicised example is SAP where they’ve deployed 12,000 iPads. An interesting comment in the story is that the iPad is encouraging people to explore data and information, and probably empowering them to make better decisions. A touch UI is more natural; maybe that’s part of it. And tablets are small and light, meaning a person is more likely to bring it to and use it at coffee or lunch or home.

The interesting thing is that people aren’t talking about the entry of the iPad into this sort of market. People Let’s face it; we’ve been expecting this.

The conversation isn’t “Oh Microsoft are screwed and this is the death of the PC”. We’re still early days in the “tablet at work” era, and if Microsoft don’t screw it up, Windows 8 with Office wave 15 could be a very powerful combination because of their possible integration with the normal PC and the LOB app. I personally think 2013 will be an exciting time to be a .NET business applications architect.

But back on topic … what are people talking about? Management. How in the hell are businesses managing and securing these devices? A recent survey said “Among 520 CIOs polled, 77% said they worry that further consumerization of IT will lead to greatly increased business risks”.

Right now, if you’re using iPad then you’re either trusting employees (I’m a techie meglomaniac with mixed a little [a lot] Roy from the IT Crowd so that doesn’t work for me) or they are using point solutions.

The point solutions will fall into one of two groups. A Blackberry house, for example, will probably use a dedicated tool for controlling and configuring their RIM devices. But along comes an iPhone or an iPad and they suddenly need another dedicated management system or something more generic.

I think the best solution right now is to adopt a more generic mobile device management solution. In a true consumerisation adoption, you have no idea what’s going to come in the door: Android, RIM, Apple, Microsoft, etc. For the IT guys, the challenge is that each platform is completely different, so they’ll have to learn the strengths and weaknesses, develop a common denominator policy (PIN codes, remote wipe, etc), and then figure out how to secure each specific platform according to its unique needs.

But think about this. That’s another management system for IT to deploy and look after. What if you could have 1 integrated system that can manage PCs and mobile devices, configure and secure them. We don’t have an RTM yet, but it’s coming: Configuration Manager 2012 from Microsoft System Center has mobile device management. Information is still light on the ground on this feature, I guess all will be revealed when the products are launched.

Technorati Tags: System Center,ConfigMgr

Private Cloud & Company Politics

I was chatting with a friend earlier today about a big project he’s about to do. It’ll bring a lot of change and some egos would be at risk of being bruised. It reminded me of a job I once did when I worked for a new bank that was being formed from lots of branch offices of the former parent. There were lots of little NT4 domains, and we “pixie Irish” were consolidating it into a single W2003 domain and upgrading all the NT4/Office95 PCs to XP. How did that go? To start with, this clip from The IT Crowd kinda reminds me of a Monday morning in Munich, after 10 days of work build that office IT from scratch:

Then there was the company politics. The IT staff of half the branch offices fought. 1 guy in Paris stormed home one morning and had to be called back in by his boss. A guy in Munich spent the next 2 years conspiring and scheming to get his way. The London crew weren’t happy with being run by Dublin at all. Managing our IT was easy compared to the company politics.

And this got me to thinking … deploying a private cloud is surely going to cause the same sort of kerfuffle? Centralisation, the “emasculation” of big-ego IT staff, a shift in power and control, they’re the sorts of things that cause powder keg & flame situations.

A couple of ideas:

Visible & Enforced Management Buy-In

People will act up and fight you if they think they can. If they think this is some sort of personal project then they’ll bitch and moan to their bosses to try get your deployment/migration stopped. I’ve been there when a director said “I want XYZ” to us but wouldn’t share that vision with the company. And 2 years of in-fighting was the result, long after the project was completed.

If there’s a big project that’s going to shake things up, then the business owner of it (the CEO, CIO, etc) has to communicate that vision to the company, clearly illustrating what it is, and that their will not be an opportunity for fighting it.

Get Buy-In From Your Colleagues

As a consultant I once worked a site where a deployment was rejected by the IT staff. I was asked to come in and run workshops with them. With that I could learn each problem, and resolve it, whether it was lack of understanding of the tech or some business/operations problem that the tech could solve. After a series of documents and workshops, the staff felt like they’d learned the tech and that they’d contributed to the solution.

I’ve a funny feeling that over the coming years we’re going to hear some stories like those of failed over cost overrun SAP deployments. Deploying private cloud will be complex, not just because of a change of tech but also because of the change to business operations and the company politics that might happen.

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Cloud

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Features Glossary

I’m going to do my best (no guarantees) to update this page with a listing of each new WS2012 Hyper-V (and related) feature as it is revealed by Microsoft (and that I can think of).

Last updated at 19:01 on September 4th, 2012.

Feature	Description
Affinity rules	In Failover Clustering, you can set affinity or anti-affinity rules to keep selected VMs on the same host or on different hosts.
ARP/ND Spoofing/Poisoning Protection	Prevent a VM’s guest OS administrator from impersonating other VMs using ARP spoofing or IPv6 Neighbour Discovery spoofing.
Asymmetric Hyper-V Cluster	A single cluster with Hyper-V and Scale Out File Server roles on dedicated nodes.
BitLocker & CSV	Use Bitlocker to encrypt CSV to prevent data theft by disk theft. Uses a Cluster Name Object (CNO) for locking and unlocking CSVs.
Block-Level Redirected I/O	Used for CSV storage path fault tolerance instead of normal SMB redirected IO. Still SMB 3.0 based, but it bypasses the CSV stack on the CSV Coordinator making it 2x faster.
Boot From SAN	VMs can boot from iSCSI or Fibre Channel disks, rather than just the traditional VHD(X)
Cluster Aware Updating	Automate the Windows Update process for clustered hosts. It automatically places hosts in paused state and drains them of VMs, enabling hosts to be patched in order without VM downtime.
Cluster Bootstrapping	A Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster does not require a physical domain controller to be present. This allows DCs to be virtualised for SMEs and branch offices.
Cluster Scalability	Up to 64 hosts and up to 8,000 VMs. Guest clusters can also be 64 nodes.
Cluster Scheduled Tasks	Schedule tasks to run on all hosts, a specific host, or the host that currently owns a VM.
Cluster Shared Storage	A cluster requires shared storage. In the past it was SAS, iSCSI or Fibre Channel. Windows Server 2012 supports SMB 3.0 (file server or Scale Out File Server) and PCI-RAID (JBOD, mirrored Storage Spaces).
Cluster Validation Wizard	Adds new Hyper-V tests, tests for CSV, and hardware replication awareness for multi-site clusters.
CNO and VCO Flexibility	You now can intelligently place Cluster Name Objects (CNO) and Virtual Computer Objects (VCO) in desired OUs
Concurrent Live Migration	Perform many live migrations at once between two hosts, with the only limit being your bandwidth. The default maximums are 2 Live Migrations, and 2 Storage Live Migrations.
Converged Fabrics	Simplified host networking by merging all of the various LAN, SAN, and cluster networks to a reduced number of teamed NICs, using features such as QoS, virtual NICs, and DCB.
CSV 2.0	Simpler setup. Supported for things other than Hyper-V, such as Scale Out File Server. Supports multi-subnets for multi-site clusters. Backup uses a single coordinated or distributed VSS snapshot, and this removes the need for redirected I/O for backup.
CSV Backup	Distributed parallel backups simplify and speed up orchestrated application consistent backups with VMs spread across many hosts.
CSV Block Cache	Dedicate a small amount of memory (e.g. 512 MB) to provide a CSV read cache. Memory configured per cluster. Then enable caching on a per CSV basis.
CSV Filter Drivers	Intermediate storage filter drivers should just work out of the box with Cluster Shared Volumes
CSVFS	CSV appears as CSVFS instead of NTFS in Disk Management
Data Center Bridging	DCB enables better performance for very different classes networking protocols to run on the same network infrastructure, such as iSCSI and LAN. DCB Requires supporting NICs and switches and boosts performance of converged fabrics. Required if converging RDMA.
Dedup	Dedup can be turned on for a volume. It depups –at rest- files. Great for file shares, but does nothing for running SQL, Exchange, VMs. Useful for VMM Library, or inside VM file systems.
Deploy Roles and Features to Offline VHDs	Server Manager can add/remove roles and features to offline VHDs, enabling you to prep a VM configuration before deployment of a VHD from the library.
DHCP Guard	Ban DHCP traffic from rogue DHCP services running in VMs.
Direct I/O Backup	VMs on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) can be backed up without Redirected I/O (Mode/Access).
Drain VMs	Easy host maintenance by draining VMs from a clustered host when it is paused.
Dynamic Memory	Once a VM has booted it can balloon down to a new Minimum Memory setting if it is underutilising the memory allocated by the Startup setting. Smart Paging can assist starting the VM if there is insufficient host memory to provide the Startup Amount (before ballooning down to the Minimum). Minimum can be reduced and maximum can be increased while a VM is running.
Dynamic Quorum	The default quorum choice in Windows Server 2012 Failover Clusters. Enables a cluster to continue working smoothly in the event of multiple host failures. Probably useful with Power Optimisation turned on in VMM 2012.
Dynamic Virtual Machine Queue	DMVQ will dynamically span processing VMQ for VM n/w traffic across more than one core. It will automatically scale up and scale down the CPU utilisation based on demand
ETW Tracing	The ability to capture network events from a Hyper-V Switch for later analysis
Failover Prioritisation	Order the failover of VMs based on application dependencies based on high/medium/low/do-not-failover priorities.
Guest Application Monitoring	Configure Failover Clustering to monitor WS2012 VMs for certain events and perform a response to those actions, e.g. restart service, reboot VM, etc.
Guest Aware NUMA	Virtual machines are aware of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture and can schedule processes in accordance with memory placement at the physical layer. Guest NUMA can be customised on a per-VM basis according to host architecture.
High Availability	A feature of Failover Clustering, allowing a service or VM to failover from one host to another, enabling machine fault tolerance and maintenance windows with minimised service downtime.
Host Scalability	320 physical logical processors, up to 4 TB RAM, 2048 vCPUs, and 1024 VMs on a single host.
Hyper-V Administrators	A new local security group enables easier delegation of full Hyper-V administrative rights to that host.
Hyper-V Appliance	This is a concept where a Cluster-in-a-Box solution is engineered to be a Hyper-V cluster-in-a-box by an OEM. It likely includes 3 or more NICs per server blade, JBOD (mirrored Storage Spaces), SAS expanders, and 2 Hyper-V hosts.
Hyper-V Server 2012	The free product that can be used when you don’t run Windows Server VMs on the host, such as VDI or Linux guests. Includes all of the scalability and features of the top-end Datacenter edition. It does not have the licensing benefits for Windows Server guests. Designed to be managed remotely via GUI or PowerShell.
Hyper-V Extensible Switch	Replacing the virtual network, this programmable layer-2 virtual switch offers extensibility for partners, with products already announced by the likes of Cisco (Nexus 1000v) and 5Nine (filtering).
Hyper-V Manager Connect and Live Migration	When a VM live migrates, an active Connect to the VM window will follow it to the new host.
Hyper-V Manager Tabbed Interface	More information is provided to the end user on the status of a VM using a tabbed information pane in the console.
Hyper-V Replica	Asynchronous replication of virtual machines from one location to another, supporting VSS snapshots, failover, and IP address injection.
Import VM More Reliable	The VM import process doesn’t require VMs to be exported. It can also fix up import problems.
Incremental Backup of Running VMs	Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V supports incremental (change only) backup of running VMs. Only the differences are backed up during this type of backup.
IPsec Task Offload	IPsecTO moves this workload from the main host’s CPU to a dedicated processor on the network adapter
Live Migration	Move a virtual machine from one host to another. This does not require Failover Clustering or shared storage Windows Server 2012. Move the VM, move the VM and storage, or move the storage. The algorithm was enhanced to allegedly make Live Migration 70% faster than before.
Live Migration Queuing	Live Migrations are queued up if more than the maximum simultaneous amount are started at once.
Live Storage Migration	Physically relocate a VM by first copying it and synchronising I/O until the source and destination are identical. Can leverage Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) in a SAN to make the process up to 90% faster.
Management OS	The term used to describe the host OS, or what was previously known as the Parent Partition or Root Partition.
Monitor Port	Turn on traffic monitoring for a specific virtual switch port (virtual NIC). It is not promiscuous mode.
Multi-Tenancy	With features such as Network Virtualisation, PVLANs, and PORT ACLs, you can use Windows 8 Hyper-V in multi-tenant environments such as IaaS public cloud hosting.
Native 4k disk allignment	This will allow disk alignment for VHDXs created on 4k sector physical disks, thus improving performance. Almost no shipping OS currently supports this format of disk – WS2012 does. OEMs to start transitioning to this type of disk, via 512K emulated disks with 4K sectors under the hood.
Network Virtualisation	The abstraction of virtual IP address from physical IP address, allowing easier mobility of VMs across fabrics. This is a key feature of multi-tenancy. Uses either GRE or IP address rewrite.
NIC Teaming	Team up to 32 NICs of the same speed in Windows Server 2012 (and Hyper-V) for bandwidth aggregation and network path fault tolerance (LBFO). Specify teaming mode, load balancing algorithm, and optionally VLAN binding.
Node Vote Weight	Configure if a clustered Hyper-V host has a vote or not. Especially useful in multi-site clusters to disable DR site nodes from voting.
ODX	Offloaded Data Transfer is a feature of a SAN. File transfers/copies between hosts on the SAN is done by the SAN rather than the normal network transfer. Will speed up the creation of fixed VHD files and Live Storage Migration on a supporting SAN.
Online Disk Repair	Windows 8 will detect storage faults and incrementally fix them with brief delays to I/O traffic that don’t interrupt it. Should replace the need for offline chkdsk.
Port ACLs	Set rules based on local IP/MAC, and remote IP (specific or network)/MAC. Rules can meter traffic, block or allow. Can specify inbound, outbound, or both directions.
Port Mirroring	Copy traffic from one NIC to another where the traffic can be analysed. This could be useful for IDS, etc.
PowerShell	Hyper-V has over 162 built-in PowerShell cmdlets. 100% of features are revealed via PowerShell and includes things not in the GUI, e.g. Port ACLs.
Private VLAN	PVLAN is a mechanism where a VM’s vNIC PVLAN port type can be set to isolated/private/community to control how it can communicate with other VMs on that large flat VLAN.
QoS	Specify maximum limits and minimum guarantees for network communications.
Read-Only Domain Controllers	WS2012 Hyper-V Clusters now support the use of RODCs in branch office and DMZ scenarios.
Receive Side Coalescing	RSC aggregates packets from the same TCP/IP flow into one larger packet, reducing per-packet processing costs for faster TCP/IP processing
Receive Side Scaling	RSS (NIC function) allows the host network traffic processing to be shared across multiple processors. Enables SMB 3.0 Multichannel on a single NIC.
Redirected I/O	Now uses SMB 3.0 and can leverage SMB 3.0 Multichannel and RDMA. It is used for metadata operations (very brief). Loss of storage connection also causes Redirected I/O but now at a much faster block level.
Remote Direct Memory Access / SMB Direct	RDMA enables massive throughput of data through the network without taxing the CPU. Found in iWarp, RoCE, and Infiniband. This powers greater throughput for SMB 3.0.
Resource Metering	Measure CPU, storage, network and memory on a per-VM basis. This data is stored with the VM and moves with the VM. It can be used for cross charging cloud usage.
Router Guard	Prevent VMs from advertising themselves as routers.
Scale Out File Server	Using CSV and a witness as features, you can create an active/active file share failover cluster with transparent failover. This is supported for services that use large file with little metadata access, e.g. Hyper-V. In other words, you can use a file share cluster instead of a SAN for your Hyper-V cluster.
Single Root I/O Virtualisation	SR-IOV allows a physical NIC to appear to be a number of physical NICs, and allows virtual machine networking to bypass the virtual switch/management OS user mode. Virtual machines with SR-IOV can be live migrated and have guest NIC teaming.
SMB 3.0	Formerly known as SMB 2.2, it supports RDMA (SMB Direct) and SMB Multichannel (RSS or multiple NICs) and is in Windows Server 2012. Storage of VMs is supported on SMB 3.0. file shares if using Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V hosts.
SMB 3.0 Multichannel	Enables multiple simultaneous data transfer streams between source and destination. Can use RSS over a single NIC. Can also span multiple RSS capable/incapable NICs, teamed or not.
SMI-S	SMI-S will be supported by Windows Server 2012 file servers, enabling SMB 3.0 and Scale Out File Servers to be managed by VMM 2012 in the future.
Snapshot Live Merge	You do not have to shut down a VM to merge a snapshot in Windows 8, resolving a major support issue.
Storage Pools	An aggregation of disks without any RAID. They can be as loosely coupled as a bunch of USB drives or a JBOD. The disks can be different sizes. A pool does not appear in Explorer. You can create Storage Spaces from Storage Pools. This is one of the storage types you could use to create a scalable and continuously available active/active file share cluster.
Storage Spaces	A thinly provisioned slice of storage from a storage pool. Can be a 2-copy-mirror (Like RAID 1 in concept and performance), 3-copy-mirror, or parity (like RAID 5 in concept and performance) storage space. Can be lots of spaces in a single pool. A space is divided up into slabs across disks in the pool depending on the fault tolerance chosen. Advanced configuration allows you to choose which pool disks to use.
System Center 2012 Service Pack 1	This will add support for Windows Server 2012 and the new version of Hyper-V
Thin Provisioning	Deploy thinly provisioned Storage Spaces, consuming only the disk that the LUN requires.
Trunk Mode	The ability for a Hyper-V Switch to pass through multiple VLANs to a VM’s port
Unified Tracing	Enables network diagnostics in the Hyper-V Extensible Switch by trapping packets.
Unmap	Supported on VHDX and Passthrough disks, attached to Virtual SCSI or Virtual Fibre Channel, this allows de-allocated blocks to be returned to storage for thin provisioning. In other words: Trim. Happens around every 5 minutes, and will thin provision LUNs and VHDX files.
VHDX	The default virtual disk type, expanding up to 64 TB, and supporting dynamic and fixed types.
Virtual Fibre Channel HBA	Fibre Channel HBAs in the host can be virtualised and FC SAN LUNs can be mounted directly by VMs, enabling guest clusters on FC SANs. Requires NPIV in the SAN. Can support guest MPIO/DSM with multiple virtual SANs in the host and multiple vHBAs in the VM. Probably requires OEM support for this solution. Support includes FCoE because it’s just Fibre Channel to the VM. The only limit on the number of guests using this feature is FC bandwidth utilisation.
Virtual Machine Converter	A free Accelerator tool for converting VMware virtual machines into Hyper-V virtual machines. It is a free alternative to System Center 2012. It uninstalls the VMware tools, converts the disks AND the VM configuration, and installs the Hyper-V integration components. GUI and command prompt driven.
Virtual Machine Scalability	64 virtual processors, 1 TB RAM
Virtual NIC	As before, VMs can have virtual NICs. Now the Management OS can also have virtual NICs.
Virtual SAN	Like a virtual network, connects Virtual HBAs to physical HBAs. Recommended that there is one virtual SAN (in a host) and one virtual HBA (in each VM using the SAN) per physical HBA if you want to install OEM supported MPIO/DSM in the VM.
Virtualisation Aware Domain Controllers	Windows Server 2012 domain controllers are aware if they are Windows 8 Hyper-V VMs. This prevents USN rollback (VM restore or snapshot application) and enables you to clone DCs by copying VMs, using a feature called VM-Generation ID (GenID).
VP:LP Ratio	The old 8:1 (server VMs) or 12:1 (VDI) limitations have been removed. Now you can place as many vCPUs as you want, keeping in mind the host (2048 vCPU) and VM (64 vCPU) limits, and the capabilities of the host hardware versus the VM workloads (assess your workloads before virtualisation).
WHEA/RAS	Windows Hardware Error Architecture is hardware fault detection. WS2012 Hyper-V can detect hardware errors, e.g. ECC RAM degradation. Non-correctable memory error in a VM might cause the VM to be stopped to prevent data corruption. Unused memory is blocked from being used.
Windows 8 Client hypervisor	Hyper-V is included in Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise for free. It’s the same Hyper-V as in the server, offering VM mobility and an easy introduction to Microsoft’s enterprise virtualisation. The client version of Hyper-V requires Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) in the CPU (Intel EPT, AMD RVI/NPT). This is not a requirement in the server version, but it is recommended.
Windows Server Backup	WSB in WS2012 supports backing up Hyper-V VMs on standalone hosts and on clusters with SAS, iSCSI, and FC storage. It does not support VSS backups of VMs on SMB file shares. Backup can be stored on USB or file shares.

Technorati Tags: Windows 8,Hyper-V,Virtualisation

Virtual Event: Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud

Microsoft has announced an event called “Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud” that will be held online on January 17th at 16:30 GMT (17:30 CET).

The definition, business value, and technology benefits of the “the cloud” have been hotly debated in recent months. Most agree that cloud computing can accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and increase business agility in the market. In 2012, cloud computing will transition from hype and discussion, to part of every enterprise’s reality, and IT is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and help business reap the benefits of cloud computing.

Join us for a virtual event designed to help you explore your cloud options. It’s your chance to interact with Microsoft experts and with IT leaders like yourself, who have been putting cloud technology to work in their own organizations. You’ll be among the first to hear the latest private cloud news from Microsoft.

Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud	Approx. Start Time
Private cloud discussion with Microsoft executives: Insights and news Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, Microsoft	8:30AM PST \| 16:30 UTC
Executive panel and Q&A: Guidance and best practices Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, Microsoft Jacky Wright, Vice President, IT Strategic Services, Microsoft IT Rand Morimoto, Chief Executive Officer, Convergent Computing	9:00AM PST \| 17:00 UTC
Envisioning Your Private Cloud: A scenario based demonstration from the Microsoft Technology Center in Redmond, WA.	9:30AM PST \| 17:30 UTC

Technorati Tags: System Center,Private Cloud,Cloud

Most Popular Posts of 2011

I’ve just run some reports to figure out what the most popular pages are on my blog. It’s amazing how many of them are old.

10) Whitepaper: A Guide to Hyper-V Dynamic Memory

This is the post where I published my guide to Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 Hyper-V Dynamic Memory, talking about how it works, how to configure it, and some recommendations.

9) Hyper-V Visio Stencils

Jonathan Cusson’s work appears to be a popular choice. I guess a lot of you are designing Hyper-V clusters in Visio. I posted this one on 16/9/2010.

8) What to Expect From SCVMM 2012

This post dates back to November 2010 and is based on the initial announcements for VMM 2012 at Teched Europe 2010.

7) Got a Vodafone Ireland Home Broadband Router? Make These Changes

Vodafone Ireland made a mistake when they pissed me off back in 2009/2010. My entries on the matter still get lots of hits. The worst kind of marketing you can do is piss off a customer, especially one that knows how to get ranked on Google Smile

6) Hyper-V and VLAN’s

I did a lot of posts in the latter half of 2009 on Hyper-V and VMM, and this one has proven to be popular. The Great Big Hyper-V Survey of 2011 shows that networking was a big challenge for most.

5) How Bad Is Vodafone Ireland Home Broadband?

I told you that I could score well on Google. My problems may have gone away, but the mark of Vodafone Ireland Home Broadband continues to this day. From January 2010.

4) Can You Install Hyper-V in a VM?

Wow! But yeah, it comes up a lot apparently! It’s not that people really want to do this, but they want to be able to set up labs to learn the product, and try out clusters, with the minimum of equipment. Not everyone has free access to racks of servers and SAN storage. From 2009.

3) Create a Shutdown Tile in Windows 8 Metro UI Start Screen

I posted this one the morning after we got the Windows 8 Slate PCs at the Build conference last year. I wanted a quick way to shutdown my machine, without juggling through Settings. Change is not always good, and study groups are the worst way to design (1 loud person can sway an entire group).

2) Whitepaper: How to Build a Hyper-V Cluster Using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target v3.3

I released this whitepaper in April 2011. I did it for two reasons. 1) I wanted to try out the iSCSI Software Target in the lab that I had at the time. 2) I wanted something more structured than my most popular blog post …

1) Rough Guide To Setting Up A Hyper-V Cluster

This one is from January 2009. This post was a summation of various things that I could think of at the time, and a very rough guide for building a Hyper-V cluster, unlike the more structured guide which came in at #2.

Comments

Together, the two clustering posts (#1 and #2) have over four times the hits of the #3 post. I think that says a lot. The topic that I blog about is pretty niche. Blogging anything about Windows 8 is an easy way to get hits. But even with this, people are still flocking to learn how to build a Hyper-V cluster.

Interview – What Is Your Favourite Hyper-V Feature In Windows 8?

Carsten Rachfahl (MVP Virtual Machine) was a busy man at E2E London. He interviewed a lot of us individually, and also interviewed us as a group to ask what our favourite feature of the Windows 8 Developer Preview release was. This features Carsten, Ronnie Isherwood, Jeff Wouters, Didier Van Hoye (MVP Virtual Machine – congrats on the New Year’s award!), and myself.

You’ll also find a video interview with Jeff Wouters on PowerShell.

Happy New Year 2012

I’ve been quiet for the holidays. There was a post or two but they were scheduled. I planned to stay offline for 10 days. That worked out sort of OK … and then the flu that was going around hit me. Anyway, I’m in work for the first time in 2012, trying to get the wheels turning after 10 days of rust.

I saw a rather interesting post on Redmondmag.com with 12 new years resolutions for this year of the dragon. I might not agree 100% with all of them (e.g. get on a cloud now & stop clicking) but I like the general theme and thought process throughout, e.g. rethink VDI, prioritize application delivery, and think like a CEO. And I love the security boogeyman comment.

Give it a read.