If you’ve been reading my blog you must think I’m a miserable old sod.

Spring has been a bit of a washout so far.  It's been unusually cold and ... well ... wet.

We're coming up on a bank (national) holiday weekend and the sun is out.  It's actually warm outside.  Birds are singing and busy gathering food for their offspring.  I'm heading south for the weekend so go do some wildlife photography on the Saltee Islands tomorrow.  I'll be taking a walk as well to see if the Buzzard pair I found during the winter are nesting or not.  With any luck, they will be. But I can't approach them because (a) it isn't good for them and (b) it isn't legal so I'll be keeping my distance.

I'm 40 minutes away from finishing work for the week.  Despite what will be awful traffic I am looking forward to the drive.  The sun is out, it's warm, I'll have my window down to work on my trucker's tan and I'll have some good music up way too loud. I like it like this.  I hope it’s good where you are and that you enjoy the weekend.

Later!  Aidan.

EDIT #1:

That was a fun and full weekend.  I walked for miles and miles.  I spent a day on the cliffs of the Saltee Islands, stalked rabbits and pheasants and took loads of photos.

“The first part of this session is a detailed look at architectural changes to the Reporting Services 2008 product and how they might benefit your reports.

The second part of the session is a demo based walk through of the new Report Builder 2.0. Focusing on the flexibility of the Tablix Format and end user charting.

We will also be taking a sneak preview of some of the new map based reporting capabilities to be introduced in SQL 2008 R2 shortly.

Speaker: Bob Duffy

Bob Duffy is a 16 year veteran of database technologies having worked closely with many enterprise customers in Ireland and Europe around SQL Server, Business Intelligence and dot.net and chalked up over 250 successful projects. Bob is currently one of eighteen Microsoft Certified Database Architects Globally, is an active speaker for SQL Server and is on the working group for the new SQL 2008 “master” examination syllabus.

Date: 04 June 2009 19:00 - 21:00

Location: Imperial Hotel, South Mall, Cork

Register and learn more here”

Tim Berk brought our attention to a couple of hotfixes for SP2 on Windows 2008 that will be relevant if you are using MPIO (dual path attached storage) for Windows Server 2008 servers.

KB967752: A Windows Server 2008-based computer that is connected to a storage device over MPIO paths does not restart

• Consider the following scenario:
• You are running a Windows Server 2008-based computer that is connected to a storage device over some Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) paths.
• A Microsoft MPIO Device Specific Module is enabled for these MPIO paths.
• The storage device is configured as an iSCSI boot device or a Storage Area Network (SAN) boot device.
• You install and then uninstall Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2.
• You have installed hotfix 957316 on the Windows Server 2008-based computer.

In this scenario, the computer does not restart if the storage device is a boot device, or you lose access to the device if the device is a data volume.

KB957316: Disk I/O errors occur after you restore a failed MPIO path on a Windows Server 2008-based computer

Consider the following scenario:

• You are running a Windows Server 2008-based computer that is connected to a storage device over some Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) paths.
• A Microsoft MPIO Device Specific Module is enabled for these MPIO paths.
• A heavy load occurs on the storage device.
• One of the MPIO paths fails. Therefore, some logical unit numbers (LUNs) fail over to another MPIO path.
• You restore the failed MPIO path.
• The computer tries to access the storage device.

In this scenario, disk I/O errors occur. This problem is more likely to occur when there are many LUNs.

Booting from and storing data on MPIO attached storage is becoming more and more common, e.g. blade servers and SAN.  Make sure you are covered in these scenarios, especially if using something like WSUS or Configuration Manager to deploy service packs.

Credit: Tim Berk.

The WSUS team blogged about the RC program for WSUS SP2 on Connect.  Lots of new features, the important one being support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and easier setup with SQL 2008.

I’ve updated a post I did 10 months ago asking if you should use SCSI or IDE controllers in your Hyper-V VM’s.

HP released a support pack (8.16) that includes support for W2008 R2 beta.  The Support Pack includes all the drivers, management tools and management agents for optimal performance and manageability of HP Proliant servers.  I’ve seem sites that never use the Support Pack and they couldn’t manage their servers.  In fact, those sites tended to be pretty poor.  The software is free.  Heck, it’s part of the price of your server so use it!

“Windows Server 2008 R2 is being released in beta form by Microsoft. For HP customers who participate in the beta program for this product, download the white paper below for help on implementing the beta operating system on ProLiant servers. Official HP customer support for Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available when Microsoft releases the official version. 

• Implementing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta on HP servers
• ProLiant Support Pack 8.16 for Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta
• Implementing Microsoft(r) Windows(r) Server 2008 R2 pre-release build on HP servers”

Credit: Dan Taylor

I flashed over this headline this morning but didn’t read it.  I just read it on Scott Lowe’s blog and I’m stunned, but I shouldn’t be.  Basically, VMware aren’t allowing any competitors into their VMWorld conference.  Strangely, MS has always allowed VMware into TechEd.  Any ESX/Virtual Center user can clearly see ESX is geared mainly towards running Windows (even if it does have a larger OS support base than Hyper-V).

I’m pro-Microsoft so you can guess my reaction.  Heck, I liked ESX when I used it, I just prefer the manageability of Hyper-V when combined with VMM/OpsMgr, not to mention where things might go with Native VHD post-W2008 R2.

But when I read a post like the above from a pro-VMware (or at least neutral guy) like Scott Lowe then I’m sure VMware has gone too far.  But that shouldn’t really strike me as strange:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Come on VMware, grow up and start competing with your product.

Microsoft made a free ebook available for download on the partner website.

I got the below mail from MS.  They accidentally announced some wrong dates regarding Windows 7 pre-RTM dates.  Note that the beta build will start to auto shut down every two hours on July 1st of this year.  This is MS’s way to get you onto the RC build and eventually to buy the RTM build.

“Because you signed up to test the Windows 7 Beta, we recently sent you mail about the expiration dates for the Beta and Release Candidate. Unfortunately, we made a mistake.

We said the Beta would start shutting down every two hours on June 1, 2009. The correct date is July 1, 2009.

The rest of the dates in the mail were correct. Here’s a quick summary:

Version	Starts Shutting Down Every Two Hours	Expires
Beta	July 1, 2009	August 1, 2009
Release Candidate	March 1, 2010	June 1, 2010

 

We apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused.

Thanks again for helping us test Windows 7.”

“The Irish Software Show” is running in August 2009 from the 24th until the 28th.  There will also be an IT Pro stream, 2 or 3 tracks and maybe up to 20 sessions.  If you’re interested in presenting then contact Barry at IrishDev.  I spoke at his IMTC event last year and it was very professionally run and a great experience.

MS has posted the top support issues PSS faced when dealing with Hyper-V.  This was for the last quarter- what we in the normal world call Q1 2009 … what MS calls Q3 2009 (we’re in Q4 for them now).

As expected, some of the top issues are:

• People using the pre-RTM build that’s included on the W2008 media.  That was a dumb move by MS.  They should never have put pre-RTM code on there.  This isn’t 20-20 hindsight either – it was obvious to everyone at the time that I talked to that this would lead to issues.  At the very least, there should have been big screaming, red, flashing alarms declaring it to be pre-RTM.
• Lack of documentation.  I’ve mentioned this over and over before.  The TechNet library is incomplete.  There’s plenty of us out there trying to fill in the gaps but we’re facing a moving playing field with mixed messages coming from PSS and the Hyper-V team.
• Virtualisation/DEP not enabled in the BIOS: This is possible to do with a Core installation for the parent OS.  It’s also possible when the motherboard is replaced (as I discovered).
• Snapshots: Lots of issues there.  My advice is simple: don’t use them in production.

HP has published a guide on how to best deploy Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on their Blade servers and EVA SAN.  Similar to us, they’ve gone with boot from SAN.  This turns your host hardware into dumb appliances that can be replaced pretty easily … assuming you’ve used virtual connects to abstract the SAN WWN’s and NIC MAC addresses.  In this document HP has used 128GB RAM BL495’s and an EVA 8000.  You don’t need to go all out like that.  I found that there was a sweet spot sizing the RAM in the servers.  32GB seems pretty good right now.  Once you go to 64GB RAM kits the prices get exponentially outrageous and defeat the purpose of virtualisation.

Jeff Woolsey (head of virtualisation at MS) talks about processor compatibility mode and 64 logical processor support in Hyper-V R2 in this 5 minute video interview.

He talks about Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 as being a money saver.  On the face of it, yes.  Really though, when you look at Enterprise or Datacenter editions they work out being free or even better!  And they are priced even better if you fall into the educational price bracket from MS. 

I see Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 being fine in a few scenarios:

• VDI where free VM server licenses won’t get used
• Linux VM hosting where those free VM Windows Server licenses again don’t matter
• Some EBS or SBS scenarios,e.g. when you want to virtualise the Standard editions.

I’ve read about this before but it’s hard to comprehend what it really is until you’ve actually done something with it.  Let’s go back a step because this is more than just the next version of Virtual PC.

When Vista hit the ground there was an immediate problem for domestic and business users.  Lots of applications that worked on XP did not work on Vista.  This led to people rejecting Vista.  For drivers there was nothing that could be done.  For applications we were told to look at “shims” in the application compatibility toolkit or App-V (then SoftGrid).  I resorted to setting up a Virtual PC 2007 virtual machine running XP for those situations.  I’ve even recently used it so I could use IE7 on some sites that IE* in compatibility mode wouldn’t work with.  However, application compatibility engineering is a lot of work and not necessarily stable.  Traditional VM’s wil confuse the typical office worker.  Some IT pro’s will guffaw at that but trust me … my #1 rule in IT is “users are stupid”.  It has served me well over the years.

BTW: I rencetly found some old NetGear 108 Mbps Wireless PCI WG311T wifi NIC’s that I could not get Vista drivers for work fine on Windows 7. 

With the RC release of WIndows 7 we are getting a beta for:

• Virtual PC 7 (I guess that’s the name!): An updated version of Virtual PC that runs on x86 and x65 versions of Windows 7 as long as virtualisation assistance is turned on in the BIOS.
• XP Mode: A pre-built virtual machine running XP SP3.

You can run these legally on Windows 7 Business, Ultimate and Enterprise editions only.

The idea here is that you run an XP SP3 VM on your Windows 7 desktop.  Most of your applications run on Windows 7.  The VM will run behind the scenes.  Administrators can install legacy applications in the VM.  Any installed applications will appear on the Windows 7 Start Menu.  You can run those legacy applications from Windows 7 without even seeing the XP VM.  The applications are essentially published to the Windows 7 installation, i.e. when they run they are visible in a seamless Window, like with Citrix or TermSvcs RemoteApp.

Let’s have a quick look.

I’ve installed Virtual PC. 

Clicking on Virtual Machines in the Start Menu brings you into the VM’s folder under your profile.

Notice that you can see the XM Mode VM I’ve installed?

That install drops a VHD into Program Files:

We’ll go back to the VM’s folder above.  You can right-click on a VM to edit the properties of a non-running VM.

That should all look familiar.  Bad news here: we still are stuck with undo disks instead of snapshots.  The serious demo/lab community will still favour VMware Workstation over Virtual PC 7 because of this.  No, Hyper-V will not do them because they are usually working on desktops or laptops that serve other roles.

Above is where the magic happens.  Any installed applications in the VM will be published to the host Windows 7 operating system.  I fired up XP from the start menu, logged in as usual and downloaded/installed WinZip. 

I then shut down the VM, making it disappear from view.

Here’s the shortcut to start WinZip in the Windows 7 (host OS) start menu.  I can click on that.  The first time I do, there will be a slight delay to start up the underlying XP VM which remains invisible.  I do get a notice telling me what’s happening.

XP boots up behind the scenes and then WinZip launches.  It’s running in the XP VM but appears like it’s running on Windows 7.

I must say the wallpapers included in Windows 7 RC are 100% better photos than those in the beta release.

It’s not 100% seamless though.  You still have to use your brain.

The user can’t simply navigate to the C: drive on the host OS like they would with a normally installed application.  You have to treat this like a TermSvcs application with remapped local drives.

This brings me onto my next point: administration and architecture.  You will probably need to join these VM’s to your domain to allow seamless access to network resources.  I’d strongly recommend using as much folder redirection as possible.  Avoid allowing roaming profiles mix between XP and Windows 7.

I suspect the MDOP tool, Med-V, is aimed at this.  I haven’t really looked into it.  Why?  I’ll probably never work in an environment where there is Software Assurance and a budget for additional purchases per machine like MDOP.

I see XP Mode as being a stop-gap, a bridge, to get your applications from XP onto Windows 7.  It’s not meant to be the forever-and-ever solution.  Administratively, it would be a nightmare.  Consider having a Windows 9 desktop running XP Mode and Windows 7 Mode virtual machines!!!

It’s a cool solution though and it will help out a lot of businesses in getting onto a newer platform.

And you’re not restricted to running just the XP Mode.  You can go ahead can create other VM’s in the Virtual Machines folder by clicking on <Create Virtual Machine>.

The default location is in the profile unfortunately.  I don’t like that.  I prefer to store them in C:\Virtual Machines.

You can allocate RAM (pre allocated at start up) and bridge the network in the wizard.

The advanced disk options in the wizard gives you the 3 normal VHD options we’re used to from Hyper-V.  Pass through disks aren’t an option.

For more advanced configuration you should edit the settings of the VM after creating it, e.g. keyboard capture, NIC numbers and configurations, hibernate/shutdown as the close option, etc.

Edit #1:

I've just come out of a meeting where I learned that Virtual PC 7 and hence XP Mode will not be available for OEM installations of Windows 7.  You will only be able to (legally?) install it on volume licensed editions of Business/Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

Jose Barreto posted a few weeks ago about Windows Storage Server 2008 and the MS iSCSI software target being available on TechNet and MSDN.  I can’t say I remember it being available like this but I could be wrong.  Normally this was OEM only.  A few of us were lucky enough to get the iSCSI bits directly from contacts in MS for testing and blogging purposes.

With this OS, you can create a storage server that can give you an economic shared storage solution for testing clustered services, e.g. SQL or even Hyper-V.

Credit: Tim Berk

Before I joined the company I work for, they’d bought some IBM servers and DAS storage units.  These were built up to host a application that is clustered to the point where we can lose 66% of the infrastructure but still be 100% operational with no loss in performance.

A little while ago, one of those DAS units went offline.  All the disks appeared offline.  I suspected either a dead backplane, SCSI cable or controller card in the attached server.  One of the engineers at work open a support case with IBM.  You see, we paid for that 4 hour on-site support contract so we expected to have that unit back online by the end of the day.  I should have learned from my previous experience with IBM last year where it took a week to get a replacement disk sent out to us.

22 days after we opened the call, we finally got an engineer on-site.  The SCSI card had failed.  Heck, we were even told that the IBM SCSI cards “sometimes lose their configuration”.  WHAT THE F**K????????  I’m sorry, but in 16 years of working with servers from Amdahl, Fujitsu and HP I’ve never had that happen.  Never.  The way the guy said this to me made it sound like a “fait du compli”.  How in the H-E-Double_Hockey_Sticks (enough swearing in this post so far) does this sound any way acceptable that a critical piece of mission critical hardware could be allowed to fail in this tolerated manner.

Luckily we do keep triplicate copies of all data on independent stores so there was zero rick of data loss.

22 days after we called on our “4 hour on site” contract an engineer finally came out to resolve the issue.  22 days.  22 DAYS!  Now that’s some fantastic support from Big Blue (can you smell the sarcasm?). 

It’s clear to me.  IBM sucks.  The hardware sucks.  Their support sucks.  I’ve called on their support twice in a year and both times they sucked.

I know of one company that recently had an awful experience with the IBM S series blade chassis.  Networking didn’t work.  Someone came out to try fix it and couldn’t.  The chassis was replaced and it still didn’t work.  And IBM like to make comments about the very simple HP blade chassis backplane because it has no intelligence.  At least it has fewer parts to break and works reliably.

I’m amending my advice for buying IT products.  It generally came in the form of “never buy software in yellow boxes”.  My new piece of advice: “Never buy from a company that made typewriters”.  I’ve been using HP for 5 years now and I’ve never had an experience like the one I’ve had from IBM.

Michale Niehaus has reported that Dell is to make it much easier to deploy images using MS imaging tools to Dell hardware.  They’ll provide a single CAB file that you can import into your driver repository.  No more testing and no more black magic to extract dodgy VGA drivers from executables, etc.

Come on HP, you can’t let them beat you on this one!  And IBM … ah I don’t care; IBM support sucks so I don’t even care.

Using this tool you can remotely manage your IIS 7 (W2008) and IIS 7.5 (W2008 R2) servers from your desktop, running either XP, Vista or Windows 7.

I’ve just been updating the blog and I noticed that Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista SP2 has been released to manufacturing.  Yes, it’s the same service pack for both platforms.  That’s why W2008 RTM was actually SP1 to match up with Vista.  The following downloads are available:

• 5 Language for x86 DVD ISO
• 5 language for x64
• 5 language for x86
• 5 language for Itanium

I’m guessing more ISO’s will be released but the links haven’t been posted yet.

Some resources have been posted:

• Things to know about SP2
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about SP2

Release Notes, Hot fixes and Security Updates:

• Release Notes for Windows Server 2008 SP2
• Release Notes for Windows Vista SP2
• Hot Fixes and Security Updates in Windows Server 2008 SP2/Windows Vista SP2

Evaluate:

• Notable Changes in Windows Server 2008 SP2/Windows Vista SP2

Deploy:

• Deployment Guide for Windows Server 2008 SP2
• Deployment Guide for Windows Vista SP2

SP2 Support

• Get support on SP2 in the TechNet Forums

Get Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Resources

• Download Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool
• Windows Operating System Service Pack Blocker Toolkit: Frequently Asked Questions

The scouts say something about preparation.  I can’t remember what it was but the idea is that it’s better to have done the work to be prepared for a disaster rather than save some time and then get bit*h-slapped by the disaster.  For example, what do you do when something nasty happens to your Active Directory Forest?  Microsoft posted a guide on this.

I can’t recommend having a lab for your production network enough.  Get yourself a TechNet account for this.  Set up a single server running something like Hyper-V and create an internal network that matches your production network (or networks).  Do a P2V of things like some of your DC’s and other critical systems.  This gives you an identical copy of your production system.   You may need to do an AD metadata cleanup to remove the DC’s you don’t P2V.  You can easily use it for test and development from then on.

I used to do that in the past.  I spent 80% of my time on the test systems.  For example, when redesigning our AD delegation, I scripted it all using DSACLS.  I tested it over and over.  When we were ready for production I simply ran the scripts on the production network.  Days of work on the test system and minutes of work on the production network with predictable results.  We did the same with GPO work and SMS 2003 software deployment.

I’d definitely recommend you do this with processes such as AD disaster recovery testing and for testing backup/recovery.