Hyper-V Amigos Showcast Episode 20 and 21

Introduction

This is just a quick blog post to let you know the Hyper-V Amigos have released 2 webcasts recently. These are Hyper-V Amigos Showcast Episode 20 and 21. You will find a link to the videos and a description of the content below.

Hyper-V Amigos Showcast – Episode 20

In episode 20 of the Hyper-V Amigo ShowCast, we continue our journey in the different ways in which we can use storage spaces in backup targets. In our previous “Hyper-V Amigos ShowCast (Episode 19)– Windows Server 2019 as Veeam Backup Target Part I” we looked at stand-alone or member servers with Storage Spaces. With both direct-attached storage and SMB files shares as backup targets. We also played with Multi Resilient Volumes.

For this webcast, we have one 2 node S2D cluster set up for the Hyper-V workload (Azure Stack HCI). On a second 2 node S2D cluster, we host 2 SOFS file shares. Each on their own CSV LUN. SOFS on S2D is supported for backups and archival workloads. And as it is SMB3 and we have RDMA capable NICs we can leverage RDMA (RoCE, Mellanox ConnectX-5) to benefit from CPU offloading and superb throughput at ultra-low latency.

Hyper-V Amigos Show Cast Episode 20

Some extra information

The General Purpose File Server (GPFS role) is not supported on S2D for now. You can use GPFS with shared storage and in combination with continuous availability. This performs well as a high available backup target as well. The benefit here is that this is cost-effective (Windows Server Standard licenses will do) and you get to use the shared storage of your choice. But in this show cast, we focus on the S2D scenario and we didn’t build a non-supported scenario.

You would normally expect to notice the performance impact of continuous availability when you compare the speeds with the previous episode where we used a non-high available file share (no continuous availability possible). But we have better storage in the lab for this test, the source system is usually the bottleneck and as such our results were pretty awesome.

The lab has 4 Tarox server nodes with a mix of Intel Optane DC Memory (Persistent Memory or Storage Class Memory), Intel NVMe and Intel SSD disks. For the networking, we leverage Mellanox ConnectX-5 100Gbps NICs and SN2100 100Gbps switches. Hence we both had a grin on our face just prepping this lab.

As a side note, the performance impact of continuous availability and write-through is expected. I have written about it before here. The reason why you might contemplate to use it. Next to a requirement for high availability, is due to the small but realistic data corruption risk you have with not continuously available SMB shares. The reason is that they do not provide write-through for guaranteed data persistence.

We also demonstrate the “Instant Recovery” capability of Veeam to make workloads available fast and point out the benefits.

Hyper-V Amigos Showcast – Episode 21

In episode 21 we are diving into leveraging the Veeam Agent for Windows integrated with Veeam Backup & Replication (v10 RC1)  to protect our physical S2D nodes. For shops that don’t have an automated cluster node build processes set up or rely on external help to come in and do it this can be a huge time saver.

We walk through the entire process and end up doing a bare metal recovery of one of the S2D nodes. The steps include:

  • Setting up an Active Directory protection group for our S2D cluster.
  • Creating a backup job for a Windows Server, where we select failover cluster as type (Which has only the “Managed by Backup Server”  as the mode).
  • We run a backup
  • After that, we create the Veeam Agent Recovery Media (the most finicky part)
  • Finally, we restore one of the S2D hosts completely using the bare metal recovery option

Some more information

Now we had some issues in the lab one of them suffering to a BSOD on the laptop used to make the recording and being a bit too impatient when booting from the ISO over a BMC virtual CD/DVD. Hence we had to glue some parts together and fast forward through the boring bits. We do appreciate that watching a system bot for 10 minutes doesn’t make for good infotainment. Other than that, it went fine and we were able to demonstrate the process from the beginning to the end.

As is the case with any process you should test and experiment to make sure you are familiar with the process. That makes it all a little easier and hurt a little less when the day comes you have to do it for real.

We hope the show cast helps you look into some of the capabilities and options you have with Veeam in regards to protecting any workloads. Long gone are the days that Veeam was only about protecting virtual Machines. Veeam is about protecting data where ever it lives. In VMs, physical servers, workstations, PCs, laptop, on-prem, in the cloud and Office 365. On top of that, you can restore it where ever you want to avoid lock-in and costly migration projects and tools. Check it out.

Conclusion

We will be doing more web casts on Veeam Backup & Replication v10 in 2020 as it will be generally available in Q1 as far I can guess.

Hyper-V Amigos Showcast Episode 20 and 21

But with Hyper-V Amigos Showcast Episode 20 and 21, that’s it for 2019. Enjoy the holidays during this festive season. The Hyper-V Amigos wish you a Merry X-Mas and a very happy New Year in 2020!

Windows Server 2019 SMB Direct Best Practices

Windows Server 2019 SMB Direct Best Practices

The Hyper-V amigos, @Hypervserver and working@workinghardinithardinit recently did a webinar together about Windows Server 2019 SMB Direct Best Practices. We also discuss some trends and put some things into perspective. Rachfahl IT Solutions does more of these cool webinars for you to check out (see the info at the end of the video). You can watch the webinar below on Vimeo. It’s quite an honor to be invited to talk on this subject as Carsten is one the worlds most experienced S2D practitioners.

https://vimeo.com/319818020
Windows Server 2019 SMB Direct Best Pratices Webinar

Need to know more?

I hope this get’s you started and updated. Need to know more? Want more details, advice and a deeper and more elaborate discussion. I will be talking about this on various occasions this year. One of them is the Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany 2019 in Hanau. Register to secure your spot. It is a great conference with a lot of hands on, real life knowledge being shard. I will be around for the Hyper-V pre day and during the entire conference. This means you can find me to talk shop. Be warned, I can go one about the subject or a while

The Hyper-V Amigos Episode 10

It’s with great pride that the Hyper-V Amigos ride again and for The Hyper-V Amigos Episode 10 they dive into what’s new and improved in Windows Server 2016 Failover Clustering.

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Well OK we only discuss a few subjects in this web cast as there is only a limited amount of time. I’ll present an overview of during my session at the German Cloud and Datacenter conference on May 12th in Germany. An hour is not enough for a deep dive into everything but we will build on our session we did at the Technical Summit (November 2014) in Germany on Improvements in Failover Cluster 2012 R2 ad get you up to speed so you can select what to investigate further.

Until then, enjoy the webcast and I hope it helps prepare you for what’s coming and entices you to join us at the Cloud and Datacenter Summit in Germany on May 12th! And if clustering alone is not enough to bring you over check out the agenda and you might realize what great gathering of experts is happing at the conference. Just look at the content, the breath and depth of the cloud and datacenter technologies being discussed is vast!

Hyper-V Amigos Podcast Episode 2 – WorkingHardInIT

Just a quick post to let you know the second Hyper-V amigo podcast is on line. You can find it at Hyper-V Amigos Podcast Episode 2 – Didier Van Hoye

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In this episode Carsten Rachfahl (https://www.hyper-v-server.de) talks with his fellow Hyper-V Amigos buddy Didier Van Hoye – that would be me. Carsten and I are both Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP. We’ll  talk about our passion for technology, when I started in computing, what it means to be an MVP and so many more things.

It was fun doing and I hope you have fun listening.