Aidan Finn, IT Pro

I joined this late due to a phone conference.

This is a System Center Influencers briefing on Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010.

The Aims

• Single supported solution for Microsoft workloads
• Single agent, no workload licensing
• Enterprise scalability in the 2010 release

New Workload Additions

• Cluster Shared Volume
• Exchange 2010
• SharePoint 2010

It supports OS’s going back to XP SP2.

Features

• Self-service end user restore from Explorer or Office
• Self-service DBA restrore from within SQL
• Auto protection of new databases
• Protect 1000’s of databases per DPM server
• Recover 2005 DB’s to SQL 2008
• Auto protection of new content databases in SharePoint farms
• Protect the farm, restore the document
• Optimizations for the new and many Exchange architectures

Hyper-V

• CSV support
• Item level recovery from within a VHD
• Alternate host recovery

Client Protection

• 1000 clients per DPM server
• “User data only”.  Don’t protect the entire machine.
• Uses VSS in Vista and Windows 7
• Policy allows you to protect specific folders, so there’s no end user set up.
• User can restore from local VSS while offline, or DPM while online.
• While offline, the PC continues to make VSS copies and will sync them to DPM when it is online again.

Fujitsu has launched a bundle for SME’s (small/medium enterprises) that want to do Hyper-V virtualisation for the very first time.  They’ve called it the “My Very First Hyper-V”.  It includes, servers, external storage, Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Work Group Edition.  A flyer can be found here.

I wonder if they’ll replace the VMM installation with System Center Essentials 2010 when it is released.  That would make sense to me seeing as it’s aimed at this market and it gives software management, health & performance monitoring and VMM functionality.

Today I was working with a customer who needed to grow their hosted presence with us due to performance and scaling requirements.  OpsMgr ProTips alerts made us aware of certain things that got the customer and us working.  A VMM library template machine was quickly deployed to meet the sudden requirements.  That got me thinking about how OpsMgr and VMM could be used in a large virtualised (and even physical) application environment to scale out and in as required.  All of this is just ideas.  I’m sure it’s possible, I just haven’t taken things to this extreme.

Let’s take the above crude example.  There are a number of web servers.  They’re all set up as dumb appliances with no content.  All the content and web configurations are on a pair of fault tolerance content servers.  The web servers are load balanced, maybe using appliances or maybe by reverse proxies.  It’s possible to quickly deploy these web servers from VM templates.  That’s because the deployed machines all have DHCP addresses and they store no content or website configuration data.

The next tier in the application is typically the application server.  This design is also built to be able to scale out or in.  There is a transaction queuing server.  It receives a job and then dispatches that job to some processing servers.  These transaction servers are all pretty dumb.  They have an application and know to receive workloads from the queuing server.  Again, they’re built from an image and have DHCP addresses.

All VM templates are stored in the VMM library.

All of this is monitored using Operations Manager.  Custom management packs have been written and distributed application monitoring is configured.  For example, average CPU and memory utilisation is  monitored across the web farm.  An alert will be triggered if this gets too high.  A low water mark is also configured to detect when demand is low.

The web site is monitored using a captured web/user perspective transaction.  Response times are monitored and this causes alerts if they exceed pre-agreed thresholds. 

The Queuing server’s queue is also monitored.  It should never exceed a certain level, i.e. there is more work than there are transaction servers to process it.  A low water mark is also configured, e.g. there is less work than there are transaction servers.

So now OpsMgr knows when we have more work than resources, and when we have more resources than we have work for.  This means we only need a mechanism to add VM’s when required and to remove VM’s when required.  And don’t forget those hosts!  You’ll need to be able to deploy hosts.  I’ll come back to that one later.

Deploying VM’s can be automated.  We know that we can save a PowerShell job into the library when we create a VM, etc.  Do that and you have your VM.  You can even use the GUIRunOnce option to append customisation scripts, e.g. naming of servers, installation of updates/software, etc.  Now you just need a trigger.  We have one.

When OpsMgr fires an alert it is possible to associate a recovery task with the alert.  For example, the average CPU/Memory across the web farm is too high.  Or maybe the response time across the farm is too slow.  Simple – the associated response is to run a PowerShell script to deploy a new web server.  10 minutes later and the web server is operational.  We already know it’s set to use DHCP so that’s networking sorted.  The configuration and the web content are stored off of the web server so that’s that sorted.  The load balancing needs to be updated – I’d guess some amendment to the end of the PowerShell script could take care of that.

The same goes for the queuing server.  Once the workloads exceed the processing power a new VM can be deployed within a few minutes and start taking on tasks.  They’re just dumb VM’s.  Again, the script would need to authorise the VM with the queuing process.

That’s the high water mark.  We know every business has highs and lows.  Do we want to waste Hyper-V host resources on idle VM’s?  Nope!  So when those low water marks are hit we need to remove VM’s.  That one’s a little more complex.  The PowerShell script here will probably need to be aware of the right VM to remove.  I’d think about this idea:  The deploy VM’s would update a file or a database table somewhere.  Thing of it like a buffer.  The oldest VM’ should then be the first one removed.  Why?  Because we Windows admins prefer newly built machines – they tend to be less faulty than ones that have been around a while.

With all that in place you can deploy VM’s to meet demands and remove VM’s when they are redundant to free up physical resources for other applications.

What about when you run out of Hyper-V server resources?  There most basic thing you need to do here is know that you need to buy hardware.  Few of us have it sitting around and we run on budgets and on JIT (just in time) principles.  Again, you’d need to do some clever management pack authoring (way beyond me to be honest) to detect how full your Hyper-V cluster was.  When you get to a trigger point, e.g. starting  to work on your second last host, you get an alert.  The resolution is buy a server and rack it.  You can then use whatever build mechanism you want to deploy the host.  The next bit might be an option if you do have servers sitting around and can trigger it using Wake-On-Lan.

ConfigMgr will run a job to deploy an operating system to the idle server.  It’s just a plain Windows Server installation image.  Thanks to task sequences and some basic Server Manager PowerShell cmdlets, you can install the Hyper-V role and the Failover Clustering feature after the image deployment.  A few reboots happen.  You can then add it to the Hyper-V cluster.  You can approach this one from other angles, e.g. add the host into VMM which triggers a Hyper-V installation.

Now that is optimisation and dynamic IT!  All that’s left is for the robots to rise – there’s barely a human to be seen in the process once its all implemented.  I guess your role would be to work on the next generation of betas and release candidates so you can upgrade all of this when the time comes.

I’ve not read much about Opalis (recently aquired by Microsoft) but I reckon it could play a big role in this sort of deployment.  Microsoft customers who are using System Management Suite CAL’s (SMSE/SMSD) will be able to use Opalis.  Integration packs for the other System Center products are on the way in Q3.

… we knew you so little!

Microsoft today announced the discontinuation of EBS as a product.  Sales will stop on June 30th.

It could be argued that EBS was a flop, unlike it’s “little” sibling SBS which is a raging success.  EBS seemed like a stretch looking back on it.  It tried to do things that medium/large enterprise administrators hate.  It tried to squeeze as much functionality as possible into a 3 or 4 server package.  Many of the potential companies who were in the target market already had invested in multi server architectures for one reason or another.  They preferred to pick and choose the components and deploy them as and when required.  The all-in-one-package bundle isn’t as suitable for these medium sized companies as it is for the SBS customer.

The real target market was always going to be small and the complexity in building this package was huge, especially when you consider all of the different product groups and time lines involved.

I talked about the TechNet Wiki recently which was announced by Keith Combs.  I won’t hold it against him for being a Cowboys fan ;-)  Ben Armstrong just blogged about the Hyper-V part of the wiki and you can see what he’s said there.  So I guess that means it’s “live” in some way, shape or form.  If you feel like you can document some facet of Hyper-V better than what has been done previously, or if you know of some tricks/work arounds, then please add them.

You can find the wiki here.  I’m not a big fan of the landing page because I’ve not really found a way to get into the wiki from it.  Maybe I’m dumb :-)

Folks, this summer the following products will be end of life, i.e. no support of any kind for the following products:

• XP SP2 – upgrade to a newer service pack
• Vista RTM – upgrade to a newer service pack
• Windows 2000 – upgrade to Windows XP SP3 or later, Windows Vista SP1 or later, or Windows 7
• Windows Sever 2000 – upgrade to Windows Server 2003/2003 R2/2008 or migrate to Windows Server 2008 R2.

Go to the Microsoft product life cycle site for precise details.

For the server replacement, I’d strongly consider you look at moving to an x64 server operating system.  Making the jump now will ease future upgrades.  A few notes:

• Microsoft hates upgrades because they are messy.  Problems are inherited/created.
• You cannot upgrade from x86 to x64 or vice versa.
• You cannot upgrade from a full installation to a core installation.
• You need the correct licensing for the server and the CAL’s.
• Check application compatibility.
• Test, test, test and verify with application/hardware vendors before making changes.

Redstone is one of Ireland’s leading enterprise hardware providers in Ireland – I’ll be open and admit that I’m a (happy) blade and storage customer.  They are running this event today in cooperation with HP Ireland.  The goodie bag will in no way influence me :)

Today’s event will focus on Data Protector, HP’s backup solution, and how it can be used in a virtualised environment.  The majority of the attendees are using EVA/VMware.  About 1/4 are using Hyper-V.  A couple are using Xen and a couple are using XP SAN.  No one here is using Lefthand.  About 1/5 are using Data Protector for their backups.

• Virtualisation solves some problems but complicates backups.
• We need to reduce backup costs – storage amounts.
• We need to be able to reliably restore business critical data and secure sensitive data.

A common problem is that people rush head first into virtualisation without considering the strategy for backup.

Strategies

• VM level backup: The argument by the HP speaker is that this is resource intensive.
• Host level backup: This “doesn’t” impact the performance of the host. Hmm.  There is an issue with recovered data consistency, e.g. is there Volume Shadow Copy integration to Windows VM’s?  SQL and Exchange don’t support this.

The speakers says Data Protector allows you to take both approaches to meet suitable requirements for each VM.

Data Protector 6.11 has VMware VCB and Hyper-V support.  The core product has a license.  It has the traditional bolt-on license approach.  Virtualisation requires an “Online Backup” license.  The Zero Downtime Backup allows integration into the snapshot features of your HP storage array.

Note: that’s probably the approach you’d go with for backup of a Hyper-V CSV due to the CSV coordinator/redirected I/O issue with host level backups – assuming this is supported by Data Protector.

For storage I/O intensive applications, Data Protector can take advantage of the ability to snapshot the targeted LUN’s.  You identify a LUN to backup, the SAN creates a copy, Data Protector backups up the copy while the primary continues to be used by the application/users.  This can be a partial copy for normal backup/recovery to save storage space/costs on the SAN.  You can do a full copy of the LUN for “instant recovery”, i.e. Data Protector restores file(s) from the copy of the LUN.  This requires additional per TB licensing.  The partial copy cannot do “instant recovery” because it links back to the original storage and isn’t completely independent.  There’s a cost for these two solutions so you save it for the mission critical, storage performance sensitive data/applications.  You can do this on a replicated partner SAN to do backups in your DR site instead of in the production site.  These solutions require the VSS integrations for the storage arrays.  Note that this isn’t for VM snapshots.

Zero Time Backup and Instant Recovery can be done in VMware if the VM uses raw device mapping (pass through disks).

Hyper-V Backup Methods

• In VM agent
• VSS system  provider snapshots
• VSS hardware provider snapshots
• Full restore of VM
• Partial restore of files
• Offline backups for VM’s
• Zero downtime backup
• Instant recovery

I would guess the last two require passthrough disks.  Might be a solution for SQL/Exchange VM’s.

Really, you will end up with a combination of backup methods across the data centre, depending on VM’s, applications, and backup/recovery times/impacts.

After coffee, we had some demos of VMware backups that didn’t go so well for the HP speaker.

In summary, Data Protector gives you some HP storage integrated backup options.  Be careful and ensure that servers, OS’s, and applications support the backup type being used.

Although HP and Microsoft have announced their “Forefront” virtualisation alliance, there’s still a lot of catch up going on with regards to Hyper-V knowledge and sharing.  Thanks to Redstone for organising this up in their scenic office in the Wicklow mountains – not exactly a bad place to be just after sunrise.

Microsoft is holding an event on March 18th at 9am PST (-8 GMT) focusing on desktop virtualisation.  You can find more details and mark it in our calendar by visiting the official site.  As Jeff Wettlaufer put it:

“Looking at desktop virtualization including VDI? Thinking about migrating to Windows 7? Want savings, but unsure of the tradeoffs? Have more questions than answers on the topic?”.

Hopefully this session will answer those questions for you.

Microsoft published a guide for implementing System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2:

“This guidance provides information on the implementation of System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 for the monitoring and management of Windows servers. It provides the information necessary to create an Operations Manager 2007 design, the procedures for installing and configuring the Operations Manager 2007 server roles and agents, and guidance for managing an Operations Manager 2007 solution”.

Microsoft did a webcast on March 1st aimed at VMware administrators/engineers/consultants who are interested in, or will be working with Hyper-V.

The fan-boys will be thinking negative thoughts and wishing me ill will now :)

Realistically, you need to start thinking of hardware virtualisation as being like hardware.  Some companies like HP, some like Dell, and some like Fujitsu – who really likes IBM?  I’m kidding; I don’t really care who likes IBM hardware.

This means that although a company may have a preference, they will have variations depending on circumstances.  For example, we’re told that VMware has a presence in every single Fortune 100 in the USA.  But do you think none of them are either using or considering Hyper-V as well?  There may be features that ESX offers that they use, but Hyper-V offers virtualisation at a greater price.  Bundle in System Center and you have a complete management solution rather than a point one.  With VMM you can manage both ESX (and ESXi) and Hyper-V.  Only the biggest of fan-boys will rule out Hyper-V making it’s way into some VMware sites to work along side it, just like you find a mix of server vendor types in some computer rooms.

The services industry is another interesting one.  This time last year, I could really think of one, maybe two, services companies in Ireland that I would call if I was in need of Hyper-V consulting skills.  Lots of them went to events, but they were all sticking to their VMware guns. It was probably a combination of internal evaluations and customer decision making that drove this.  But since last Summer, things shifted slightly.  Hyper-V is mentioned more as a skills requirement.  And thanks to the HP/Microsoft virtualisation alliance, HP resellers are starting to gather skills.  One of the major players in the Irish enterprise hardware space was laughing at Hyper-V a year ago.  Then they started to lose big virtualisation bids to the few companies going in with Hyper-V solutions.  CSV and Live Migration changed everything.  Customers now were happy to get the core features at a fraction of the price.

If you are a VMware person, give the webcast a watch.  Most of the criticisms of Hyper-V by fan-boys are usually based on lack of knowledge, e.g. the famous “9 things” post that was widely slammed for being ill-informed.

Microsoft published a bunch of guides for engineers and administrators who work with ConfigMgr 2007:

• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Deployment Guide: This guidance provides information on how to design and deploy a Configuration Manager infrastructure within a healthcare organization. It allows the healthcare organization to be confident that the Configuration Manager infrastructure being designed and deployed is using current best practice.
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Operating System Deployment Guide: This guidance helps healthcare organizations when implementing and using the operating system deployment feature of Configuration Manager. This guidance provides the information required to quickly become familiar with the operating system deployment feature and understand the appropriate decisions that need to be made in order to deploy and use the solution. It also provides step-by-step guidance showing how to install and configure the required components, and also how to use the most common features.
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Software Distribution Guide: This guidance provides the information required to quickly become familiar with the software distribution feature and understand the appropriate decisions that need to be made in order to deploy and use the solution. It also provides step-by-step guidance showing how to create the objects required within Configuration Manager to perform the software distribution.
• System Center Configuration Manager Software Update Management Guide: This guidance provides the information required to quickly become familiar with the software update feature, and understand the appropriate decisions that need to be made in order to deploy and use the solution. It also provides step-by-step guidance showing how to install and configure the required components, and how to use the most common features.

Keith Combs just tweeted that TechNet V2.0 is live.  It’s got a whole new look to it. 

Microsoft has published guidance on how to size your OpsMgr 2007 R2 installations:

“The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Sizing Helper is an interactive document designed to assist you with planning & sizing deployments of Operations Manager 2007 R2. It helps you plan the correct amount of infrastructure needed for a new OpsMgr R2 deployment, removing the uncertainties in making IT hardware purchases and optimizes cost. A typical recommendation will include the recommended hardware specification for each server role, topology diagram and storage requirement. The Operations Manager Sizing Helper is most useful when used with the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Design Guide”.

Microsoft has published an Active Directory design guide. 

“This guidance provides general recommendations for the design, deployment and management of an Active Directory environment in a healthcare organization according to current best practices. The purpose of this guidance is to accelerate Active Directory design and deployment in a healthcare organization, and provide a framework for a more consistent network operating environment”.

I saw this one last night for myself and I’ve just seen a week-old post by Mike Briggs on the subject.  When you deploy KB978560 to your VMM 2008 R2 server, it will require an update to the agents.  You’ll see a yellow exclamation mark icon appear on your hosts.  When you check their status you’ll see that you must take manual action to resolve the issue.  Simply right-click on the managed hosts, update the agent, and provide any required credentials.  It takes a minute or two, then you’ll get your “issue” resolved. 

Be sure to put the hosts in maintenance mode in OpsMgr if you’re using it.  Otherwise you’ll get a bunch of alerts for every host you upgrade.

Patrick Lownds, a fellow virtualisation MVP over in the UK, has provided a couple of useful links if you are running Hyper-V on HP equipment.  The first is a post on best practice guidance if you are running Hyper-V on a HP EVA SAN.  There is a whitepaper that goes through HP’s recommendations on this.  It was interesting to see they saw a fixed VHD’s get 7% more IOPS at 7% less latency than dynamic VHD’s.

The ProTips for HP are also available.  They’re not easy to find but Patrick provided me with a link.  The idea here is that HP SIM agents (which you should be installing, even if you don’t use the HP or other management software) detect hardware issues.  OpsMgr then picks up the alert and notifies VMM using the HP Pro Tips.  VMM can then take action, e.g. migrating VM’s from one host to another in the cluster.

KB976002 describes what operating systems will receive a choice of Internet browser and how this process will work.  This will bring Microsoft into compliance with the much discussed demands of the European Union on this subject.  Affected OS’s are:

• Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Service Pack 3
• All editions of Windows Vista
• All editions of Windows 7
• Future versions of the Windows client operating system that are released within the duration of the agreement with the European Commission

Some more information on the process can be found on Stealth Puppy.  I’ve not seen the update yet but it appears to be delivered by Windows Update.  If you don’t have Windows Update enabled then I guess you don’t get a choice.

If you are running tightly controlled corporate PC’s then you’ll be glad to hear that you can prevent the update from being deployed via WSUS/ConfigMgr/etc.  You can also use the registry, according to KB2019411 (and therefore group policy) to prevent the update from executing:

• Key: HKLM\Software\BrowserChoice
• Value: Enable (REG_DWORD)
• Possible settings: Enabled = 1, Disabled = 0

We have a customer who has a number of physical machines hosted with us.  They were deployed before we had a virtualised environment.  The specs were defined by the customer based on what they thought they’d need for a new service.

They asked us to look at replacing (not converting) their Windows Server 2003 web servers with Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 virtual web servers.  They also asked if the back end servers could be looked at as virtualisation candidates. Operations Manager to the rescue!

OpsMgr is constantly gathering performance data.  It keeps over a year of it in a reporting database.  I ran some reports.  CPU and memory were the two important ones.

The web servers were simple enough.  Their CPU average utilisation proved to be low with the occasional spike.  The standard deviation was very small and the spikes were very infrequent.  As Hyper-V VM’s on a cluster, this is no problem.  If a spike is detected by OpsMgr, the VMM Pro Tips integration will move the VM using zero-downtime Live Migration to an idle host and allow the VM the CPU resources it needs.  As it turns out, they use exactly 50% of their RAM.  The nice thing here is that we have empirical data to justify a reduction of the ram by 25%.  If it needs to go up then it’s just a couple of minutes of mouse clicks to do that.

The back end servers were another story.  The average CPU was low, but not quite as low.  I also could see much more frequent CPU spikes.  The standard deviation was much greater.  To be honest, this was what the customer and I both expected.  These machines are not virtualisation candidates.

So instead of doing a blind P2V, or sticking a wet finger in the wind, we went through a scientific decision making process, courtesy of the reporting database in Operations Manager 2007 R2.  There will be no worrying about any future deployment, we should know what the end result will be.

Microsoft UK is spreading word about a program they are running with Bing.  For every 10 qualifying searched that you do with Bing, MS will donate 5 pence (UK Sterling) to the charity.  Sounds good to me.  You can sign up as a person, business, or school, to track how much you raise by searching on Bing.

Everyone knows that budgets are slashed and the opportunity to attend big and expensive conferences so you can stay up to date is probably gone.  Well there is a more economic way to stay up to date.

Mark Minasi (well known TechEd/WinConnections speaker, Windows IT Pro journalist, Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2 author) will once again be hosting a conference in his home town of Virginia Beach, VA, USA.  It’s a low cost, non-profit event that is aimed squarely at the IT Pro.  The registration cost is a measly $450 which is around €330.  It’s 3 days full of techie talk, including Windows Server/Desktop, virtualisation, SBS/EBS, Exchange, SharePoint, PowerShell, Active Directory, security/certificate services, SQL, and a whole lot of fun.

This is not WinConnections or TechEd.  It’s a whole lot smaller and all of the speakers are techies.  Because this event is smaller, everyone is approachable and they’ll try to answer any question.  Every session is very interactive, and most of the speakers can usually be found afterwards in the bar, at breakfast/lunch, or at the party.

It’s not only sessions or classes here.  Intercontinental friendships, both personal and professional, are formed here every year.  Delegates look forward to meeting up with friends again, and with figuring out problems with other delegates.  The opportunity to network is unmatched … everyone is made welcome, we pretty much all have breakfast and lunch together.  And whether you want to party or just hang out for a quiet evening, you’ll have some company.

The speakers include authors, journalists, consultants, administrators, MVP’s, and people respected on the Internet for the experience and willingness to help.  Something quite original was tried last year and it’s being repeated this year.  Mark likes to encourage people to develop their skills, be it technical or otherwise.  Many of the speakers at the conference really only started doing this stuff here.  Most people would run at the thought of speaking for 75 minutes.  So last year we tried running mini-sessions where attendees could talk for 15 minutes about stuff they had done that might be interesting, e.g. a first time delegate spoke about how to build a PC at home for running VMware ESXi.  It was a success and it’s being repeated this year.

We also push outside the usual topics to boost personal development.  A few years ago Mark did a session on how to do technical presentations.  It was a hit and provided great information, some of which I try to use.  This year Eric Rux (an editor with Windows IT Pro) is talking about how to get into writing.  With Mark Minasi, and a bunch of other writers (book and magazine) in the audience also taking part, there’ll be a lot of information. 

Previous attendees will know that each conference is pretty much formed the year before based on feedback.  It really is a conference that is “owned” by the delegates.  A perfect example is PKI/certificate services.  Last year it seemed to be mentioned in half of the sessions and most delegates had no knowledge or experience in dealing with this technology.  A Q&A session on content pretty much steered the speaker recruiting.  So this year we have Roger Grimes (MS security architect) in to talk about it.  Take a peek at the below schedule and you’ll see how much interaction there is: panel sessions, Q&A sessions, etc.  Check it out and see if you’ve got a time slot in May to attend.  Here’s the schedule for 2010:

Sunday – May 2nd 2010

• Pre-Conference event with Todd Lammle
• 08:30 – 12:30
• 12:00 PM – Conference Registration Begins
• 1 PM – Opening Session led by Mark Minasi
• 2 PM – Session 1: Mark Minasi – 10 (or more) things that you don’t know about Windows Server 2008 R2
• 3:15 – Break
• 3:30 – Eric Rux – “So, you want to be a writer, eh?:  Tips, tricks and other thoughts on getting into the writing game – with open discussion with the other authors in the audience”
• 4:00 – Mini Session – TBC
• 4:30 – Break
• 4:45 – Roger Grimes – Fighting off Malware, the latest attacks and ways to resist them!
• 6:00 – Welcome Reception in the Hunt Room

Monday  – May 3rd 2010

• 9:00 – Ultan Kinahan – Disaster Recovery With VMware SRM
• 10:15 – Laura E. Hunter – Active Directory Federation Services
• 11:30 – Break
• 11:45 – Aidan Finn – Using Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2: How to manage Hyper-V
• 1:00 – Lunch (Provided)
• 1:45 – Claus Neilsen – Digging into PowerShell V2
• 3:00 – Mark Minasi – The Active Directory recycle bin.
• 4:15 – Break
• 4:30 – Expert Panel:  Project Planning, Design and Documentation (Bring Your Own Questions)
• 5:45 – Offsite Dinner Organized with Transportation

Tuesday – May 4th 2010

• 9:00 – Eric Rux – Using Windows in your Home! -  “More fun with Windows Home Server: How to use this versatile product for small business and home entertainment”
• 10:30  – Mini Session – TBC
• 11:00 – Roger Grimes – Server 2008 PKI – Certificates are becoming increasing critical – learn how to use them!
• 12:30 – Lunch (Provided)
• 1:00 – Nathan Winters – Protection and Compliance with Exchange 2010
• 2:15 – Break
• 2:30 – Michael B. Smith – Part 1 – Migrating from 2003 AD and Exchange to 2010 Exchange and 2008 R2 AD – Hands on Demonstration
• 3:45 – Break
• 4:00 – Michael B. Smith – Part 2 – Migrating from 2003 AD and Exchange to 2010 Exchange and 2008 R2 AD – Hands on Demonstration
• 5:30 – Dinner (on your own) at a local restaurant. Last chance to rub elbows.

Wednesday -  May 5th 2010

• 9:00 – Stacy Hein – SQL Server troubleshooting
• 10:15 – Short Session
• 10:45 – Break
• 11:00 – Joe McGlynn – A look at SBS and EBS – Doing IT right for the SME
• 12:15 – Closing and Lunch
• 1:30 – Unofficial Round Table

There’s no doubt of a few things:

• Some people have found Microsoft documentation to be a bit lacking, and sometimes a bit late.  For example, we only recently got clear guidance on networking configuration for Live Migration. I’ve had people contact me who were very confused on different subjects because they’ve only had closely related blog posts to work on, not specific ones.  And that’s just with one “small” subject.
• The power of the community on the Internet is impressive.  Wikipedia has become a huge source of information, even if that information has to be verified against other sources.  The same goes for blogs.
• Microsoft TechNet should be one of the first port of calls for IT pros when referencing technical articles on Microsoft infrastructure.  But lets face it, it isn’t.  That might be because of poor searchability, poor/confusing writing or incomplete/missing articles.

So Microsoft is going to try something.  It is a bit of a leap of faith.  Microsoft TechNet is going to launch a wiki.  I think there’s some excitement about this dabbling with the community in Redmond.  The idea is that you, me, or anyone else, can contribute or edit content on this wiki.  It should be documentation about products, solutions, fixes, architecture, etc.  It will be up to the community at large to maintain the content for the community.  I’m not saying MS might not edit it for legal reasons, etc, but in the end it will be down to ordinary people to manage.

Obviously some MVP’s and other assorted nutters will be big writers (not me … doing this blog, my day job and a few projects that are starting up will keep me busy).  But there’s nothing to stop you from adding content and editing.

As it is community content you cannot rely on it solely.  I would recommend trying to verify any statements made on it against other sources.  However, it should quickly become a huge repository of information, making it a great jumping off point on any search.

Microsoft’s Keith Combs talks about the new TechNet Wiki on his blog.  Keith says that it will launch later this year.  As he says at the end, the success or failure of this service will depend on the community, not Microsoft.  Will it succeed?  I don’t know, but I’m sure that people in Redmond are taking it seriously.  It’s a subject worth keeping an eye on.

Microsoft has published a whitepaper on VHD performance.  It talks about raw disk, pass through, fixed and dynamic.  It’s must reading if you’re in a Hyper-V engineering/design role.

To be honest, it is more than just a Hyper-V document.  It does talk about VHD in general.  Windows Server 2008 is also included.

I hadn’t really read this one too much because I don’t deal with Exchange very often.  But it came up on the Minasi Forum over the last few days and Jetze Mellema (Exchange MVP) posted a link to the official support article.

Does Exchange 2010 support virtualisation?  Yes … barely.  There’s so many notes associated with the support statement from the Exchange teams that you really want to sit back and go Hmmm!

Obviously it supports Hyper-V and other hardware virtualisation solutions in the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program.

Microsoft goes on to say:

• The Unified Messaging server role is not supported in VM’s.
• Virtual disks that dynamically expand aren’t supported by Exchange.
• Virtual disks that use differencing or delta mechanisms (such as Hyper-V’s differencing VHDs or snapshots) aren’t supported.

Other notes from this site are:

• You cannot run a DAG on a clustered host, e,g. a VMware cluster with VMotion or a Hyper-V cluster with Live/Quick Migration.
• Snapshots of the VM are not supported.
• The Exchange team supports no more than 2 virtual processors per logical processor on the host.  For example, you cannot have more than 16 virtual processors on a dual, quad core host (8 logical processors).  Normally, Hyper-V has a max of 8:1 ratio.
• Like with SQL, snapshots are not supported.

Not that these restrictions don’t just apply to Hyper-V.  They apply to all virtualisation solutions.

Microsoft has released a configuration guide on how to set up networking cards in a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster with Live Migration.  There’s been a bit of confusion on this topic for those who are new to Hyper-V and failover clustering.  It hasn’t been helped with various failover clustering posts making recommendations that don’t take account of CSV or Live Migration.  Once you get to know this stuff, it is actually not too bad at all.

Deployment MVP, speaker, journalist, consultant, and author, Rhonda Layfield is running a deployment workshop in Las Vegas on March 17th-19th.  It’s 2 and a half days with a person who knows this stuff inside-out.  If you’re a techie getting ready for a desktop deployment, a consultant who’ll probably do Windows 7 deployments this year, or an engagements manager with staff who should know this stuff then this is the best way to kept them up to speed with the MS technologies and approved ways to do this work. 

Rhonda doesn’t stop there.  She always goes on to explain the “edge scenarios”, e.g. what happens when drivers aren’t there, WDS deployments are slow, etc. Rhonda has done deployment projects for some huge organisations in the USA so she knows what she’s talking about.  This will be totally unlike attending some MOC course or a MS partner training day.  This is real at-the-coalface teaching from someone who has been there and done that.

Rhonda is the sort of person you want to teach you because she personally invests herself in each and every session she does.  I’ve seen how much work she invests in sessions the days leading up to them … even if they are repeat sessions, Rhonda will be constantly looking for ways to tune them, give better explanations, more information, etc.

The costs are actually pretty low.  The 2.5 days cost $835 which is around the cost of a MS partner training course in Ireland when you take the exchange rate into account.  Flights to Vegas are economic (Delta via Atlanta), and the Bellagio hotel will cost €150 a night.  Lunch and unlimited coffee are free for 2 days.  There will also be a cocktail hour.  Mark Minasi and Paul Thurrott will be attending so that’s 3 of the biggest brains around to bounce questions off of which is a unique opportunity.  I’ve never met Paul but if he’s like Mark and Rhonda, you’ll get your questions answered by someone approachable and friendly – and knowledgeable.

It also happens to be St. Patricks weekend and the bar to be at in Vegas will be in New York, New York, just a short stroll away.  Their rooms can be cheap if you book ahead.  I can’t remember the name of the older hotel just diagonally across from NY, NY on that junction but it’s decent and very cheap.

So go check out the Deployment Workshop.  I personally think it’s a great looking course, full of info and with a great teacher.  Rhonda did one session at TechEd Europe last year … and then was asked to repeat it due to popular demand later in the week.  That, I promise you, does not happen by accident.  So imagine what you’d get out of 2.5 days of material!