Microsoft has just released BIIS for W2008:

"The Branch Infrastructure Implementation Solution provides guidance to design and implement Microsoft’s branch infrastructure solution. This solution, previously known as the Branch Office Infrastructure Solution, has been updated to support the features and functionality in Windows Server 2008 that support branch infrastructure.

Windows Server 2008 includes several enhancements to the base operating system plus powerful new functionalities that make it valuable in a branch office environment. These include:

• Mitigated Security Risks: The Read-Only Domain Controller is a powerful new feature that enables organizations provide their remote branch office with local authentication servers, without having to increase security exposure to their Domain Database. The RoDC also provides a read-only copy of the DNS and receives uni-directional updates from the Central Office DataCentre. BitLocker technology provides hardware-based encryption for data on branch office server. The Server Core installation option helps significantly decrease the servers’ surface area of exposure and management overheads by reducing the operating system footprint.
• Improved Network Performance: Windows Server 2008 offers several new or improved network technologies that will improve the efficiency of WAN communications. The new TCPIP Stack and the Server Message Block (SMB 2.0) is redesigned for networking environments especially when connecting branch offices. The Distributed File System Replication service (DFSR) is a multi-master replication engine that increases data availability and gives users in remote sites fast, reliable access to files
• Improved Deployment and Administration: New management tools like the Server Manager Console provide a single, unified console for managing a server's configuration and system information, displaying server status, identifying problems with server role configuration, and managing all roles installed on the server.

BIIS provides an understanding of the complex issues that affect branch infrastructure planning and design. This solution was designed using a modular approach that will support future releases and add-on guides to support core as well as extended branch infrastructure services. The service guides that are available with this release focus specifically on key Windows Server 2008 role services. Future releases will present a selection of “extended” services to detail branch infrastructure focused on solutions for roles and products such as Hyper-V, System Center Configuration Manager, and Forefront Client Security. This guidance helps IT Service designers and architects minimize the branch office design and implementation costs and provide the most efficient and effective management possible, while still providing the desired user experience for staff in branch offices."

A good while back, I mentioned an organisation that allowed companies and individuals to donate old or unwanted computers to charity - they'd be refurbished and sent off to a worthy cause.

Microsoft Ireland has mentioned a program in their blog today.  Anyone in the Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher program will take an old machine, refurbish it, stick Microsoft software on it and give it to a school, charity or community program.  The list of Irish operators is here and the International directory is here.  Watch out though; some of them are commercial operations, some are not-for-profit and some are charities.

This way you can have:

• A genuinely environmentally friendly program for getting rid of your unwanted hardware - we all suspect that recycled computers just end up in a landfill in China or India anyway!
• You get good marketing material.
• You might be eligible for tax breaks - I'm not an accountant so consult an expert on that.
• Someone worthy who needs a PC will get one.

If you're worried about data security then wipe it securely using something free like DBAN which will overwrite that data numerous times with junk data.  They also have a commercial product for regulatory compliance.

Possibly the biggest budget black hole in the IT world, SAP, have announced that they now support Hyper-V as a platform.  You can now save money by virtualising on Hyper-V so that you can give that money to the plethora of SAP consultants on your site ;-)

I wonder if Oracle will respond to this by supporting their products on Hyper-V - or any other non-Oracle virtual platform?

Credit: VolkerW.

• SQL 2008 is supported.  This requires 2 hotfixes.
• Hyper-V is supported as a VM platform for site systems.
• Windows Mobile 6.1 is supported.
• Application Compatiibility Toolkit 5.0.3 is supported.
• .NET 3.5 SP1 is supported for the admin MMC and Desired Configuration Management.

I just deployed the HP Blade System Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 (what a mouth full!).  It was relatively easy.  I'm assuming you've already added the Proliant Server management pack.

• Get the IP address of each of the blade chassis' you have.
• Set up a "user" account for OpsMgr and note the password.
• Configure SNMP alerts to your OpsMgr server and set up a read string for the OpsMgr Server.
• Download and install the exe from HP.
• Start the BladeSystem monitor and add your chassis in there using your chassis IP address and OpsMgr user account/password.
• Add the blade management pack from the HP Blade Management Pack folder in Program Files.
• Discover a network device using the SNMP read string and the chassis IP address.
• Deploy agents to your blade servers.

Wait a while, maybe 10-15 minutes.

Come back and you'll find lots of newly discovered objects and a really cool BladeSystem diagram that drills down to all of the components.

This NIC doesn't have the same complication as the HP NC373i but there's still a gotchya to watch out for.  Do not use the HP Network Configuration utility to assign a VLAN tag to the NC326M, even for a temporary test.  Even if you remove the VLAN tag from the NIC, there's still something left behind by HP's utility.

I found that if  configure a virtual switch on a clean machine with the NC373M then there were no problems at all - as long as the HP Ethernet virtual connect is wired and configured correctly.

We've heard little bits of information about Hyper-V Server, the dedicated version of Windows Server 2008 that can only run the Hyper-V role.  You can read about it now.

Microsoft says: "Customers who require richer and more robust virtualization features, such as Quick Migration, multi-site clustering, large memory support (greater than 32 GB of RAM), and more than four processers on the host server, should use Windows Server 2008". 

Hyper-V server is aimed at branch office server consolidation, VDI (where there is a broker to manage hardware fault tolerance) and test labs.

One of the things I've disliked about OSD or OS Deployment in SMS and SCCM 2007 was the need to pre-configure computer accounts using information gathered from the hardware.  It kinda killed the idea of zero touch deployment.

SCCM 2007 R2 takes care of that and you can read how in this article.

This update offers greater scalability to accommodate the new 6 core CPU's from Intel.  You now can have 24 logical processors (cores) per host and 192 VM's per host.

This is the latest advert effort from Microsoft:

That is to replace these useless adverts that have been cancelled:

and ...

All these adverts have something in common (more than just sucking).  They fail to mention what it is they are selling and why people should want those products.  Of course, they do have a history of quality advertising:

Steve Ballmer has matured and mellowed with age ;-)

I'm in all sorts of places these days.  I spoke a few weeks ago at the Windows Server 2008 User Group (Ireland) about Hyper-V.  I'm speaking about Hyper-V at the UK/Ireland MVP Open Day in Reading on October 3rd.  There was a tiny bit about me in the Sunday Business Post yesterday.  And I'm quoted in the last edition of CompuScope about why IT admins/owners started to look at and justify VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure).

Tim Litton has published the results of testing where the performance of fixed and dynamic disks were compared.  Fixed disks generally performed 10-15% better.

When considering fixed versus dynamic disks:

• Fixed disks (and pass-through disks) are the only disks that PSS support in production.
• Dynamic (and differencing) disks are great in labs where you have smaller physical storage capacities.

On a related note, some details from QLogic on their performance testing with 8GB fibre channel HBA's (a few months ago prior to RTM) are available.

Virtual Server 2005 R1 SP1 and Virtual PC 2007 SP1 both use VMC files to describe a VM.  This tool, aka VMC2HV, will convert those files into the XML format used by Hyper-V.  Removing VM additions (pre convert) is still a manual task.

TechNet Magazine (online and free) features virtualisation this month and spends plenty of time talking about Hyper-V.  There's a good article explaining the basics of getting a cluster of Hyper-V servers up and running so your VM's can become host-fault tolerant.

SBS 2008 has been out for a little while now.  That serves up to 75 users with a single server solution. 

EBS 2008 has been released and is a three server solution serving up to 300 users:

Note that both are based on Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2007 and SQL 2008.  They are x64 only.

This is a subject I'm not familiar with at all - we may have stupid political "leaders" here in Ireland but they haven't tried to pull the DST scam.  Microsoft has sent out information that applies to people in these countries:

Some countries with DST & TZ Changes Implemented Last Year (2007):

• Australia
• U.S.
• Canada

Some countries with New DST & TZ Changes this year (2008) with H2 Impacts:

• Egypt
• Mauritius
• Pakistan
• Morocco
• Brazil
• Chile
• Iran
• Argentina
• All other companies who have organizations with operations, customers or vendors based in these locales may be affected. In addition, companies who interact or integrate with systems that are based in these locales or rely on date/time calculations may be impacted.

According to Microsoft:

"In general, computer systems should be updated to reflect the new DST rules. For most companies, this means applying software updates to select Microsoft products, including various releases of the Microsoft Windows servers and operating systems, Microsoft Office, and other applications. In a few important cases, companies must take more considered action.

Please go to the Microsoft Products Affected site for a list of affected Microsoft products: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_prodlist"

I started a thread on the Minasi forum today wondering if people would think I was crazy or not.

I like Windows Server 2008.  2003 was excellent and 2008 has jumped way ahead.  It's stable, modular and easy to use, e.g. clustering is a dream.  One of the things that got loads of PR was Server Core.  I was determined to deploy it in the Hyper-V cluster I'm deploying now.

I set up a pilot build to work out the kinks of the hardware and the OS configuration.  I've been having a few hardware issues and troubleshooting them on Core is impossible.  Pure, 100% impossible.  I can do certain amounts using remote GUI's but it's not the same.

We use HP hardware that's monitored using OpsMgr 2007 with the HP management packs.  You soon discover the SIM agents have V8.0 issues.  I tend to disable the remote management and the performance SIM agents because I don't need them.  Unfortunately, the GUI for configuring them is not available in Core and I don't know of a command line option.  HP haven't publicly documented one that either their search nor Google can find.

We know that getting Broadcom NIC's working with VLAN trunks requires an advanced configuration of the NIC.  Apparently there's a script we can write to get this working on GUI.  Great - more crap I have to learn.  If I was a single function administrator then maybe I could invest several weeks getting to grips with that.

I made a simple mistake when configuring a virtual switch in Hyper-V on the parent OS NIC (I wanted to be able to get VM's onto the management network for initial build configuration).  My parent OS on that server went offline.  I got onto ILO to log on locally on that box.  However, what the hell is the command to undo what I did?  I could probably find powershell to run it .... but powershell isn't available on Core!

So the long and short of it is that I decided that Core is not ready for me yet.  MS needs to come up with operational docs for all the roles and features on Core - locally on the machine itself and not via the network/WMI.  And the OEM's need to catch up too.

I kicked off a thread on the Minasi forum to see what people thought.  I expected to get slammed because Core has been a popular idea.  I was shocked (and relieved) to see people had the same experiences as me.

There are two variables on the time required for quick migration:

1. Your storage throughput
2. How much RAM is assigned to the VM

Using a 4GB Fibre Channel SAN on 15K disks, a quick migration of a VM with 1GB RAM is taking me 9 seconds.

EDIT:

I just moved a VM with 28GB of RAM.  It took exactly 70 seconds from start to finish.  A machine with 4GB RAM took 12 seconds.  Note that disk fail over always takes the same amount of time.

This one embarrassingly stopped me in my tracks for a day until I got some help from Willem Kasdrop in MS Netherlands on the Minasi Forum.  

The symptoms were as follows:

• I'd set up a VM in Hyper-V.
• I'd add it to the cluster.
• I'd finish the VM configuration, e.g. virtual network and VLAN ID.
• I'd test the quick migration or cluster fail over.
• I'd check the VM but the network configuration was reset to the defaults, the VLAN ID checkbox was cleared, the VLAN ID entry was back to "2" and the virtual switch was back to the original setting.

I went as far as rebuilding the cluster (that takes no time at all in W2008) but couldn't find the solution.  Then Willem suggested that I hadn't refreshed the cluster ... as in right click the VM and select the entry to refresh the VM cluster configuration.

Why would you do this?  I was wondering when I checked the VM XML why I wasn't seeing any virtual network configuration as above.  It turns out the cluster configuration for the VM stores some information.  If you change the VM configuration then you should:

• Update the cluster configuration.
• This saves the state of the VM, thus bringing it offline.
• You get a report on the update.
• You need to manually bring the VM back online.

After that, you'll find that the configuration successfully follows the VM on fail over and fail back.