Dario IT Solutions Blog

Hi guys,

We held two open houses this week, one on February 22nd at MediaTech Haifa and the other on February 24th at Microsoft Raanana.

I would like to thank the large number of people who attended, it was great hearing your comments and questions.

Attached below are all the PowerPoint decks from the events:

 

I’ve summarized several notes about Hyper-V and VMM. It may be useful for you to take it into account when planning or handling Hyper-V platforms.

1. Enabling NLB on a VM
Follow this procedure in case you need to enable NLB on a VM running under Hyper-V 2008. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953828
Note that when your VM is running under Hyper-V 2008 R2, you will no longer need to specify a certain MAC. You will only need to check the option to “Enable MAC spoofing”.
Follow this link for detailed steps: http://robwhitehouse.com/virtualisation/enable-nlb-in-a-hyper-v-guest/

2. Max CPUs per VM
This Technet article shows the max number of allowed CPUs per VMs : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794868(WS.10).aspx

3. Disk alignment
Set the disk alignment on two levels:

1. On the storage level. Set the alignment of the LUN so that the disk that the Host OS sees will see blocks the same as you storage device.
   Follow this link for best practices for Hyper-V on NetAPP : http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-hyperv-best-practices-0911.html
   Follow this direct link for the complete document, where you will find additional information regarding disk alignment : http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3702.pdf
2. Within the VHD. After aligning the partition on the LUN on the Host server, you should also align the partition that exists within the VHD file. The above link to the NetAPP documentation shows this procedure as well. You should notice, though, these point:

i. 2008 R2 allows you to mount a VHD to the host (without booting it to a VM). This allows you to create / change / align partitions from the host itself, before creating the VM.

ii. Aligning the VHD is only relevant for fixed virtual disks. Alignment of Incremental or dynamic disks won’t last, due to the nature of the file.

4. IDE / SCSI
Your boot disk has to be connected to an IDE controller on the VM (SCSI controller is a synthetic device http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.10.hyperv.aspx?pr=blog ). Connect all Other drives to a SCSI controller for better performance.controller.

5. Pass Through Disks
For best application disk performance, use Pass-Through disks. Pass-Through disks will give the VM direct access to a physical drive. For more information on this feature: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768521(BTS.10).aspx

6. Moving VMs from 2008 to 2008 R2
After moving VMs from a Server 2008 to Server 2008 R2 be sure to install the integration services again.

7. General Host / VM Performance
Follow this link for explanation about measuring basic Memory / CPU / Disk performance: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.08.pulse.aspx?pr=blog . Pay special attention to the disk monitoring. It is very likely that you’ve placed several disk intensive VMs on the same LUN.

8. Disconnect ISO files
When working on a Hyper-V cluster, make sure that you disconnect any ISO file from a VM when you’re done using it. Otherwise, when moving or live migrating your VM, it may fail because it wouldn’t find the ISO to connect to on the other node.

9. What’s new in VMM 2008 R2
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/virtualmachinemanager/en/us/whats-new-r2.aspx

10. Disk size planning
When planning the size of the disk holding the VM’s VHDs, make sure that you have enough free space to save also the VM’s snapshots and entire memory. When Saving / Moving or Live Migrating the VM, the VM’s entire memory content is saved to disk.

I wanted to thank the large number of attendees at our open house yesterday. It was a real pleasure for us to spend a morning with you, talk a little about technology but more importantly to laugh and exchange views! the mood was up and we really enjoyed it

I would also like to thank the talented Kobi Akiva, Asaf Nakash & Udi Leutashi for their presentations, the feedback they got from the audience was simply great.

One last thank to Gur Proper, Microsoft Israel’s Windows Server Marketing Manager for organizing this whole event!

And lastly, due to the fact the event registration closed within 2 days and a lot of people were not able to attend, we will held another Open House on October 29th. we will be happy to see any of you that couldn’t attend yesterday.

 

 

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized data center, enabling increased physical server utilization, centralized management of virtual machine infrastructure, and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator, delegated administrator, and authorized end users. VMM 2008 can manage hosts that are running Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, and VMware ESX through VirtualCenter Server.

Recently, Windows Server 2008 released an R2 version that included significant feature improvements to Hyper-V. VMM 2008 R2 leverages these new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008. This topic provides an overview of the new features that are included in VMM 2008 R2.

 

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Host Management

With VMM 2008 R2, you can create and manage virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts. When you add a host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 and that does not have Hyper-V enabled, VMM 2008 R2 automatically enables the Hyper-V role on the host.

VMM 2008 R2 supports the following new features of Windows Server 2008 R2:

• Live migration between Windows Server 2008 R2 clustered hosts. With live migration, you can migrate a virtual machine from one node of a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to another node in the same cluster without any downtime. Because the virtual machine does not experience any downtime, the move is completely transparent to the users that are connected to the virtual machine.

• Network optimization detection during virtual machine placement. VMM 2008 R2 supports both Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney, which are Windows Server 2008 R2 features that improve network performance for virtual machines.

• Network adapters that support the VMQ feature are able to create a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter and then connect that queue directly to the virtual machine’s memory. This connection routes packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine, bypassing much of the processing in the virtualization stack.

• Network adapters that support the TCP Chimney feature are able to offload the processing of network traffic from the networking stack. Both of these features increase network performance and reduce CPU utilization.

• Hot addition and removal of virtual hard disks (VHDs). In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V allows users to add and remove VHDs from a virtual machine while it is running.

Enhanced Support for Shared Storage and SAN Transfers

VMM 2008 R2 provides the following enhancements:

Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) Support

VMM 2008 R2 supports the Windows Server 2008 R2 clustered shared volume (CSV) feature. CSV enables all hosts on a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to concurrently access virtual machine files on a single shared logical unit number (LUN). Because all nodes on the cluster can access a single shared LUN, virtual machines have complete transparency with respect to which nodes actually own a LUN. This enables live migration of virtual machines within the cluster because all nodes in the cluster can access any LUN.

Support for Sanbolic Clustered File System

VMM 2008 R2 supports the Sanbolic Clustered File System (CFS), a third-party shared volume solution for quick migration on hosts running Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, and live migration on hosts running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

Support for Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows

VMM 2008 R2 supports Veritas Storage Foundation 5.1 for Windows (SFW), an online storage management solution for creating virtual storage devices from physical disks and arrays. Volumes created as part of a cluster resource group by using SFW are detected by VMM 2008 R2 and can be selected during virtual machine placement or migration. An SFW volume is limited to one virtual machine.

SAN Migration into and out of Clustered Hosts

VMM 2008 R2 supports the use of SAN transfers to migrate virtual machines and highly available virtual machines into and out of a cluster. When you migrate a virtual machine into a cluster by using a SAN transfer, VMM checks all nodes in the cluster to ensure that each node can see the LUN and automatically creates a cluster disk resource for the LUN. Even though VMM automatically configures the cluster disk resource, it does not validate it. You must use the Validate a Configuration Wizard in Failover Cluster Management to validate the newly created cluster disk resource. To migrate a virtual machine out of a cluster, the virtual machine must be on a dedicated LUN that is not using CSV.

Expanded Support for iSCSI SANs

VMM 2008 supports SAN transfers of virtual machines that use initiator-based iSCSI target connections, which requires one iSCSI target for every LUN. VMM 2008 R2 adds support for LUN masking, which allows multiple LUNs per iSCSI target and expands VMM support for iSCSI SAN vendors.

 

Quick Storage Migration

For a Windows Server 2008 R2 host or a Storage VMotion-capable host, you can migrate a running virtual machine’s files to a different storage location on the same host with minimal or no service outage. If you use a wizard to migrate a virtual machine to a host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 and you use a network transfer, VMM 2008 R2 now gives you the option to specify separate storage locations for each virtual hard disk (.vhd) file for the virtual machine. 

 

Maintenance Mode for Hosts

In VMM 2008 R2, you can start maintenance mode for a Windows-based host anytime you need to perform maintenance tasks on the host, such as applying updates or replacing a physical component.

When you start maintenance mode on a host in a Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster with highly available virtual machines, you can do one of the following:

• If the option is available, use live migration to evacuate all virtual machines to other hosts on the same cluster. If the migration fails for any virtual machine on the host, maintenance mode is not started on that host and VMM does not migrate back the virtual machines that have already migrated.

• Place all virtual machines on the host into a saved state.

When you start maintenance mode on a stand-alone Windows-based host, on a host in a Windows Server 2008 cluster, or on a Windows Server 2008 R2 host that has any non-highly available virtual machines, VMM automatically places all virtual machines into a saved state.

Important

When VMM places virtual machines into a saved state, any users of the virtual machines will experience a loss of service.

When you start maintenance mode on any host, VMM automatically does the following:

• Blocks virtual machine creation operations on the host.

• Excludes the host from the host ratings during placement.

• Displays a host status of In Maintenance Mode in Host view of the VMM Administrator Console.

When you stop maintenance mode on a host, VMM allows virtual machine creation operations on the host, includes the host in the host ratings during placement, and displays a host status of OK in Host view of the VMM Administrator Console. However, VMM does not automatically do a live migration to move highly available virtual machines back onto the host in a Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster, and it does not restart any of the virtual machines on the host.

To start or stop maintenance mode, in Host view of the VMM Administrator Console, right-click a host, and then click the appropriate command.

 

Support for VMware Port Groups for Virtual Switches

VMM uses the network location and tag specified for the virtual network adapter in the hardware configuration to determine the network availability of a virtual machine on a host. In VMM 2008 R2, if you are deploying the virtual machine to a VMware ESX Server host, you can select from the VMware port groups that are available for virtual switches.

 

Support for Virtual Machine Permissions Assigned in Hyper-V

In VMM 2008 R2, VMM preserves changes made to role definitions or role memberships in the root scope of the Hyper-V authorization store. All changes to any other scope are overwritten every half hour by the VMM user role refresher. This differs from user role processing in VMM 2008. In VMM 2008, VMM determines access to virtual machines, hosts, and resources based solely on the rights and permissions associated with VMM user roles. VMM 2008 does not make any changes to Hyper-V role definitions and role memberships; it simply ignores the Hyper-V authorization store while the hosts and virtual machines are under its management. 

For more information about user roles and scopes, see Role-Based Security in VMM (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=119337).

You can now download VMM 2008 R2 Beta from https://connect.microsoft.com.

I’ve already tested it with Live Migration and it work great! (we had a demonstration for it at a Municipality Convention in Jerusalem recently) so take the time to play with it a little.

What’s New in VMM 2008 R2 Beta

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for managing virtualized infrastructure running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMware ESX through Virtual Center.  Recently, Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta was released which included significant feature improvements to Hyper-V-the underlying hypervisor platform.  A corresponding beta version of VMM R2 – the next version of VMM – is due for release shortly.  VMM R2 Beta  leverages the new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008. This overview highlights the most important new and significantly enhanced features in the VMM 2008 R2 Beta:

Support for new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

• Live Migration: – Seen through the VMM console, this enables administrators to move virtual machines from one machine in a virtual host cluster to another with no downtime. This allows administrators greater flexibility in responding to planned or unplanned downtime, provides higher machine availability and more robust fault tolerance within virtualized infrastructure. The basic requirements for Live Migration are that all hosts must be part of a cluster and host processors must be from the same manufacturer. Additionally all hosts in the cluster must have access to shared storage. No changes are required to existing virtual machines, network, or storage devices in moving from Quick Migration to Live Migration other than upgrading to beta versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2.
• Hot addition/removal of VHDs: Allows the addition and removal of new virtual hard disks (VHDs) on a running virtual machine. This enables storage growth in virtual machines without downtime. Additionally, ‘live" VHD management allows administrators to take advantage of additional backup scenarios and readily use mission critical and storage-intense applications (eg: SQL Server and Exchange).
• New optimized networking technologies: VMM 2008 R2 Beta supports two new networking technologies – Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney – providing increased network performance while demanding less CPU burden. NICS that support VMQ, create a unique virtual network queue for each virtual machine on a host that can pass network packets directly from the hypervisor to virtual machine. This speeds throughput as it bypasses much of the processing normally required by the virtualization stack. With TCP Chimney, TCP/IP traffic can be offloaded to a physical NIC on the host computer reducing CPU load and improving network performance.

Enhanced storage and cluster support

• Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV): Provides a single, consistent storage space that allows virtual hosts in a cluster to concurrently access virtual machine files on a single shared logical unit number (LUN). CSV eliminates the previous one LUN per virtual machine restriction and coordinates the use of storage with much greater efficiency and higher performance. CSV enables the Live Migration of virtual machines in and out of the shared LUN without impacting other virtual machines. Enabling CSV on failover clusters is straightforward and easy to monitor through the VMM administrator’s console; many storage configuration complexities prior to CSV have been eliminated.
• SAN migration into and out of clustered hosts: This allows virtual machines to migrate into and out of clustered hosts using a SAN transfer, which automatically configures the cluster nodes to recognize and support the new workload.
• Expanded Support for iSCSI SANs: Previously, only one LUN could be bound to a single iSCSI target whereas now — with VMM 2008 R2 Beta — multiple LUNS can be mapped to a single iSCSI target. This provides broader industry support for iSCSI SANs allowing customers more flexibility in choosing storage providers and iSCSI SAN options.

Streamlined process for managing host upgrades:

• Maintenance Mode: Allows administrators to apply updates or perform maintenance on a host server by safely evacuating all virtual machines to other hosts on a cluster using Live Migration or putting those workloads into a saved state to be safely reactivated when maintenance or upgrades are complete. Maintenance mode is enabled for all supported hypervisor platforms on Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta.

Other VMM 2008 R2 Beta enhancements

• Support of disjoint domains: Reduces the complexity of reconciling host servers with differing domain names in Active Directory and DNS. In these situations, VMM 2008 R2 Beta automatically creates a custom service principal name (SPN) configured in both AD and DNS allowing for successful authentication.
• Use of defined port groups with VMware Virtual Center: On installation, VMM 2008 R2 Beta will present available port groups for VMM’s use with VMware Virtual Center thus allowing administrators to maintain control over which port groups are used.

Management of Virtual Machines is not just about managing the VM’s themselves but also the workloads that run in them. The key to managing the entire IT infrastructure is the integration of both physical and virtual machine management into a single set of tools.

I’ll be giving a presentation on managing a virtual datacenter with SCOM, SCCM, DPM and VMM at a Microsoft Open House that will be held on February 3rd at Microsoft Israel.

The main point in my presentation is that when looking at the data center (or IT environment) as a whole, tools like Systems Center Operations Manger and Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager (that has integration built into them from the grounds up) really stand out in the crowd in comparison to tools that are built for a specific environment (like managing only virtual machines).

One of the demonstrations will involve Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) which is one of VMM’s top features, as it allows administrators to automate practically any type of response to a given condition, including responding to application, virtualization, system, storage, or network events.

I’ll love to get your comments and suggestions regarding the planned presentation and of course to see you at the event

Following is the link with all the info about the Open House, including registration to the event:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032401717&culture=he-IL

Microsoft has just announced the availability of Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer 2008 (VMMCA). Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) is a diagnostic tool that you can use to evaluate important configuration settings for computers that either are serving or might serve Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) roles or other VMM functions.

To download VMMCA 2008 -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=02d83950-c03d-454e-803b-96d1c1d5be24&displaylang=en

I had the opportunity today (16.9.08) to participate in Microsoft�s getVIRTUALnow event, and to present the session “Physical and Virtual Server Management”

I presented my take on data center management, which involves automating management tasks in response to system\application states.

It was impressive to see the number of vendors that were present in the event. Microsoft seem to be quick in building the required ecosystem of partners that will push it’s Virtualization offerings greatly in my opinion.

The main point in my presentation was that when looking at the data center (or IT environment) as a whole, tools like Systems Center Operations Manger and Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager (that has integration built into them from the grounds up) really stand out in the crowd in comparison to tools that are built for a specific environment (like managing only virtual machines).

One of the demonstrations involved Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) which is one of VMM�s top features, as it allows administrators to automate practically any type of response to a given condition, including responding to application, virtualization, system, storage, or network events.

For more demonstrations, take a look at Liran’s post – “Get Virtual Now with Hyper-V Technology“.

Also, You are more then invited to check out a bunch of pictures we took at the event – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=55996&id=15415483905&ref=mf

Come & visit our booth at the “Get Virtual Now” conference at Avenue Airport City.

Amit Gatenyo will deliver a lecture about the advantages of Hyper-V for you organization

with emphasis on management.

At our booth you can see the Hyper-V technology in action via our presentations, and

learn more about how Dario IT Solutions can assist your organization’s IT needs.

Hyper-V Capabilities Demo 

 

Management of Virtual Machines is not just about managing the VM’s themselves but also the workloads that run in them. The key to managing the entire IT infrastructure is the integration of both physical and virtual machine management into a single set of tools.

I’ll be giving a presentation on the subject tomorrow (16/9/08) at the Microsoft getVIRTUALnow convention that will be held in Airport City, Israel.

In this session I will give an overview & demo of real-world costumer implementation who uses OpsManager 2007 to locate service disruption and then utilize Hyper-V in order to dynamically create additional servers, add them to clusters and automatically direct users to use them.

This session will also demonstrate the concepts and benefits behind the integration of Physical and Virtual Management, along with how the System Center family of products provide that capability to the IT administrator.

If you are interested in learning how to push your IT environment to new automation heights, this session is an absolute must.

For more details, you can view the whole presentation here (with some Screenshots from the demo):