I’ve discussed this before in Windows Server 2012 Deduplication Results In A Small Environment but here’s a little updated screenshot of a backup volume:
Not to shabby I’d say and 100% free in box portable deduplication … What are you waiting for 
It’s important to keep our Hyper-V cluster hosts and the virtual machines running on them up to date. Whilst we have great and free solutions to achieve this there are some things missing like centralized reporting on the Integration Services component version running on all of the nodes in a cluster and way to upgrade all the virtual machines to version running on the host. This post deals with the first issue.
Before we upgrade the Integration Services components on the virtual machines we always check if all nodes in the cluster are on the same version themselves. Sure this should not happen if you mange them right but my world isn’t perfect. So trust but verify.With cluster sizes now up to 64 nodes it’s ever more important to keep an eye on them. But even for smaller cluster the task of determining the Integration Services components manually via the GUI, event viewer and/or registry is rather tedious. Out of sync Integration Services components can be troublesome and cause many issues and if you have out of sync virtual machines, imagine the extra mess you’ll be in when even the cluster nodes are running different versions.
To make live easier I threw a little PowerShell script together to check the host Integration Services component version on all nodes of a Window Server 2012 Hyper-V Cluster With PowerShell. I’m far from a PowerShell guru, but you’ll see that you can do a lot of things done even if you’re not. I’m sharing it here for you to use, adapt for your own needs and get some inspiration. It basically allows you to optionally pass an expected version of the IS components and a cluster name like this
CheckHyperVClusterHostsICVersion -Version 6.2.9200.16433 -cluster "MyClusterName"
It does the following:
Here’s a screen shot of when you run this on a none clustered host, without Hyper-V installed:
This is the result of running it against a well maintained cluster without any parameters that has been updated with KB2770917:
The same but now with the expected version and cluster name passed as parameters
So, there you go, I hope you find it useful.
#=========================================================== # # Microsoft PowerShell Source File # # NAME: CheckISCOnNodesOfHyperVCluster.ps1 # VERSION: 1.0.0.0 # AUTHOR: Didier Van Hoye # DATE : 17/11/2012 # # COMMENT: This script is intended to be run # against Windows Server 2012 and assumes # the use of PowerShell 3.0 # The parameters are optional but if you # leave out some the remainder should be named. # # ======================================================= cls $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop" function CheckHyperVClusterHostsICVersion { Param ( #Param help description [Version] $ExpectedISCVersion, #Param help description [String] $Cluster ) Write-Host "This script will check the IS components on all nodes of a cluster." -ForegroundColor Green If ($ExpectedISCVersion) {Write-Host "You specified the expected IS component version to be $ExpectedISCVersion" -ForegroundColor Green} Else {Write-host "You did not specify an expected IS component version." -ForegroundColor Green} If ($Cluster) { Try { $ClusterObject= Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster } Catch { Write-Host "We cannot contact the cluster you specified" } } Else { write-Host "`n`n" Write-host "You did not specify a cluster to connect to. We'll use the cluster to which the node this script is running on belongs if any." -ForegroundColor Yellow write-Host "`n`n" Try { $ClusterObject = Get-Cluster } Catch { $LocalHost = $env:computername Write-Host Write-Host "The current node ($LocalHost) is not a member of a cluster. As a courtsey to you we'll check the IS components for current host" -foregroundcolor Magenta Write-Host } } If ($ClusterObject) {$ToCheck= "the nodes of cluster $ClusterObject"} Else { $ToCheck = "server $env:computername"} write-Host "Attempting to running Integration Components version check on" $ToCheck -ForegroundColor Green Write-Host If ($ClusterObject) { $ClusterNodes = Get-Clusternode -cluster $ClusterObject.Name #Declare an hashtable to hold all host/IS version values. The hosts are the key here. $HostISVersions = @{} foreach ($ClusterNode in $ClusterNodes) { Try { $HostISVersions[$ClusterNode.Name]=Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionVirtualizationGuestInstallerVersion" | select -ExpandProperty Microsoft-Hyper-V-Guest-Installer } Catch { Write-Host "We could not determine the version of the Integration Services on this host, probably due to this not being a Hyper-V host" -ForegroundColor Orange Write-Host "We'll check this for you right now" -ForegroundColor Orange $HyperVFeature = Get-WindowsFeature Hyper-V If ($HyperVFeature.Installstate -eq "Installed") { Write-Host "Hyper-V seems to be installed on this node. Something else is wrong." -ForegroundColor Red } Else { Write-Host "Hyper-V is indeed not installed on this node." -ForegroundColor Orange } } } #Use GetEnumerator or thise sorting thing doesn't work out well on an hash tabel :-) $UniqueIcVersions = $HostISVersions.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object -Property Value -Unique Write-Host "We've found " $UniqueIcVersions.count "versions on the" $HostISVersions.count "nodes of your cluster" $ClusterObject.Name ForEach ($IcVersion in $UniqueIcVersions ) { $Counter = 1 $IcVersionValue = $IcVersion.value "IC version " + $IcVersion.value + " is found in:" foreach ($Key in ($HostISVersions.GetEnumerator()| Where-Object { $_.value -eq $IcVersionValue})) { "`t" + "$Counter : " + $Key.Name $Counter= $Counter + 1 } If ($ExpectedISCVersion) { $CompareVersions = ([Version]$IcVersion.Value).CompareTo([Version]$ExpectedISCVersion) switch ($CompareVersions) { 0 {Write-Host "This version ($IcVersionValue) is equal to the expected version ($ExpectedISCVersion)." -ForegroundColor Green} 1 {Write-Host "This version ($IcVersionValue) is higher than the expected version ($ExpectedISCVersion). Please ensure all hosts run the same IC version level." -ForegroundColor Yellow} -1 {Write-Host "This version ($IcVersionValue) is lower than the expected version ($ExpectedISCVersion). Please ensure all hosts run the same IC version level." -ForegroundColor Red} } } } } Else { Try { $HostIcVersion = Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionVirtualizationGuestInstallerVersion" | select -ExpandProperty Microsoft-Hyper-V-Guest-Installer Write-Host "The IS component version on server $localhost is $HostIcVersion" If ($ExpectedISCVersion) { $CompareVersions = ([Version]$HostIcVersion).CompareTo([Version]$ExpectedISCVersion) switch ($CompareVersions) { 0 {Write-Host "This version ($HostIcVersion) is equal to the expected version ($ExpectedISCVersion)." -ForegroundColor Green} 1 {Write-Host "This version ($HostIcVersion) is higher than the expected version ($ExpectedISCVersion). Please check if you need to downgrade your host or if the expected version is correct." -ForegroundColor Yellow} -1 {Write-Host "This version ($HostIcVersion) is lower than the expected version ($ExpectedISCVersion). Please check if you need to upgrade your host or if the expected version is correct." -ForegroundColor Red} } } } Catch { Write-Host "We could not determine the version of the Integration Services on this host, probably due to this not being a Hyper-V host" -ForegroundColor yellow Write-Host "We'll check this for you right now" -ForegroundColor yellow $HyperVFeature = Get-WindowsFeature Hyper-V If ($HyperVFeature.Installstate -eq "Installed") { Write-Host "Hyper-V seems to be installed on this node. Something else is wrong." -ForegroundColor Red } Else { Write-Host "Hyper-V is indeed not installed on this node." -ForegroundColor yellow } } } } CheckHyperVClusterHostsICVersion -Version 6.2.9200.16433 -cluster "MyClusterName"
Carsten Rachfahl, a German Hyper-V Expert, friend and fellow MVP, interviewed me after the joint MVP effort at TEC 2012 in Barcelona. The subject was storage in Windows Server 2012. We found a great setting in the garden and got into quite a nice discussion on the subject.
It’s no surprise to anyone I guess that I’m very enthusiastic about what Microsoft is doing with storage on all levels in Windows Server 2012 and is trying to achieve for us, the customers from both a cost and performance and reliability perspective. It was a lot of fun to do and I see blinking lights in our eyes at many moments during this interview. Yes, working is important for many reasons, but when you can enjoy your work and have fun whilst doing it, life is pretty good 
. So enjoy, we certainly did.
Here’s an early X-Mas gift from Altaro. They are giving away 50 free licenses of their desktop backup solution to all Hyper-V admins until December 24th 2012. Altaro is better known for their cost effective and good Hyper-V Backup product.
There is no catch. Now there is no such thing as a free lunch in life but there are some very decent meals to be gotten at very democratic pricing. This is one such case. All you need to do is send them a screenshot of Hyper-V in your environment that proves that you’re really using Hyper-V. I guess that means I qualify due to the amount of Hyper-V related screenshots on my blog 
. I’m going to check it out for sure.
What do you get? 50 licenses of their desktop backup solution ($2,000 worth of software). You’re free to use them in your company, at home of as a gift to friends and family. 50 Licenses is something that a lot of companies using Hyper-V in the SMB market can leverage to protect their desktops so that’s a pretty nice gift.
If you’re interested you can go to http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/50-free-pc-backup-licenses-for-all-hyper-v-admins
There more information about Altaro Hyper-V Backup at http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/ and http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/?LP=Xmas. If you’re a SMB shop in need of easy to use, affordable backup software for Hyper-V and want one that has full support for all features in Windows Server 2012 you should try them out. In that respect they were very fast to market beating most or all competitors I know (a lot of them still don’t have that support) They are also a non-aggressive vendor, which is something I appreciate.