Category Archives: IT Pro

KB3063283 Updates the Hyper-V Integration Components for Windows Server 2012 R2 to 6.3.9600.17831

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While investigating a backup issue with some VMs I noticed an entry in the VEEAM Backup & Replication logs that the Hyper-V integration components were out of date.

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This was the case on all the guests on that particular cluster actually. A quick look at the IC version on the host showed them to be at 6.3.9600.17831.

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Comparing that to the ones in the guest made clear very quickly that those were at 6.3.9600.16384. So lower.

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A web search for Hyper-V Integration components led us to KB3063283 “Update to improve the backup of Hyper-V Integration components in Hyper-V Server 2012 R2”on their Hyper-V hosts. They keep a tight ship but due to regulations they are normally 3 to 4 months behind in patches and updates. So in their case they only recently installed that update. KB3063283 Updates the Hyper-V Integration Components for Windows Server 2012 R2 to 6.3.9600.17831

So a little word of warning while you are keeping your Hyper-V environment up to date (you should), don’t forget to update the integration components of your virtual machines. A good backup product like Veeam Back & Replication will log this during backups. It might not make the backups fail per se but they have been updated for a good reason. This upgrade  was even specifically for backup related issues so it’s wise to upgrade the virtual machines to this version a.s.a.p..

Kemp LoadMaster OEM Servers and Dell Firmware Updates with Lifecycle Controller

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When you buy a DELL OEM based Kemp Technologies LoadMaster you might wonder who will handle the hardware updates to the server. Well Dell handles all OEM updates via its usual options and as with all LoadMasters Kemp Technologies handles the firmware update of the LoadMaster image.

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Hardware wise both DELL and Kemp have been two companies that excel in support. If you can find the solution that meets your needs it’s a great choice. Combine them and it make for a great experience.  Let me share a small issue I ran into updating Kemp Loadmaster OEM Servers and Dell Firmware Updates with Lifecycle Controller

For a set of DELL R320 loadmasters in HA is was upgrading ( I not only wanted to move to 7.1-Patch28b-BARE-METAL.bin but I also wanted to take the opportunity to bring the firmware of those servers to the latest versions as that had been a while (since they had been delivered on site).

There is no OS that runs in those server,s as they are OEM hardware based appliances for the Loadmaster image. No worries these DELL servers come with DRAC & Lifecycle controllers so you can leverage those to do the firmware updates from a Server Update Utility ISO locally, via virtual media, over over the network, via FTP or a network share. FTP is either the DELL FTP Site or an internal one.

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Now as I had just downloaded the  latest SUU at the time (SUU-32_15.09.200.74.ISO – for now you need to use the 32 bit installers with the life cycle controller) I decided to just mount it via the virtual media, boot to the lifecycle controller and update using local media.

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But I got stuck  …

It doesn’t throw an error but it just returns to the start point and nothing can fix it. Not even adding “/repository”  to the file path . You can type the name of an individual DUP (32 bit!) and that works. Scanning the entire repository however wouldn’t move beyond step 2 “Enter Access Details”.

Scanning for an individual DUP seemed to work but leaving the file path blank while trying to find all eligible updates seemed not to return any results so I could not advance. The way I was able to solve this was by leveraging the DRAC ability to update it own firmware using the firmware image file to the most recent version. I just got mine by extracting the DUP and taking the image file from the payload sub folder.

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You can read on how to upgrade DRAC / Lifecycle Controller via the DRAC here.

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When you’ve done that, I give the system a reboot for good measure, and try again. I have found in all my cases fixes the issue. My take on this is that older firmware can’t handle more recent SUU repositories. So give it a try if you run into this and you’ll be well on your way to get your firmware updated. If you need help with this process DELL has excellent documentation here in “Lifecycle Controller Platform Update/Firmware Update in Dell PowerEdge 12th Generation Servers”

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The end result is a fully updated DELL Server / Kemp Loadmaster. Mission accomplished. All this can be done from the comfort of your home office. A win-win for both you and your customer/employer. Think about it, it would be a shame to miss out on all the benefits you get from working in the cloud when your on premises part of a hybrid infrastructure forces you to get in a car and drive to a data center 70 km away. Especially at 21:21 at night.

BitLooker In Veeam Backup and Replication v9

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When your backup size is bigger than the amount of disk space used in the virtual machine you might wonder why that is. Well it’s deleted data who’s blocks have not been released for reuse by the OS yet. BitLooker in Veeam Backup and Replication v9 as announced at VeeamOn 2015 offers a solution for this situation. BitLooker analyses the NFTS MFT to identify deleted data. It uses this information to reduce the size of an imaged based backup file and helps reduce bandwidth needed for replication. It just makes sense!

BitLooker In Veeam Backup and Replication v9

I really like these additions that help out to optimize the consumption of backup storage. Now I immediately wondered f this would make any difference on the recent versions of Hyper-V that support UNMAP. Well, probably not. My take on this is that the Hyper-V virtual Machine is aware of the deleted blocks via UNMAP this way so they will not get backed up. This is one of the examples of the excellent storage optimization capabilities of Hyper-V.

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It’s a great new addition to Veeam Backup & Replication v9. Especially when you’re running legacy hypervisors like like Windows Server 2008 R2 or older, or (at the time of writing) VMware. When you’ve been rocking Windows Server 212 R2 for the last three years Hyper-V already had your back with truly excellent UNMAP support in the virtual layer.

Musings On Switch Embedded Teaming, SMB Direct and QoS in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V

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When you have been reading up on what’s new in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V networking you probably read about Switch Embedded Teaming (SET). Basically this takes the concept of teaming and has this done by the vSwitch. Which means you don’t have to team at the host level. The big benefit that this opens up is the RDMA can be leveraged on vNICs. With host based teaming the RDMA capabilities of your NICs are no longer exposed, i.e. you can’t leverage RDMA. Now this has become possible and that’s pretty big.

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With the rise of 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100 Gbps NICs and switches the lure to go fully converged becomes even louder. Given the fact that we now don’t lose RDMA capabilities to the vNICs exposed to the host that call sounds only louder to many.  But wait, there’s even more to lure us to a fully converged solution, the fact that we now do no longer lose RSS on those vNICs! All good news.

I have written an entire whitepaper on convergence and it benefits, drawback, risks & rewards. I will not repeat all that here. One point I need to make that lossless traffic and QoS are paramount to the success of fully converged networking. After all we don’t want lossy storage traffic and we need to assure adequate bandwidth for all our types of traffic. For now, in Technical Preview 3 we have support for Software Defined Networking (SDN) QoS.

What does that mean in regards to what we already use today? There is no support for native QoS  and vSwitch QoS in Windows Server 2016 TPv3. There is however the  mention of DCB (PFC/ETS ), which is hardware QoS in the TechNet docs on Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and Switch Embedded Teaming (SET). Cool!

But wait a minute. When we look at all kinds of traffic in a converged Hyper-V environment we see CSV (storage traffic), live migration (all variations), backups over SMB3 all potentially leveraging SMB Direct. Due to the features and capabilities in SMB3 I like that. Don’t get me wrong about that. But it also worries me a bit when it comes to handling QoS on the hardware side of things.

In DCB Priority Flow Control (PFC) is the lossless part, Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) is the minimum bandwidth QoS part. But how do we leverage ETS when all types of traffic use SMB Direct. On the host it all gets tagged with the same priority. ETS works by tagging different priorities to different workloads and assuring minimal bandwidths out of a total of 100% without reserving it for a workload if it doesn’t need it. Here’s a blog post on ETS with a demo video DCB ETS Demo with SMB Direct over RoCE (RDMA .

Does this mean a SDN QoS only approach to deal with the various type of SMB Direct traffic or do they have some aces up their sleeves?

This isn’t a new “concern” I have but with SET and the sustained push for convergence it does has the potential to become an issue. We already have the SMB bandwidth limitation feature for live migration. That what is used to prevent LM starving CSV traffic when needed. See Preventing Live Migration Over SMB Starving CSV Traffic in Windows Server 2012 R2 with Set-SmbBandwidthLimit.

Now in real life I have rarely, if ever, seen a hard need for this. But it’s there to make sure you have something when needed. It hasn’t caused me issues yet, but I’m a performance & scale first, in “a non-economies of scale” world compared to hosters. As such convergence is a tool I use with moderation. My testing when traffic competes without ETS is that they all get part of the cake but not super predictable/ consistent. SMB bandwidth limitation is a bit of a “bolted on” solution => you can see the perf counters push down the bandwidth in an epic struggle to contain it, but as said it’s a struggle, not a nice flat line.

Also Set-SmbBandwidthLimit is not a percentage, but hard max bandwidth limit, so when you lose a SET member the math is off and you could be in trouble fast. Perhaps it’s these categories that could or will be used but it doesn’t seem like the most elegant solution/approach. That with ever more traffic leveraging SMB Direct make me ever more curious. Some switches offer up to 4 lossless queues now so perhaps that’s the way to go leveraging more priorities … Interesting stuff! My preferred and easiest QoS tool, get even bigger pipes, is an approach convergence and evolution of network needs keeps pushing over. Anyway, I’ll be very interested to see how this is dealt with. For now I’ll conclude my musings On Switch Embedded Teaming, SMB Direct and QoS in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V