Windows Server blog by Kurt Roggen [BE] : Virtualization

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions – R2 update

Kurt Roggen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:53:19 GMT

This is a free ebook for IT professionals who want to learn more about the latest Microsoft virtualization technologies, including Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and Microsoft’s private and public cloud computing platforms including Windows Azure.

Chapters covered:

Why Virtualization?
Server Virtualization
Local Desktop Virtualization
Remote Desktop Virtualization
Virtualization Management
Cloud Computing

Download here

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP)

Kurt Roggen — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:57:00 GMT

Microsoft released the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP), designed to simplify and streamline IT infrastructure planning process across multiple scenarios through network-wide automated discovery and assessments, this tool provides a quick and complete inventory of current IT environment of any organization, hardware and device compatibility assessment, and actionable reporting of recommended hardware upgrades for migration.

MAP Toolkit 5.0 CTP includes:

Inventory of heterogeneous server environments including Windows Server, Linux, UNIX and VMware technologies
Ability to determine usage of deployed System Center Configuration Manager, a member of the Core Client Access License (Core CAL) Suite
Readiness assessment for migration or upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010.

Additional Features:

Windows 7 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation
Inventory of VMware Server Hosts and Guests
User Interface and Proposal Customization for Partner co-branding
Enhanced Usability and Improved Inventory Performance
SQL Server Instance Discovery
Desktop Security Assessment for Anti-virus and Anti-malware Programs Installation
Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment

Download here (registration required)

Starwind brings storage high-availability with version 5.0

Kurt Roggen — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:35:28 GMT

StarWind iSCSI SAN software is a storage virtualization software which turns any standard 64-bit or 32-bit Windows Server into a fail-safe SAN that uses an existing Ethernet network. StarWind Enterprise HA is a special High Availability edition which uses Synchronous Data Mirroring with Active-Active Automated Failover and Failback technology, allowing the storage to continue operating properly in the event of a failure. This technology permits you to configure an Active-Active 2 Node storage cluster which ensures a highly reliable and fault tolerant storage.

So for building those Hyper-V clusters, Starwind certainly brings added value to the scene, by providing storage high-availability over iSCSI.

Enterprise-class features of StarWind HA include:

Synchronous Data Mirroring: real-time data mirroring to another storage server
High Availability / Automated Failover: fault tolerant technology eliminates single point of failure
Failback with Fast Synchronization: failback to an original system after an automated failover
Remote / Asynchronous Replication: replicates your storage remotely across a WAN
CDP & Snapshots: captures point-in-time snapshots with unlimited rollback points
Thin Provisioning: allocates space dynamically for highly efficient disk utilization
Server Clustering: provides shared storage for High Availability server clustering
Advanced High Speed Caching: advanced caching to accelerate I/O performance

For more information:

Free P2V tool: Disk2Vhd.exe

Kurt Roggen — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:37:23 GMT

Sysinternals offers a free P2V tool called Disk2vhd that creates VHDs (Virtual Hard Disks) of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC and/or Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). You can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online, since it uses Windows Volume Snapshot (VSS) capability, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM configuration as IDE disk(s).
On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components.

You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Download here

For more information: Sysinternals website

Hyper-V and Virtual Devices (VDev): Synthetic versus Emulated Devices

Kurt Roggen — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:21:00 GMT

Virtual Device (VDev)

With Hyper-V, a virtual device is a software module that provides an I/O path for a partition and are configurable via Hyper-V Manager console. A VDev allows a single physical device attached to the primary partion to be shared across multiple child partitions. Each partition believes it has exclusive access to the device. Virtual devices are very often packaged as a COM device and managed using a WMI interface.
There are two different kinds of Virtual Devices in general:

Emulated devices also sometimes called Core devices
Synthetic devices also called Enlightened devices

Synthetic versus Emulated devices

Emulated (legacy) devices emulate a physical network adapter in software. Although this process provides networking services to a virtual machine, it requires
additional host processing resources.

Each child partition has a Virtual Machine Worker Process (vmwp.exe) and device emulation occurs within this process. The emulated devices work by utilizing the native physical device driver inside the child partition. Emulated devices have a high overhead in terms of processing required to handle I/O to/from the device, however emulated devices also provide a high degree of compatibility with existing software and operating systems.

Emulated devices have been implemented by Microsoft for a variety of different devices:

S3 Trio Video Card
Intel/DEC 21140 network card
Intel 440 BX controller

Emulated devices

Synthetic devices can be thought of as “proxy devices” that present themselves as network devices, but only serve to pass data along the VMBus to other networking resources. This process does not require software emulation, and therefore offers higher performance for virtual machines and lower host system overhead.

VMBus synthetic devices

Some Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V sessions at WinHEC 2008

Kurt Roggen — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:22:00 GMT

Below a list of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V sessions lined up for this years WinHEC 2008.
It covers some exciting new stuff…

Microsoft Hyper-V - ENT-T587

This session provides an overview of the recently launched Microsoft Hyper-V product, its architecture, and how it combines with modern processors, chipsets, and I/O devices to enable unprecedented flexibility by the Windows Server platforms. You'll also receive an update on the progress of the Microsoft virtualization development efforts and highlights of selected features in the next release of Hyper-V.

Windows Virtualization and Cluster Shared Volumes - ENT-T588

Windows Server 2008 R2 will introduce a new feature for Failover Clustering called Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). CSV is an enhancement that allows multiple virtual hard disk (VHD) images to be mounted on a single logical volume. It allows the migration of virtual machines from one physical host server to another with minimal downtime. This session discusses the architecture and implementation details of CSV and illustrates its utility in Windows virtualization deployments.

Improving Networking Performance for Hyper-V Virtual Machines - ENT-T589

Windows Server 2008 R2 will deliver new networking features and enhanced support of stateless and state-full offload technologies to Hyper-V virtual machines. This session discusses the architecture and implementation details of these Windows networking features. Also included is a description for how network interface card (NIC) adapters implement this support for virtualized environments.

Directions for Virtualized I/O in Windows - ENT-T590

Now that Hyper-V is released, it's time to consider virtualized I/O directions that go beyond "make it work with existing drivers." This session discusses areas of technologies that are being investigated for future Microsoft virtualization offerings. These include PCI Single-Root I/O Virtualization, those technologies that enable it, and their implications to the Windows Driver Model. Improving storage area network (SAN) support and other I/O-related virtualization capabilities are also discussed.

Windows Boot from Virtual Hard Disk - ENT-T606

Virtual hard disk (VHD) is the image format for virtual machine operating system images. This session discusses native support of VHD in Windows Server 2008 R2. This support allows users, administrators, and vendors of storage and management tools to operate on VHDs as they would other storage devices. This creates opportunities for lowering operational costs by enabling customers to use a single image creation, deployment, and maintenance process and toolset across virtual and physical environments.

Some great Hyper-V virtualisation resources

Kurt Roggen — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:55:00 GMT

On September 8, 2008 Microsoft kicked off its Virtualization Launch wave with a major event in Bellevue, Washington that showcased the latest virtualization products and solutions from Microsoft and its partners, highlighted customer successes and demonstrated our vision for the future of virtualization.

If you missed the September 8th Launch event, you can still capture the experience by viewing and reading the information here.

Some sessions:

For more information: getVirtualnow

Hyper-V Integration Services & Virtual Services Consumers (VSC)

Kurt Roggen — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:56:00 GMT

Integration Services (sometimes also referred to as ICs - Integration Components) is a term used to describe a collection of services that enable a virtual machine to use synthetic devices and to provide (better) integration between child and parent partitions.

It is strongly recommended that Integration Services be installed on all Hyper-V virtual machines to get the best performance and enhanced feature functionality.

The components available with the Integration Services enable the following:

Inter-partition communication (VSPVSC) through the use of the VMBus using Video, Storage and Networking VSCs (Virtual Services Consumers) (read:synthetic devices).
- Installs device drivers for synthetic devices (Video, SCSI controller, Network Controller)
- Installs fastpath filter driver that allows the emulated IDE controller to switch to synthetic mode (only when Windows is running)
Mouse integration drivers
VSS-based backup of virtual machines initiated from the parent partition
Time synchronization between child and parent
Guest OS shutdown initiated from the virtualization management consoles
Guest OS heartbeats
Guest OS Identification

Microsoft makes available Integration Services for all supported guest operating systems (Windows XP/Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008). Integration Components are natively installed as part of Windows Server 2008.

Integration Services are packaged into a CD ISO image and can be installed on guest operating systems by mounting the ISO image on the virtual machine. When using the Virtual Machine Connection window to connect to a virtual machine, this can be done via Action → Insert Integration Services Setup Disk on the Windows guest operating system.

The Integration Components for supported Linux operating systems are currently available for download on the Microsoft website.
For the latest information on integration services, refer to www.microsoft.com/hyper-v.

Once the ICs are installed onto your Guest OS/partition, the following services below will appear and provide inter-partition communications.

Hyper-V Parent partition, VSP, VSC and VMBus

Kurt Roggen — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:16:08 GMT

With Hyper-V, the parent partition or the root partition runs on Windows Server 2008 x64 Server Core installation or Windows Server 2008 x64 Full installation with the Hyper-V role installed and sits on top of the hypervisor.
The parent partition (not the hypervisor) manages the I/O devices. To provide virtual machines with access to those devices, Hyper-V supports a high-speed interconnect referred to as the VMBus. Virtual devices for each VM, such as network and storage adapters, can communicate with the parent partition through the VMBus. The parent partition receives those requests through the VSPs (Virtualisation Services Provider) and directs them to the underlying physical devices via the I/O stack of the parent partition. This model requires device drivers for the physical devices to be installed inside the parent partition.
Most device specific drivers and utilities created for Windows Server 2008 x64 work as-is and do not require any changes when Hyper-V is enabled.

So “virtual devices for VMs, can communicate with the parent partition through the VMBus”. But what criteria determines if communication passes through the VMBus?!

Guest operating systems require specialized drivers (VSCs – Virtualisation Services Consumers) provided by Microsoft in order to access the VMBus. The drivers are specific to the type of device that is presented to the guest operating system through the VM configuration (with the Hyper-V Manager) and are installed as a part of the Integration Services that are available for Hyper-V supported guest operating systems.

Hyper-V to support Intel Xeon 7400 6-core boxes

Kurt Roggen — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:23:44 GMT

The new Intel Xeon 7400 will have six cores (up to 16 MB L3 cache) and will be socket compatible with Xeon 7300 boards which will allow for simple upgrades with little downtime. Intel delivers higher virtualization performance for consolidation and data demanding applications offering more cores, cache and larger memory footprints.

Hyper-V also increases the number of logical processors and virtual machines that are running on a Windows Server 2008-based computer through this update package 956710 and includes the following improvements:

The update package increases the limitation on the number of logical processors to 24 (6x4). The previous limitation was 16.
The update package increases the number of Hyper-V virtual machines that you can run per server to 192. The previous limitation was 128.

Download here

And it looks like this…

Updated Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides

Kurt Roggen — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:46:09 GMT

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture (WSSRA). The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.

IPD consists of the following downloadable packages:

New! System Center Operations Manager 2007
New! System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
New! Internet Information Services 7.0
New! Selecting the Right NAP Architecture
Infrastructure Planning and Design Series Introduction
Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization
Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology
Windows Deployment Services
Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services
Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services
Windows Server Virtualization (for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1)

Download here

Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides for Windows Server 2008

Kurt Roggen — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:55:59 GMT

The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.

Infrastructure Planning and Design guides share a common structure, including:

Definition of the technical decision flow through the planning process.
Listing of decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape.

These guides complement product documentation by focusing on infrastructure design options.
Each guide leads the reader through critical infrastructure design decisions, in the appropriate order, evaluating the available options for each decision against its impact on critical characteristics of the infrastructure.

The IPD Series highlights when service and infrastructure goals should be validated with the organization and provides additional questions that should be asked of service stakeholders and decision makers.

IPD consists of the following downloadable packages:

Infrastructure Planning and Design Series Introduction
Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology
Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization
Windows Server Virtualization (for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1)
New! Windows Deployment Services
New! Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Domain Services
New! Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services

The guides are available as individual downloads or as a single all-in-one package.

Download here

Key Management Service (KMS) for Windows Server 2003 Update - version 1.1

Kurt Roggen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:45:07 GMT

As I mentioned in a previous post on Volume Activation for Windows Server 2008, the current Windows Server 2003 based KMS (Key Management) activation infrastructure requires an update to support Windows Server 2008 systems and Virtualization.

Microsoft Key Management Service (KMS) for Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later is part of Microsoft Windows Volume Activation 2.0.
It allows enterprise users to host KMS on Windows Server 2003 to enable activation of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 using a KMS key.

Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0 is a set of technical and policy solutions provided by Microsoft’s Software Protection Platform (SPP) that gives Microsoft customers more secure and easier methods to manage their volume license keys.

KMS based activation allows enterprise customers to host a local service (read: KMS) within their environment to enable activation of machines running Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 volume editions within their environment, instead of activation directly with Microsoft.
Computers that have been activated using KMS are required to reactivate by connecting to a KMS host at least once every 6 months + 30 days (Out of Tolerance). KMS keys are provided through Microsoft’s Volume Licensing System portals (MVLS, eOpen). The KMS host needs to be activated once with Microsoft either online or via telephone.

KMS version 1.1 for Windows Server 2003 provides the same feature set as version 1.0 and the following additional functionality:

A single KMS host which support volume license editions of both Windows Vista RTM/SP1 and Windows Server 2008

Running KMS version 1.1 in a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine.

Download here (x86) or here (x64).

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2008,KMS,Volume Activation

Windows Server 2008, Volume Activation 2.0 and KMS (Key Management Server)

Kurt Roggen — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:44:06 GMT

Volume Activation (VA) 2.0 is designed to automate and manage the activation process while addressing the piracy and product key management problems associated with Volume License Keys (VLKs) issued for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Volume Activation 2.0 eliminates the use of product keys at installation and enables better protection and management of customer-specific product keys through some new and enhanced activation management tools.
All installations of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 must be activated.

Multiple activation options exist for volume customers: MAK independent, MAK proxy and KMS.
Let's have a closer look at KMS...

The Key Management Server (KMS) is used to establish a local activation service (Key Management Service) that is hosted locally/internally in your environment.
Use of the KMS eliminates any need for individual machines to connect to Microsoft to activate.

A KMS key is used to enable/activate the Key Management Service on a KMS server/host machine. A KMS server/host can run natively on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and even Windows Server Core 2008. Computers running volume license editions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are KMS clients and try to locate the KMS server/host using one of the two methods:

Auto-Discovery: the KMS client uses Domain Name Service (DNS) records to automatically locate a local KMS host (DNS RR - Resource Record).
Direct connection: the administrator specifies the KMS host location and communication port (default port is 1688, but configurable).

Windows Server 2008 KMS clients require a KMS activation threshold (n-count) of only 5 physical machines to activate. Windows Vista clients require a KMS activation threshold of 25 physical machines. A single KMS server/host can support and activate unlimited KMS clients. A KMS client must connect with KMS host anonymously at least once every six months (180 days).

The current Windows Server 2003 based KMS (Key Management) activation infrastructure requires an update to support Windows Server 2008 systems and Virtualization.
This update will be released at Windows Server 2008 launch timeframe.

Windows Server 2008 systems

A Windows Server 2008-based KMS server/host will be able to active both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 editions. Different KMS keys (installed on the KMS server/host) will allow the transparent activation of different editions (Web, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter), but of course still support Windows Vista Business/Enterprise.

Virtualization

Both KMS server/host and KMS client will support running inside virtual machines.
The KMS server/host can now run on a Windows Vista-based virtual machine or a Windows Server 2008-based virtual machine. So you can start considering to put the KMS server/host on a virtual machine. The KMS clients (read: all Windows Vista clients and Windows Server 2008 installations) running in virtual machines can now also be activated through the KMS server/host. However, only physical computers are added to the KMS count.

One final remark!! KMS and MAK keys apply to product groups rather than being edition-specific. This greatly simplifies key management by reducing the number of possible keys.
KMS keys are hierarchical by Volume Product Group: a KMS key can activate systems with any of the Windows editions in its corresponding product group as well as Windows editions listed in lower product groups, as the table below illustrates.

Volume Product Group	KMS Key	KMS can be hosted on	Windows product editions activated by this KMS
Vista VL	KMS	Windows Vista KMS for Windows Server 2003	Windows Vista Business Windows Vista Enterprise
Server Group A	KMS_A	Windows Web Server 2008 KMS for Windows Server 2003	Windows Web Server 2008 Vista VL
Server Group B	KMS_B	Windows Web Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 Standard Windows Server 2008 Enterprise KMS for Windows Server 2003	Windows Server 2008 Standard Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Server Group A Vista VL
Server Group C	KMS_C	Windows Web Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 Standard Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Windows Server 2008 for Itanium KMS for Windows Server 2003	Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Windows Server 2008 for Itanium Server Group B Server Group A Vista VL

For more information:

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2008,KMS,VLA 2.0,MAK

Old News: Hyper-V included in Windows Server 2008 RC1 x64

Kurt Roggen — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:17:34 GMT

Some added features on top of the preview-release of Hyper-V (WSV at the time) of the JuneCTP release:

Quick Migration and cluster high availability - for migration of VMs for planned and unplanned downtime.
Hyper-V is included by default in Windows Server manager, which means enabling virtualization is as easy as installing any other server role
Support for running Hyper-V with Server Core in the parent partition
Volume Shadow Services support
VHD Tools support (compaction, expansion and inspection)
Hyper-V administration MMC only installation. The Hyper-V MMC can be installed on Windows Server 2008 without installing the complete Hyper-V role enabling remote management of Hyper-V servers.
Support for up to 4 virtual SCSI controllers per VM, with 255 VHDs per controller
Support for multiple network adapters per VM
Support for up to 64 GB of memory per VM
Numerous performance, scalability and stability enhancements since the CTP release.

For more information: Windows Server Team blog, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V homepage

Technorati Tags: Windows Server 2008, Server Core, Virtualisation, HyperV