BUBBLE

Windows 2012 (aka Windows 8) has been making big buzz in the IT industry and seems like Microsoft want it to be like that. Personally I feels like every Windows version always gives the new excitement feeling and curiosity.

Anyway back to the track to talk about one of the feature in the upcoming Windows 2012 which I find really cool “Data de-duplication” Now I can keep on writing more and more words about it but again I guess a video would do the work with little bit of info here and there through a PPT.

You can download the PPT file from here. Video can be access from here.

Apart from that always refer this link for the up-to-date information.

Greetings for everyone for the New Year. This is a great year for Microsoft System Center product family. As for the Virtualization point of view this would be a significant year around VM management. I do believe lot of customers will move ahead and adopt the hybrid HYPER VISOR solution.

SCVMM 2012 has a big role play this year. During my lab setup I’ve captured very high level how you can setup the SCVMM 2012. Click the VMM 2012 logo to access the video.

Apart from that I found below mention urls are really valuable through your journey of learning SCVMM 2012.

SCVMM Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/

SCVMM 2012 on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610610.aspx

SCVMM 2012 error codes: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4906.aspx

Note: Adding a existing HYPER-V host to SCVMM 2012 video cast can be viewed here.

Few days back I mention about the latest version availability of Linux IC for HYPER-V. Soon after that got a chance to test this on RH 6.1. Below steps will guide through the setup process of RH 6.1 along with Linux IC. Once completed you have the mouse drivers setup properly. Some of the latest improvements of the Linux IC’s are,

First I went ahead and created a VM with default settings. Important part is to add a Legacy network card initially,

Adding legacy card will allow the Linux OS to have network communication without Linux  IC (Integrated components)

Rest of the process is typical Linux installation and will be shared with you’ll with screen captures,

Make sure you’re tick “Connect automatically” for the NIC in bootup.

Make sure you select customize now and add the desktop component

At this moment Linux setup is completed. After the boot up you’ll have the chance to register with RedHat Network. This will help you to get the latest updates. Since I didn’t had a RH account I have skip this option,

Now we go ahead and mount the Linux IC iso file which we have downloaded from Microsoft web site.

Go ahead and open the Terminal and login under root account by typing “su –“

Mount the CD Rom to the system, once mounted you can type “ls” and view the files in the CD Rom,

Now it’s time to install the integrated components, depend on your operating system 32bit or 64bit execution files will be different,

For 64-bit versions:

# yum install /media/x86_64/kmod-microsoft-hyper-v-rhel6-60.1.x86_64

# yum install /media/x86_64/microsoft-hyper-v-rhel6-60.1.x86_64

# reboot

For 32-bit versions:

# yum install /media/x86/kmod-microsoft-hyper-v-rhel6-60.1.i686

#yum install /media/x86/microsoft-hyper-v-rhel6-60.1.i686

# reboot

I had a 32bit version of RH 6.1 ,

To see if Linux IC setup properly,

After this completes you can reboot the system and then check the mouse integration and also the functionality of the second NIC.

Latest Linux IC can be downloaded from here.

Recently enough Microsoft released the latest version of it’s assessment and Planning toolkit’s latest version (6.5) Fro those who don’t know MAPS it’s a software which available freely for you to do assessment prior getting your hands certain projects. This tool is really useful for consultants, engineers as well as for the end user as well to carry out their own assessment of their current infrastructure. Some of the benefits of the latest version are as follows,

• Discover Oracle instances on Itanium-based servers for migration to SQL Server: useful for SQL Server migration projects when you tire of the price and virtualisation support of Oracle.
• Assess your software usage and evaluate your licensing needs with the Software Usage Tracking feature, now updated with the Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) scenario: get your licensing right before and auditor does.
• Accelerate planning for the private cloud with Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track Onboarding: FAST is the Microsoft private cloud architecture for their big international partners.
• Identify migration opportunities with enhanced heterogeneous server environment inventory: this stuff supports MySQL, Linux and VMware scanning.
• Accelerate planning and migration with the new UI and usability updates in MAP 6.5: All new UI to lay out stuff more logically.

Personally I recommend to use the MAPS before you jump into HYPER-V projects and do recommendation based on your assumptions. Some would argue that based on the experience which is great but backing up that with some real data is much more cooler MAPS will do that part for you with great deal of data with nice presentable manner. Another cool thing about MAPS it can do this even in very large network environments. Recommend to let the scan gather information at least for one week time. This is one of the best tool I can recommend given by Microsoft for free

Apart from that as I mention customers can use the latest version to carry our license assessment on their environment. This is really helpful for them taking decision on license purchasing and fall under compliances.

You can obtain the latest version with sample databases in here. Before setting up MAPS spend some time reading the FAQ pages as well.

PoweShell is a very powerful tool you can use across Microsoft technologies. Microsoft will keep on adopting and improving this technology every time. Right now PowerShell module ver 2 for HYPER-V has been released. This article will dicuss how can you install the modules correctley into your Windows 2008 R2 server. Please note this is for Windows 2008 R2 only!

First get the PS modules from the codeplex web site. Url is here

Download the zip file to a root drive or any preferred area and unzip. Once that complete locate the “install.bat” file and execute it with administrator privilege.

Once the instllation completed, we’ll move the unzip folder in the PS module folder located in the root drive, (I’ve rename the folder as HyperV and copied to the modules folder)

Now we can import this to the system by excuting through PowerShell. Open the Powershell and try to run “import-module HyperV” you’ll grant with a error message

We need to enable the execution permissions to import the module, please follow the instruction mention in below screenshot,

After that import the Hyper-V modules,

Now when that complete we can run the command “Get-Command –Module hyperv” to list down the available commands,

Now we have plethora of task can be automated combing these commands, it’s all about your imagination  

Few days back the above topic came to the discussion table with my colleagues. We got a project where customer got few RedHat machines. One argument went on RedHat Linux would not have mouse movement when we do a P2V and setup the IC’s (Integrated components) Going deep on this matter it is revealed Microsoft has not officially mentioned mouse integration will work properly and it is misunderstanding if someone states.

Following table show the supported guest OS and the capabilities HYPER-V will support on them,

The above list is taken from the TechNet site. You can download the latest Linux Integration services from here.

The TechNet Forum Assistant is a free Windows gadget, available in the Microsoft Download Center. This gadget will help you better utilize the great information in TechNet Forums and community. By downloading, you have the support and expertise of Microsoft TechNet Forum Support Engineers directly right on your desktop. Receive support on your terms by downloading the TechNet Forum Assistant.

It’s been a weeks’ time since the Microsoft BUILD conference and the Internet is still buzzing with talk of Windows Server 8. The next generation of Microsoft’s general purpose server operating system promises to be a revamped virtualization platform that introduces the world to Microsoft’s latest hypervisor, Hyper-V 3.0. Most of the reviews have already carried out covering the features in depth, but here is a summary of the interesting Hyper-V 3.0 features for those of you that haven’t had a chance to see them yet:

• Up to 63-nodes, 4000 Virtual Machine Clusters
• Up to 32 vCPUs, 512GB RAM, and 2TB of disk space per Virtual Machine
• Increased Guest NUMA Support (memory segmentation for better performance)
• New VHDX storage containers with 16TB of capacity
• Support for concurrent Live Migrations using SAN (Storage Area Network) and DAS (Direct Attached Storage)
• Support for NAS (Network Attached Storage) using SMB 2.2 and NFS Protocols
• “Hyper-V Replica” built-in Asynchronous Virtual Machine Replication
• Integrated Source and Destination De-depulication
• Network Virtualization
• Cisco Nexus Virtual Switching and Routing Infrastructure Support

While the list is certainly impressive and is sure to make many Windows system administrators giddy, this release marks something greater than just an incremental upgrade for the Windows Server platform. Since its beginnings, Hyper-V’s deliverables have been commendable but have lagged significantly behind competing products. While Microsoft has supported it with the robust System Center platform to great acclaim, the hypervisor itself has always been outmatched by its competitors. With this release of Hyper-V, Microsoft has finally started focusing of achieving feature-parity with competitor hypervisor offerings. The promised updates to the Windows Server platform represent a more mature approach to virtualization, providing a feature-rich and high-performance platform that starts with hypervisor itself, allowing it to stand on it’s own now more than ever. A recent review of the HYPER-V hypervisor can be read over here.

With the tight integration of System Center Product Suite HYPER-V ver 3.0 stands strong to deliver the customer requirements as well as their future demands. Customer demands of ease management, visibility of applications, and speedy provision of applications apart from hyper visor itself. This is where I see Microsoft seek truly into customer requirements and provide true support for their core business applications availability.

Recent customer onsite job I had to setup Exchange rollup 3 for the Exchange servers with fingers cross to fix some of the existing issues. Environment consists of 2 HUB/CAS in NLB mode and 2 MBX servers in DAG.

Previously I’ve already applied rollup 2 for all servers. During the rollup 3 setup to one of the HUB/CAS servers I’ve been thrown with an error of “The user who's currently logged on doesn't have sufficient permissions to install this package. You need at least Exchange Server Administrator permissions on the current computer to complete the task.”

Since I’ve used the same user account for the pervious machine rollup 3 update I know there is no permission issues for the account. To isolate the issue I tried running the update with logging enable by using the following command,

Exchange2010-KB2529939-v3-x64-en.msp /lxv* c:\Rollupdat3.log

Error log didn’t help much with the given details apart from pointing out ,” Exchange ADAccess service not being able to access AD” This can be easily fix by restarting the “Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology” service. No luck when ran the rollup.

Did some research on the net to see if I’m the only guy with this pain J According to the internet search I did, one of the fix that did work for me is,

1.       Stop the Exchange services, IIS Admin, WWW, Windows Search (Exchange) and WMI service.

2.       Restart the server and trying the setup again.

Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup 3 update can be obtained from here.

I was testing SCVMM with few host machines located in Domain environment and also in workgroup environment. After applying latest updates to the SCVMM I found out the host computers in the workgroup environment giving an error saying unable to update the SCVMM agent installed in those servers. Exact error is as follows,

“Error (10436) Virtual Machine Manager does not support updating an agent on a host that is in a non-trusted domain or on a perimeter network

Recommended Action
If the host is in a non-trusted domain, remove Xxxxhost01 from VMM in Hosts view of the VMM Administrator Console. Then use the Add Hosts Wizard to add the host and automatically install a new agent.
If the host is on a perimeter network, after you remove the host from VMM, you must manually uninstall the VMM agent from the host computer, install a new agent locally on the host, and then add the host to VMM.”

According to the recommended action when tried to remove the Remote agent from the host computer and removing from the SCVMM console didn’t work.

Found the the main problem is due to the SCVMM agent latest version is not exist in the CD but in the SCVMM machine itself. Located the path to the Remote agent path in CVMM console,

Took a copy of the amd64 folder to the host computer in the perimeter network and apply the agent. During this update process I didn’t remove the host computer from the SCVMM and found out it work without any problems. Didn’t had to reapply the security file either

Yesterday during monthly ITPro forum in Sri Lanka I’ve discuss the above mention topic. When Virtualization becomes commodity model in IT industry next concern would be security as  usual During this presentation I’ve discuss about the importance of properly implementing the HYPER-V server and how we can use the tools and utilities give to secure the environment. HYPER_V architecture has been analyzed in detail level to understand how the components work with each other and where attacks can occur.

During this presenation I’ve highlighted the risk of running the HYPER-V role in a GUI method and the advantage on Server CORE. How to use the AZ Man and other Microsoft security tools to tight the security around the HYPER-V host and protect the guest machines.

		ITPro-June2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

You can download the presentation file from here.

Recently I was engage in a project of migrating Exchange 2003 environment to Exchange 2010. User was having around 500 mailboxes on various capacities. During the mailbox migration process we found out the process was extremely slow. 500 MB mailbox transfer took more than 20 minutes!

Doing some search around found out this is a due a recent change on the Exchange 2010 SP1. The value of “MaxActiveMovesPerTargetMDB”  was change from 5 to 2. This means only 2 mailboxes can be migrated simultaneously Not a good idea and so far no idea why Microsoft did that. You can edit this value in “MSExchangeMailboxReplication.exe.config” to 5 from 2.

Open the above mention file from a notepad and locate the entry of MaxActiveMovesPerTargetMDB and change the value.

Once you do that you have to restart the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service in HUB CAS servers. Try doing the Mailbox moving and you’ll find the difference.

Note: This information specifically given “AS IS” there is no such documentation found in official in Microsoft web site.

Microsoft recently announced a remediation process for once of the vulnerability found in HYPER-V. The identified vulnerability s per Microsoft words as follows,

“vulnerability could allow denial of service if a specially crafted packet is sent to the VMBus by an authenticated user in one of the guest virtual machines hosted by the Hyper-V server. An attacker must have valid logon credentials and be able to send specially crafted content from a guest virtual machine to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability could not be exploited remotely or by anonymous users.”

Out of the above I’ve highlighted the key things an end user need to give an attention about.

Patch has been already released and advised to apply he patch on the HYPER-V environment.

Word wide IP v6 day is 8th June. I got the invitation to conduct a session on Microsoft contribution towards IP v6. Event has been organized by “Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa and the Information
Technology & Communications Engineering Sectional Committee of the Institution of Engineers” wow that is a mouthful name But for short TechCert.

I’ve decided to talk about how Microsoft company has been contributing to the IP v6 and the new features we use in Windows 208 R2 and Windows 7 combined to make the world ready to use the IP v6 technology. During the event I wanted to highlight the feature of DirectAccess and how it contribute to people to make their connected life seamless.

Due to the limited time frame carrying out a live demo is not possible but managed to discuss the architecture of the Direct Access. Slide Deck can be accessed over here.

		IPv6 Day VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Microsoft announced few weeks back it will  provide support running Cent OS in HYPER-V. Cento OS is a popular Linux OS used by Enterprise companies and hosters.

Microsoft Open Source Community (Port 25) team has taken great initiation by providing their contribution on developing the relevant ICS for this OS.

With that addition Microsoft official support has been expand to 3 Linux flavors (Suse Linux, Red Hat and Cent OS)