Computer Enterprise

Export Hyper-V Configuration Using PowerShell

2015-02-01T18:22:00.001-08:00

When Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 were released, we also received a new PowerShell module. Within this module are many cmdlets that are designed to make it easy to manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines directly from PowerShell. Many of these cmdlets and command line versions of functionality that exists within the graphical Hyper-V manager. But sometimes, even these cmdlets may not meet your needs. As a case in point, consider the Export-VM cmdlet. This cmdlet will export a virtual machine to disk including its disk files and snapshots. In other words, a backup.

Using PowerShell to Export a Hyper-V Configuration

I'm assuming that if you are running Hyper-V in a production environment, then you probably have invested in a backup solution. What I want to demonstrate in this article isn't intended to replace those products, but rather supplement them. If you run a smaller shop, a lab environment, or client Hyper-V on a Windows 8 or later desktop, then this article may be especially handy.

The problem is that when you use the Export-VM cmdlet, you get everything and given the size of the virtual machine hard drives and snapshots, this process may take some time to complete. But perhaps you only want to export the configuration itself? I was working on this problem when I came across someone with this exact issue. He wanted to export the virtual machine configuration so that he could import it later.

The configuration that you see when you run Get-VM or look at a virtual machine settings in Hyper-V Manager are stored in an XML file. The file location is included in the virtual machine object.

The name of the file is the same as the virtual machine's id.

It is pretty easy to get that file with PowerShell.

The file should exist in a sub-folder called Virtual Machines, but sometimes it is not. There is also a possibility there might be multiple XML files, so I do this to get the full file name.

Next, I need to create the destination folder and copy the xml file to it.

In terms of a quick and easy export or backup that's all there is to it. But I'm always thinking about what other requirement someone might have. Assuming you might import the configuration file, it might be helpful to provide a new name for the virtual machine. Or remove hard drive references so that if you import on a different Hyper-V host you don't get ugly errors. Or remove snapshot references. Plus, you most likely want to do this from the comfort of your desktop. So I created a PowerShell function called Export-VMConfiguration.

#requires -version 3.0

Function Export-VMConfiguration {

.Synopsis

Export Hyper-V configuration file.

.Description

This command will export a Hyper-V virtual machine's configuration file to a new location. You can use this as an alternative to Export-VM which will also export hard drives and snapshots. Sometimes you just want the configuration file.

The command has options to provide a new name, as well as remove hard drive or snapshot references. This can be helpful if you plan on importing the configuration later as the basis for a new virtual machine.

The path must exist and is relative to the computer. The command will create a subfolder for each virtual machine under this path. The path must be a local, fixed drive. You cannot specify a UNC or shared drive.

.Example

PS C:\> get-vm chi* -computername chi-hvr2 | export-vmconfiguration -path d:\exports -verbose

This command will export, or backup, the configuration files for all virtual machines that start with CHI* to a new location on CHI-HVR2.

.Example

PS C:\> Export-VMConfiguration chi-test01 -Path E:\exports -Verbose -NewName CHI-TEST2 -RemoveDrives -RemoveSnapshots

This command will get the CHI-TEST01 virtual machine on the local host and export its configuration. The new configuration will reflect a new name and remove existing drives and snapshots.

.Notes

Last Updated: October 13, 2014

Version : 1.0

Learn more:

PowerShell in Depth: An Administrator's Guide (http://www.manning.com/jones6/)

PowerShell Deep Dives (http://manning.com/hicks/)

Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (http://manning.com/jones3/)

Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches (http://manning.com/jones4/)

****************************************************************

* DO NOT USE IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT UNTIL YOU HAVE TESTED *

* THOROUGHLY IN A LAB ENVIRONMENT. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. IF *

* YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS SCRIPT DOES OR HOW IT WORKS, *

* DO NOT USE IT OUTSIDE OF A SECURE, TEST SETTING. *

****************************************************************

.Link

Get-VM

Export-VM

[cmdletbinding(DefaultParameterSetName="Name")]

Param(

[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Enter the name of a virtual machine",

ValueFromPipeline=$True,

ParameterSetName="Name")]

[alias("vmname")]

[ValidateNotNullorEmpty()]

[string[]]$Name,

[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$True,ValueFromPipeline=$True,

ParameterSetName="VM")]

[Microsoft.HyperV.PowerShell.VirtualMachine[]]$VM,

[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Enter the destination path")]

[string]$Path,

[Alias("cn")]

[Parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]

[ValidateNotNullorEmpty()]

[string]$Computername = $env:computername,

[Alias("rename")]

[string]$NewName,

[alias("NoDrives")]

[switch]$RemoveDrives,

[alias("NoSnapshots")]

[switch]$RemoveSnapshots

)

Begin {

Write-Verbose -Message "Starting $($MyInvocation.Mycommand)"

Write-Verbose "Using parameter set $($PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName)"

} #begin

Process {

#create a scriptblock so this can run remotely

$sb = {

[cmdletbinding()]

Param(

[string]$VerbosePreference

)

#$VerbosePreference = "continue"

if ($using:vm) {

Write-Verbose "Processing VM: $($using:VM.Name)"

$myVM = $using:vm

}

else {

Write-Verbose "Processing $using:name"

#get the virtual machine

Try {

$myvm = Get-VM -Name $using:name

}

Catch {

Write-Warning "Failed to find virtual machine $using:name on $($env:computername)"

}

} #else

if ($myVM) {

foreach ($v in $myVM) {

#proceed if we have a virtual machine object

#create the target configuration path

$config = dir $v.configurationlocation -filter "$($v.id).xml" -recurse | Select -first 1 -ExpandProperty fullname

Write-Verbose "Processing configuration file: $config"

If ($config) {

#define the target path

#use the New name if specified

if ($NewName) {

$vmname = $NewName

}

else {

$vmname = $v.name

}

$destination = Join-path $using:path "$vmname\Virtual Machines"

Write-Verbose "Testing $destination"

if (-Not (Test-Path -Path $destination)) {

#create the folder

Try {

Write-Verbose "Creating $destination"

New-Item -Path $destination -ItemType directory -ErrorAction stop | Out-Null

}

Catch {

Throw

}

} #if destination doesn't exist

if (Test-Path -Path $destination ) {

Write-verbose "Exporting $config to $destination"

Try {

Copy-item $config -destination $destination -errorAction Stop -passthru

}

Catch {

Throw

}

#post processing

Write-Verbose "Post processing"

$newConfig = Join-Path -Path $destination -ChildPath "$($v.id).xml"

[xml]$new = Get-Content -path $newConfig

$prop = $new | select-xml -XPath "//properties/name"

#insert a note

Write-Verbose "Inserting a note"

$notes = $new.selectNodes("//notes")

$noteText = @"

Exported $(Get-date) from $($prop.node.innertext)

$($notes[0].InnerText)

$notes[0].InnerText = $noteText

if ($NewName) {

#rename

Write-Verbose "Renaming to $Newname"

$prop.node.InnerText = $NewName

} #if new name

#remove drives

if ($RemoveDrives) {

Write-Verbose "Removing drive references"

$drivenodes = $new | Select-Xml "//*[starts-with(name(),'drive')]"

foreach ($item in $drivenodes) {

$pn = $item.node.parentnode

$pn.RemoveChild($item.node) | Out-Null

}

} #remove drives

#remove snapshots

if ($RemoveSnapshots) {

Write-Verbose "Removing snapshot references"

$snapnodes = $new | Select-Xml "//snapshots"

$snapnodes.node.RemoveChild($snapnodes.node.list) | Out-Null

$pii= $new | Select-Xml "//parent_instance_id"

$new.configuration.properties.RemoveChild($pii.node) | Out-Null

} #remove snapshots

#save revised configuration

Write-Verbose "Saving XML to $newconfig"

$new.save($newconfig)

} #if destination verified

} #If configuration file found

else {

Write-Warning "Failed to find a configuration file for $($v.name)"

}

} #foreach

} #if VM

} #close scriptblock

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $sb -ComputerName $Computername -ArgumentList $VerbosePreference

} #process

End {

Write-Verbose -Message "Ending $($MyInvocation.Mycommand)"

}

Microsoft’s View on Hyper-Convergence

2015-02-01T17:59:00.001-08:00

What is Hyper-Convergence?

The traditional deployment of a vSphere or Hyper-V farm has several tiers connected by fabrics. The below diagram shows a more traditional deployment using a storage area network (SAN). In this architecture you have:

    Storage trays
    Switches (iSCSI or fiber channel)
    Storage controllers
    Virtualization hosts (application servers)

In the Hyper-V world, we are able to do a software-defined alternative to a SAN called a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS), where:

    RAID is replaced by Storage Spaces
    Storage controllers are replaced by a Windows Server transparent failover cluster
    iSCSI and fiber channel are replaced by SMB 3.0

But for the most part, the high-level architecture doesn't really change:

In the world of hyper-convergence, we simplify the entire architecture to a single tier of servers/appliances that run:

    Virtualization
    Storage/cluster network
    Storage

I say "simplify" but under the covers, each server will be running like a hamster on a wheel … on an illicit hyper-stimulant.

What Microsoft Says About Hyper-Convergence

Hyper-convergence is a topic that has only been getting headlines for the last year or so. This is mainly thanks to one vendor that is marketing like crazy, and VMware promoting their vSAN solution. I had not heard Microsoft share a public opinion about hyper-convergence until TechEd Europe 2014 in October.

The message was clear: Microsoft does not think hyper-convergence is good. There are a few reasons:

The method of growing a hyper-converged infrastructure is to deploy another appliance, adding storage, memory, processor, and license requirements. This is perfect if your storage and compute needs grow at the same scale, but this is about as rare as gold laying geese. Storage requirements normally grow much faster than the need for compute. We are generating more information every day and keeping it longer. Adding the costs of compute and associated licensing when we could be instead growing an affordable storage tier makes no sense.
Performance: Hyper-converged storage is software defined. Software-defined storage, when operated at scale, requires compute power to manage the storage and perform maintenance (such as a restore after a disk failure). Which do you prioritize in a converged infrastructure: virtual machine computational needs, or the functions of storage management, which in turn affect the performance of those same virtual machines?

This is why Microsoft continues to push solutions based on a storage tier and a compute tier, which are connected by converged networks, preferably leveraging hardware offloads (such as RDMA) and SMB 3.0. The recently launched Dell/Microsoft CPS is such a solution.

6 Hyper-V Predictions for 2015

2015-02-01T17:55:00.001-08:00

It's time once again for every tech author to make dauntless divinations about what will happen in the IT industry in the following year. Hopefully I will take delivery of my robot chauffeur and moon buggy soon, but in the meantime much like like I did last year, I'll make some predictions about what I think will happen in the world of Microsoft virtualization in 2015. I sure hope I do better this time around than I did for 2014!

1. Docker Hype

We're going to be hearing a lot about a technology called Docker. This snowball started to roll in recent months when Microsoft announced Azure support for Docker via a partnership with the company. Docker can work in Azure right now through a command-line interface (CLI) that was launched for Windows clients, and we know that Docker is coming to Windows Server in the future.

Docker is more so an addition to Azure or Hyper-V, rather than being viewed as a distinct competitor. In machine virtualization we have isolation between machines, with each machine having its own operating system. This security boundary contains an OS, libraries, and typically one application. Containerization is done on a per application deployment basis. A Docker engine runs on a single operating system. Containers for different applications are deployed on shared libraries that are hosted by this shared operating system. The Docker engine could be installed on a physical server, or it could be run in the guest OS of a virtual machine (Azure or Hyper-V).

The benefit of Docker is that you can deploy applications nearly instantly from a library of containerized apps. This is a great benefit in a private deployment where change is frequent, such as in a DevOps environment. For example, a farm of a few virtual machines could run lots of application instances.

I think we are going to hear a lot about Docker in 2015, with the trickle becoming a torrent. But I don't think many IT pros will use Docker in 2015, as it will be early days, and I think Docker's market is geared toward larger organizations that demand a pace of change that even a flexible private/public cloud can offer.

2. Windows Server Licensing Will Switch to Per-Core

At the moment, we purchase Windows Server (and therefore Hyper-V virtual machines running Windows Server) on a per-physical processor basis. Each Windows Server license covers two physical processors, no matter how many cores are in each processor. If you license a physical host with two Intel E5-2699 v3 processors (18 cores each = 32 total cores or 64 logical processors), then you can license that host for an unlimited number of virtual machines with just one copy of Windows Server Datacenter Edition, which costs $6,155 with Open NL licensing. Remember that this license can be installed on the host and you can enable Hyper-V for free.

Here's the issue: Just a year ago, you most likely required four processors and two datacenter licenses to get a host with that sort of core density. Microsoft would have made $12,310 on Open NL license fees. Intel continues to increase the core density of hosts, and this is reducing Microsoft's earning power in larger host deployments.

I believe that Microsoft will switch from a per-pair of processors licensing model to a per-core pricing system with the release of Windows Server vNext. I can understand why because newer processors will reduce their earnings. Hopefully Microsoft will calculate the per-core pricing based on the typical processor (6 -8 cores) that most of us still use. This would mean that we wouldn't necessarily see a price rise

3. Windows Server vNext Release Details

I could be lazy and tell you that Windows Server vNext will arrive in the second half of 2015, but everyone in the business knows that. Instead, I will take some chances. I am guess-timating that general availability (not RTM) of Windows Server will be in September.

Microsoft typically uses the same naming system as games by EA Sports. The reasoning for this is simple — Microsoft's financial year starts in July, so anything released after July uses the following year. The next version of Windows Server will be released in Microsoft's financial year of 2016 and will be called Windows Server 2016.

4. Microsoft Azure Momentum

If you attend any Microsoft events or you have any dealings with a Microsoft employee, then expect to hear a lot about Azure in the first six months of 2015. Microsoft is going to be doing a lot get you hooked on their public cloud. Microsoft wants customers to try out their public and hybrid offerings. If you've got an on-premises environment, then they'll be making big pushes with online backup and disaster recovery in the cloud. Services such as site-to-site VPN and ExpressRoute have had recent upgrades, and the number of WAN partners will continue to grow. Microsoft Ignite (the super conference in Chicago in May 2015) will seem like a great big cloud conference!

No matter what you might think of the public cloud (and I was a skeptic of Microsoft's offerings!) you cannot get over:

    The pricing
    The incredible rate of improvement of their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings
    The hybrid offerings that supplement (not replace) on-premises hardware.

A lot more IT pros will be managing some services in Azure by the end of 2015 than at the end of 2014, but the focus will remain on hybrid cloud.

5. You Still Won't Be Using PowerShell

This is a depressing prediction by me. Most of you reading this article will not be using PowerShell to simplify management, deployment, and operations and enable automation. I am not a programmer, but I've taken to PowerShell, where I used it to drive the demos from my presentation at TechEd Europe 2014. I use PowerShell to rebuild my demo lab at work. I use PowerShell scripts to provision large numbers of virtual machines in Hyper-V or Azure. And I use PowerShell to get predictable and fast results. There was a certain time investment to get all that stuff right, but as all scripters know, we start off by blatantly copying and pasting from other people's work from the many available online resources and tweak from there. The investment, even in small deployments, is recouped later on when that script, a function, or a cmdlet is reused over and again.

But no matter what I say, no matter what Jeffrey Snover says, and no matter what anyone in Microsoft says, most of you will ignore our advice on using PowerShell and will continue to use a subset of the product that they have purchased by not adventuring beyond the GUI.

6. Hyper-Convergence Was the Rubik's Cube of 2014

A number of hyper-convergence specialist companies have been shouting very loudly and very expensively about the benefits of their kind of compute and storage deployment. I get the feeling (my opinion and not the official view of Petri.com) that these companies are more successful at getting investment and the attention of the media than at selling their products.

I think hyper-convergence will go the way of tab, parachute pants, leg warmers, Furby, the Rubik's Cube, and music on MTV, and we'll get back to operating compute on one tier and storage on another, connected by a high-speed fabric.

How Do I Manage Hyper-V?

2015-02-01T17:50:00.001-08:00

Just like with other virtualization and cloud platforms, there are many ways to manage Hyper-V. The choices depend on how big your installation is, what licensing you have purchased, how much automation you want to use, and if you have leveraged self-service. I will explain different administration options that are available from Microsoft in this article. Please note that other companies such as 5nine and Veeam also offer administration tools for Hyper-V.

Hyper-V Management Basics for Small to Medium Deployment

Hyper-V Manager is the basic administration tool that is included in Windows Server and Windows 8/8.1 Pro/Enterprise. We normally use Hyper-V Manager for the following scenarios:

Managing a small number of hosts
Configuring host settings
Creating and managing virtual machines on non-clustered hosts
Troubleshooting a host

Using Hyper-V Manager to control host settings.

Note: You must use a version of Hyper-V Manager that is compatible with the hypervisor version. For example, you cannot use Hyper-V Manager for Windows Server 2008 R2 to manage Windows Server 2012, as there is a mismatch of WMI versions. However, you can use the Hyper-V Manager in Windows 8.1 to manage Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Highly Available Virtual Machines

If you deploy clustered hosts, then you will actually need to use two tools. If you want a virtual machine to be highly available (HA), then you will deploy and configure that virtual machine using Failover Cluster Manager. Similar to Hyper-V Manager, you should not use Failover Cluster Manager on the hosts. Instead, you should install it on your PC.

Unlike Hyper-V Manager, you will have to download the Remote Server Administration Toolkit for your version of the Windows client OS. Note that you must run Windows 8.1 on your PC to remotely manage Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 or 8 to manage Windows Server 2012, and Windows 7 to manage Windows Server 2008 R2.

You will continue to use Hyper-V Manager to configure host settings, with one exception; Live Migration settings are configured in Failover Cluster Manager. Non-clustered hosts require a bit more security work to enable Live Migration, but a cluster has its own security boundary that makes Live Migration almost a click-and-go experience.

Using Failover Cluster Manager to manage highly available virtual machines.

Creating virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager on a Hyper-V cluster is a mistake that is commonly made by people that are new to Hyper-V. The resulting virtual machine is not HA, but you can fix this with the following steps:

Using Live Storage Migration to move the virtual machines files to the cluster's storage if required.
Using Configure Role to add the existing virtual machine to the management scope of the cluster. No restarts are required of the virtual machine.

Managing Hyper-V in Medium to Large Deployments

There are several different scenarios where you will purchase System Center with per-host licensing and use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage Hyper-V, including:

Scale: You need a solution to centrally manage lots of hosts/clusters.
Cloud: You will be deploying public or private clouds.
Deployment: You need faster host, storage, virtual machine, or service deployment.
Delegation: You want to enable delegation of administration, enabling some administrators to manage some hosts.

Managing a cloud fabric using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

Note that SCVMM is just one of eight products in the System Center license suite. You will choose from the System Center menu to enable other elements of management, protection, and automation.

Hyper-V Automation

PowerShell… yes, I said it. If you want to do things at scale, get repeatable and predictable results, and do it quickly, then invest some time in Windows PowerShell to get the job done. And you'll also get access to deeper features that are not otherwise revealed in a GUI. You can use cmdlets from Hyper-V, Failover Cluster Manager, and SCVMM to write your scripts in the easy to use Integrated Scripting Editor (ISE).

Configuring Hyper-V host networking using a PowerShell script.

Using Hyper-V, System Center, and Windows Azure Pack

You will deploy a cloud whenever you want to enable self-service deployment of virtual machines and services. The front-end of a Microsoft cloud based on Hyper-V and System Center is the Windows Azure Pack (WAP). There are two portals:

The administrative portal: Used to manage the cloud
The tenant portal: Used by users of the cloud to deploy virtual machines and services

Note that you will continue to use System Center to manage and monitor the fabric of the cloud.

5 Hyper-V Skills

2015-02-01T17:34:00.001-08:00

1. Hyper-V Deployment

I do not argue that Hyper-V still has a smaller total market share than vSphere. But we have evidence from IDC that Hyper-V continues to grow while vSphere is shrinking. And outside of the USA, at least here in Europe, Hyper-V has a much larger presence than in the USA, possibly because we Europeans were slower to adopt virtualization. It's for this reason that IT pros should start to learn how to deploy Hyper-V… correctly.

I work for a distributor, so I am normally one-step removed from working on customer sites; I sell to the resellers, I teach the resellers, and from time-to-time, I help the resellers or my local Microsoft office out when there is an issue with a project. When I am called into a Hyper-V project it is more often than not because a VMware consulting company has been trying to deploy Hyper-V with a design that they would normally use for vSphere. My Hyper-V MVP colleagues from around Europe have a plethora of stories of when they've been called to undo the damage done in Hyper-V deployments by vSphere experts.

Let me ask you a simple question: would you use the same techniques for a gasoline engine as you would for a diesel engine? Of course not, so why would anyone assume that the way to design vSphere is universally correct? I would not assume that how I would deploy Hyper-V is universally correct. If you are going to be working with Hyper-V then you need to learn how to deploy Microsoft hypervisor correctly, including Failover Clustering, Windows Server networking, Windows Server storage, and more.

2. Learn System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

If you are going to deploy a larger Hyper-V farm, then you should strongly consider deploying System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). For you vSphere folks, SCVMM is not Microsoft's answer to vCenter; it is much more than a central console for hosts and virtual machines. I believe SCVMM should be renamed to System Center Fabric Manager because it is the tool that Microsoft envisions owners of larger systems will use to manage storage and networking, deploy bare-metal hosts and Scale-Out File Servers, and provision highly-available services with deep integration into any available load balancers.

In my experience, SCVMM is underused by those customers who do buy System Center licensing. Yes, Hyper-V Manager, Failover Cluster Manager, and PowerShell can do a lot, but SCVMM brings more to the table, especially in environments where change is frequent. There are three kinds of Hyper-V customers who buy System Center:

    Sites that deploy other parts of System Center, typically SCOM and SCCM, but not SCVMM and miss out on lots of functionality.
    Customers that do have SCVMM installed, but use it as nothing more than a centralized Hyper-V Manager.
    The minority of sites that do make great use of SCVMM.

Not everyone can afford System Center, and there are those that have concerns with the complexity of SCVMM. But for those of you that do have that licensing, my advice is that you learn the tool and make better use of it. If you are in the role of service delivery (internal or external customers), then SCVMM is the starting point for build a Windows Azure Pack (WAP) powered private or public cloud.

3. Understand SMB 3.0

If you read my posts then it should be no surprise that I am advocate of using Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) storage for Hyper-V virtual machines. SOFS was the first technology to make real use of Microsoft strategic data transmission protocol, SMB 3.0. In the role of storage connectivity between hosts and a file share, SMB 3.0 competes against the likes of iSCSI, fiber channel and fiber channel over Ethernet (FCoE). However, Microsoft had bigger plans for SMB 3.0. In Windows Server 2012 R2, SMB 3.0 can be used for Live Migrations running at speeds of 10 Gbps or faster. In Windows Server vNext, SMB 3.0 expands again for synchronous and asynchronous replication between Windows servers.

SMB 3.0 is here to stay. There are three components or concepts you need to learn:

SMB Multichannel: What NICs are selected and how to control this
SMB convergence: How to design converged networks with bandwidth controls
SMB Direct: You are going to be pushing huge amounts of data, so you need to learn about hardware offloading via Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) via iWarp, RoCE, or Infiniband

4. Study Windows Server Converged Networking

For those of you running more than a few hosts, you need to release that death grip on 1 GbE networking. 10 GbE is here, and for some of you, you need to be looking at 40 Gbps, 56 Gbps, or even faster! This isn't because of Hyper-V; this is because you are creating larger virtual machines, generating more data, and retaining data for longer than ever before. Stuff needs to move across networks, and it needs to happen quickly.

This typically requires investing in expensive switches, where the NICs don't actually have to be that expensive if you shop wisely, so you need to make the very most of every switch port. This is why we deploy converged networking, once the reserve of hardware solutions, such as those found in blade server enclosures.

Right now, many people are deploying Hyper-V hosts with lots of 1 GbE NICs, or they're using very expensive converged-networking hardware. Those who use 1 GbE networking have bandwidth limitations for individual services or virtual machines. And most of those who are using Windows Server 2012 R2 on blade servers have grown frustrated with Emulex, who have near-monopoly status in this market, taking a year to resolve outage issues with the firmware and drivers of their converged networking NICs.

I have been an advocate of using the features of converged networking that are free in Windows Server. Place a pair of 10 GbE or faster NICs into your host, team them, create a Hyper-V virtual switch that connects to that team, and connect the host and virtual machines to ports on the virtual switch. Now the host and virtual machines have access to 10 Gbps networking while consuming just two top-of-rack (TOR) switch ports. Don't get caught up in CAPEX costs. Remember that the cost of powering six to 10 x 1 GbE posts per host is probably much more than powering two x 10 GbE switch ports per host. OPEX cost savings over three years must be accounted for, too!

4. Embrace Microsoft Azure

2015 will be the year that you finally have to admit that you're going to do some stuff in the cloud. I came to that realization in early 2014 after very successfully ignoring Office 365 and Microsoft Azure for a long time. Your bosses are going to be hearing a lot in the media and directly from Microsoft about the cloud. Pressure will build, and if you won't do it, they'll find someone who will.

There are easy ways to embrace the cloud to supplement your on-premises environment. Everyone struggles with the costs of disaster recovery. Maybe Azure Site Recovery will give you an reasonably-priced solution for disaster recovery in the cloud? I hated working with tapes and tape drives, so maybe backup to Azure will service your needs for off-site backup and archiving? Do you need a hybrid web presence? If so, check out Azure website hosting plans, starting with free offerings. Or do you need a test/dev lab for IT or for the developers and testers? If so, why spends money on hardware when you can pay for what you use in Azure with supervision and enforcement by IT?

5. Learn PowerShell

You're using just 40% of the product you've invested in if you refuse to consider using PowerShell. Most of the magic that I show and talk about is driven by PowerShell and does not have a UI. I guarantee you that this percentage will decrease in the next version of Hyper-V. If you worked for me, I'd fire you. Harsh words, but sometimes a kick in the rear is required.

2015 will be a year of disruption in the world of Hyper-V. There will be the release of Windows Server vNext in the second half of the year. Azure will be purchased by more and more CIOs, with or without the cooperation of their IT departments, but there'll be no choice about deploying services in the public cloud. And storage and networking will continue to evolve. You can prepare yourself for a very interesting year by spending some time learning the above technologies.

About Hyper-V Virtual Processor Limitations

2015-02-01T17:29:00.001-08:00

I was reviewing older posts on the Petri IT Knowledgebase when I noticed an article called Virtual Processor Limitations in Hyper-V. It occurred to me that I should write an updated post that covers a few related topics. In this article, I will clear up a few myths about Microsoft guidance and talk about support virtual processor maximums in Hyper-V.

Virtual Processors versus Logical Processors

Consider a physical computer for a moment. This machine has one or more CPUs or sockets. Each CPU has a number of cores. Most Intel desktop or server processors feature something called hyper threading. This is a design that improves parallelization, enabling a single core to process two threads of execution at once. This isn't truly a doubling of processing horsepower, but it does improve capacity when using modern software on a modern processor. In virtualization, it is important to understand how many logical processors a host has. If you have an AMD 8-core CPU, then that CPU has 8 logical processors (LPs). If you have an Intel 8-core CPU, then it will have 8 LPs if hyper threading is disabled and 16 LPs is hyper threading is disabled.

Each virtual machine you create also has one or more single-core virtual processors. Each virtual processor executes on a host's LPs. What does this mean? If a host has 16 LPs, then the most number of virtual processors (vCPUs) that can be executing on the host hardware at once is 16. I've tried to use precise wording here because there is a subtlety; I can actually overcommit my processors by having lots more virtual machines in a running state. The hypervisor will swap virtual machines in and out on the physical processors based on demand and resource control.

Let's make this clear with a few examples.

I have a host with 16 LPs.
At any one point in time I can have 8 virtual machines with 2 vCPUs executing on the physical processors. Or that might be 16 x 1 vCPU virtual machines, or 4 x 4 vCPU VMs, or any mix that makes up to 16 vCPUs.
However, I might have 50 virtual machines with one or more vCPUs actually running on that host. The hypervisor will swap them in and out of the physical processor, so I don't notice the over-commitment.

That might sounds scary if you're new to virtualization, but we've been doing that sort of thing for decades with software, and it's been the norm for the last 10+ years of machine virtualization.

Maximum Processor Counts

There are four factors to consider:

    How many logical processors are supported by your specific version of Hyper-V?
    What are the maximum number of vCPUs supported on a host?
    How many vCPUs are supported per LP on the host?
    What are the performance requirements of your guests' services?

The first two questions are easy to answer with a search engine by querying 'Hyper-V 2012 R2 Maximums.' In the case of Windows Server 2012 R2 (WS2012 R2) Hyper-V, a single host can have up to 320 logical processors and can support up to 2048 vCPUs on 1024 virtual machines running on a single host.

Note: When you log into a host and run Task Manager, you will see a maximum of 64 logical processors on the host; rest assured that all the logical processors are there and used by the virtual machines it's just that a single install of Windows Server can only use up to 64 logical processors.

In the case of Windows Server 2008 R2 (W2008 R2) Hyper-V, a host can have up to 64 logical processors, and a single host can support up to 512 running vCPUs on 384 running virtual machines.

Older versions of Hyper-V applied a vCPU:LP ratio. In the case of server workloads, Microsoft supported 8 server vCPUs per LP in the host to be running at any one time. So if my host had 8 LPs, Microsoft would support me having 32 x virtual machines, each with a 2 vCPUs. For VDI workloads, we had a 12:1 ratio. That would mean my 8 LP host could run up to 96 virtual machines with a single vCPU each. Microsoft dropped this ratio with the release of Windows Server 2012 (WS2012) Hyper-V, which is because of the fourth question above.

In reality, all these ratios and counts are theory for exams. There is no "you can run X virtual machines" on a host rule in Hyper-V. Virtual machines on all platforms are just like physical servers in terms of resource requirements. Some services are heavy consumers of cores, some services require lots of cores for multi-threading, and some services are lightweights. Microsoft's guidance is quite realistic: you can fit as many virtual machines onto your hardware as your hardware can support, and this is dictated by the workloads that you will run in those virtual machines. In the real world, you'll hit a performance ceiling long before you hit the theoretical maximums of supported vCPUs per host.

Hyper-V Virtual Processor Best Practices

Microsoft does not have and never has had a general rule of having one LP per vCPU. However, some products from Microsoft have issued support guidance. Some products will support 2 vCPUs per LP, and some want a 1:1 assignment. This is a per-product guidance and affects only those virtual machines running those products. You can use Resource Control to enforce this guidance.

Another best practice is to not go crazy with assigning vCPUs. The MSDN Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2012 R2 advises that you should only assign enough vCPUs to a virtual machine to meet the needs of that machine's services. Wastefully assigning vCPUs will reduce the performance of the host and other virtual machines.

A related tip is to monitor the processor queue length within the guest operating systems of your virtual machines, especially mutli-threaded ones such as those running SQL Server. If this metric rises beyond acceptable levels then assign more virtual CPUs to the virtual machine.

Using Internet Explorer 11 Edge Mode in Windows 10 Technical Preview

2015-02-01T17:20:00.001-08:00

In August 2013, Microsoft announced that document modes would be deprecated starting with Internet Explorer 11. IE in the Windows 10 Technical Preview is the only version that currently includes Edge Mode, and any sites that need one of the deprecated document modes to render correctly will have to be recoded to adhere to web standards going forward.

Enabling Edge mode on the new Experimental Features dashboard in Internet Explorer 11 on the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

At the time of writing, Edge Mode is only enabled by default for a small percentage of Windows Insider users who have downloaded the Windows 10 Technical Preview. But Edge Mode can also be enabled and disabled manually.

What is Edge Mode?

The concept for Edge Mode comes from the interoperability strategy deployed in Mobile IE in Windows Phone 8.1 Update, where prior to the update it was found that either mobile versions of sites weren't displayed or sites didn't display correctly.

In the updated IE11 on Windows Phone, changes were made to ensure that sites render in a similar way to how Safari and Chrome users see them on iOS and Android devices, even if that meant implementing changes that didn't adhere to standards.

The IE11 Windows 10 Technical Preview has an interoperable User Agent (UA) string to help ensure that the browser is provided with site mark-up that uses modern web standards and not IE-specific code. Edge Mode will be the new default setting in IE12 and is designed to replace all previous document compatibility modes.

New HTML5 Feature Support

The Windows 10 Technical Preview supports some new HTML5 features that are currently in development, including:

WAV lossless PCM audio
ECMAScript 6 Features
Gamepad API to give JavaScript access to game controllers over USB
Content Security Policy 1.0
CSS Interaction Media Queries (Level 4) for responsive input on different device types

Content Security Policy 1.0 Support for a Safer Browsing Experience

One of the most interesting features for IT administrators is support for Content Security Policy 1.0, which when defined in the HTML code, instead of complying with the web's same origin policy, trusting everything that a web server delivers, a whitelist of trusted content sources can be specified to help prevent cross-site scripting attacks. Content Security Policy can contain one or more directives that determine where trusted content can be downloaded. IE10 and later already include limited experimental support for Content Security Policy 1.0 using the X-Content-Security-Policy header.

Enable Edge in IE11 on Windows 10 Technical Preview

Edge can be enabled in the new experimental features dashboard. To get to the dashboard, open Internet Explorer by clicking the icon on the desktop taskbar, type about:flags in the address bar, and press ENTER.

Check Enabled, under Enable Experimental Web Platform Features, and then restart the browser. Now you will be using Edge Mode, and you can always disable the feature if you run into any problems.

Updating the Windows 10 Technical Preview to the Latest Build

2015-02-01T17:18:00.001-08:00

In this article, I'll teach you how to upgrade to the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build and learn about the two update tracks Microsoft is offering within Windows Insider program.

Yesterday Microsoft released Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860, and in this Ask the Admin I'll show you how to perform an upgrade. Before starting, be aware that there is no .iso for this build. I suspect that Microsoft might not release another .iso for Windows 10 until the consumer preview arrives in early 2015. Assuming that it will be possible to upgrade to the latest builds without applying every preceding update, the lack of .iso shouldn't be much of a problem.

Slow and fast track updates

After the upgrade to build 9860, there is the option in PC Settings to choose between two different update tracks. Internally, Microsoft has three tracks: Canary for daily builds, Operating System Group (OSG) once approved by the Canary track, and then Microsoft as a whole once the build has been approved by OSG.

Once a new build has been validated by Microsoft employees, it's released to the Windows Insiders 'fast track' first, and at a later stage to the Windows Insiders 'slow track.' Users running the Windows 10 Technical Preview will be able to choose between slow and fast tracks in build 9860 and later. Although regular updates might be interesting to investigate for IT professionals, it will be more important to see how Microsoft decides to cope with delivering frequent builds via Windows Update.

Update to the latest build

There are nearly 7,000 improvements in build 9860, including features borrowed from Windows Phone 8.1, such as Action Center and Battery Saver. If you'd like to know more about these and other new features in Windows 10,

To update to build 9860, log in to Windows 10 and follow the instructions below.

Open PC Settings from the Start menu. PC Settings is listed in the Quick Links section of the Start menu by default.
In PC Settings, click Update and recovery on the left.
In the left of PC Settings, click Preview builds and then the Check now button on the right.

Checking for a new preview build in Windows 10 Technical Preview.

If a new preview build is available, click Download now on the right in PC Settings.
Once the build bits have downloaded, in PC Settings click Install now.

Installing a new preview build in Windows 10 Technical Preview.

The install process for build 9860 takes much longer than a clean install of Windows 10 Technical Preview using the .iso, so be prepared to wait.

Once the initial phase of the upgrade has completed, you'll be prompted to restart the PC. You can opt to restart right away or at a later stage. Select Now from the Restart and update menu and click OK.

Rebooting your PC to update Windows 10 Technical Preview.

The PC might start several times during the update process. When the update has finished, log on to the PC. They will be another delay while Windows reinstalls your Universal apps. Users of Windows Phone 8.1 will be familiar with this process.

Configure new update options in PC Settings

Now that the new build has been installed, you can choose between fast and slow track updates. The slow track is the default track.

Open PC Settings from the Start menu.
In PC Settings, click Update and recovery on the left.
Under Update and recovery, click Preview builds.
On the right side of PC Settings under Preview builds, select Fast or Slow from the drop-down menu.
Click Check now if you want to check for new builds right away.
Close PC Settings.

Select your preferred update track after updating to build 9860.

In the final version of Windows 10, Microsoft has promised that there will be three update tracks: Consumer, Near Consumer and Enterprise. But that could change between now and RTM.

Easily Edit the Hosts File in Windows 10

2015-02-01T17:13:00.001-08:00

Most operating systems, including Microsoft Windows versions, use the hosts file to translate computer names. Also known as "host names" to numerical IP addresses, the hosts file is similar to using a phone book to find the matching phone number of a specific person's name.

While Domain Name System – or DNS – is mostly used for this function (being a centralized and half-automatically managed name resolution system), the HOSTS file can be used as a local name resolution mechanism, and when used in conjunction with other name resolution mechanisms such as DNS, the HOSTS file takes precedence over them.

This is why many users still edit the HOSTS file and add names and IP addresses of servers, websites and other computers they frequently access to it.

Location of the Hosts File

In Microsoft operating systems, the HOSTS file is located in the following location:

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc

How the Hosts File Works

The HOSTS file is a text file, one that does not have a file extension. It contains lines of text that are made of IP addresses followed by one or more host names or fully qualified domain names (FQDNs). Each field is separated by white space (blanks or tabulation characters).

For example, if you wanted to use the HOSTS file to translate a host name of a computer called "printserver" into the IP address of 192.168.0.1, you would add this line:

192.168.0.1 printserver

1	192.168.0.1 printserver

You can add more than one host name to the same IP address. For example, if the computer called "printserver" also acts as a scanner called "scanserver", you could use this line:

192.168.0.1 printserver scanserver

1	192.168.0.1 printserver scanserver

If you ping either "printserver" or "scanserver", you'd get to the same IP address:

The HOSTS file can also translate Fully Qualified Domain Names (or FQDNs) of computers, such as ones used on the Internet.

For example, if you wanted to add a manual line to translate a FQDN of a computer called "webserver.domain.com" into the IP address of 8.8.8.8 (this is just an example, actually 8.8.8.8 is the IP address used by Google's DNS servers), you would add this line:

8.8.8.8 <a href="http://webserver.domain.com">webserver.domain.com</a>

1	8.8.8.8 webserver.domain.com

When you ping it, your computer will resolve the name to the correct IP address:

You can also include comment lines by placing a hash character (#) at the beginning of the line.

This is how the HOSTS file looks on a Windows 10 Technical Preview build machine:

The HOSTS file may sometimes be used by malicious software such as adware, computer viruses, or trojan horses etc. These applications may use it to redirect traffic from the intended destination to sites hosting malicious or unwanted content. That is why some Anti-Virus programs may monitor changes to the HOSTS file, preventing malicious software from modifying it. So does Windows, and unless you use elevated permissions to edit the file, you will be prevented from saving it.

How to Edit the Windows 10 Hosts File

To edit the HOSTS file we need to use a method that allows us to save the file to it's original location, which is:

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc

1. To do so, copy the HOSTS file to your Desktop.

2. Open the copy from your Desktop in Notepad.

3. Make all necessary changes. For example, adding a line that translates 192.168.1.1 to "kuku". Save the copy.

4. Next, copy and paste the file to its original location.

5. You will be asked if you want to overwrite the file. Choose Replace the file in the destination.

6. Windows will ask for Administrator permissions. Click Continue.

7. The changed HOSTS file will replace successfully the original, and now, if you ping "kuku" you will get the corresponding IP address.

Microsoft Provides a Much More Complete Look at Windows 10

2015-02-01T17:09:00.001-08:00

As expected, Microsoft provided a lot more information about Windows 10 at a media event on Wednesday and promised to ship many of the new features to testers within the week. But the software giant also had a few surprises up its sleeve, including giant new Surface Hub conferencing systems and an innovative augmented reality headset called HoloLens.

Microsoft is promising to ship many of the new Windows 10 features to testers within the week following Wednesday's media event in Redmond. (Image Credit: Microsoft)

"Windows 10 is the first step to an era of more personal computing," Windows lead Terry Myerson said today. "We are moving Windows from its heritage of enabling a single device–the PC–to a world that is more mobile, natural and grounded in trust."

Myerson and his coworkers then stepped through a two-and-a-half hour presentation that piled up the news in such rapid succession that it was almost hard to keep up. But here are the highlights.

Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for consumers for a limited time. In a bid to get as many users on the latest Windows version as quickly as possible, Microsoft will make Windows 10 available for free to users of Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1. This offer will be available for the first year of Windows 10's life cycle. Windows 10 will also be a free update for Xbox One.

Windows 10 is being positioned as "Windows as a service." In order to get that free Windows 10 upgrade, consumers will need to agree to let Microsoft update the product for the lifetime of the devices on which it is installed. This will effectively remove the need to worry about version numbers since most users will always be up-to-date.

Businesses can still license Windows 10 in traditional ways. But Microsoft would really like to see its business customers adopt the always up-to-date strategy as well.

Windows Phone will be replaced by Windows 10 for phones and small tablets. Smartphones and tablets with screens smaller than eight inches will have their own Windows 10 version that looks and works much like Windows Phone OS.

Continuum arrives. For detachable PCs like Surface, Windows 10 will provide a seamless transition between laptop and tablet states, where apps float on the desktop in the former and run full-screen in the latter.

Cortana is coming to the PC and Xbox One. Windows 10 will include an improved version of the Cortana personal digital assistant capabilities that debuted in Windows Phone 8.1.

Project Spartan is a new web browser. It won't replace Internet Explorer yet because of compatibility reasons, but this new browser adopts a sleek new UI, typed and handwritten page annotation functionality, easier sharing, an improved reading view and offline article viewing.

Office universal apps will be included with Windows 10. If you're using Windows 10 on a phone or small tablet, you will get the Office universal apps — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook Mail and Calendar — for free.

Universal apps are new and improved. Apps like Photos, Videos, Music, Maps, People, Messaging, Mail and Calendar are being updated with the evolved look and feel of Windows 10, to support usage across device types, and to support content sync via OneDrive.

New Xbox app. A new Xbox app will be the hub for all your Xbox gaming activity in Windows 10 and will provide new features like Xbox One game streaming (to any Windows 10 PC or tablet), friend finding, and more.

New devices. Microsoft showed off two new devices, the Surface Hub — an 84-inch screen with an internal Windows 10 PC and an array of sensors and unique capabilities — and HoloLens, a crazy-innovative augmented reality headset that will have ramifications for both personal and business use.

Microsoft says that testers can expect the new build of Windows 10 — which will include some but not all of the features mentioned above — "within a week," though my sources say this should be available as soon as Friday. And the first pre-release build of Windows 10 will be made available for current Windows Phone devices in February, my sources told me.

Looking ahead, Microsoft says it plans to reveal more information at upcoming events such as the Game Developers Conference, WinHEC, Mobile World Congress and Build. The company says it will ship Windows 10 sometime later in 2015.

Windows 10 Enterprise Data Protection

2015-02-01T17:06:00.001-08:00

More details of data loss prevention (DLP) features in Windows 10 were revealed recently at TechEd Europe 2014 in Barcelona. In contrast to third-party systems, such as Samsung Knox for mobile and desktop solutions for Windows, DLP will be deeply integrated into Windows 10 to contain data at the file-system level so that the technology works transparently to users.

Windows 10 Security: Cross-platform sharing

In Microsoft's new client DLP solution, Windows acts as an access control broker to data that's secured at the file-system level, unlike other products that are built on top of the OS. Not only will it work on Windows, but APIs will allow iOS and Android to access data protected by Windows 10 DLP to provide a similar experience as possible, despite the lack of deep integration that's possible in Windows. While programs will need to be updated to work with Windows 10 DLP, reader and viewer apps will be made available so users can access content when there are no available updates.

Protection everywhere

Windows 10 DLP protects data in transit and at rest, which includes removable devices, such as USB sticks. Administrators will be able to remotely wipe devices and control which apps can access corporate data. This idea has also been extended to virtual private networks (VPN), and organizations will be able to define which apps are allowed to work over VPN. Third-parties will also be able to integrate with Windows 10 DLP using APIs, including applications in the cloud.

Differentiating corporate and personal data

Windows 10 DLP intelligently differentiates between corporate and personal data via a few different mechanisms. Organizations can define domain names that are marked as corporate, so for example when data is loaded from an organizational Office 365 account, it is marked as company data.

Apps can be also set to only work with corporate data, and they can also create new content that must be categorized as corporate, but system administrators will have the option to allow end users to determine how data is categorized when initially saving files.

Finally, although Windows 10 doesn't rely in any way on data being saved to a particular location to be protected by DLP, organizations can define locations where all data must be categorized as corporate.

One point that was stressed today is that there are no plans to introduce file classification on the client, so Windows 10 DLP will not be able to scan the contents of files to determine how they should be categorized. Depending on customer feedback, file classification will remain a server-only feature, but could be introduced on the client at a later date.

Windows 10 DLP setup and management

DLP solutions have been traditionally difficult to set up and manage and have required users to manage different profiles or apps to work with protected data. Windows 10 DLP aims to remove users from the equation in most instances and are only involved in decisions about how data is categorized when creating new content if policy doesn't enforce that content must be categorized as corporate.

For cloud-based environments, Mobile Device Management (MDM) will manage the encryption keys, and for onsite systems, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) will take on this role, with the underlying key-management technology likely to be Rights Management Server (RMS), although a final decision has yet to be taken. Windows 10 DLP is currently being referred to as Enterprise Data Protection, but again this is likely to change before Windows 10 is released to manufacturing sometime in the second half of 2015.

What about Windows Server 10?

2015-02-01T17:03:00.001-08:00

If you watched yesterday's Windows 10 media event online, you could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft isn't developing a new version of Windows Server alongside Windows 10. But back in October 2014, Microsoft did release Windows Server Technical Preview — also referred to by some as 'Windows Server vNext' — although unlike the Windows 10 Technical Preview, it hasn't received regular updates since that time.

Surface Hub and HoloLens took up much of the allotted one and a half hours of yesterday's event, in addition to Joe Belfiore and others racing through new Windows 10 features, many of which will be available in next week's updated technical preview. Because of this, there evidently wasn't time to trumpet Windows Server.

It's fair to expect that Microsoft will deemphasize the importance of Windows Server as a standalone product going forward. It's been clear since the release of Windows Server 2012, that much of the improved functionality is not to help you do more with less on premise, but to enable Azure. That's evidenced in the focus on networking, storage, and improvements to Hyper-V.

As the primary building block for Microsoft's public, private and hybrid cloud solutions, Windows Server will take a backseat as Microsoft tries to sell Office 365 and its Azure cloud platform. Along with Windows Azure Pack for private or hybrid cloud deployments, Azure as a cloud OS is strategically more important than Windows Server as a technical enabler.

Does Microsoft Want Server Workloads to Move to the Cloud?

Take a look at Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 Migration Planning Assistant website, and you'll get the impression that the preference is to migrate your Windows Server 2003 workloads not to Windows Server 2012 R2, the current version of Microsoft's server operating system, but to one of Microsoft's cloud services. And if that's what you decide to do, you probably won't need to worry about migration in the future, as the backend infrastructure is upgraded for you transparently, while your data and services continue to function, hopefully with little or no interruption.

Windows Server 10 New Feature Summary

That's not to say that Windows Server 10 isn't coming. While there has been no official announcement to date about when we'll see an updated build, you can be sure it will arrive, but not necessarily at the same time as Windows 10. Just as we saw in the previous two versions of Server, Windows Server 10's core improvements center around virtualization, storage, and networking.

Hyper-V

On the virtualization front, a new binary format for configuration data is designed to reduce the likelihood of corruption during a storage sub-system failure or power outage, and production checkpoints look set to improve on VM snapshots.

You'll also be able to perform rolling Hyper-V cluster upgrades, much in the same way as is possible when adding new domain controllers to an Active Directory domain. Windows 10 Server nodes can be added to a Server 2012 R2 cluster, and when all the nodes have been upgraded, you flip a switch to enable the new Hyper-V features in Windows Server 10.
Storage and Networking

Storage enhancements include quality of service (QoS), and Storage Replica to enable block-level synchronous replication for disaster recovery, regardless of the underlying storage, and stretch clusters across metropolitan distances.

Networking also receives a boost in Windows Server 10, with Network Controller for centralized management and automation of virtual and physical network infrastructure, including the ability to configure IP subnets, VLANs, switches, firewalls and network monitoring. With only some minor changes to DNS and DHCP, Windows Server Gateway will support GRE tunneling to solve several networking issues, such as allowing high-speed connectivity between on premise and cloud networks using MPLS.

Windows 9 Preview Slated for September 30th

2014-09-02T02:38:00.001-07:00

The rumor mill has been working overtime with regards to the what, how, why, and when of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 9 client OS, which has also been given the Microsoft codename of 'Threshold.' Thanks to some solid reporting by Tom Warren over at The Verge (and some of his sources), we now know that Microsoft is planning a press event in late September to release some additional details about Windows 9.

So what exactly will Microsoft be discussing at the Windows 9 preview event? Warren suggests in his post that it isn't likely that the final name from the product will be announced then, but that Microsoft may release an early technology preview that will give "...developers a first look at the new mini Start Menu in Windows 9, alongside the removal of the Charms bar feature and several UI changes."

There are some other features that have been rumored for Microsoft's next update to the Windows client, including a version of the Windows Phone 'Cortana' voice assistant technology. Warren mentions that Microsoft may release an early technology preview version of Windows 9, primarily for developers, soon after the September 30th press event. Warren's information aligns well with an earlier report by Mary Jo Foley that indicated that a tech preview of Windows 9 would be available in late September and that the preview would be available to end users as well.

Expected New Features in Windows 9

While detailed information on what new features Windows 9 will contain is still hard to come by, here's a summary of features that are more than likely to find their way into the next release of Windows.

Revised Start menu: This was initially shown at the Microsoft BUILD developer conference earlier this year in a very enigmatic presentation by Microsoft's Terry Myerson. During BUILD, Myerson said that Microsoft would " be making this available to all Windows 8.1 users as an update. We think [there will be] a lot of happy people out there." While Myerson's vague comments seemed to indicate that the new Start Menu would be included in an update to Windows 8.1, the consensus is that this feature will show up in Windows 9.
More improvements for desktop users: Besides the omission of the start menu, the duct-taped together feel of the the new "Modern" touch-based Windows UI with the traditional Windows desktop in the first release of Windows 8 wasn't well-received by consumers or corporate IT departments alike. Microsoft has taken some steps at improving this in the several updates to Windows 8.1, but we should expect Windows 9 to boot to desktop by default for mouse and keyboard users, and to the touch-based Windows UI for touch-based tablets.
Cortana voice assistant: Tom Warren has mentioned that this feature might make its way from Windows Phone to Windows 9, and I think it's a smart move. Windows Phone is still struggling for smartphone relevance against Android and iOS, and moving one of the most promising new features of the platform to the desktop (and laptop) can only help both Windows Phone and Windows 9, in my opinion.
Virtual Desktops: News of this feature comes to us from Brad Sams at Neowin, who suggests that Microsoft will be adding virtual desktops to Windows 9, not unlike the same feature used in Mac OS X and in Ubuntu. This should also help improve Windows usability on the desktop, which many users and IT staff think is long overdue.
Removal of the Charms bar: The Charms bar is a Windows 8 feature that nobody seems to like: It's confusing, it's not very intuitive, and it looks like it will be heading to the recycle bin when Windows 9 ships. Mary-Jo Foley has more info on the rumored demise of the Charms bar over at ZDNet.

Controlling SMB Multichannel in Windows Server 2012 R2

2014-09-02T02:34:00.001-07:00

In "Managing SMB Multichannel in SMB 3.0," I discussed managing SMB Multichannel and explained how SMB chose NICs for data transfer if there was more than one option between the SMB client and the SMB server. Sometimes SMB 3.0 might choose NICs that you didn't want it to use or it might use too many NICs.

In this article, I'll explain how to control SMB multichannel and avoid those potential issues throughout design. I'll also show you how to limit the bandwidth that SMB 3.0 can use when NICs are shared.

Controlling SMB Multichannel through Smart Design

In the first article of this series, I showed a problematic example design. You can review this example design in the image below. The design was deployed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) administrators that thought they needed a physical management NIC. When the hosts were tested, the administrators found that all SMB 3.0 storage traffic went through the management NIC, instead of the intended, management OS virtual NICs.

Refer to the first article in this series to learn how SMB 3.0 chooses available paths from the SMB client and the SMB server, along with learning detailed information on NIC ordering.

The best way to prevent SMB 3.0 from using the physical management NIC is to design the host correctly. When designing the logical switch, you can actually designate a virtual NIC as the management NIC. It's a bit tricky to do in the SCVMM console, but it can be done. You can even dispense with the physical NIC that was being used for host management. So not only will you get higher bandwidth storage networking, but you will also have a cheaper and simpler design.

SMB 3.0 Multichannel Constraints

The above all-converged design is nice because it is much simpler and software defined, which includes fewer drivers and firmware dependencies. But there is a catch! What will happen if the management, clustering, and SMB NICs of the hosts are all on the same VLANs as the file server's respective management, clustering, and storage networks?

SMB 3.0 will determine that there are multiple paths between the hosts and the storage, namely every management OS virtual NIC, and it will use every single one of them! Yes -- SMB Multichannel will aggregate the management, clustering, and SMB virtual NICs to access the file server's storage!

We do not want this. We need to apply controls to guarantee cluster communications and management accessibility of a host, even if the storage resources are being maximized. This is why Microsoft gave us a control called SMB Multichannel constraints, which is managed using PowerShell. The New-SMBMultichannelConstraints cmdlet is used to add a new restriction on different NICs that are used by the local server to access a designated file server. You can have different rules for different servers. SMB Multichannel is used in two ways in the above design:

Storage: SMB1 and SMB2 are intended to be used for accessing SMB 3.0 storage.
Redirected IO: Cluster1 and Cluster2 should be used whenever the Hyper-V cluster needs to redirect storage IO for whatever reason.

Using this requirement, I would create two SMB Multichannel constraints:

New-SmbMultichannelConstraint -ServerName Host2,Host3,Host4 -InterfaceAlias Cluster1,Cluster2

New-SmbMultichannelConstraint -ServerName SOFS1 -InterfaceAlias SMB1,SMB2

SMB 3.0 Bandwidth Limits

SMB 3.0 has evolved quite a bit since the release of Windows Server 2012 (WS2012). Windows Server 2012 R2 (WS2012 R2) can use SMB 3.0 for storage, redirected IO, and Live Mirgration on 10 GbE or faster networks.

This convergence of roles on the SMB 3.0 protocol lets us introduce higher speed networks, possibly even with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA,), to make the most of the investment by limiting the costs of top-of-rack (TOR) switch ports. A design that I really like is shown below:

Two non-teamed RDMA capable NICs (rNICs) are used for multiple roles:

Cluster communications, including redirected IO
Storage
Backup
And SMB Live Migration

Normal QoS rules cannot stop Live Migration from starving storage of bandwidth or vice versa because there's no way to differentiate SMB 3.0 from SMB 3.0. This is why we have Set-SmbBandwidthLimit, which requires the SMB Bandwidth Limit feature to be enabled in Server Manager. You can configure three types of traffic with this cmdlet:

VirtualMachine: Hyper-V over SMB storage traffic.
LiveMigration: Hyper-V Live Migration based on SMB.
Default: All other types of SMB traffic.

With the following example, I can limit Live Migration and SMB storage traffic consumption from the NICs:

Set-SmbBandwidthLimit –Category LiveMigration –BytesPerSecond 8 GB

Set-SmbBandwidthLimit –Category VirtualMachine –BytesPerSecond 10 GB

Now you should have the ability to control which NICs are used by SMB 3.0, along with the ability to control the bandwidth consumption of the protocol in its various use cases.

Enable Telnet Client in Windows 8 and Server 2012

2014-09-02T02:24:00.001-07:00

The Telnet client is one of the most basic connectivity and management tools that any IT professional needs, and this article will show you how to enable Telnet client in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. The Telnet client not only lets you connect to a remote Telnet server and run applications on that server, but is also useful for testing connections to remote servers, such as ones running web services, SMTP services and others.

Using the Telnet client is simple enough and the use of Telnet clients has been covered in several different articles on the Petri IT Knowledgebase. The idea is that once the user has logged on, they can use a command prompt interface that can be used as if it had been opened locally on the Telnet server's console, and any command the user types is sent to the Telnet Server and executed there. The output from that command is sent back to the Telnet client.

Telnet Client Options

Note: There are many Telnet client tools, where many of them are freely available on the Internet. There are even smartphone and tablet versions that you can download from Google Play or the Apple Store, depending on the OS version on your mobile device. For example, PuTTY is one of the most used apps, as it can perform many types of remote connections, including to Telnet servers.

How to install the Telnet Client for Windows 8 and Server 2012

The Telnet client is a feature that has been included with Microsoft operating systems since Windows NT. However, it is not enabled by default for later OSs, where this started back with Windows Server 2008/Vista. So unless you are going to use a third-party tool to assist you when you perform your remote connection and connectivity troubleshooting work, you want to enable Telnet client on your machine. Just in case you need it.

There are several methods for installing or enabling the Telnet client in Windows Server 2012/R2/8.

Install the Telnet client from the GUI

There is a difference between Windows Server 2012/R2 and Windows 8.

1. In Windows Server 2012/R2, open Server Manager from the taskbar icon or from the Start page.
2. Click "Manage" and then "Add Roles and Features".
3. Click "Next" four times until you get to the "Select Features" page.
4. Click to select the "Telnet Client" feature. Click "Next".
5. Click "Install".
6. You can click "Close". No need to wait for the installation to complete.
7. In Windows 8 open Control Panel and click on "Uninstall a program" under "Programs".
8. Click on the "Turn Windows features on or off" link.
9. Click "OK", and the feature will be installed.

Install the Telnet client from the Command Prompt

1. Open the Command Prompt window with elevated permissions (Run as Administrator).

Opening the command prompt

2. In the Command Prompt window type:
dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:TelnetClient

3. Once command finished, Telnet client will be installed.

Install Telnet client from Windows command prompt

Install the Telnet client with PowerShell

1. Open the PowerShell window with elevated permissions (Run as Administrator).

Install the Telnet client with PowerShell

2. In the PowerShell window type the following line:
Import-Module servermanager

3. Then type:
Add-WindowsFeature telnet-client

VMware Management Tools

2014-09-02T02:11:00.001-07:00

Any VMware administrator worth his or her salt has a grab bag of useful tools and scripts to make administration easier, so much so that this list of tools usually follows them between jobs. Below is a list of what I'd consider to be 10 essential VMware management tools I personally use on a day-to-day basis as a VMware administrator.

1. RVTools

RVTools is a tiny free tool that allows an administrator to easily interrogate and report on a VMware infrastructure. It will collect just about all the information you require, displaying it in a series of useful tabs. What is exceptionally useful is that RVTools allows the export of the data in both CSV and Excel formats for manipulation of data if needed.

It is an ideal way to get a list of virtual machines in a cluster or vCenter in one easy step. It lets someone do exactly the same with hosts and pretty much every reportable item you could possibly need. It gives loads of information, perhaps too much, about a host, cluster or VM in an easily exportable list. One really useful function is that RVTools has a special tab for problem machines that will show any machines that don't meet VMware best practice or have serious issues, such as inconsistent machine names, large snapshots, zombie virtual machines and many other potential issues.

2. PowerShell

Every administrator, like it or not, is going to have to get used to Windows PowerShell. PowerShell is a key component in running anything but the smallest VMware farm. It provides a key part of VMware automation infrastructure. It allows admins to quickly create small scripts to perform frequently performed tasks all the way up to huge automation scripts to migrate entire clusters to new homes.

If you are running Windows 2008, then you will already have PowerShell installed. As proficiency increases, you can build small and useful scripts. A typical example of a PowerShell script I use frequently is to check that all datastores in the cluster are available to all the hosts. Having tens of LUNs per cluster, it saves time and reduces the margin for error. It is small time saving scripts like this that separate good admins from great admins. [Download PowerShell]

3. vCheck Daily Report

The vCheck daily report script is created by Alan Renouf and several members of the VMware community with one key goal in mind. That goal is to provide a daily health check for VMware infrastructure. It is free to download and use. It will require a small amount of customisation for specific environments, such as the email delivery settings and access settings but it is well worth it. The key takeaway from this is that it can be used to get an easy to understand report that highlights and points out issues with the infrastructure.

What is even better is that where there is a deviation from best practice it will report that. Reporting includes virtual machine faults, hardware faults, DRS, HA and many others. This script is worth its weight in gold. It is all about reporting issues and errors where as RVTools is all about reporting numbers.

4. WinSCP

WinSCP is a very useful Windows implementation of the classic SCP (Secure Copy Protocol) tool that most Linux machines have installed. It is one of those tools that is handy when an admin just needs to upload directly to a datastore, or the actual host filesystem itself. Sure, it is possible to use the upload feature built in the vSphere client, but sometimes, for example if you need to upload a fix to the actual hypervisor level storage that is not available from the client. [Download WinSCP]

5. PuTTY/DCUI Command

PuTTY, the secure shell client is a key component to any administrator's armory that gets used frequently. PuTTY can be used to troubleshoot the server without having to use ILO/DRAC and the slow and awkward interface that comes with them.

It is even possible to get the full-on console experience using PuTTY when there is a need to configure some options on the console. Once logged in as root using PuTTY, use the command "dcui" to get the same text based menu as would be seen on the console. The PuTTY console also allows use of the command line tools that come with the VMware host and if needs be, manage the virtual machines directly. I frequently use it when I need to migrate virtual machines between infrastructure that is not directly connected to both source and destination and also to get around firewall issues. [Download PuTTY]

6. PowerGUI

Using the default PowerShell Integrated Environment (PSE) is not an experience to relish. I just don't use the PSE. I can, however, wholeheartedly recommend PowerGUI by Dell. Quest was the company that created PowerGUI, and Dell recently purchased Quest.

It is a fully integrated IDE that has autocompletion and plug-in modules to extend the functionality. The VMware community has additional plugins to expose VMware functionality. There is a pro version that has version control and a few other features that are overkill to most admins. [Download PowerGUI]

7. PowerCLI

PowerCLI is an essential part of scripting sauce that extends the functionality of the PowerShell environment. To use the scripting environment with VMware, you need to create a VMware account to download the tool for free. We've also published a PowerCLI getting started guide that will help get you up to speed quickly. [Download PowerCLI]

8. Virtual vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA)

Virtual vCenter Mobile Access is not really production ready, but it is a handy tool to manage the infrastructure from an iPad. It is not a tool you would use every day, it allows for rudimentary management of an environment in a pinch. [Download vCMA]

9. VMware Converter

Any seasoned administrator is going to be using the VMware converter tool frequently. As the name implies, it allows an admin to convert other physical and virtual platforms and import them into the vCenter infrastructure. Using the converter tool does more than just importing a machine into the infrastructure. The converter allows an administrator to resize the disks, alter the memory and number of CPUs prior to import. Other nice features include the ability to install VMware tools as part of the import process and also power on the imported virtual machine after it's complete. [Download VMware Converter]

10. vMA Management Assistant for Linux admins

The vMA is a godsend for Linux administrators who wish to manage the vSphere infrastructure using Linux-based tools. As every VMware admin knows, the move from ESX to ESXi left behind the RH based console that was replaced with a very small and rudimentary hypervisor shell. [Download vMA Management Assistant]

To stop all the Linux guys from deserting VMware, the clever VMware guys and girls created the vMA. The vMA is essentially a pre-packaged Linux system that allows an admin to run Linux and Perl commands against the vSphere environment. For those that don't like Powershell, Perl can be used in its place, with all the SDK elements exposed. It gives the Linux lovers a chance at automation.

What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.0

2014-08-29T16:19:00.001-07:00

VMworld 2014 is coming to a close, and VMware administrators are just starting to sort through all of the news, new products, and other information coming out of the event. I've already written a bit about EVO: RAIL, the vRealize Suite, and vCloud Air, but there was a lot of other information released this week that deserves a deeper dive. One product that was mentioned often by VMware executives was the upcoming VMware vSphere 6.0 release, which VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said was now available in public beta form.

Yet while many VMware execs mentioned individual features of vSphere 6.0 in piece-meal fashion, there wasn't an umbrella announcement for vSphere 6.0, which means that we're likely to get more official news in the weeks in months to come. That said, there was enough information release during VMworld for us to start assembling a picture of what vSphere 6.0 will have to offer feature-wise, so I've cobbled together some of the available information below.

Note: Given that VMware vSphere 6.0 is still in beta form, I'd expect the following list of features to be tweaked and revised as the product gets closer to final release. I'll continue to update this post as new information becomes available, so please bookmark this page for future reference. If you know of a vSphere 6.0 feature that isn't listed here, please drop me an email and I'll credit you and add it to the post.

New Features in VMware vSphere 6.0

So what new features will VMware vSphere 6.0 have to offer? Some information was made public this week at VMworld 2014, and I've assembled the following list of new features, largely gleaned from the day one and day two keynotes, as well as some of the sessions and other information released at the show.
Virtual Volumes (VVols)

Mentioned during the day 1 keynote by VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, virtual volumes (VVols) take the software-defined mindset and apply it to external storage. VMware's Rawlinson Rivera goes into more detail as to what VVols can offer via a blog post on the VMware website, writing that VVols serves up an approach to storage in which an "individual virtual machine and its disks, rather than a LUN, become a unit of storage management for a storage system. Virtual volumes encapsulate virtual disks and other virtual machine files, and natively store the files on the storage system."

VVols were previewed years ago at VMworld 2012, and VMware has steadily been working on the technology since then. In the video embedded below (and in a companion VVols blog post) VMware gives a bit more information on what VVols is.

Fault Tolerance for Multi-Processor Virtual Machines

One long-awaited vSphere feature was support for fault tolerance for multi-processor virtual machines, and that functionality will be added to VMware vSphere 6. With vSphere 6. VMs with up to 64GB RAM and 4 vCPUs will be covered under with fault tolerance, which Raghuram said should "...provide these application with zero downtimes."

vMotion Improvements

VMware vMotion is one of the most popular features vSphere features, and allows running virtual machines to be shifted from one physical server (or several) without any downtime. VMware's Raghu Raghuram mentioned during the VMworld 2014 Day 2 keynote that they were planning to make several improvements to vMotion in vSphere 6, namely Cross vCenter vMotion and Long Distance vMotion.

Cross vCenter vMotion: This feature will allow applications to be migrated from physical racks managed by different instances of VMware vCenter. Prior to vSphere 6, migrating VMs between different instances of VMware vCenter wasn't possible, so this feature should make the lives of VMware administrators a bit easier.
Long Distance vMotion: In addition to allowing admins to move VMs between instances of vCenter, vSphere 6 will also support the migration of applications from one datacenter to another datacenter located across the country. Raghuram said that -- used in conjunction with updates to VMware NSX -- network properties of apps being migrated this way won't have to be updating, adding that the technology is "science fiction in action."

Used in conjunction, these new features will improve load balancing and the performance of applications, and will provide for "proactive disaster avoidance" and seamless data center migration.

How Do I Manage Hyper-V?

2014-08-19T19:22:00.001-07:00

Hyper-V Management Basics for Small to Medium Deployment

Hyper-V Manager is the basic administration tool that is included in Windows Server and Windows 8/8.1 Pro/Enterprise. We normally use Hyper-V Manager for the following scenarios:

Managing a small number of hosts
Configuring host settings
Creating and managing virtual machines on non-clustered hosts
Troubleshooting a host

It's typically bad practice to regularly log into hosts to manage them. You should enable Hyper-V Manager on your PC to manage your hosts. Not only is this a better practice, but it also makes administration quicker and easier. If you're working in a business that's using old technologies, such as Windows 7, then you can deploy a Windows Server 2012 RDS server, install Hyper-V Manager on it, and publish the application to Hyper-V administrators. This makes deploying Windows 8.1 for IT seem much easier and more economical.

You must use a version of Hyper-V Manager that is compatible with the hypervisor version. For example, you cannot use Hyper-V Manager for Windows Server 2008 R2 to manage Windows Server 2012, as there is a mismatch of WMI versions. However, you can use the Hyper-V Manager in Windows 8.1 to manage Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Highly Available Virtual Machines

If you deploy clustered hosts, then you will actually need to use two tools. If you want a virtual machine to be highly available (HA), then you will deploy and configure that virtual machine using Failover Cluster Manager. Similar to Hyper-V Manager, you should not use Failover Cluster Manager on the hosts. Instead, you should install it on your PC.

Unlike Hyper-V Manager, you will have to download the Remote Server Administration Toolkit for your version of the Windows client OS. Note that you must run Windows 8.1 on your PC to remotely manage Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 or 8 to manage Windows Server 2012, and Windows 7 to manage Windows Server 2008 R2.

You will continue to use Hyper-V Manager to configure host settings, with one exception; Live Migration settings are configured in Failover Cluster Manager. Non-clustered hosts require a bit more security work to enable Live Migration, but a cluster has its own security boundary that makes Live Migration almost a click-and-go experience.

Creating virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager on a Hyper-V cluster is a mistake that is commonly made by people that are new to Hyper-V. The resulting virtual machine is not HA, but you can fix this with the following steps:

Using Live Storage Migration to move the virtual machines files to the cluster's storage if required.
Using Configure Role to add the existing virtual machine to the management scope of the cluster. No restarts are required of the virtual machine.

Prior to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, a common mistake was to configure virtual machine settings in Hyper-V Manager. Those settings would be lost if the virtual machine moved nodes because the settings were not saved in the cluster's database. If you forget to use Failover Cluster Manager you can update the settings of the virtual machine in the cluster. Note that Windows Server 2012 prevents you from editing the settings of HA virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager.

Managing Hyper-V in Medium to Large Deployments

There are several different scenarios where you will purchase System Center with per-host licensing and use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage Hyper-V, including:

Scale: You need a solution to centrally manage lots of hosts/clusters.
Cloud: You will be deploying public or private clouds.
Deployment: You need faster host, storage, virtual machine, or service deployment.
Delegation: You want to enable delegation of administration, enabling some administrators to manage some hosts.

Although SCVMM can be used to deploy Hyper-V clusters in theory, I still prefer to configure and manage clusters using Failover Cluster Manager, where I use SCVMM's bare metal deployment to create the hosts. I have found that SCVMM is not so hot in this department.

Note that SCVMM is just one of eight products in the System Center license suite. You will choose from the System Center menu to enable other elements of management, protection, and automation.

Hyper-V Automation

PowerShell yes, I said it. If you want to do things at scale, get repeatable and predictable results, and do it quickly, then invest some time in Windows PowerShell to get the job done. And you'll also get access to deeper features that are not otherwise revealed in a GUI. You can use cmdlets from Hyper-V, Failover Cluster Manager, and SCVMM to write your scripts in the easy to use Integrated Scripting Editor (ISE).

Using Hyper-V, System Center, and Windows Azure Pack

You will deploy a cloud whenever you want to enable self-service deployment of virtual machines and services. The front-end of a Microsoft cloud based on Hyper-V and System Center is the Windows Azure Pack (WAP). There are two portals:

The administrative portal: Used to manage the cloud
The tenant portal: Used by users of the cloud to deploy virtual machines and services

Note that you will continue to use System Center to manage and monitor the fabric of the cloud.

What are Hyper-V Protected Networks?

2014-08-19T19:13:00.001-07:00

Traditional Network Protection

When we decide that a virtual machine must have fault tolerant networking, we normally choose to deploy a network configuration as depicted below. Two or more NICs are connected to different top-of-rack (TOR) access switches. Those NICs are teamed to give load balancing and failover (LBFO).

A virtual switch is connected to that NIC team and then virtual machines connect to that virtual switch. The end result is that virtual machines have a fault tolerant network connection, where the virtual machines stay online if a single TOR switch or a single NIC fails.

Although this design has been around for years and is considered good practice, times are changing. There are some data centers where this design might not be considered suitable, or it might not offer the right kind of fault tolerance.

The following two examples are scenarios where this design wouldn't be suitable:

Fault domain: In this scenario, a data center is concerned that all of the TOR switching in a rack (usually two independent switches) might fail. They need a solution to get virtual machines out of that rack as quickly as possible to another rack with working network connectivity.

Reduced Costs: A data center decides that the cost of supporting double the number of NICs and switch ports is not sustainable. Instead, they consider a rare brief outage to virtual machines to be more tolerable than the guaranteed CAPEX (purchase cost) and OPEX (operational cost) of additional hardware and management.

An automated remediation to a virtual network outage is made possible with a single host NIC and without NIC teaming by using a feature that was added in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V called protected networks.

What Are Protected Networks?

Protected networks is a feature that is supported by Failover Clustering when you deploy Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V clusters. A cluster will monitor the network connection of virtual machines. If a virtual machine loses network connectivity, then the virtual machine will be live migrated with no perceivable downtime to another host that has an identical, but working network connection.

Each host in the Hyper-V cluster has a single NIC that is dedicated to virtual machine networking. Note that there is no NIC team. A virtual switch is created in each host and connected to that dedicated NIC. A virtual machine is created in Host A and connected to the virtual switch. Failover Clustering monitors the connection status of the physical NICs. If the physical NIC in Host A fails, then the virtual machine will be live migrated to Host B.

Note: A failover cluster did not occur because the clustering NetFT driver was still able to send receive heartbeats across the other network(s) on the host.

Failover Clustering will not react immediately to a network outage. Each virtual machine has a cluster resource to report failures to that virtual machine. Each virtual machine will individually report a failure to Failover Clustering.

The status report might be executed immediately or it might take up to 60 seconds. As a result, a brief network disconnection might occur after the network failure before the virtual machine is live migrated to another host. The fact that each virtual machine has an individual report means that you won''t see all virtual machines initiate a live migration at the same time, assuming that your faulty host is configured to accommodate that load.

For most of us, this would be intolerable so we'll continue to invest in dual TOR switches and NIC teams. But if you have a truly massive installation or if the cost of insurance is higher than the cost of brief outages, then protected networks might seem better than NIC teaming.

Controlling Protected Networks

By default, protected networks is turned on. Yes, this feature protects you even if you have a traditional NIC team connection for your virtual switches. This is protection for the above fault domain scenario. You can view this setting by opening the properties of a virtual machine and expanding the Advanced Features of the desired virtual NIC. You can disable or re-enable this setting for different virtual NICs. For example, you might tolerate outages on one virtual NIC but want an automated response for another virtual NIC.

Protected networks gives you additional protection for your highly available virtual machines' network connectivity. But if you are working in one of those data centers that considers NIC teaming to be too expensive, then you can use protected networks to move virtual machines quickly to another host in the cluster soon after the network outage.

How to Export Hyper-V Virtual Machines

2014-08-19T19:07:00.001-07:00

When you export a virtual machine, you get the configuration file, a copy of the VHD, and any snapshots. What is attractive about this feature is that you can move the virtual machine anywhere else or even reimport it in the event of data loss or if you rebuild a system. Before you can export a virtual machine, however, it must be shut down.

Using Hyper-V Manager to Export a Virtual Machine

There are two ways to export a virtual machine. In the Hyper-V Manager, you can select a virtual machine, then right-click and choose Export from the context menu.

Next, you will be prompted for a folder path

Click Export to begin. However, there's one major "gotcha" -- you can't have a previously exported version in the same location.

You can delete or move the existing files and repeat. Be aware that this export will need as much space as the existing VHDs and snapshots, and it might take a while to finish. Another option is to specify another path. If the folder doesn't exist, it will be created. This would let you create date-named folders.

However you choose to do it, the virtual machine will be a top-level folder.

It is also possible to select a number of virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager and export to the same top-level directory. Remember, the virtual machine must be turned off. Each virtual machine will get its own folder structure under the specified path.

Using PowerShell to Export a Virtual Machine

Another approach is to use PowerShell to export the virtual machine (assuming you are running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 and have Hyper-V installed). In the Hyper-V module, you can use the Export-VM cmdlet. You can export a VM by its name.

PS C:\> export-vm "test rig" -Path E:\Exports
Or as a virtual machine.
PS C:\> get-vm "test rig" | export-vm -Path E:\Exports

The same rules apply: You can't have an existing export with the same name in the target path. This makes it easy to get a number of virtual machines and export them all at once.

PS C:\> get-vm "test*" | export-vm -path E:\Exports\2012_10_04

The cmdlet won't write anything to the pipeline unless you use –Passthru. Also be aware that Export-VM does NOT support –Whatif or –Confirm, although you could wrap this up in a function and add your own –Whatif as well as better error handling for things like existing files.

Because the export can take a long time, you can use the cmdlet's –AsJob parameter.

PS C:\> get-vm jdh* | export-vm -Path E:\Exports\2012_10_04 -AsJob

Id Name PSJobTypeName State HasMoreData Location Command
-- ---- ------------- ----- ----------- -------- -------
2 Job2 NotSt... True get-vm jdh* | ...
3 Job3 NotSt... True get-vm jdh* | ...

You get a job for every virtual machine, and you can let them run in the background while you keep working. Overall, using PowerShell is great because it means you can set up a PowerShell scheduled job or a task to perform periodic exports.

The Export feature in Hyper-V is a handy way to perform relatively fast and easy backups, especially if you export to removable drives. Yes, there are dedicated Hyper-V backup utilities, but in some situations, exporting may be all that you really need.

Hyper-V Virtual Machine Virtual Network Adapters Explained

2014-08-05T20:29:00.001-07:00

In Hyper-V, a virtual machine has one or more virtual network adapters, sometimes also called virtual NICs or vNICs. A vNIC connects to a host's virtual switch. This allows the virtual machine to potentially talk to other virtual machines on the same virtual switch. An external virtual switch has a port that connects to a physical NIC on host. And this allows virtual machines that are connected to an external virtual switch to talk on the LAN, and potentially on the Internet. Note that this all assumes that machines are on the same VLAN, are routed, don't have firewalls blocking communications, and that other virtual technologies such as Hyper-V Network virtualization or Port ACLs aren't in the way. In this post I will discuss the types of NICs available and how to add them to a virtual machine.

Types of Virtual NICs

Hyper-V offers two kinds of virtual NICs that can be used in virtual machines – one for the past and one for now.

Synthetic Network Adapter

The first kind is simply known as a "network adapter," but you can think of it as the synthetic network adapter. The synthetic network adapter requires that the guest OS is Hyper-V-aware; in other words, the child partition is enlightened or it is running either the integration components for Windows or the Linux Integration Services.

Hyper-V will add a single synthetic vNIC into a virtual machine's specification by default. You can add up to eight synthetic vNICs into a single virtual machine. The below screen shot shows a generation 1 virtual machine with a single synthetic vNIC. Note that this vNIC has a name (VM01). By default, a synthetic vNIC is called "network adapter" when created in Hyper-V Manager or in Failover Cluster Manager. This virtual machine was created using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), so the vNIC was given a label. You can also name vNICs using PowerShell, which can be handy if you do want to create lots of vNICs in a single virtual machine.
Synthetic Network Adapter

A default synthetic network adapter in a generation 1 virtual machine.

Legacy Network Adapter

The second kind is a legacy network adapter. You can have up to four legacy network adapters in a virtual machine. The name suggests the primary focus of this type of vNIC; the legacy network adapter is intended to be used in unenlightened virtual machines that do not have the integration components or Linux Integration Services installed.

A common question on forums is "Why can't my Windows XP VM connect to a network?" The reason is either of the following must be true:

* The guest OS must be Windows XP SP3 to support the Hyper-V integration components to use the default synthetic network adapter.
* You have replaced the synthetic network adapter with legacy network adapter, and remembered to configure the TCP/IP stack.

Another reason to use the legacy network adapter is that it offers support for PXE network boots. Synthetic vNICs do not have support for PXE in generation 1 virtual machines. The use of virtual machines in System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Windows Deployment Services (WDS) for developing and testing OS deployment is common, so you will find yourself using legacy vNICs quite a bit if using generation 1 virtual machines.
Legacy Network Adapter

Legacy Network Adapter settings in a generation 1 virtual machine.

Hyper-V uses synthetic network adapters for a reason; that's because they offer more functionality and they offer better performance. Legacy network adapters are less efficient, causing more context switches between kernel mode and user mode on the host processor.

Generation 2 Virtual Machines

The generation 2 virtual machine was added in Windows Server 2012 R2 (WS2012 R2) Hyper-V to give us a new virtual machine virtual hardware specification that was legacy-free. It should therefore come as no surprise that generation 2 virtual machines do not offer legacy network adapters.

Generation 2 virtual machines only support synthetic network adapters. You can have eight of these efficient vNICs in a single generation 2 virtual machine.
There is no need for legacy network adapters in generation 2 virtual machines

Generation 2 virtual machine with many network adapters.

There is no need for the legacy network adapter in generation 2 virtual hardware. Remember that generation 2 virtual machines only support 64-bit edition of Windows 8 or later, and Windows Server 2012 (WS2012) and later. That means we don't have an issue of enlightenment. Thanks to the new virtual hardware specification, Microsoft was able to add PXE functionality to generation 2 synthetic vNICs.

Hyper-V Virtual Machine Virtual Network Adapters Explained

2014-08-05T19:58:00.001-07:00

In Hyper-V, a virtual machine has one or more virtual network adapters, sometimes also called virtual NICs or vNICs. A vNIC connects to a host's virtual switch. This allows the virtual machine to potentially talk to other virtual machines on the same virtual switch. An external virtual switch has a port that connects to a physical NIC on host. And this allows virtual machines that are connected to an external virtual switch to talk on the LAN, and potentially on the Internet. Note that this all assumes that machines are on the same VLAN, are routed, don't have firewalls blocking communications, and that other virtual technologies such as Hyper-V Network virtualization or Port ACLs aren't in the way. In this post I will discuss the types of NICs available and how to add them to a virtual machine.

Types of Virtual NICs

Hyper-V offers two kinds of virtual NICs that can be used in virtual machines – one for the past and one for now.

Synthetic Network Adapter

The first kind is simply known as a "network adapter," but you can think of it as the synthetic network adapter. The synthetic network adapter requires that the guest OS is Hyper-V-aware; in other words, the child partition is enlightened or it is running either the integration components for Windows or the Linux Integration Services.

Hyper-V will add a single synthetic vNIC into a virtual machine's specification by default. You can add up to eight synthetic vNICs into a single virtual machine. The below screen shot shows a generation 1 virtual machine with a single synthetic vNIC. Note that this vNIC has a name (VM01). By default, a synthetic vNIC is called "network adapter" when created in Hyper-V Manager or in Failover Cluster Manager. This virtual machine was created using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), so the vNIC was given a label. You can also name vNICs using PowerShell, which can be handy if you do want to create lots of vNICs in a single virtual machine.

Legacy Network Adapter

The second kind is a legacy network adapter. You can have up to four legacy network adapters in a virtual machine. The name suggests the primary focus of this type of vNIC; the legacy network adapter is intended to be used in unenlightened virtual machines that do not have the integration components or Linux Integration Services installed.

A common question on forums is "Why can't my Windows XP VM connect to a network?" The reason is either of the following must be true:

* The guest OS must be Windows XP SP3 to support the Hyper-V integration components to use the default synthetic network adapter.
* You have replaced the synthetic network adapter with legacy network adapter, and remembered to configure the TCP/IP stack.

Another reason to use the legacy network adapter is that it offers support for PXE network boots. Synthetic vNICs do not have support for PXE in generation 1 virtual machines. The use of virtual machines in System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Windows Deployment Services (WDS) for developing and testing OS deployment is common, so you will find yourself using legacy vNICs quite a bit if using generation 1 virtual machines.

Hyper-V uses synthetic network adapters for a reason; that's because they offer more functionality and they offer better performance. Legacy network adapters are less efficient, causing more context switches between kernel mode and user mode on the host processor.

Generation 2 Virtual Machines

The generation 2 virtual machine was added in Windows Server 2012 R2 (WS2012 R2) Hyper-V to give us a new virtual machine virtual hardware specification that was legacy-free. It should therefore come as no surprise that generation 2 virtual machines do not offer legacy network adapters.

Generation 2 virtual machines only support synthetic network adapters. You can have eight of these efficient vNICs in a single generation 2 virtual machine.

There is no need for the legacy network adapter in generation 2 virtual hardware. Remember that generation 2 virtual machines only support 64-bit edition of Windows 8 or later, and Windows Server 2012 (WS2012) and later. That means we don't have an issue of enlightenment. Thanks to the new virtual hardware specification, Microsoft was able to add PXE functionality to generation 2 synthetic vNICs.

Creating a NIC Team and Virtual Switch for Converged Networks

2014-08-05T19:49:00.001-07:00

A common solution for creating a converged network for Hyper-V is to aggregate links using a Windows Server 2012 (WS2012) or Windows Server 2012 R2 (WS2012 R2) NIC team, such as in the below diagram. We will look at how you can do this in Windows Server and then connect a virtual switch that is ready for Quality of Service (QoS) to guarantee minimum levels of service to the various networks of a Hyper-V cluster.

What Is an NIC Team?

A NIC team gives us load balancing and failover (LBFO) through link aggregation:

Load Balancing: Traffic is balanced across each of the physical NICs that make up the team (team members) in the NIC team. The method of balancing depends on the version of Windows Server and whether the NIC team is being used for dense virtualization or not.
Failover: The team members of a NIC team are fault tolerant. If a team member fails or loses connectivity then the traffic of that team member will be switched automatically to the other team member(s).

NIC teams have two types of setting. The first is the teaming mode:

Switch Independent: The NIC team is configured independently of the top-of-rack (TOR) switches. It allows you to use a single (physical or stack) or multiple independent TOR switches.
Static Teaming (switch dependent): With this inflexible design, each switch port connected to a team member must be configured for that team member.
LACP (switch dependent): Switch ports must be configured to use LACP to automatically identify team member connections via broadcast by the NIC team.

Load balancing configures how outbound traffic is spread across the NIC team. WS2012 has two options (with sub-options) and WS2012 R2 has three options (with sub-options):

Address Hash: This method hashes the destinations of each outbound packet and uses the result to decide which team member the traffic should traverse. This option is normally used for NIC teams that will not be used by a Hyper-V virtual switch to connect to a physical network.
Hyper-V Port: Each virtual NIC (management OS or virtual machine) is associated at start up with a team member using round robin. That means a virtual NIC will continue to use the same single team member unless there is a restart. You are still getting link aggregation because the sum of virtual NICs are spread across the sum of the team members in the NIC team.
Dynamic: This is a new option in WS2012 R2. Traffic, even from virtual NICs, is spread pretty evenly across all team members across all team members.

Note that inbound traffic flow is determined by the TOR switch and is dependent upon the teaming mode and load balancing setting.

Recommended Settings

We'll keep things simple here, because you can write quite a bit about all the possible niche scenarios of NIC teaming. The teaming mode will often be determined by the network administrator. Switch independent is usually the simplest and best option.

If a NIC team will be used by a virtual switch, then:

The NIC team should be used by that single virtual switch only. Don't try to get clever: one NIC team = one virtual switch.
Do not assign VLAN tags to the single (only) team interface that is created for the NIC team.
On WS2012, load balancing will normally be set to Hyper-V Port.
On WS2012 R2, it looks like Dynamic (the default option) will be the best way forward because it can spread outbound traffic from a single virtual NIC across team members, unlike Hyper-V port.

Creating the NIC Team

Note: If you want to implement the VMM Logical Switch or use Windows/Hyper-V Network Virtualization then you should use VMM to deploy your host networking instead of deploying it directly on the host yourself.

There are countless examples of creating a WS2012 NIC team on the Internet using LBFOADMIN.EXE (the tool that is opened from a shortcut in Server Manager). Scripting is a better option, because a script will allow you to configure the entire networking stack of your hosts, consistently across each computer, especially if you have servers that support Consistent Device Naming (CDN). Scripting is also more time efficient: Simply write it once and run it in seconds on each new host. The following PowerShell examples require that the Hyper-V role is already enabled on your host.

The following PowerShell snippet will:

Rename the CDN NICs to give them role-based names. Change the names to suit your servers. You should manually name the NICs if you do not have CDN-enabled hosts.
Team the NICs in a switch independent team with Dynamic load balancing.

Rename-NetAdapter "Slot 2" –NewName VM1

Rename-NetAdapter "Slot 2 2" –NewName VM1

New-NetLBFOTeam –Name ConvergedNetTeam –TeamMembers VM1,VM2 –TeamingMode SwitchIndependent –LoadBalancingAlgorithm Dynamic

Converged Networks and Creating the Virtual Switch

In the converged networks scenario you should create the virtual switch using PowerShell. This allows you to enable and configure QoS. The following PowerShell snippet will:

Create a virtual switch with weight-based QoS enabled and connect it to the new NIC team
Reserve a share of bandwidth for any virtual NIC that does not have an assigned QoS policy. This share is assigned a weight of 50. That would be 50% if the total weight assigned to all items was 100.

New-VMSwitch "ConvergedNetSwitch" –NetAdapterName "ConvergedNetTeam" –AllowManagementOS 0 –MinimumBandwidthMode Weight

Set-VMSwitch "ConvergedNetSwitch" –DefaultFlowMinimumBandwidthWeight 50

What Has Been Accomplished in the Design

Running these PowerShell cmdlets will create a NIC team ready for a Hyper-V virtual switch. It'll also create a virtual switch that is ready for Hyper-V converged networking

Create a NIC Team Inside of a Hyper-V Virtual Machine

2014-08-05T19:38:00.001-07:00

You might wonder why you might want to do it, but it is possible to create a NIC team inside of a virtual machine. In this blog post, I will explain several different reasons to create a NIC team, along with necessary configurations.

Why a Guest OS NIC Team Might Be Required

Normally you will never create NIC teams inside of virtual machines. A best practice is to implement what is illustrated in the figure below. A pair of physical NICs in the host are designated for virtual networking use. These two NICs are ideally plugged into different top-of-rack switches and are teamed in the management OS of the Hyper-V host.

The default team interface is used to connect a virtual switch. Virtual machines are connected to this virtual switch. With this design, your virtual machines get network path redundancy, where you have more than one of each physical device (NIC and top-of-rack switch) to connect the virtual machines to the network core. We don't need multiple vNICs in the virtual machines or virtual switches in the hosts because these are virtual devices that do not suffer hardware failures.

Reasons to Create a NIC Team Inside of a Guest OS VM

What are legitimate reasons to create a NIC team inside of the guest OS of a virtual machine? There are two that I can think of.

To experiment with NIC teaming
The first reason is simple enough; you want to experiment or demonstrate NIC teaming, and you do not have any physical machines to work with. I typically will use a virtual machine to show new Windows or Hyper-V administrators how to use LBFOADMIN.EXE to create and configure NIC teams.
To get network path fault tolerance for in-guest services
The second reason is related to a hardware feature that Hyper-V supports that is incompatible with NIC teaming. Single-Root IO Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a feature that is made possible by SR-IOV capable NICs. SR-IOV directly connects the virtual function (VF) or vNIC of a virtual machine to special physical functional (PFs) on a host's network card.

This direct connection bypasses the networking features of the host, such as the virtual switch and the host's NIC team. The result of enabling SR-IOV is that a host's NIC team offers no network path fault tolerance for the virtual machine. And that means if you want network path fault tolerance for your in-guest services, then you will have to implement NIC teaming within the guest OS.

The host has two SR-IOV capable NICs. A virtual switch is created for each NIC -- SR-IOV enhanced traffic will bypass the virtual switch, but the virtual switch is used to map the virtual machine's vNICs to the correct physical NIC.

The virtual machine is given two virtual NICs, and each virtual NIC is connected to one of the virtual switches. This means that each virtual NIC has a different virtual and physical paths to the network core in the data center. The two virtual NICs are teamed, and this provides load balancing and fail over between the two virtual NICs using a single IP address.

Virtual Machine NIC Team Considerations

There are several different considerations to keep in mind when creating a NIC team inside of a virtual machine:

Enable NIC Teaming: A Hyper-V administrator must enable NIC teaming in the settings of the virtual machine.
Two virtual NICs: A team in a physical server may contain up to 32 NICs. A team that is created inside of a virtual machine is only supported with two virtual NICs, even though nothing will stop you from creating larger teams.
External Virtual Switches: You must ensure that each of the two virtual NICs is connected to a different external virtual switch. Private/Internal virtual switches will leave the team in a disconnected state. Using just one virtual switch is not supported.

Enabling NIC Teaming

The setting for enabling NIC teaming in a guest OS is controlled by the Hyper-V administrator. Edit the settings of the virtual machine, expand the network card that will be a part of the NIC team, and browse into Advanced Features. There you will find a setting called Enable The Network Adapter To Be A Part Of A Team In The Guest Operating System. This setting is disabled by default; check the box to enable this virtual NIC to become a part of a NIC team in this virtual machine's guest OS.

Enabling this setting can lead to a lot of clicking. PowerShell can be a lot quicker. The following example will enable NIC teaming for all NICs in a virtual machine called VM01.

Set-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName VM01 -AllowTeaming On

Once you enable NIC teaming in the virtual machine settings you will proceed with creating the NIC team as usual in the guest OS. Note that the configuration will be locked down to switch independent and the load balancing will also be locked down. This is the ideal and only possible NIC team configuration within a guest OS.

5 Reasons to Choose VMware vSphere 5.5 over Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

2014-07-07T01:53:00.001-07:00

In that same datacenter, we did first attempt to virtualize with Microsoft Virtual Server prior to trying VMware ESX and were disappointed with the performance and lack of centralized management. In more recent years, I have also created two video training courses on Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 and have written numerous articles about Hyper-V. Finally, I have visited Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA and have received briefings on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V to fully understand the latest features. I do run Hyper-V in my lab for testing and education on it's capabilities (but inside a VMware vSphere virtual machine). I do respect and follow what Microsoft is doing to enhance Hyper-V and have respect for the innovation and speed at which they have enhanced Hyper-V. I enjoyed learning more about Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure this year at Microsoft TechEd 2014. But enough about me! Here are the five reasons why I think you should choose VMware vSphere over Hyper-V.

5 Reasons to Choose VMware vSphere over Hyper-V

1. VMware: The Leading Virtualization Innovator

VMware has undeniably been the leader in virtualization technology and innovation for many years. No, just because VMware pioneered vMotion, storage VMotion, distributed resource scheduler, high availability, storage distributed resource scheduler, and fault tolerance for Intel-based virtual infrastructures doesn't mean that they will continue to be the leading innovator in virtualization technology. However, it's a safe bet. With the most recent release of VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware offered new features like server-side caching and VMware virtual SAN support. VMware's network virtualization hypervisor will soon be available to the masses and it's poised to do for the network what ESX has done for the datacenter.

Over time, Microsoft has tried to replicate many of these advanced features that VMware invented years ago. In some cases, Microsoft's cloned feature is similar in functionality. In other cases, the results of the feature may be the same but the level of effort required to accomplish the same results is frustrating (i.e. vSphere's single click to enable HA for a cluster versus Microsoft's entirely separate HA management application that was not designed for Hyper-V high availability, but must be used to configure it on a per-VM basis).

In other cases, vSphere still has numerous advanced features that Microsoft has yet to imitate. For example, vSphere offers fault tolerance, hot-add vCPU, built-in agentless VM backup software with deduplication, a disaster recovery planning and testing software offering, load balancing for storage performance and capacity, and their own end-user computing suite for desktop virtualization.

So I ask you: Would you select the leading innovator in the software-defined datacenter, or the most well-known imitator?

2. The Proven Virtualization Solution

You want to run your datacenter and consolidate all of your company's servers and most critical applications on a single virtualization platform. You require reliability and dependability in the datacenter. Your most critical tier-1 applications must perform predictably. Which platform would you choose to accomplish this?

It's vSphere's time-tested advanced features that make it so reliable, both in uptime and performance consistency. There's a good reason that so many companies choose VMware. In fact, more than 500,000 customers of all sizes have chosen VMware as their virtualization platform, including the following.

99 percent of Fortune 100 companies
99 percent of Fortune 500 companies
100 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies

99 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies

Small companies also have good reasons to choose vSphere. Within small- and medium-sized businesses (fewer than 1,000 employees) VMware has 77 percent market share, according to Spiceworks MarketView data from February 2014.

Not only is VMware proven, VMware is entrenched. Petri IT Knowledgebase Editorial Director Jeff James recently wrote an article on the 5 Reasons that VMware is here to stay and said that "VMware released ESX Server 1.0 in 2001, a full seven years before Microsoft launched the first release of Hyper-V." He goes on to say that "Much like Oracle and IBM, VMware has attained the hallowed status of the IT industry equivalent of tenure." However, I would point out that -- unlike Oracle and IBM -- VMware is widely known as a leading innovator in the datacenter, and is not just relying on their tenure. Similar to what Apple did with the iPhone, VMware has fairly consistently alternated between releasing major and minor version of vSphere hypervisor since they announced the original VMware vSphere back in 2009, which is a much more consistent stream of new innovations and enhancements than Hyper-V.

So I ask you: Should you select the proven datacenter solution or the new kid on the block?

3. The Best Virtualization Architecture

The tier-1 applications of the world that run on Windows run there because Microsoft developed the applications: Exchange, SQL Server, and Sharepoint. For the vast majority of non-Microsoft-developed tier-1 applications, you should note, they don't run on Windows. Think about this: Roughly 67% of all Internet-facing servers run on some version of Unix/Linux, including financial applications, storage servers, voice over IP systems, and database systems.

VMware ESX Server initially ran around a specialized Linux OS; today, vSphere uses open source components and has a busybox Unix-like command interpreter. Many perceive ESXi as being based on Linux, but that's technically not true as vSphere has its own kernel. No matter how you look at it, vSphere doesn't run on Windows, vCenter is available in a non-Windows version, and other VMware applications are moving further away from Windows all the time.

This unique design gives VMware a strong advantage over Hyper-V. With Microsoft "bolting on" virtualization to Windows Server, security and reliability for the virtual infrastructure are decreased. Think about it: To Microsoft, virtualization is a "role" of a Windows Server that does other things like act as a print or fax server. To VMware, virtualization is a hypervisor – and the only thing running on that server.

The VMware vSphere 5.5 hypervisor is less than 200MB to install, while the Windows 2012 Server Core with Hyper-V installation is still roughly 5GB. Yes, that is server core (I had to double-check that). The Windows OS with the bolted-on Hyper-V hypervisor design means that Hyper-V will require many more server reboots for critical security patches, most of which are completely unrelated to virtualization

For example: In 2013, Microsoft released at least one patch per month that required a reboot of a Windows Server -- while there were no critical patches that required the reboot of a vSphere host -- but were unrelated to Hyper-V. Perhaps if you have a small cluster this wouldn't be that big of a deal for you. However, if you have a large datacenter with 50 or 100+ virtualization hosts, this is a huge problem.

This is one of the reasons that Hyper-V has been termed the "good enough" hypervisor: It's good enough for small, less-important workloads for which you don't care that you have to reboot your datacenter once a month, and perhaps you don't even apply patches but once a year. If we leave the reboot issue out of the equation -- and again look at the same 2013 timeframe -- there were 34 critical security patches for Hyper-V while there were only 3 for VMware vSphere. Again, this is because Hyper-V is a bolt-on Windows feature.

So I ask you: Should you select the a hypervisor built for enterprise data centers or a general-purpose operating system, built for everything under the sun, that happens to have a virtualization option that can be enabled? Should you choose the virtualization option that clearly has the optimal design for enterprise virtualization, or the virtualization option that you can most easily enable on your file and print server?

4. VMware: The Strongest Ecosystem

Another reason why I'd choose VMware over Hyper-V is the strength of the VMware partner ecosystem. My Petri colleague Jeff James highlighted VMware's success in building a partner network and a powerful community in his article on why VMware is here to stay. Many people think that Microsoft has a strong partner ecosystem, and while that is true, that Microsoft ecosystem in general is spread across many different products, services, and communities that are totally unrelated to virtualization. Microsoft has strong communities of .NET developers, application experts, Xbox enthusiasts, Windows phone developers, and desktop support specialists. But I'd argue that VMware has built an amazing ecosystem that is focused solely on virtualization.

For those who aren't too familiar with the term ecosystem, an ecosystem might include:

software and hardware vendors

VARs, sales partners / channels
certified experts
consultants
books, video training, classroom training
certification programs
user groups
blogs, forums, and print magazines

VMware's ecosystem built around virtualization has more energy, excitement, and strength than Microsoft's ecosystem in its entirety.

There are so many different ways to measure this. One would be the two companies' conference attendance numbers. VMware's annual conference, VMworld, has had continually increasing attendance every year (except the year of the economic downturn) and, last year, it had 22,500 attendees. That exceeds Microsoft's 2014 TechEd attendance figures (12,000) by 10,000 attendees. Remember, VMworld is solely focused on virtualization and cloud topics, whereas Microsoft's TechEd covers every product that Microsoft makes, and virtualization is just a small piece of this.

Another way to measure an ecosystem is the number of blog posts that are created around it. VMware's Planet v12N blog aggregator collects all blogs related to VMware and lists them on the v12n website, via Twitter and RSS. There are easily more than 20 per day. Go ahead and try to find the best Hyper-V blogs posted each day by using you can use Google Alerts. You'll find a vast difference between vSphere and Hyper-V interest. Again, this is simply a measure of how excited and engaged an ecosystem is around a product or company.

Finally, another test is to do two saved Twitter searches, one for "vSphere" and one for "Hyper-V." See what your results are to measure interest, but don't try that search during VMworld or TechEd or your results will be swayed.

So I ask you: Should you select a hypervisor that comes with the strongest ecosystem support, or the hypervisor whose ecosystem is mostly unrelated to virtualization?

5. VMware: The Best Educational and Career Opportunities

One final point: VMware has vastly expanded their educational courses and certification options, all around VMware's virtualization solutions. According to VMware's certification roadmap they have more than 15 certifications available, all around virtualization. How many does Microsoft have on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V? Answer: they have one certification around "private cloud," the MCSE: Private Cloud, that relates to virtualization.

Why do the number of certifications matter? The exact number doesn't matter, but the point is that VMware offers so many virtualization-specific certification options and Microsoft so few. VMware education also offers more than 50 courses covering virtualization and IT pros line up to take them. Pluralsight.com offers over 90 video training courses on virtualization, mostly on vSphere. VMware's vExpert award program for those who evangelize virtualization was awarded to more than 600 people last year (compared to the 72 Microsoft MVPs for Virtual Machine).

Finally, VMware created a centralized global user group in 2010 and in just four years they have amassed a membership of more than 100,000, with 150+ events across North America, Europe, and Australia. To find out about Microsoft's global community events, you can visit the Microsoft technical communities events calendar. There are hundreds of events listed covering topics like development, Xbox, and Sharepoint. But if you search for events focused on Hyper-V (as offered in their drop-down menu) for the next six months, there are absolutely zero events (yes, worldwide). Conversely, if you search for Windows Server community events, there are three planned events (two of them virtual).

Combine excited IT pros, education, certification, popular user groups, and a steady stream of exciting new product features, and you have an army of virtualization evangelists. Those virtualization experts are finding that there are many more job openings for those with vSphere knowledge than with Hyper-V knowledge (which results in higher pay).

So I ask you: Should you select the a hypervisor that offers the most options for training, certification, and for your career, or the hypervisor with the least?

Don't Get Stuck on Cost or Scalability

In my justification for vSphere, you may notice out that I didn't talk a lot about the cost or the "configuration maximums" (AKA scalability). It's not that these things don't matter. Of course they are important. However, both vSphere and Hyper-V have gotten to the point that they are plenty scalable for every potential use case and, if there is some scaleability limitation that a small percentage of very large enterprises hit, then there is an architectural design decision that is made to accommodate for it, such as not having more than 32 hosts per cluster.

Related: VM Limitations in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

On the cost side, what Microsoft undeniably holds over the heads of most every enterprise that uses Windows Server -- and most enterprises do -- is that if you buy Windows Server Datacenter Edition then you get an unlimited number of Windows Server guest VMs. This is undoubtedly a benefit to using Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Edition Hyper-V that VMware cannot match, as it simply doesn't own the Windows OS.

However, I won't trade all the benefits that vSphere offers simply to save money on my Windows licensing costs, so I'll save you an extensive cost comparison. Most every unbiased cost comparison that I've seen -- including the one that I did in my vSmackdown: vSphere 5.1 vs Windows Server Hyper-V article -- shows that if you left out the Windows licensing benefits that Microsoft has the luxury of "giving away" that Hyper-V and vSphere are similarly priced with vSphere costing more as you move up to higher editions, such as VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus.

However, if you're selecting a hypervisor based on the absolute lowest cost, then you aren't making the smartest decision. Do you buy the absolute cheapest server that you can find? Do you use the absolute cheapest smart phone or laptop? Would you buy the cheapest parachute or bungee jumping cable? While some people do have a need for the absolute cheapest of everything, the vast majority of people purchase products that offer the most benefit for a reasonable price. Those people have learned that the cheapest product may also be the least reliable, poorest performing, and quickest to be replaced. If you want to bet your datacenter, your company, and your career on the cheapest solution possible, then buy Hyper-V.

On the other hand, if you want to use the leading software-defined datacenter solution that continues to innovate and grow their amazing ecosystem of partners and educational resources, choose VMware. By selecting VMware, your employer, coworkers, and your career will thank you.