Cloud and Datacenter Management Blog

Microsoft Hybrid Cloud blogsite about Management


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#Microsoft Cloud OS Roadshow Evenement op 7 maart 2014 #MVPBUZZ (Dutch)

Cloud OS MVP RoadshowEen stralend nieuwe dag in IT – Ervaar het vandaag!

Er zijn vandaag meer apps, meer apparaten en meer gegevens dan ooit tevoren – allemaal mogelijk gemaakt door de opkomst van cloud computing en allemaal verbonden met cloud services. Hoe kunnen we effectiever samenwerken en meer waarde brengen door deze technologieën te introduceren in onze zakelijke omgevingen? Het antwoord vanuit Microsoft is het CloudOS.  Met deze oplossing krijgt u alle schaalbaarheid, snelheid en wendbaarheid  die u wenst, zonder dat het afdoet aan uw huidige investeringen. Uw IT-afdeling kan dan snel apps bouwen en uitrollen, IT-services flexibel beheren en real-time analyse van gegevens ondersteunen.

The Cloud OS

Agenda

09u00 – 09u15 Introduction to the CloudOS (Isabel Moll)
09u15 – 10u00 Extend your datacenter with virtualization and networking (Marc van Eijk)
10u00 – 10u45 Ensure business continuity and service delivery (James van den Berg)
10u45 – 11u00 Koffie pauze
11u00 – 11u45 Unlocking Data Insights (André Kamman)
11u45 – 12u30 The Modern Data Warehouse  (André Kamman)
12u30 – 13u15 Lunch Pauze
13u15 – 14u00 Access and information Protection (Raymond Comvalius)
14u00 – 14u45 Unified Device Management (Maarten Goet)
14u45 – 15u00 Koffie pauze
15u00 – 15u45 Enable modern business apps (Tom Verhoeff)
15u45 – 16u30 Why cloud matters for modern business applications (Tom Verhoeff)
16u30 – 17u00 wrap-up & Drinks
U kunt zich hier meteen inschrijven voor het evenement.
Het evenement vindt plaats op Vrijdag 7 maart 2014 bij Microsoft Nederland


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#Microsoft Windows #PowerShell Networking Guide for #ITPRO #MVPBUZZ

Powershell Networking

Windows PowerShell is an essential administrative tool designed specifically for Windows administration. By learning to use Windows PowerShell, network administrators quickly gain access to information from Windows Management Instrumentation, Active Directory, and other essential sources of information. To manage Exchange Server, Windows Azure, and SQL Server, DNS, DHCP, network adapters, and other components, one needs to know and understand how to use Windows PowerShell. This guide explains how to use Windows PowerShell to manage a few networking scenarios.

Powershell logoYou can Download the Microsoft Windows Powershell Networking Guide here


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Awesome Free E-Book Building a Virtualized Network Solution #sysctr #SCVMM #Hyperv #NVGRE #SDN

Building Virtualized Networking Solutions

Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution
Mitch Tulloch with Nigel Cain, Alvin Morales, Michel Luescher, Damian Flynn
February 2014
136 pages

This book is geared to private and hybrid cloud architects preparing to design and build a virtualized network solution based on Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, or later. Written by experts on the Microsoft System Center team and with Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch as series editor, this title focuses on architecture and design.

You can download “Building a Virtualized Network Solution” here

AWESOME Free E-Book 🙂


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Download Now Microsoft #WindowsAzure Symbol/Icon Set #sysctr #MVPBUZZ

Windows Azure Icons 2

Windows Azure IconsWindows Azure Icons 3

This package contains a set of symbols/icons to help you create visual representations of systems that use Windows Azure and related technologies. Feel free to use the symbols in your architectural diagrams and training docs

You can download the Microsoft Windows Azure Symbols and Icons here


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#HyperV Network Virtualization technical details and Gateway Architecture #SCVMM #Cloud #SDN

S2S Hybridcloud

In Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV), a customer is defined as the “owner” of a group of virtual machines that are deployed in a datacenter. A customer can be a corporation or enterprise in a multitenant public datacenter, or a division or business unit within a private datacenter. Each customer can have one or more VM networks in the datacenter, and each VM network consists of one or more virtual subnets

GRE

Generic Routing Encapsulation figure 1.

Generic Routing Encapsulation This network virtualization mechanism uses the Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) as part of the tunnel header. In NVGRE, the virtual machine’s packet is encapsulated inside another packet. The header of this new packet has the appropriate source and destination PA IP addresses in addition to the Virtual Subnet ID, which is stored in the Key field of the GRE header.

The Virtual Subnet ID allows hosts to identify the customer virtual machine for any given packet, even though the PA’s and the CA’s on the packets may overlap. This allows all virtual machines on the same host to share a single PA, as shown in Figure 1.

Sharing the PA has a big impact on network scalability. The number of IP and MAC addresses that need to be learned by the network infrastructure can be substantially reduced. For instance, if every end host has an average of 30 virtual machines, the number of IP and MAC addresses that need to be learned by the networking infrastructure is reduced by a factor of 30.The embedded Virtual Subnet IDs in the packets also enable easy correlation of packets to the actual customers.

With Windows Server 2012 and later, HNV fully supports NVGRE out of the box; it does NOT require upgrading or purchasing new network hardware such as NICs (Network Adapters), switches, or routers. This is because the NVGRE packet on the wire is a regular IP packet in the PA space, which is compatible with today’s network infrastructure.

Windows Server 2012 made working with standards a high priority. Along with key industry partners (Arista, Broadcom, Dell, Emulex, Hewlett Packard, and Intel) Microsoft published a draft RFC that describes the use of Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE), which is an existing IETF standard, as an encapsulation protocol for network virtualization. For more information, see the following Internet Draft: Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation. As NVGRE-aware becomes commercially available the benefits of NVGRE will become even greater.

Here you can read more on Microsoft Technet about Hyper-V Network Virtualization technologies

Hyper-V Network Virtualization Gateway Architectural Guide :

SCVMM2012R2 Design

System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager Figure 2.

In the VMM model the Hyper-V Network Virtualization Gateway is managed via a PowerShell plug-in module. Partners building Hyper-V Network Virtualization gateways need to create a PowerShell plug-in module which physically runs on the VMM server. This plug-in module will communicate policy to the gateway. Figure 2 shows a block diagram of VMM managing a Hyper-V Network Virtualization deployment. Note that a partner plug-in runs inside the VMM server. This plug-in communicates to the gateway appliances. The protocol used for this communication is not specified here. The partner may determine the appropriate protocol. Note that VMM uses the Microsoft implementation of WS-Management Protocol called Windows Remote Management (WinRM) and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to manage the Windows Server 2012 hosts and update network virtualization policies.

Cross Premise Gateway

Cross Premises Gateway Figure 3.

The Hybrid Cloud scenario enables an enterprise to seamlessly expand their on-premises datacenter into the cloud. This requires a site to site VPN tunnel. This can be accomplished with Windows Server 2012 as the host platform and a per tenant Windows Server 2012 guest virtual machine running a Site To Site (S2S) VPN tunnel connecting the cloud datacenter with various on-premise datacenters. Windows Server 2012 S2S VPN supports IKEv2 and configuration of remote policy can be accomplished via PowerShell/WMI. In addition Windows Server 2012 guest virtual machines support new network interface offload capabilities that enhance the performance and scalability of the gateway appliance. These offload capabilities are discussed below in the Hardware Considerations section.

Figure 3 shows a scenario where Red Corp and Blue Corp are customers of Hoster Cloud. Red Corp and Blue Corp seamlessly extend their datacenter into Hoster Cloud has deployed Windows Server 2012 based per tenant virtual machine gateways allowing Red Corp and Blue Corp to seamlessly extend their on-premise datacenters. In Figure 10 there is no requirement that Red Corp or Blue Corp run Windows Server 2012 S2S VPN, only that the customer’s on premise S2S VPN support IKEv2 to interact with corresponding Windows Server 2012 S2S virtual machines running on HostGW.

Figure 9 shows the internal architecture for HostGW. Each Routing Domain requires its own virtual machine. The technical reason for this is that a vmnic can only be associated with a single Virtual Subnet (VSID) and a VSID can only be part of a single routing domain. The VSID switch port ACL does not support trunking of VSIDs. Therefore the simplest way to provide isolation is with a per tenant (Routing Domain) gateway virtual machine.

Each of the virtual machines is dual homed which means they have two virtual network interfaces. One of the virtual network interfaces has the appropriate VSID associated with it. The other virtual network interface has a VSID of 0 which means traffic is not modified by the WNV filter. The Windows Server 2012 virtual machine is running RRAS and using IKEv2 to create a secure tunnel between Hoster Cloud and the customer’s on premise gateway.

HybridCloud VM Gateway

Hybrid Cloud with Windows Server 2012 based Per Tenant VM Gateways Figure 4.

Figure 4 shows the architecture where VMM is managing a Hyper-V Network Virtualization deployment. The partner has a plug-in that runs in the VMM server. When using Windows Server 2012 as a Hyper-V Network Virtualization gateway appliance a local management process running in Windows is required as the end point for this communication from the plug-in running in the VMM server. This is how the plug-in is able to communicate network virtualization policy to the WNV filter running on HostGW

You can Read more on Microsoft Technet about Hyper-V Network Virtualization Gateway Architecture here


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Virtualizing Your Data Center with #Hyperv and System Center Free online event #sysctr #MVA

MVA Virtualizing your Datacenter
Virtualizing Your Data Center with Hyper-V and System Center
Free online event with live Q&A: http://aka.ms/virtDC
Wednesday, February 19th from 9am – 5pm PST
 
If you’re new to virtualization, or if you have some experience and want to see the latest R2 features of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V or Virtual Machine Manager, join us for a day of free online training with live Q&A to get all your questions answered. Learn how to build your infrastructure from the ground up on the Microsoft stack, using System Center to provide powerful management capabilities. Microsoft virtualization experts Symon Perriman and Matt McSpirit (who are also VMware Certified Professionals) demonstrate how you can help your business consolidate workloads and improve server utilization, while reducing costs. Learn the differences between the platforms, and explore how System Center can be used to manage a multi-hypervisor environment, looking at VMware vSphere 5.5 management, monitoring, automation, and migration. Even if you cannot attend the live event, register today anyway and you will get an email once we release the videos for on-demand replay! 
 
Topics include
•        Introduction to Microsoft Virtualization
•        Host Configuration
•        Virtual Machine Clustering and Resiliency
•        Virtual Machine Configuration
•        Virtual Machine Mobility
•        Virtual Machine Replication and Protection
•        Network Virtualization
•        Virtual Machine and Service Templates
•        Private Clouds and User Roles
•        System Center 2012 R2 Data Center
•        Virtualization with the Hybrid Cloud
•        VMware Management, Integration, and Migration
 
Register here: http://aka.ms/virtDC
 
Also check out the www.MicrosoftVirtualAcademy.com for other free training and live events.


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Great WhitePaper #SQL and System Center from MVP Paul Keely #sysctr #MVPBUZZ

SQL and System CenterA Great WhitePaper from MVP Paul Keely about SQL Server 2012 with System Center 2012 R2 on Windows Server 2012 R2.
Here you find the blogwebsite of Paul Keely

In this guide Paul Keely has decided to be very much more focused on SQL and its interaction with System Center and indeed Server 2012.  In the last guide he felt that a lot of people were already installing SQL for quite some time and there was a lot of knowledge out there on SQL installs but not best practices.  SQL 2012 and Server 2012 have brought some real game changers to the story, and because of that this guide is going to go into way more detail on areas like setup and some of the options we have here.  We are not going to walk you through a basic SQL setup, there are a ton of guides for that on the internet, instead we are going to look at some of the more complex areas like clustering, AlwaysOn, Storage Spaces and SQL Azure.  If you are new to this subject then Paul suggest that you download the guide and use in in conjunction to this one.

You can download this Great SQL and System Center WhitePaper of MVP Paul Keely here


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HOTFIX : Windows Server 2012 R2 NVGRE Gateway #SCVMM #NVGRE

NVGRE HOTFIX

After some hours or days, a Windows Server 2012 R2 Network Virtualization that uses Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE) gateways cannot establish outgoing UDP or TCP connections intermittently.

Hotfix information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing the problem described in this article. This hotfix might receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next software update that contains this hotfix.

If the hotfix is available for download, there is a “Hotfix Download Available” section at the top of this Knowledge Base article. If this section does not appear, contact Microsoft Customer Service and Support to obtain the hotfix.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft website:

Note The “Hotfix Download Available” form displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language.

Prerequisites

To apply this hotfix, you must be running Windows Server 2012 R2.

Registry information

To apply this hotfix, you do not have to make any changes to the registry.

Restart requirement

You might have to restart the computer after you apply this hotfix.

Hotfix replacement information

This hotfix does not replace a previously released hotfix.

NVGRE Hotfix download


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Resources for Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2012 R2 #WS2012R2 #hyperv

DV668282 Skiing Chemmy Alcott

Additional Resources for Performance Tuning Guidelines

 

Use the links in this topic to learn more about the concepts that were discussed in Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2012 R2.

Websites

Power Management

Networking Subsystem

Network Workload

Storage Subsystem

Web Servers

File Servers

Active Directory Servers

Virtualization Servers

Print Servers

Sales and Distribution Two-Tier Workload and TPC-E Workload

Server Tuning Tools