Many MVP’s attended Microsoft Ignite 2015 in Chicago to see what our future will look like.
Carsten published the “Hyper-V Amigo Chat” we did right after Ignite. The conference was a blast for us all. Tired but happy we chat about storage space direct, Nano Server, ReFS, Dedupe, Azure Stack, … Enjoy!
Here’s the link to the video Hyper V Amigos Chat – Microsoft Ignite 2015 on Carsten’s blog.
So you migrate over 200 VMs from a previous version of Hyper-V to Windows Server 2012 R2 fully patched and life looks great, full of possibilities etc. However one thing get’s back to your e-mail inbox consistently: a couple of Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 (x64) and Windows XP SP3 (x86) virtual machines. The VEEAM backups consistently fail. Digging into that the cause is pretty obvious … it tells you where to problem lies.
Ah they forgot the upgrade the IS components you might conclude. Let’s see if we try an upgrade. Yes they are offered and you run them … looks to be going well too. But then you’re greeted by "An error has occurred: One of the update processes returned error code 1603”.
Darn! Now you can go and do all kinds of stuff to find out what part of the integrations services are messed up as most day to day operations work fine (registry, explore, versions, security settings …) or be smart a leverage the power of PowerShell. It’s easy to find out what is not right via a simple commandlet Get-VMIntegrationService
We’ll that’s obvious. So how to fix this. I uninstalled the IS components, rebooted the VM, reinstalled the IS components … which requires another reboot. While the VM is rebooting you can take a peak at the integration services status with Get-VMIntegrationService
That’s it, all is well again and backups run just fine. Lessons learned here are that SCOM was completely happy with the bad situation … that isn’t good 
.
So there’s the solution for you but it’s kind of “omen” like that it happened to three Windows 2003 virtual machines (both x64 and x86). You really need to get off these obsolete operating systems. Staying will never improve things but I guarantee you they will get worse.
See you at a next blog 
Just before Carsten Rachfahl and I left for Microsoft Ignite we recorded episode 9 of the Hyper-V Amigo Showcast. In this episode we’ll discuss SMB Direct over RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) which requires lossless Ethernet.
Data Center Bridging is the way to achieve this. It has four standards, PFC (802.1Qbb), ETS (802.1Qaz), CN (802.1Qau) and DCBx, but only two are important to us now.Priority Flow Control (PFC) is mandatory
and Enhanced Transmission Selection is optional (but very handy depending on your environment).
If you need more information on this start with these blogs on the subject. But without further delay here’s Hyper-V Amigos Showcast Episode 9 – RDMA, RoCE, PFC and ETS
Microsoft sure knows how to keep the pressure on the storage industry. Both the traditional and the hyper converged crowd now have heard the gloomy tolling of that big doomsday bell once again. The offerings for 3rd party storage in the Wintel ecosystem will have to become better value for money once again in order to keep up or stay ahead.
I already wrote that here in TechEd 2013 Revelations for Storage Vendors as the Future of Storage lies With Windows 2012 R2 and poked some fun that the days of the easy big money in storage were over. Today storage vendors that do not adapt are going to feel that more than ever. One thing is for sure, there is no one size fits all and one trick ponies are not going to thrive. Microsoft now covers hyper converged, converged and centralized storage solutions. SMB Direct is the backbone for high throughput, low latency transport. If you haven’t done so you might just take a peek at SMB Direct now and study up on DCB (PFC/ETS). No worries … I have done a lot of “pioneer” work in the field on this. But unfortunately I could not present an end-to-end configuration of SMB Direct over RoCE session here at Ignite. But there are other opportunities.Storage replication completes the story while Storage QoS is giving is long needed control. So let the FUD fly, sit back and enjoy the show. Remember, when you’re catching lots of FLAK, you’re over your target 