Aries's Sysadmin Blog

Sunday, April 15, 2012

System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server "8" Beta

Have done some preliminary readings about CTP and its material.

What is CTP

Community Technology Preview (“CTP”) enables System Center customers to jointly evaluate System Center 2012 and Windows Server “8” Beta. Customers should use this CTP for their evaluations of Windows Server “8” beta, and to provide Microsoft with feedback on both products. The CTP includes updates to the Virtual Machine Manager and Data Protection Manager components of System Center 2012.

What are the technology available now in CTP
As of now, there are only 2 products available in CTP program, these are:-

Virtual Machine Manager 2012
Data Protection Manager 2012

What do I get out of SC2012 CTP

Virtual Machine Manager
The CTP enables the Virtual Machine Manager component's management server to run on Windows Server “8” as well as managing virtual machines (VMs) hosted on Windows Server “8”. The CTP also enables management of new Windows Server “8” features in Virtual Machine Manager:

Creation of Hyper-V Virtual Networks using Hyper-V Network Virtualization
Creation of virtual machines using the VHDx format
SMB 2.2 file servers as storage for virtual machines in a clustered and non-clustered environment
Live migration and live storage migration

Data Protection Manager The CTP enables the Data Protection Manager component's repository and agents to run on Windows Server ‘8” as well as providing protection in Windows Server “8” environments. The CTP also adds protection for new features in Windows Server “8”:

Hyper-V Virtual Machines on Cluster Shared Volumes 2.0 (CSV2.0)
Hyper-V Virtual Machines on remote SMB share
Files on De-Duplicated Volumes

What are the system requirements

Supported operating systems: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 8 Beta

Data Protection Manager:
Windows 2008
Windows 2008 R2
Windows "8" Beta

Virtual Machine Manager:
Windows “8” Beta (Management Server, Console, Library Server, VM Hosts)
Windows “8” Beta or Windows Server 2008 R2 (Database Server)
Windows Server “8” is the only supported guest operating system

Other Software: SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1, Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter Edition, 64-bit edition only

Pre-requisite Software: .NET 3.5

Hypervisor: Data Protection Manager: Not applicable
Virtual Machine Manager: Hyper-V on Windows Server "8" only

Where can I get CTP
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=29099

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Hyper-V Replica of Windows Server 8 Beta

I have blogged about Hyper-V replica a while ago when Windows Server 8 release as Developer Preview. And here comes the Windows Server 8 Beta released not long ago, Hyper-V Replica is everywhere on the net most exciting part of it, more and more detailed technical documentation make available by Microsoft to the public particular to this piece of Hyper-V components.

My first look is on the Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster and my first expression was…………<speechless>………..and WOW !!!! IMPRESSIVE!

Windows Server "8" Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

"Hyper-V Replica is an asynchronous virtual machine replication technology that is included in Windows Server "8" Beta. It is designed for business continuity and disaster recovery. It works with any server, network, or storage vendor. It does not require any shared storage. It enables you to replicate individual or multiple virtual machines. Hyper-V Replica is tightly integrated with Hyper-V and Failover Clustering. You can replicate virtual machines from one computer running Hyper-V at a primary site (the primary server) to another computer running Hyper-V at a Replica site (the Replica server). The Replica server accepts incoming replication traffic from one or more primary servers." - Windows Server "8" Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Figure 1: Windows Server "8" Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Technical Write Up

A document on Understand and Troubleshoot Hyper-V Replica in Windows Server "8" Beta is available for you if you are looking for the detailed bits of Hyper-V Replica in Windows Server 8. I personally find that this document is very useful for someone like me who involves in proposing Hyper-V design.

Hyper-V Replica with Powershell

For some of you would like to deploy Hyper-V with Server Core installation, you may be looking into managing Hyper-V Replica using Powershell. The below 2 blogs you may be interested in :

http://www.hyper-v.nu/archives/pnoorderijk/2012/03/hyper-v-replica-powershell-cmdlets/

http://blogs.technet.com/b/matthts/archive/2012/04/02/managing-hyper-v-replica-from-powershell.aspx

Technical Diagram of Hyper-V Replica

My previous testing and blog of Hyper-V Replica

You may refer to :-

How-To: Enable Hyper-V 3.0 Replica (Part 1)

How-To: Enable Hyper-V 3.0 Replica (Part 2)

More testing on the way when I secured hardware for testing :-)

Sunday, January 29, 2012

How-To: Enable Hyper-V 3.0 Replica (Part 2)

As promise in my previous blog How-To: Enable Hyper-V 3.0 Replica (Part 1), I have capture a full video of my testing on Hyper-V 3.0 Replica. Below are the videos and it is best view at 720p resolution:-

Hyper-V 3.0 Replica Highlights During Testing
As usual, i did quite number of things that may be does not make sense with the purpose to see how is the Hyper-V manager handle this. Below are some of the things that I have tried to perform during the testing.

Maximum number of recovery point
Notice that the Store additional recovery points have a maximum value of 15.

Figure 1: Maximum value of Store additional recovery point is 15

Schedule Initial Replication

You can only schedule the Initial Replication not later than 7 days.

Figure 2: Schedule of Initial Replication must be within 7 days

Power up the VM during replication
When you try to power up the VM during the Replication in progress, This is the error you will get.

Figure 3: Error when power up VM during replication

Network Utilization During Initial Replication

The network utilization at 95% of 100Mbps during Initial Replication. Looking forward to test again when i got 1Gbps switch.

Figure 4: Network utilization

Report of Replication Health
Report is available to tell you the statistics and status of VM replication.

Figure 5: Replication Health Report

Failover test
You can use failover test to test the functionality of the replicated VM. The Test Failover feature will create a test VM of the replicated VM with just a click away.