Tag: System Center

Data Protection Manager 2010 Webcast

I joined this late due to a phone conference.

This is a System Center Influencers briefing on Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010.

The Aims

  • Single supported solution for Microsoft workloads
  • Single agent, no workload licensing
  • Enterprise scalability in the 2010 release

New Workload Additions

  • Cluster Shared Volume
  • Exchange 2010
  • SharePoint 2010

It supports OS’s going back to XP SP2.

Features

  • Self-service end user restore from Explorer or Office
  • Self-service DBA restrore from within SQL
  • Auto protection of new databases
  • Protect 1000’s of databases per DPM server
  • Recover 2005 DB’s to SQL 2008
  • Auto protection of new content databases in SharePoint farms
  • Protect the farm, restore the document
  • Optimizations for the new and many Exchange architectures

Hyper-V

  • CSV support
  • Item level recovery from within a VHD
  • Alternate host recovery

Client Protection

  • 1000 clients per DPM server
  • “User data only”.  Don’t protect the entire machine.
  • Uses VSS in Vista and Windows 7
  • Policy allows you to protect specific folders, so there’s no end user set up.
  • User can restore from local VSS while offline, or DPM while online.
  • While offline, the PC continues to make VSS copies and will sync them to DPM when it is online again.
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Fujitsu “My Very First Hyper-V”

Fujitsu has launched a bundle for SME’s (small/medium enterprises) that want to do Hyper-V virtualisation for the very first time.  They’ve called it the “My Very First Hyper-V”.  It includes, servers, external storage, Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Work Group Edition.  A flyer can be found here.

I wonder if they’ll replace the VMM installation with System Center Essentials 2010 when it is released.  That would make sense to me seeing as it’s aimed at this market and it gives software management, health & performance monitoring and VMM functionality.

OpsMgr 2007 R2 Guide For Monitoring Windows Servers

Microsoft published a guide for implementing System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2:

“This guidance provides information on the implementation of System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 for the monitoring and management of Windows servers. It provides the information necessary to create an Operations Manager 2007 design, the procedures for installing and configuring the Operations Manager 2007 server roles and agents, and guidance for managing an Operations Manager 2007 solution”.

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Guides

Microsoft published a bunch of guides for engineers and administrators who work with ConfigMgr 2007:

  • System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Deployment Guide: This guidance provides information on how to design and deploy a Configuration Manager infrastructure within a healthcare organization. It allows the healthcare organization to be confident that the Configuration Manager infrastructure being designed and deployed is using current best practice.
  • System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Operating System Deployment Guide: This guidance helps healthcare organizations when implementing and using the operating system deployment feature of Configuration Manager. This guidance provides the information required to quickly become familiar with the operating system deployment feature and understand the appropriate decisions that need to be made in order to deploy and use the solution. It also provides step-by-step guidance showing how to install and configure the required components, and also how to use the most common features.
  • System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Software Distribution Guide: This guidance provides the information required to quickly become familiar with the software distribution feature and understand the appropriate decisions that need to be made in order to deploy and use the solution. It also provides step-by-step guidance showing how to create the objects required within Configuration Manager to perform the software distribution.
  • System Center Configuration Manager Software Update Management Guide: This guidance provides the information required to quickly become familiar with the software update feature, and understand the appropriate decisions that need to be made in order to deploy and use the solution. It also provides step-by-step guidance showing how to install and configure the required components, and how to use the most common features.

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Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 R2 Sizing

Microsoft has published guidance on how to size your OpsMgr 2007 R2 installations:

“The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Sizing Helper is an interactive document designed to assist you with planning & sizing deployments of Operations Manager 2007 R2. It helps you plan the correct amount of infrastructure needed for a new OpsMgr R2 deployment, removing the uncertainties in making IT hardware purchases and optimizes cost. A typical recommendation will include the recommended hardware specification for each server role, topology diagram and storage requirement. The Operations Manager Sizing Helper is most useful when used with the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Design Guide”.

Crazy Idea – Use VMware for Hyper-V P2V of Linux

I posted a while back about how to P2V convert a physical Linux machine to a Hyper-V virtual machine.  I really only looked at nasty complicated solutions that required knowing Linux.  You can P2V Windows machines using Virtual Machine Manager but not Linux machines.

Some conversations last week at the summit revealed an alternative that I really should have thought of.  It’s not NDA stuff.

You can use the free VMware vCenter Converter to P2V a Linux VM.  That creates a VMware VM with a VMDK disk file.  The downside is that it appears that the target must be VMware ESX, ESXi, Workstation or Player (See below comment).

Now, you can use a tool to convert the VMDK to a Microsoft VHD disk file, e.g. VMDK2VHD.  Now you have a disk you can attach to a Hyper-V VM and boot from.  You can then install your integration components which are supported on RHEL and SLES.  They’ll install on other distros but are not MS supported.

At least, that’s the theory.  I’ve not tried this.  It feels like it’ll work.

It’s a shame that a Linux tool has to be used for this.  It’ll look bad for a MS partner consultant who has sold a client on the idea of Microsoft virtualisation to break out a VMware tool for a P2V of Linux VM’s.  Sure, they’ll be the majority of VM’s but there’s still a good number of them out there.

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Microsoft Whitepaper: How To Protect Hyper-V with DPM 2010

Microsoft has a white paper on how to backup and restore Hyper-V using System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 (currently in RC stage, might be RTM announced at MMS).  It includes:

  • Protection for Live Migration scenarios, including Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
  • Item level recovery (ILR) for restoring individual items from a host-based backup of a VM
  • Restoring VMs to different Hyper-V hosts than where they were backed up

I was chatting with Hans Vredevoort 2 days ago about DPM 2010.  He’s been working with it quite a lot and has some good contacts on the product.  He says you need to be very careful about how you schedule backups of VM’s on CSV and that the devil is in the details.  Read the paper once, twice and again.

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System Center Capacity Planner End of Life

I just read a blog post by Microsoft staff that said System Center Capacity Planner is end of life and will have no new developments.  That’s a pity.  It’s a concept that was a really good idea, and could have extended to all products in the planning stages.

The idea was that Microsoft would model how their different products would work.  You would then describe your network and it would help you design a solution.  A simulation could be run to see how your hardware would handle the work loads.  Unfortunately it suffered from a few problems.  The product set never really grew beyond Exchange, SharePoint and Operations Manager.  The newer versions weren’t added.  And the available hardware models weren’t kept up to date.  Maybe if the model was open source it could have helped but it really needed Microsoft’s assistance.

On the Hyper-V front, I would have loved to see it integrate with data generated by MAP and OpsMgr/VMM to help you design a Hyper-V farm managed by VMM.  But that never came to be.

In the end, the results were just a recommendation and not to be 100% relied upon.

The post describes alternative sources for planning OpsMgr, SharePoint and Exchange.

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Download OpsMgr 2007 R2 Documentation

You can now download Microsoft’s TechNet documentation for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 technical documentation helps you plan, deploy, operate, and maintain Operations Manager 2007 R2. For information about the specific guides available in the library.

Microsoft Ireland Partner Event: Virtualisation & Management

This is a follow on from my post earlier today on the 2010 Microsoft Ireland Partner event.  This post will focus on the virtualisation track.

Ronan Geraghty (owner of the Server business in Ireland, former DPE) introduces the session.  Wilbour Craddock (partner technical sales) takes over to talk about Windows Server 2008 R2.

The story for Windows Server 2008 R2 is:

  • Streamlined management
  • Robust web platform
  • “Better Together” with Windows 7
  • Virtualisation with Hyper-V

It’s an evolution of Windows Server 2008, not an entirely new operating system.  However, there is a lot more stuff in there.  Read the stuff on that link; it’ll save me typing a bunch of stuff.

The key to the MS platform is System Center. OpsMgr for fault/performance/audit collection, VMM for virtualisation, DPM for backup and ConfigMgr for deployment, auditing and reporting.  Service Desk will be a complete helpdesk solution implementing MOF/ITIL.

Liam Cronin (Compete Lead) takes over to talk about the compete message.  MS Ireland is big on competing with VMware.

VMware

Strategy:

  • 100% of Fortune 100 and 96% of Fortune 1000
  • Win the desktop through VDI
  • Win the cloud

Evolution:

  • Rich virtualisation portfolio
  • Acquiring a lot of technology through company take over

Partners:

  • 700+ tech partners
  • 65% of partner revenue through OEM’s
  • Rich virtual appliance market

MS Differentiators

  • MS is a platform company.  VMware is a product company, not a platform one.
  • MS is competitive with Windows Server 2008 R2 – claims by Liam that MS is ahead on features … I’m as pro Hyper-V as it gets and I disagree.  MS has the core stuff and it works excellently but does not have the same set of features as VMware.
  • MS is more cost effective
  • Management & security (very true)

Why pay a “vTax” to VMware when virtualisation is built into Windows?

Objection Handling

Made a commitment to VMware already: Don’t need to rip/replace.  You can use System Center to manage, maybe use Hyper-V for newer stuff.  The virtualisation platform isn’t as important as the management of it.

4 questions to ask VMware customers:

  • Why does VMware have a mandatory support contract that doesn’t include upgrades?
  • Why do they have to pay more money for VMotion?  Live Migration is in the free Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
  • How does VMware provide management for operating systems and applications running on their hypervisor?
  • Ask VMware what their virtualised desktop solution is for roaming or remote users who are disconnected.

Citrix V-Alliance

Matthew Brenchley – Strategic Alliances Manager from the UK.

Citrix has 21 years of partnership with Microsoft. 

Essentials For Hyper-V

OK – I want a Citrix person to say exactly what this is.  I have yet to see a clear explanation.  Where is the comic book store guy when you need him …. oh … “Worst Marketing Ever”.  We get the pitch on VDI and how Citrix can work on the MS platform.  Not much meat on these bones; the trend continues unfortunately.  I guess I’ll have to wait until PubForum to hear technical information on the Citrix side of things.

Over to marketing person, Karen Reilly.  This is a pitch for recruiting members into the V-Alliance.  Focus appears to be on desktop virtualisation.  Lead generation support and POC funding.  I’m glad I have guest wifi access.  Seriously, VDI is an expensive model and is a very niche solution.

Afterwards

I chat with Will and he tells me what Citrix Essentials is about.  (a) It allows block level and de-duplicated replication of VM’s between sites.  You can use different storage systems that don’t have replication engines and you do not need dark fibre – unlike controller based replication systems (b) It provides a lab/development deployment solution where the MS solution is purely developer driven in Visual Studio 2010.