Home - John's Microsoft Solutions Notepad

6/30/2008

Data protection manager 2007 supports Windows Server 2008, SQL 2008, and Tape Library Sharing

Great Tool for Enterprise Backup now supports the latest Microsoft platform.

The Windows Storage Solutions team that manages DPM 2007 is very excited to announce that the ‘Rollup Update’ for System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 is now available for download. The biggest new workload that DPM now has supported protection for is, of course, Windows Server 2008.

While DPM2007 has actually been protecting “Longhorn” since Beta 3, this update makes Windows Server 2008 a supported protect-able workload.

Specific new capabilities for Windows Server 2008 include:

Protect Windows Server 2008 systems, including those running Core
Protect Windows Server 2008 System State
Ability to run the DPM2007 Server on a Windows Server 2008 platform

Some of the other enhancements in the rollup update include:

Protection for SQL Server 2008
Protection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 clustered hosts
Tape Library Sharing - so that multiple DPM servers can share a single enterprise tape library silo

For more details on what is included in the DPM 2007 “Rollup Update” or in the upcoming Service Pack 1, please check out:

TechNet webcast on “What is coming next for DPM 2007” from April 23, 2008

The DPM 2007 Rollup Update is now available via Microsoft Update, if your DPM server has opt’ed in for updates … or it is downloadable from:

System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 - Rollup Update - x86
System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 - Rollup Update - x64

Posted at 1:31 PM by John Gilham | Category: Systems Center | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/29/2008

Getting UNDO functionality with Hyper-V Snapshots

http://blogs.technet.com/roblarson/archive/2008/05/15/getting-undo-functionality-with-hyper-v-snapshots.aspx

Snapshots are not the same as UNDO disks in Virtual Server 2005…go here to read a previous post of mine to learn about how they work.
That said, you get UNDO like functionality using snapshots…..with maybe a little more work.
In Virtual Server, when you wanted to use UNDO, you powered down your VM and enabled UNDO on the Virtual hard disk tab. Then after you power on the VM, when you powered it off you will be asked if you want to Save, Commit, or Discard your changes. Selecting Save kept the changes separate, Commit merged them into the original VHD and then started the UNDO process over again, and Discard threw away the changes and started over again. All of this used Differencing disks in the background.
In Hyper-V, UNDO is not an available option on the virtual disk menu anymore, you now have snapshots. If you want the ability to protect your VHD from any changes getting merged you need to do this.
Before you first power on a VM (the same point you would have enabled UNDO in Virtual Server), take a snapshot and call it something like UNDO DISCARD. This just makes your VHD effectively read only and all changes are written to a working AVHD file.
Power on your VM and work away. When you want to effectively “Turn OFF and Discard” all changes, then apply/revert to the UNDO DISCARD snapshot and it is all gone…start a new test scenario. Just remember that if you made any changes to the VM settings, they are also discarded.
By default all changes are saved to the working file, so you need to do nothing to get the SAVE feature.
If you want a COMMIT capability and want it permanent like it is with Virtual Server, then that takes a little more work. Once you create the UNDO DISCARD snapshot, there is no way to merge any changes back to the original VHD through the snapshot UI.
You can do the following though to get the COMMIT functionality

Power down the VM
Find the working avhd file
Copy it to CHILD.VHD
Backup up your original VHD for protection
Use the Edit disk option in Hyper-V MMC to edit the new CHILD.VHD and select Merge for the action in the wizard
Select to Merge to the parent
Wait for the merge to complete
Apply the UNDO DISCARD Snapshot (which throws away all the changes which you just merged from the copy and creates a new working avhd file that is the child of the original VHD)
Power on the VM and work away

Once again remember that if you had made any changes to the VM settings, that applying the UNDO DISCARD snapshot would have thrown them away…..other than that have fun!!

Robert Larson : Getting UNDO functionality with Hyper-V Snapshots

Posted at 2:49 AM by John Gilham | Category: Virtualization | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Communications and Collaboration: Create Powerful Connections with Groove and SharePoint

SharePoint® offers a robust and scalable content management framework and collaboration toolset with support for structured workflows. Groove™, in contrast, is a collaboration toolset that allows rapid workspace deployment with little or no IT overhead. With support for document collaboration, threaded discussions, and calendaring among its features, Groove provides the ideal framework for dynamic, secure, ad hoc collaboration. In short, most users will naturally end up using these products in different ways.
Moreover, the release of Groove 2007 adds built-in support for SharePoint integration using the SharePoint Files tool. This tool allows Groove workspaces to be synchronized with SharePoint document libraries and, as we will see, the built-in integration means you can easily make the most of both products. In fact, combining the flexibility and dynamic nature of Groove with the sophistication and power of SharePoint will yield significant benefits for many.
Groove and SharePoint Together
Today's IT world demands ever-increasing collaboration between organizations and their partners and vendors. However, the powerful collaboration solutions that are being implemented using products such as SharePoint tend to focus heavily on internal teams and the need to make information broadly available throughout an organization. In such cases, the challenges, both from an administrative and security perspective, of providing access to users external to an organization are often significant. In the face of such challenges, the goal becomes enabling users to reach out to external partners on an ad hoc basis.
The combination of Groove and SharePoint offers exactly that solution. SharePoint provides intra-organization collaboration, content search, and a workflow framework; adding Groove lets companies extend those capabilities to include easy inter-organization collaboration. With Groove, users can quickly set up collaboration workspaces that cross company boundaries. Furthermore, support for 192-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric keys ensures that the collaboration is secure. In fact, Groove security is built-in and always on, so users don't have to worry about configuring it.
The security architecture of Groove provides a high degree of protection for these workspaces and their contents, both while stored locally and during network transmission. The SharePoint Files tool allows this information to be bi-directionally synchronized with a SharePoint document library to ensure that the information is available centrally for easy internal access. Let's use a concrete example to see how this process works.
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Posted at 2:35 AM by John Gilham | Category: Sharepoint 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

OCS 2007 Is Not Supported For Virtualization

From the OCS Supportability Guide:

Virtualization is not supported for any server role in a production environment.

That was easy :)

BTW, The OCS Supportability guide is a great read to make sure your first UM project goes smoothly:

...high-level reference for supported Office Communications Server 2007 topologies and configurations. It is also intended to answer frequently asked questions. This document identifies supported topologies, configurations, and scenarios described in detail in the existing deployment and planning documentation.

Posted at 2:14 AM by John Gilham | Category: Office Communications 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Updated Exchange 2007 SP1 Management Pack for System Center - SCOM2007 and SCE

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1a83e112-8677-4e03-83c3-f1b7ebfc3a4b&displaylang=en&tm

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 management pack is designed to be used for monitoring Exchange 2007 events, collecting Exchange component-specific performance counters in one central location, and for raising alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically responding to critical events, this management pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage Exchange servers and identify issues before they become critical. The management pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, health monitoring, and centralized management.

More Details: Download details: Exchange 2007 MP for SC Ops Mgr 2007

Posted at 2:07 AM by John Gilham | Category: Systems Center | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Hyper-V Monitor Guest VM Toolbar Gadget for Windows Sidebar

Great little Vista Sidebar gadget for Hyper-V.

I've created a sidebar gadget so I can see what the Hyper-V server is doing from my workstation.
The gadget can list multiple servers at once and also support vmconnect when double clicking on a VM.

PS: The gadget uses WMI to connect to the server so the user need remote WMI access (Step 5) on the Hyper-V server.

More Info @> Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar

Posted at 2:02 AM by John Gilham | Category: Virtualization | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Hyper-V Performance Guidance and Best Practices

Latest version @> Hyper-V Performance FAQ

Q: What is the recommend configuration for performance testing?
A: Here are some simple steps:
1. Be sure to have the latest WS08 Hyper-V build – Hyper-V RC1 which is on Microsoft Downloads and Windows Update
2. Next you need to make sure you are running a “Supported OS” with the latest SP.

Operating System

Virtual Processor Limit

Windows Server 2008 64-bit

4

Windows Server 2003 32-bit

2

Windows Server 2008 32-bit

4

Windows Server 2003 64-bit

1

Windows Vista SP1 32-bit / 64bit

1

Windows XP SP3 32-bit / 64bit

1

Windows 2000 32bit

1

SUSE/RedHat LINUX

1

3. Make sure the guest and root OS have integration components installed (http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/2008/04/19/hyper-v-how-to-make-sure-you-are-getting-the-best-performance-when-doing-performance-comparisons.aspx **and** http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/2008/01/02/hyper-v-integration-components-and-enlightenments.aspx )
4. Make sure you are using the “Network Adapter” and not the “Legacy Network Adapter”. The legacy adapter has a lot of emulation which causes lots of CPU overhead.
5. Use passthrough disks attached to SCSI for the next performance. Next best is Fixed VHD attached to SCSI. To understand storage better see (http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/2007/10/13/what-windows-server-virtualization-aka-viridian-storage-is-best-for-you.aspx )
6. Follow these tips for avoiding pitfalls http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/2008/04/19/hyper-v-how-to-make-sure-you-are-getting-the-best-performance-when-doing-performance-comparisons.aspx
Q: How do I monitor performance?
A: First you need to understand that the clocks in the root and guest Virtual Machines may not be accurate see (http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/2008/03/20/hyper-v-clocks-lie.aspx ). Given an understanding of clocks you can see why we implemented the “Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor” performance counters (access using perfmon) which are not skewed by clock effects. There are other Hyper-V performance counters that are useful. See the following for more details (http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/tags/Hyper-V+Performance+Counters/default.aspx )
Q: Should I use passthrough or iSCSI attached to the guest for storage?
A: The decision depends on what features you need to expose to the guest. In the passthrough case the drive will show up without knowledge of the underlying LUN.
Educated guess: If you are looking for raw performance passthough will give you the best result.
Reason: When doing IO from the guest using passthough you traverse the guest storage stack + disk stack in the root. When doing iSCSI you traverse the storage + networking stack in the guest + root networking stack
Q: Is there a simple way to disable the hypervisor to run some baseline tests on the native system.
A: Yes. “bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off” and reboot the server. You should also consider changing the protocols on the root network device to re-enable IP and turn off the “Microsoft Virtual Network Switch Protocol”. See the following for more details (XXX – coming to my blog soon J). For starters turning off the Hypervisor should be enough for testing native performance.
To turn it back on do “bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype on” and reboot the server.
Q: Is there any common terminology used to talk about virtual machine configurations?
A: Yes - Internal to Microsoft we typically use the following;
· Native = System without the Hyper-V role. This means you have no virtual drivers, virtual switch, …
· Root = you have Hyper-V role installed and but are not using a virtual switch for networking.
· Guest = Guest Virtual Machine.
· 8p.child.2x1p or better 8p.child.2VMx1VP = A system with 8 logical processors / cores running 2 Virtual Machines (VM) each with 1 Virtual Processor (VP)
Q: Are there any services that should be stopped?
A: No If you are running Server Core which is the ideal root OS to use. Regardless of running server core vs server you should close the Hyper-V Management Console because it has a noticeable impact on CPU. If you want the details see http://blogs.msdn.com/tvoellm/archive/2008/04/19/hyper-v-how-to-make-sure-you-are-getting-the-best-performance-when-doing-performance-comparisons.aspx
Q: Is it ok run applications / processes in the root OS?
A: You should avoid running any Role / Feature or custom service in the root. If you have services you want to run put them in a guest VM. Running roles in the root can have a negative impact the guest VM’s. This is due to how the Hypervisor scheduler handles the root virtual processors.

Read the latest version @> ALL TOPICS PERFORMANCE : Hyper-V Performance FAQ

Posted at 1:46 AM by John Gilham | Category: Virtualization | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Exchange 2007 on Hyper-V Guidance

Looks like no Officially supported Exchange 2007 on Hyper-V until August 2008.

As we recently announced at Tech.Ed USA, Microsoft will be publishing a support statement with respect to Exchange Server on Hyper-V within 60 days of today.
Some of the more noteworthy bits of info from the session are:

Within 60 days of Hyper-V's RTM, the Exchange team will publish a detailed support statement for Hyper-V, and a TechNet article with best practices.
Customers should not deploy Exchange on Hyper-V until our support guidance is available.
Early results show that performance of Exchange 2007 on Hyper-V is quite good, and that it scales very well from 1-4 processors per VM.

In terms of best practices and requirements, the following guidance was released:

We're only supporting guests running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008.
We're only supporting fixed disks, and not dynamic disks.
Storage should be on spindles that are separate from the Guest operating system VHD physical storage.
Storage must be SCSI passthrough or iSCSI (with a preference of SCSI passthrough for queues, databases and log files).
All Exchange server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, will be supported.
There's a limit on VHD size of 2040 GB.

It was also mentioned that Hyper-V is a good fit when Exchange servers in branch offices cannot be consolidated to a central datacenter (for example, because of bandwidth or connectivity issues).
In terms of workload, not every workload is a candidate for virtualisation. For example, server roles such as Client Access and Hub Transport can be good candidates, but a more heavy hitter like the Mailbox role (which often uses all available resources on a physical server) might not be the best candidate for virtualising.

Posted at 1:39 AM by John Gilham | Category: Virtualization | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Slipstream Hyper-V using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT 2008)

Until the new media ships, here is a way to slipstream Hyper-v using the Microsoft Deployment Tool

John Howard posted a blog entry explaining how to inject the final Hyper-V update into a Windows Server 2008 WIM; read more about that at http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/26/deploying-windows-server-2008-with-slipstreamed-hyper-v-rtm-part-1.aspx. For those of you who are familiar with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, you probably know that there is an easier way for Lite Touch deployments. Here are the steps:

Download the Hyper-V update from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED. (Note that this is for x64 only, since Hyper-V is a 64-bit only feature.)
(Optional) Download the Hyper-V management tool updates that you may need (note that these require Windows Vista SP1, and no separate package is needed for Server 2008 x64 since the management tools are included in the update downloaded in step #1):
Windows Vista SP1 x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=88208468-0AD6-47DE-8580-085CBA42C0C2
Windows Vista SP1 x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BF909242-2125-4D06-A968-C8A3D75FF2AA
Windows Server 2008 x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6F69D661-5B91-4E5E-A6C0-210E629E1C42
Import all the downloaded updates into Deployment Workbench in the "OS Packages" node. (MDT 2008 will automatically extract the needed CAB files from the MSU files that you downloaded.)
Deploy an OS :-)

That's all there is to it: MDT 2008 will automatically inject the appropriate updates into Windows Vista SP1 (x86 or x64) and Windows Server 2008 (x86 or x64) as part of the OS deployment process, so they will be there from the first boot of the OS.
Now if you actually want to install the Hyper-V role, you can do this using the "Install Roles and Features" action. Just add it into your Windows Server 2008 task sequence, check the "Hyper-V" role, and it will be installed.
You'll have to wait for the Hyper-V updates to be available through Windows Update before you can do the same thing with ConfigMgr 2007, but fortunately you won't have to wait long: those updates will be published in the next couple of weeks.

Read the complete article @> Michael Niehaus' Windows and Office deployment ramblings : Automatically installing Hyper-V RTM with MDT 2008

Posted at 1:01 AM by John Gilham | Category: Virtualization | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Office 2007 Add-On Allows Users To Search For Commands on The Toolbar

Helpful tool when you can't find the command on Office 2007 new ribbon...

The Office Labs team has released a Search Commands add-on for Office 2007 (for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). Search Commands adds a new ribbon with a simple search textbox. Type part of the name of a command you're looking for, and the ribbon will show buttons for each of the matching results!
The results also integrate guided help, which are step-by-step automations of common processes in Office, helping you each step of the way.
Examples
Searching For "Color" in PowerPoint:

Searching for "Export" in Excel

Search Commands will even offer spelling correction suggestions for the command names you type: