December, 2013 | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Toshiba Encore Windows 8.1 8” Tablet – Initial Impression

After the Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet debacle, I was hesitant about getting another Windows 8.1 mini tablet. But I do need something for work (I’d be murderfied if I used the Android-powered Lenovo Yoga 8 at a MSFT event – not kidding!), so I decided to get the Toshiba Encore 32 GB 8” tablet, running Windows 8.1 (the consumer product, not RT). Note: I work for a Toshiba distributor, and I was lucky enough to get one of the very limited stock.

Available from:

Appearance

The tablet is just over 10mm thick. That’s thinker than an iPad mini, but not unreasonable. The portrait mode works and feels natural, but more on that later. The back is a tough plastic of some kind, not the Samsung shiny/bendy/slippery kind, but a pleasant & textured kind.

Screen

It’s a 1280 * 800 IPS display. It seems to do the trick. Don’t get overly caught up on pixel counts. The original iPad mini has a lower screen resolution. It’s all about pixels per inch (PPI). You don’t see those pixels with the normal human eye on a screen this size. It would be very different on a 10” device. Multitouch support is there as you would expect. Note that Windows 8.1 defaults to portrait mode.

Controls

You get a capacitive Windows button at the front of base of the tablet. It has a reassuring buzz response like you get on most Windows phones. The power button and volume rocker are on the top right edge, slightly protruding. I’d like them flush to avoid accidental pushes, but it’s not a big deal.

Performance

You get the new Intel “Bay Trail” quad core Atom CPU, with 8 logical processors. This is noticeably better than the previous generation “Clover Trail” CPU. The tablet is responsive and plays games like Hills Of Glory very well. Browsing was good. Video play is good.

Battery

I’ve not done any formal test but I think I’d get 7 hours from the battery. I’d like more, but this is a consumption device. You pick it up and use it lightly for short periods of time.

Expansion

You get the expected Micro-SD slot, found uncovered on the top-left edge. This allows up to 64 GB of expansion. You’ll need this slot if you go with the 32 GB, which has just 10 GB free out of the box. I think most people should go for the 64 GB model once it appears. The price point of the 32 GB 8” tablets (all brands) will draw consumers to that size.

The device is powered via Micro-USB at the top. There is the usual audio jack on the top.

This tablet has something that I have not seen in others, and is definitely not in the Dell Venue 8 Pro. There is a Micro-HDMI port for connecting another display. That will be useful for PowerPoint. However, I have not found it useful for video. When you play a video it plays on the main display (the tablet). Without a Bluetooth mouse, there is no way to project the video to another display. This is a flaw in the Windows 8.1 video app rather than in the tablet itself. A way around will be Miracast, but that has challenges all of it’s own.

There is no support for a digitizer. You can use one of those tablet pens – not as good, but this is primarily a consumer device where stylus support is not required. Yes, the Dell Venue 8 Pro has a stylus option, but it sucks the big one.

Software

You get some of the usual Toshiba bits, including manuals (uninstalled), Toshiba Today (or something), McAfee 30 day trial (uninstalled), and a third-party cra-app store (uninstalled).

Part of the cost of the tablet is a full OEM edition of Office 2013 Home & Student. Who really wants to work on Office on an 8” device? Maybe you want to view some stuff or make a quick edit? It’ll do that. But maybe you want to try use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and connect a monitor via Micro-HDMI? Then you have a lightweight productivity solution. I haven’t tried it, but I used my Clover Trail tablet for a lot of Office stuff, so with the right peripherals, the Toshiba Encore might do a good job.

On the App side, Windows is still lagging way behind. I have maybe 3-4 times more apps installed on my Lenovo Yoga 8 (Android 4.2).

Experience

I used the tablet quite a bit over the weekend after getting it on Thursday. Social media was the main thing, and a little browsing and surfing. In other words, just as it is meant to be used. It worked very well, especially when I was using it to keep up with other games while watching the NFL action last night.

Satellite S50 Series

Summary

This is a very nice device, and it’s working out much better than the questionable quality Dell Venue 8 Pro. The Lenovo Yoga 8 will continue to be my entertainment device, but the Toshiba Encore will be my work tablet. I’ll post more when I have a chance to push the tablet a bit.

Technorati Tags: Hardware,Windows 8.1

KB2894032 – Clustered VM Cannot Access Fiber Channel LUN After Performing Live Migration on WS2012 Hyper-V

FYI, Windows Server 2012 R2 allows VMs to have virtual fiber channel adapters that use the bandwidth of the hosts’ physical HBAs. This means that VMs can have their own WWN (actually 2 WWNs per virtual HBA) and connect to zoned LUNs on an FC SAN. This supports both Live Migration of those VMs, and the ability to use the FC LUNs as the shared storage of a guest cluster.

The first phase of Live Migration (that first 3% of the progress bar) is when Hyper-V attempts to build up a VM’s spec & dependencies on a destination host. This includes connecting to any FC LUNs using the alternative WWN (hence 2 WWNs per virtual HBA).

Microsoft released a hotfix to deal with an issue on WS2012 Hyper-V where one of those FC enabled VMs loses connectivity to an FC LUN.

Symptoms

Consider the following scenarios:

You have two Windows Server 2012-based computers that have the Hyper-V role installed.

You install a virtual machine on one of the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V hosts.

You set up a guest failover cluster, and then you make the virtual machine a cluster node.

The virtual machine is configured to access logical unit numbers (LUNs) over a Synthetic Fibre Channel.

You try to perform live migration to move the virtual machine to another Hyper-V host.

In this situation, the virtual machine on the target Hyper-V host cannot access the LUNs over the Synthetic Fibre Channel.

Cause

This issue occurs because the target Hyper-V host cannot restore the Synthetic Fibre Channel LUN on behalf of the virtual machine during live migration.

More Information

You might receive the following error event and warning event when this issue occurs:

On the target Hyper-V host:
Error event:
Hyper-V SynthFC-Admin ID 32214 with description like
Failed to reserve LUN with Instance Path ‘\?SCSI#VMLUN&Ven_HP&Prod_HSV360#5&17efa605&0&070002#{6f416619-9f29-42a5-b20b-37e219ca02b0}’ to virtual machine ‘WS2012-1’ with error: The data is invalid. (0x8007000D). (Virtual machine ID C799C113-B153-4E49-B0C5-F9E24774EB9A)
Hyper-V SynthFC-Admin ID 32216 with description like
Failed to register LUN with Instance Path ‘\?SCSI#VMLUN&Ven_DGC&Prod_RAID_5#5&378d83c&0&080200#{6f416619-9f29-42a5-b20b-37e219ca02b0}’ to virtual machine ‘SERVER2012R2-STD-64-1’ with error: The data is invalid. (0x8007000D). (Virtual machine ID 86FA60B1-8B40-45C5-A88F-1F024BECA8F0)

On the virtual machine:
Warning Event:
Microsoft-Windows-Ntfs ID 140
The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur in VolumeId: F:, DeviceName: DeviceHarddiskVolume82.
(A device which does not exist was specified.)
Event ID:50
{Delaled Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all the data for the file. The data has been lost. This erorr may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

A hotfix has been released to fix this problem.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Windows Server 2012,Storage,Virtualisation,Failover Clustering

How WS2012 R2 Hyper-V Backup Works

You might have heard that WS2012 R2 Hyper-V changed how it performs backups of virtual machines but not heard how. I’ll give you a glimpse of what that change was in this post.

First some terminology:

Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Snapshot: VSS performs a snapshot of a volume to get a consistent backup of a file or files/folders.
Checkpoint: Formerly known as a (Hyper-V) snapshot, a checkpoint (matching the SCVMM term) creates a crash consistent copy of a VM at a point in time, using AVHD or AVHDX files that are linked to a parent VHD or VHDX file – or linked to a parent AVHD or AVHDX files in the case of nested checkpoints.

In the past, VSS is used to create a VSS snapshot of the volume(s) containing the files of a VM that is to be backed up. The snapshot was mounted and the required files (identified by the Hyper-V Writer) were backed up. The process was pretty complex and could lead to problems for some customers. The quality of storage hardware VSS writers had too much impact on the process. Once you have a pretty clean environment (network/storage design, patching, drivers and firmware), backup was the one problem that could hurt. CSV 2.0 sorted out most of that, but Microsoft wanted to simplify the backup process.

Thanks to live merging of checkpoints (snapshots) that was added in WS2012, and the experience Microsoft has gained by using checkpoints (snapshots) for other features (such as Hyper-V Replica), WS2012 R2 Hyper-V has switched to using checkpoints instead of VSS snapshots.

Now a checkpoint is created of every virtual machine that is to be backed up. Writes are temporarily redirected to the checkpoint’s AVHDX/AHVD file(s). This gives the backup requestor a clean & crash consistent copy of the virtual machine’s VHD or VHDX files that are safe to read. After the backup, the checkpoint is merged and the job is done.

Note: You might notice that a VSS snapshot is still taken of the relevant volume(s).

We’ve moved from application consistent backup to the next (small) step down with a crash consistent backup. This isn’t a big deal – not for backup experts anyway. For products like SQL Server or Exchange, restoring this VM is like someone reset the VM. The restored database starts up, does a quick cleanup, and carries on operating as it did before the backup operation. In return, we get a much simpler backup process that should prove to be more resilient and selective.

KB2893986 – Vulnerability in WS2012 & Windows 8 Hyper-V Could Allow Elevation of Privilege

In November, Microsoft released the MS13-092 (aka CVE-2013-3898) security fix for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Windows 8 Client Hyper-V.

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could execute arbitrary code as System in another virtual machine (VM) on the shared Hyper-V host. An attacker would not be able to execute code on the Hyper-V host, only on guest VMs on the same host. The vulnerability could also allow denial of service in Hyper-V on the same platforms, allowing an attacker to cause the Hyper-V host to stop responding or restart.

We’ve only had a handful of security fixes for Hyper-V since it was released on Windows Server 2008. This looks like the most important one of the lot.

Please test/deploy as quickly as you can.

Technorati Tags: Hyper-V,Security,Windows Server 2012,Windows 8,Virtualisation

Please Welcome 5nine!

I’m pleased to announce that 5nine have become a sponsor of my blog. 5nine is a key player in the Hyper-V partner ecosystem, making of security, networking, and management tools & extensions.

You’ll find an alternative to SCVMM for small/medium businesses, extensibility to SCVMM and the Hyper-V virtual switch for the medium to large enterprise, and a number of very useful free tools.

Please take the time to evaluate 5nine’s tools and see what they could add to your network.

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2012,Windows Server 2012 R2,Hyper-V,VMware,VMM,System Center,Networking,Security,Virtualisation

Cool New Hyper-V Features in Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows Server 2012 R2 – What’s New in Networking