Category Archives: Windows Server

Windows Server Technical Preview delivers integration services updates through Windows Update

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Benefits of delivering updates to the integration services via Windows Updates

In Windows Server  vNext aka the Technical Preview the integration services are being delivered through Windows Update (and as such the well know tools such a s WSUS, …). This is significant in reducing the operational burden to make sure they are up to date. Many of us turned to PowerShell scripting to handle this task. So did I and I still find myself tweaking the scripts once in a while for a condition I had not dealt with before or just to get better feedback or reporting. Did I ever tell you that story about the cluster where a 100VMs did not have a virtual DVD drive (they removed them to improve performance) … that was yet another improvement to my script => detect the absence of a virtual DVD drive. In this day and age, virtualization has both scaled up and out with ever more virtual machines per host and in total. The process of having to load an ISO in a virtual DVD drive inside a virtual machine to install upgrades to integration services seems arcane and it’s very timely that it has been replaced by an operation process more befitting a Cloud OS Winking smile.

I have optimized this process with some PowerShell scripting and it wasn’t to painful anymore. The script upgrades all the VMs on the hosts and even puts them back in the state if found them in (Stopped, Saved, Running). A screenshot of the script in action below.

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I’m glad that it’s now integrated through Windows Update and part of other routine maintenance that’s done on the guests anyway.

But is not only good news for us “on premises” system administrators and integrators. It’s also important for service/cloud providers and (hosted) private cloud hosters. This change means that the tenants  have control of updates to the integration services of their virtual machines. They update their Windows virtual machines with all updates during their normal patch cycles and now this includes the integration services. This provides operation ease (single method) and avoids some of the discussions about when to upgrade the integration services.

Legacy Operating Systems

Shortly after the release of the Windows Server Technical Preview, updates to integration services for Windows guests began being distributed through Windows Update. This means that on that version the vmguest.iso is no longer needed and as such it’s no longer included with Hyper-V.  This means that if you run an unsupported (most often legacy) version of Windows you’ll need to grab the latest possible vmguest.iso from an W2K12R2 Hyper-V host and try to install that and see if it works.

What about Linux and FreeBSD?

Well nothing has changed and how that’s taken care of you can read here: Linux and FreeBSD Virtual Machines on Hyper-V

Storage Replication – Server To Server Demo

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I’ve discussed the efforts Microsoft is putting into enhancing the storage offerings (Storage Spaces, SOFS, SMB) in its OS since Windows Server 2012 (R2) before in previous articles. In my last blog post on this subject  Microsoft Keeps Investing In Storage Big Time I talked about their latest announcements around storage replica in the Windows Server Technical Preview.

In this post I’d like to show case how to set up server to server storage replication and demonstrate how to recover from certain events.  We are doing this asynchronously as the scenario is one were we replicate a backup target off site to another city. Not an uncommon scenario and one that gives copies off site without introducing the cost & operational overhead of portable media.clip_image002

The easiest way to show  this without writing elaborate white papers is a video. I’ll wait with more elaborate writings or demo videos as things are bound to change a lot prior to RTM. After all we still only have the more then 3 month old Technical Preview bits. It’s important to realize what we are now getting in box with Windows Server aka the Cloud OS that used to require 3rd party solutions.

I hope to be doing some talks & presentations on this subject and in good tradition make those presentations demo heavy as I like to really show how technology in action.

Hyper-V Technical Preview Live Migration & Changing Static Memory Size

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I have played with  Hot Add & Remove Static Memory in a Hyper-V vNext Virtual Machine before and I love it. As I’m currently testing (actually sometimes abusing) the Technical Preview a bit to see what breaks I’m sometimes testing silly things. This is one of them.

I took a Technical Preview VM with 45GB of memory, running in a Technical Preview Hyper-V cluster and live migrate it.  I then tried to change the memory size up and down during live migration to see what happens, or at least nothing goes “BOINK”. Well, not much, we get a notification that we’re being silly. So no failed migrations, crashed or messed up VMs or, even worse hosts.

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It’s early days yet but we’re getting a head start as there is a lot to test and that will only increase. The aim is to get a good understanding of the features, the capabilities and the behavior to make sure we can leverage our existing infrastructures and software assurance benefits as fast a possible. Rolling cluster upgrades should certainly help us do that faster, with more ease and less risk. What are your plans for vNext? Are you getting a feeling for it yet or waiting for a more recent test version?

Hot add/remove of network adapters and enabling device naming in Windows Server Hyper-V

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One of the cool new features in Window Server vNext Hyper-V (in Technical Preview at the moment of writing) is that you gain the ability to hot add and remove NICs.  That might sound not to important to the non initiated in the fine art of virtualization & clouds. But it is. You see anything you can do to a VM configuration wise that does not require downtime is good. That’s what helps shift the needle of high availability to that holey grail of continuous availability.

On top of that the names of the network adapters are now exposed to the guest. Which is also great. It’s become lot easier to automate the VM network configuration.

Hot adding NICs can be done via the GUI and PoSh.

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But naming the network adapter seems a PowerShell only game for now (nothing hard, no sweat). This can be done during creation of the network adapter. Here I add a NIC to VM RAGNAR connected to the ISCSI-GUEST switch & named ISCSI.

Add-VMNetworkAdapter –VMName RAGNAR –SwitchName ISCSI-GUEST –Name ISCSI

Now I want this name to be reflected into the VM’s NCI configuration properties. This is done by enabling device naming. You can do this via the GUI or PoSh.

Set-VMNetworkAdapter –VMName RAGNAR –Name ISCSI –Devicenaming On

That’s it.

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So now let’s play with our existing network adapter “Network Adapter” which connects our Hyper-V guests to the LAN via the HYPER-V-GUESTS switch? Can you rename it?  Yes, you can. In PoSh run this:

Rename-VMNetworkAdapter –VMName RAGNAR –Name “Network Adapter” –NewName “LAN”

And that’s it. If you refresh the setting of your VM or reopen it you’ll see the name change.

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The one thing that I see in the Tech Preview is that I need to reboot the VM to see the Name change reflected inside the VM in the NIC configuration under advance properties, called “Hyper-V Network Adapter Name”. Existing one show their old name and new one are empty until then.

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Two important characteristics to note about enabling device naming

You notice that one can edit this field in NIC configuration of the VM but it doesn’t move up the stack into the settings of the VM. Security wise this seems logical to me and it’s not intended to work. It’s a GUI limitation that the field cannot be disabled for editing but no one can try and  be “funny” by renaming the ethernet adapter in the VMs settings via the guest Winking smile

Do note that this is not exactly the same a Consistent Device Naming in Windows 2012 or later. It’s not reflected in the name of the NIC in the GUI, these are still Ethernet, Ethernet 2, … Enable device naming is mainly meant to enable identifying the adapter assigned to the VM inside the VM, mainly for automation. You can name the NIC in the Guest whatever works best for you and you’ll never lose the correlations between the Network adapter in your VM settings and the Hyper-V Network Adapter name in the NIC configuration properties. In that respect is a bit more solid/permanent even if some one found it funny to rename all vNICs to random names you’re still OK with this feature.

That’s it off, you go! Download the Technical Preview bits from MSDN, start exploring and learning. Knowledge is seldom a bad thing Winking smile