Category Archives: Windows Server 2012

April 24th–Windows 2003 Is 10 Years Old

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I’d like to chime in on a recent blog post by Aidan Finn Hey Look–Your Business Is Running On A 10-Year Old Server Operating System (W2003). The sad thing is this is so true and “the good” thing is some are even still on Windows Server 2000 so even in worse shape. Now I realize that not all industries are the same but keeping your operating systems up to date does have it’s benefits for all types of companies.

  • Security Improvements
  • Improved, richer, enhanced features
  • New functionality
  • Support for state of the art hardware & software
  • Supported for that day the SHTF
  • Future Proofing of your current investments

For one, all the above  it will save you time and money. On top of that mitigates the risks of lost revenue due to security incidents & unsupported environments no one can fix for you.

Think about it, if you’re running Windows Server 2000 or 2003 chances are you are paying for software to provide functionality that’s available right out of the box. You’re also putting in the extra effort & jumping through loops to run those on modern server grade hardware.

You’re also building up debt. Instead of yearly improvements keeping your infrastructure & services top notch you’re actively digging an ever bigger, very expensive, complex and high risk hole where you’ll have to dig your self out off. If you can, that is. Not a good place to be in. Still think leveraging software assurance is a bad thing?

So while way to many companies now have to assigned resources to mitigating that looming problem we’re focusing on other ventures (such as Hyper-V, Azure, Hybrid Cloud, …) and just keep our OS up to date at a steady pace, like before. Well people that doesn’t happen by accident. We’ve maintained a very healthy pace of upgrading to the most recent version of windows in our environments and at times I have had to fight for that and I’m I will again..But look at our base line, even if the economy tanks completely we’re in darn good shape to weather that storm and come out ahead. But it’s not going to happen by sitting there avoiding change out of fear or laziness. So start today.A point where I agree with Aidan completely: if your “Zombie ISV” and other vendors are telling you Windows 2003 is great and you shouldn’t use those new unproven versions of the OS; they are really touting BS. They have fallen behind so far on the technology stack that they need you to stay in their black hole of despair with them or they’ll go broke. Just move one. Trust me, they need you more than the other way around

SMB 3.0 Multichannel Auto Configuration In Action With RDMA / SMB Direct

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Most of you might remember this slide by Jose Barreto on SMB Multichannel  Auto Configuration in one of his many presentations:image

  • Auto configuration looks at NIC type/speed => Same NICs are used for RDMA/Multichannel (doesn’t mix 10Gbps/1Gbps, RDMA/non-RDMA)
  • Let the algorithms work before you decide to intervene
  • Choose adapters wisely for their function

You can fine tune things if and when needed (only do this when this is really the case) but let’s look at this feature in action.

So let’s look at this in real life. For this test we have 2 * X520 DA 10Gbps ports using 10.10.180.8X/24 IP addresses and 2 * Mellanox  10Gbps RDMA adaptors with 10.10.180.9X/24 IP addresses. No teaming involved just multiple NIC ports. Do not that these IP addresses are on different subnet than the LAN of the servers. Basically only the servers can communicate over them, they don’t have a gateway, no DNS servers and are as such not registered in DNS either (live is easy for simple file sharing).

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Let’s try and copy a 50Gbps fixed VHDX file from server1 to server2 using the DNS name of the target host (pixelated), meaning it will resolve to that host via DNS and use the LAN IP address 10.10.100.92/16 (the host name is greyed out). In the below screenshot you see that the two RDMA capable cards are put into action. The servers are not using  the 1Gbps LAN connection. Multichannel looked at the options:

  • A 1Gbps RSS capable Link
  • Two 10Gbps RSS capable Links
  • Two 10Gbps RDMA capable links

Multichannel concluded the RDMA card is the best one available and as we have two of those it use both. In other words it works just like described.

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Even if we try to bypass DNS and we copy the files explicitly via the IP address (10.10.180.84)  assigned to the Intel X520 DA cards Multichannel intelligence detects that it has two better cards  that provide RDMA available and as you can see it uses the same NICs  as in the demo before.  Nifty isn’t it Smile

 image

If you want to see the other NICs in action we can disable the Mellanox card and than Multichannel will choose the two X520 DA cards. That’s fine for testing but in real life you need a better solution when you need to manually define what NICs can be used. This is done using PowerShell Smile (take a look at Jose Barrto’s blog The basics of SMB PowerShell, a feature of Windows Server 2012 and SMB 3.0  for more info).

New-SmbMultichannelConstraint –ServerName SERVER2 –InterfaceAlias “SLOT 6 Port 1”, “SLOT 6 Port 2”

This tells a server it can only use these two NICs which in this example are the two Intel X520 DA 10Gbps cards to access Server2. So basically you configure/tell the client what to use for SMB 3.0 traffic to a certain server. Note the difference in send/receive traffic between RDMA/Native 10Gbps.

On Server1, the client you see this:

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On Server2, the server you see this:

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Which is indeed the constraint set up as we can verify with:

Get-SmbMultichannelConstraint

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We’re done playing so let’s clean up all the constraints:

Get-SmbMultichannelConstraint | Remove-SmbMultichannelConstraint

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Seeing this technology it’s now up to the storage industry to provide the needed  capacity and IOPS I a lot more affordable way. Storage Spaces have knocked on your door, that was the wake up call Winking smile. In an environment where we throw lots of data around we just love SMB 3.0

Design Considerations For Converged Networking On A Budget With Switch Independent Teaming In Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

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Last Friday I was working on some Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V networking designs and investigating the benefits & drawbacks of each. Some other fellow MVPs were also working on designs in that area and some interesting questions & answers came up (thank you Hans Vredevoort for starting the discussion!)

You might have read that for low cost, high value 10Gbps networks solutions I find the switch independent scenarios very interesting as they keep complexity and costs low while optimizing value & flexibility in many scenarios. Talk about great ROI!

So now let’s apply this scenario to one of my (current) favorite converged networking designs for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Two dual NIC LBFO teams. One to be used for virtual machine traffic and one for other network traffic such as Cluster/CSV/Management/Backup traffic, you could even add storage traffic to that. But for this particular argument that was provided by Fiber Channel HBAs. Also with teaming we forego RDMA/SR-IOV.

For the VM traffic the decision is rather easy. We go for Switch Independent with Hyper-V Port mode. Look at Windows Server 2012 NIC Teaming (LBFO) Deployment and Management to read why. The exceptions mentioned there do not come into play here and we are getting great virtual machine density this way. With lesser density 2-4 teamed 1Gbps ports will also do.

But what about the team we use for the other network traffic. Do we use Address hash or Hyper-V port mode. Or better put, do we use native teaming with tNICs as shown below where we can use DCB or Windows QoS?

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Well one drawback here with Address Hash is that only one member will be used for incoming traffic with a switch independent setup. Qos with DCB and policies isn’t that easy for a system admin and the hardware is more expensive.

So could we use a virtual switch here as well with QoS defined on the Hyper-V switch?

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Well as it turns out in this scenario we might be better off using a Hyper-V Switch with Hyper-V Port mode on this Switch independent team as well. This reaps some real nice benefits compared to using a native NIC team with address hash mode:

  • You have a nice load distribution of the different vNIC’s send/receive traffic over a single member of the NIC team per VM. This way we don’t get into a scenario where we only use one NIC of the team for incoming traffic. The result is a better balance between incoming and outgoing traffic as long an none of those exceeds the capability of one of the team members.
  • Easy to define QoS via the Hyper-V Switch even when you don’t have network gear that supports QoS via DCB etc.
  • Simplicity of switch configuration (complexity can be an enemy of high availability & your budget).
  • Compared to a single Team of dual 10Gbps ports you can get a lot higher number of VM density even they have rather intensive network traffic and the non VM traffic gets a lots of bandwidth as well.
  • Works with the cheaper line of 10Gbps switches
  • Great TCO & ROI

With a dual 10Gbps team you’re ready to roll. All software defined. Making the switches just easy to use providers of connectivity. For smaller environments this is all that’s needed. More complex configurations in the larger networks might be needed high up the stack but for the Hyper-V / cloud admin things can stay very easy and under their control. The network guys need only deal with their realm of responsibility and not deal with the demands for virtualization administration directly.

I’m not saying DCB, LACP, Switch Dependent is bad, far from. But the cost and complexity scares some people while they might not even need. With the concept above they could benefit tremendously from moving to 10Gbps in a really cheap and easy fashion. That’s hard (and silly) to ignore. Don’t over engineer it, don’t IBM it and don’t go for a server rack phD in complex configurations. Don’t think you need to use DCB, SR-IOV, etc. in every environment just because you can or because you want to look awesome. Unless you have a real need for the benefits those offer you can get simplicity, performance, redundancy and QoS in a very cost effective way. What’s not to like. If you worry about LACP etc. consider this, Switch independent mode allows for nearly no service down time firmware upgrades compared to stacking. It’s been working very well for us and avoids the expense & complexity of vPC, VLT and the likes of that. Life is good.

MMS2013: SD-B303 How to Build Your Strategy For a Private Cloud

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Eduardo Kassner delivered a great session. You can look at it here when it becomes available. Give it 24 hours after real time delivery.

What’s more, he was deadly honest about the realities in the field. Only 2% of customers are effectively using a private cloud … He also offered some very simple tool for getting started with projects to get things done and deliver results. All you need is a Hotmail account and an internet connection to use the tool. It produces reports and MS Project files for the needed projects, Visio diagrams etc. The Optimization Assessment Tool generates reports that can serve as the baseline for planning an effective roadmap and as an incentive for optimizing your IT infrastructure. The detailed Roadmap plan will be generated as part of the Discovery tools.

Now we can be skeptical and realistic that this tool is not perfect. But that same reality is that I have seen a lot less results from expensive consulting and “non committed” attempts at doing something with cloud. The two Dilbert cartoons below demonstrate this very adequately while at times being a bit to close to reality for comfort.

January 07, 2011

November 18, 2009