Category Archives: How-To

Windows Server 2012 IT Camp – Lab #3 – Thin vs. Fixed provisioning… That is the storage management question.

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Since the last few Windows Server 2012 IT camps a few discussions have sprouted regarding “Thin provisioning” in Storage Spaces. a new feature of Windows Server 20912.  Those discussions mainly revolved around 3 things:

  1. What is Thin provisioning?
  2. How will that bring me value?
  3. And, Why should I care?

Thin Provisioning and Storage Spaces?

Thin provisioning or “just-in-time allocations” is a method of optimizing the efficiency with which the available disk space is utilized and the ability to reclaim storage that is no longer needed (also known as trim).

Thin provisioning is designed to address several issues with traditional models for provisioning storage used by enterprises:

  • Unreliable forecasting of future storage needs makes it hard to pre-allocate storage capacity to meet changing demand.
  • Pre-allocated storage is often underused, which leads to inefficiencies and unnecessary expenditures.
  • Managing an enterprise storage system can often add considerable overhead to the overall cost of managing an IT infrastructure

It’s all part of Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces that operates by allocating disk storage space in a flexible manner based on the space required at any given time. It means is that you can let the server/application/users think they have all the storage they needs, but only purchase disk to keeps pace with total actually consumed storage.

You can also pool together commodity storage devices so you can provision storage as you need it. Storage Spaces is a highly available storage solution that has all the power and flexibility of a SAN but is considerably cheaper and also easier to manage.

Storage Spaces can virtualize storage to create what are called storage pools. A storage pool is an aggregation of unallocated space on physical disks installed in or connected to servers (These disks could be installed inside servers on your network or within just-a-bunch-of-disks (JBOD) enclosures). Storage pools are flexible and elastic, allowing you to add or remove disks from the pool as your demand for storage grows or shrinks.

Once you’ve created a storage pool using Storage Spaces, you can provision storage from the pool by creating virtual disks. A virtual disk behaves exactly like a physical disk except that it can span multiple physical disks within the storage pool. Virtual disks can host simple volumes or volumes with resiliency (mirroring or parity) to increase the reliability or performance of the disk. A virtual disk is sometimes called a LUN.

Storage Spaces is fully remoteable and scriptable. This increases the Operational simplicity. Management is permitted through the Windows Storage Management API, WMI, and Windows PowerShell. And, Storage Spaces can be easily managed through the File Services role in Server Manager.

Configuring a storage pool

Configuring a storage pool using Storage Spaces requires that you have at least one unallocated physical disk available (a disk with no volumes on it). If you want to create a mirrored volume, you’ll need at least two physical disks; a parity volume requires at least three physical disks. Pools can consist of a mixture of disks of different types and sizes. Table 3-3 shows the different types of disks supported by Storage Spaces. These disks could be installed inside servers on your network or within just-a-bunch-of-disks (JBOD) enclosures.

Supported drive types

  • SATA – Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
  • SCSI – Small Computer System Interface
  • iSCSI – Internet Small Computer System Interface
  • SAS – Serial Attached SCSI
  • USB – Universal Serial Bus

 

 

Monitoring

It’s very important to mention that thin provisioning will not prevent storage shortages. Applications will break if storage is not added to the thinly provisioned volumes in time.  After you deploy thin-provisioned volumes to application and data servers, and threshold notification and resource exhaustion settings are configured by the storage administrator. The system administrator and the storage administrator MUST monitor and respond to related events. look for the following threshold notification warning events in Event Viewer.

Event ID General Information
144 Threshold notification without additional information
145 Threshold notification without specific information
146 Threshold notification with used LUN capacity and available LUN capacity information
147 Threshold notification with used LUN capacity and available pool capacity information
148 Threshold notification with used pool capacity and available LUN capacity information
149 Threshold notification with used pool capacity and available pool capacity information
150 Permanent resource exhaustion threshold is reached

 

Home lab setup

After Lab #2 We have our 2 physical machines and 2 virtual Domain controllers (one on each physical hosts)

VMhost10a and VMhost10b.  We have them configured as follows:

  • VMhost10a – physical
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.5
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.100
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.110
  • VMHost10B – physical, 192.168.11.10
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.10
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.100
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.110

ITCAMP-DC1 and ITCAMP-DC2.  We have them configured as follows:

  • ITCAMP-DC1 – Virtual
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.100
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.100
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.110
  • ITCAMP-DC2 – Virtual
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.110
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.110
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.100

ITCAMP-SMB and ITCAMP-SCVMM. We have them configured as follows:

  • ITCAMP-SMB – Virtual
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.150
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.110
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.100
  • ITCAMP-SCVMM – Virtual
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.130
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.110
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.100

lab 2 end

 

In my home Lab I collected a few removable drives that will be configured as a storage Pool.  If you have a third machine that can become a physical ITCAMP-SMB use it.  It will makes the shared storage exercises and clustering labs a lot more straight forward.  I also included a gateway to the internet to facilitate updating and remote access to the lab.  But there is no real reason why you can’t keep it as described above.

DSC_0006

So my Lab now looks like the following diagram:

image

In this lab we will achieve the following:

  • Create a storage pool & thin disk
  • Create iSCSI Disk & iSCSI target
  • Configure iSCSI access from hosts

Watch the following 13 minute video on configuring our Storage Space into a Pool and iSCSI disks to prepare for our next lab where we will setup a failover cluster.

 

If you have other scenarios you would like me to explore and post please leave me a comment.

As always, the easiest way to learn is to download the evaluation and start getting your hands dirty.

you can find the evaluation download here.  ( http://aka.ms/ws2012eval)

Cheers!

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Pierre Roman, MCITP, ITIL | IT Pro Advisor
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Windows Server 2012 IT Camp – Lab #2

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In November I posted the first of several post that covered building a lab at home.  Then I followed up with Windows Server 2012 IT Camp – Lab #1 .

This is third one in this series and it will cover the following:

  • Details of the import virtual machines process in Hyper-v
  • Virtual Machines Dynamic memory   

The import virtual machines process in Hyper-v

Importing a virtual machine from one physical host to another can expose file incompatibilities and other unforeseen complications. Administrators often think of a virtual machine as a single, stand-alone entity that they can move around to address their operational needs. In reality, a virtual machine consists of several parts:

  • Virtual hard disks, stored as files in the physical storage.
  • Virtual machine snapshots, stored as a special type of virtual hard disk file.
  • The saved state of the different, host-specific devices.
  • The memory file, or snapshot, for the virtual machine.
  • The virtual machine configuration file, which organizes the preceding components and arranges them into a working virtual machine.

Each virtual machine and each snapshot that is associated with it use unique identifiers. Additionally, virtual machines store and use some host-specific information, such as the path that identifies the location for virtual hard disk files. When Hyper‑V starts a virtual machine, it undergoes a series of validation checks before being started. Problems such as hardware differences that might exist when a virtual machine is imported to another host can cause these validation checks to fail. That, in turn, prevents the virtual machine from starting.

Windows Server 2012 includes an Import wizard that helps you quickly and reliably import virtual machines from one server to another.

The Import Wizard for virtualization:

  • Detects and fixes problems.
    • Hyper‑V in Windows Server 2012 introduces a new Import Wizard that is designed to detect and fix more than 40 different types of incompatibilities. You don’t have to worry ahead of time about the configuration that’s associated with physical hardware, such as memory, virtual switches, and virtual processors. The Import Wizard guides you through the steps to resolve incompatibilities when you import the virtual machine to the new host.

 

  • Doesn’t require the virtual machine to be exported.
    • You no longer need to export a virtual machine to be able to import it. You can simply copy a virtual machine and its associated files to the new host and then use the Import Wizard to specify the location of the files. This “registers” the virtual machine with Hyper‑V and makes it available for use.

The flowchart shows the Import Wizard process.image

When you import a virtual machine, the wizard does the following:

  1. Creates a copy of the virtual machine configuration file. This is created as a precaution in case an unexpected restart occurs on the host, such as from a power outage.
  2. Validates hardware. Information in the virtual machine configuration file is compared to hardware on the new host.
  3. Compiles a list of errors. This list identifies what needs to be reconfigured and determines which pages appear next in the wizard.
  4. Displays the relevant pages, one category at a time. The wizard identifies incompatibilities to help you reconfigure the virtual machine so it’s compatible with the new host.
  5. Removes the copy of the configuration file. After the wizard does this, the virtual machine is ready to start.

The new Import Wizard is a simpler, better way to import or copy virtual machines. The wizard detects and fixes potential problems, such as hardware or file differences that might exist when a virtual machine is imported to another host.

As an added safety feature, the wizard creates a temporary copy of a virtual machine configuration file in case an unexpected restart occurs on the host, such as from a power outage. The Windows PowerShell cmdlets for importing virtual machines let you automate the process.

 

Virtual Machines Dynamic memory and automatic start-up actions

In Windows Server 2012,  Fast-growing organizations whose workloads are rapidly expanding often need to add more virtual machines to their host processors. These organizations want to optimize the number of virtual machines that they can place on a host server to minimize the number of expensive host servers that they need. With the Hyper-V Dynamic Memory improvements in Windows Server 2012 , IT administrators can now allocate virtual machine memory resources more efficiently and dramatically increase virtual machine consolidation ratios.

Dynamic Memory improvements in Windows Server 2012 include support for higher virtual machine consolidation with minimum memory and Hyper-V smart paging.

Minimum memory lets Hyper‑V reclaim the unused memory from virtual machines. This can result in increased virtual machine consolidation numbers, especially in VDI environments.

Although minimum memory increases virtual machine consolidation numbers, it also brings a challenge. If a virtual machine has a smaller amount of memory than its startup memory and it’s restarted, Hyper‑V needs additional memory to restart the machine. Due to host memory pressure or the states of the virtual machines, Hyper‑V may not always have additional memory available. This can cause sporadic virtual machine restart failures in customer environments. In Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V smart paging is used to bridge the memory gap between minimum and startup memory and allow virtual machines to restart reliably.

Hyper-V smart paging allows virtual machines to start reliably when the minimum memory setting has indirectly led to an insufficient amount of available physical memory during restart.

Hyper-V smart paging

As in the earlier version of Dynamic Memory, you can configure minimum memory for your virtual machines and Hyper‑V continues to help ensure that this amount is assigned to running virtual machines. To provide a reliable restart experience for the virtual machines configured with less minimum memory than startup memory, Hyper‑V Windows Server 2012 uses Hyper-V smart paging.

Hyper-V smart paging is a memory management technique that uses disk resources as additional, temporary memory when more memory is required to restart a virtual machine. This approach has advantages and drawbacks. It provides a reliable way to keep the virtual machines running when no physical memory is available. However, it can degrade virtual machine performance because disk access speeds are much slower than memory access speeds.

To minimize the performance impact of Hyper-V smart paging, Hyper‑V uses it only when all of the following occur:

  • The virtual machine is being restarted.
  • No physical memory is available.
  • No memory can be reclaimed from other virtual machines running on the host.

Hyper-V smart paging isn’t used when:

  • A virtual machine is being started from an off state (instead of a restart).
  • Oversubscribing memory for a running virtual machine would result.
  • A virtual machine is failing over in Hyper‑V clusters.

Internal guest paging

Hyper‑V continues to rely on internal guest paging when host memory is oversubscribed because it’s more effective than Hyper-V smart paging. With internal guest paging, the paging operation inside virtual machines is performed by Windows Memory Manager. Windows Memory Manager has more information than the Hyper‑V host about memory usage within the virtual machine, which means it can provide Hyper‑V with better information to use when choosing the memory to be paged. Because of this, internal guest paging incurs less overhead to the system when compared to Hyper-V smart paging.

Memory ballooning

To further reduce the impact of Hyper-V smart paging, after a virtual machine completes the startup process, Hyper‑V removes memory from the virtual machine, coordinating with Dynamic Memory components inside the guest (a process sometimes referred to as “ballooning”), so that the virtual machine stops using Hyper-V smart paging. With this technique, the use of Hyper-V smart paging is temporary and is not expected to be longer than 10 minutes.

Runtime configuration

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V enables you to make the following configuration changes to Dynamic Memory when the virtual machine is running:

  • Increase the maximum memory.
  • Decrease the minimum memory.

Home lab setup Part 3

After Lab #1 We have our 2 physical machines and 2 virtual Domain controllers (one on each physical hosts)

VMhost10a and VMhost10b.  We have them configured as follows:  

  • VMhost10a – physical     
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.5
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.100
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.110         
  • VMHost10B – physical, 192.168.11.10
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.10
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.100
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.110

ITCAMP-DC1 and ITCAMP-DC2.  We have them configured as follows:

 

  • ITCAMP-DC1 – Virtual
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.100
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.100
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.110
  • ITCAMP-DC2 – Virtual
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.110
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.110
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.100

    image

In this lab we will get our hands on a couple more machines that we will build and use in our scenarios.

Build our ITCAMP-SMB server

Using the VHD downloaded here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx) after extracting it to a temporary location, I copied it to the location I want my ITCAMP-SMB machine to be located and renamed it to ITCAMP-SMB. Once that’s done I created a new Virtual machine on VMHost10A with the following settings:

  • Name: ITCAMP-SMB
  • Startup Memory: 1024MB
  • Network Connection : Use the same Virtual Network as the one configured for ITCAMP-DC1 and ITCAMP-DC2.  In our case it’s “CorpNet”
  • Use an Existing Disk: Use the disk and location we copied at the beginning of this exercise.
  • everything else is default

Once the machine is created, open the settings for ITCAMP-SMB and under the “SCSI Controller” add 4 disks as shown in the exhibit below:

image

Once it’s started, there are a few things to do for setup before we can continue with the labs.

  1. Rename to ITCAMP-SMB
  2. Join it to the ITCAMP domain.
  3. Set the IP address to :
    • IP Address: 192.168.11.150
    • Subnet Mask: 225.225.225.0
    • Gateway: none
    • DNS1: 192.168.11.110
    • DNS2: 192.168.11.100

  4. Ensure that the following roles (and supporting features) are installed

image

 

 

Build ITCAMP-SCVMM

That one is a little easier.  Since System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 is not out yet, you still have to download a pre-baked machine to be used as a System Center 2012 Virtual Machine manager.  you can get the SCVMM machine here (http://aka.ms/SCVMM2012SP1)

Once you’ve downloaded and expanded it on VMHost10B just follow the directions included with the virtual machine.

Here is what we have at the end of the build process:

image

Lab #2

Lab #2 will consist in the following:

  • Configure dynamic memory for ITCAMP-SMB
  • Configure to auto start w/ 60 sec delay
  • Add File and iSCSI Services – File Server Role to VMhost10A,
  • On VMHOST10A, create share to F:\VMMLibrary

 

Here is the 7 minutes video on this lab.

 

 

If you have other scenarios you would like me to explore and post please leave me a comment.

 

As always, the easiest way to learn is to download the evaluation and start getting your hands dirty. 

you can find the evaluation download here.  ( http://aka.ms/ws2012eval)

 

Cheers!

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The new Internet.

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Hello folks,

A customer ran into an issue this week and the first thing that was suggested was “Hey, I know, lets disable IPV6….”image

Really?? No research, no questions?  It’s easy! I’ve been told…  Just go to the Ethernet Adapter setting and unbind the protocol.

WRONG!

Microsoft recommends leaving IPv6 enabled even when not in active use.  if you really have to,  you can.  It is supported.  but you have to do it the right way.  We’ll cover that later in this post.

I wanted to talk about why it is not recommended to disable IPV6.  First Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (and earlier) did not natively support IPv6. These OS’s require manual intervention to install and enable IPv6.  Starting with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, IPv6 is installed and enabled by default.  That was made possible because Microsoft redesigned and built the TCPIP stack using native IPv6.  That’s why IPv6 cannot be uninstalled on these operating systems (or later ones), but it can be disabled IPV6

Here is a extract from the IPV6 FAQ (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/cc987595.aspx)

Better yet!  read Understanding IPv6 from Microsoft Press.  http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/book.aspx?ID=4883&locale=en-us

 

“From Microsoft’s perspective, IPv6 is a mandatory part of the Windows operating system and it is enabled and included in standard Windows service and application testing during the operating system development process. Because Windows was designed specifically with IPv6 present, Microsoft does not perform any testing to determine the effects of disabling IPv6. If IPv6 is disabled on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2008, or later versions, some components will not function. Moreover, applications that you might not think are using IPv6—such as Remote Assistance, HomeGroup, DirectAccess, and Windows Mail—could be.”

Did you read that?  Microsoft products are not tested with IPv6 disabled. Disabling IPv6 places that host and application into a less-tested state.  Which means we don’t know what you’re going to get!!  if you contact the MS support center, they may ask you to re-enable it.   In the end, leaving IPv6 enabled, even when not in use, does not impact production networks.

But if you ARE going to disable it…..  DO IT RIGHT!

Like i said earlier, disabling it in the Properties of the NIC is NOT Recommended.   When you do that a few things come into play:

  • You Unbinds IPv6 from that one interface only.  which means if you replace it or introduce another it will be enabled on that one.
  • The disabling cannot be easily scripted and validated.
  • and even if you do….  The IPv6 loopback is still enabled

This will introduce support issues. Things will start to break. There are known issues reported already. The product group do not perform any regression testing by keeping IPv6 disabled.

There is no easy way to manage “Unbind or “Bind” operation for IPv6 centrally. You need to go to each server locally to configure this setting. There is no GPO or scripted way to manage this configuration. In other words it is going to increase your administration overhead when you may wants to turn this setting on (Bind IPv6 again) the machines at the enterprise level.

How to Disable IPv6

OK OK…  after all i just said if you still want to disable IPV6 here’s how you do it.

It is recommend using the DisabledComponents Registry Key to disable IPV6 it’s well documented in the following KB article. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852 

The DisabledComponents key does not exist by default and must be created the KB tells you how to do that too…

So, create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTcpip6ParametersDisabledComponents

Enter  any one of the following values in the Value data field to configure the IPv6 protocol the way you want it

  • 0 - to enable all IPv6 components. (Windows default setting) 
  • 0xffffffff  – to disable all IPv6 components, except the IPv6 loopback interface. This value also configures Windows to prefer using Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) over IPv6 by modifying entries in the prefix policy table. For more information, see Source and Destination Address Selection (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb877985.aspx) .
  • 0×20 – to prefer IPv4 over IPv6 by modifying entries in the prefix policy table. 
  • 0×10 – to disable IPv6 on all nontunnel interfaces (on both LAN and Point-to-Point Protocol [PPP] interfaces). 
  • 0×01 – to disable IPv6 on all tunnel interfaces. These include Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP), 6to4, and Teredo. 
  • 0×11 – to disable all IPv6 interfaces except for the IPv6 loopback interface.

Of course you need to leave the IPv6 box checked in the NIC properties when using the DisabledComponents Key to disable it.  And watch out for 6to4 address that may get generated automatically and get registered in DNS if the IPv4 address is defined in public range of addresses. if you’re running private addresses,  don’t worry about it.

Individual transition technologies (ISATAP, 6to4, Teredo, IP-HTTPS) can be disabled individually via GPO on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and higher.

The policy is located here in the GPO:

  • Computer Configuration
    • Administrative Templates
      • Network
        • TCPIP Settings
          • IPv6 Transition Technologies

•image

I know some people have already mentioned using the firewall to bloc the traffic, well all i can tell you is that it’s not supported or recommended.

Now you know. 

If you are considering this, take a really good look at why you’re trying to disable it.  you might be introducing more issues that it’s worth.

That’s my IT 2 cents.

Chao!

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MCITP, ITIL | Senior Technical Account Manager | Directeur de Compte Technique Senior
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How I preserve that new PC smell.

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While participating in a discussion on LinkedIn (http://linkd.in/r3WJPl) where we were discussing what are the different processeshabits that people have in order to setup a newly acquired machine, i decided to document my own process. I personally use a mix of WinPE and ImageX to image the machine and that way preserve that new PC smell.

Here are the details:

to create the WinPE disk, Download the Windows Automated Install Kit from here (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=136976) and install in on a workstation.

On that computer, click Start, All Programs, Windows AIK, right-click Deployment Tools Command Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.

In the command prompt type “copype.cmd x86 c:winpe_x86” to prepare the staging area.

In the command prompt type “copy c:winpe_x86winpe.wim c:winpe_x86ISOsourcesboot.wim” to copy the boot image to the staging area

In the command prompt type “copy “c:Program FilesWindows AIKToolsx86*.*” c:winpe_x86iso” to copy all the tools for manipulating the wim files to the staging area.

Now you need to create a Bootable a USB key. you can refer to an old post of mine that explains and shows the video on preparing the USB stick here (http://blogs.technet.com/b/canitpro/archive/2009/02/16/windows-7-on-a-stick.aspx) or folow the steps below.

To prepare the USB key using the diskpart utility built-in to Windows 7.

  • In a command window type “Diskpart” to start the utility, once started use the following sequence to prepare the key to be bootable.
  • List disk (to see with disk is your USB key)
  • select disk 1 (where disk 1 is the USB key)
  • clean (Ensure that you’re NOT pointing at your system disk. CLEAN will wipe your partition table WITHOUT asking for confirmation)
  • create partition primary
  • select partition 1
  • active
  • format quick fs=fat32
  • assign (take note of the drive letter assigned to the key)
  • exit

now that the key is ready, copy the staging area to your key “Copy C:winpe_x86iso*.* /e D:” D: being the drive letter assigned to the USB key.

Your key is now ready. so boot your newly acquired PC (or any PC you need to capture) with the USB key we just created and once booted connect to the network share you want to use as your repository for the image.

in my case i use my home server so the command will be as follows “net use z: homepublic” you should be prompted for credentials, and once supplied the drive Z: will be mapped.

once mapped, it’s as simple as using the ImageX utility to capture your system partition to the network drive. the command line in my batch file looks like this, “imagex /capture d: z:newpclenovox61data.wim “lenovo x61″ /verify”

you can find more information on the ImageX command line structure here.

Once the process is finished, i have an image i can restore at any point should i need to.

I hope this helps.

Cheers.

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Pierre Roman, MCITP, ITIL | Microsoft Canada | Senior Technical Account Manager | pierre.roman@microsoft.com

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Make Windows 2008 R2 roar like a performance machine…

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Hello Folks,Srv2008

I meet a lot of you during the last TechDays season.  And a few of you asked me if there were any information or guidelines for “tuning” servers. Well I found out that an old document has been updated and is  just as relevant today as it was when it was just published back in June 2009.

This guide describes tuning parameters and settings that you can tweak to improve the performance and energy efficiency of your Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. It describes each setting and its potential effect to help you make an informed decision about its relevance to your system, workload, and performance goals.

After going through it i figured i have to tell the guys about this document.  I know they will be interested.

The different workloads discussed in this whitepaper are :

  • Choosing and Tuning Server Hardware
  • Performance Tuning for the Networking Subsystem
  • Performance Tuning for the Storage Subsystem
  • Performance Tuning for Web Servers
  • Performance Tuning for File Servers
  • Performance Tuning for Active Directory Servers
  • Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Session Host (formerly Terminal Server)
  • Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Gateway
  • Performance Tuning for Virtualization Servers
  • Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (NetBench)
  • Performance Tuning for File Server Workload (SPECsfs2008)
  • Performance Tuning for Network Workload (NTttcp)
  • Performance Tuning for Remote Desktop Services Knowledge Worker Workload
  • Performance Tuning for SAP Sales and Distribution Two-Tier Workload
  • Performance Tuning for TCP-E Workload

download the white paper. Read it, Try the different setting and make that server hmmm like the performance machine it’s meant to be.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/s.stem/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv-R2.mspx

Cheers!

Pierre Roman, MCITP, ITIL | Microsoft Canada Co.| Senior Technical Account Manager| pierre.roman@microsoft.com

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Is my VM solution supported?

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Hello Folks,

Knowing that your production environments are fully supported is very important for an IT pro (even more to an IT manager). That knowledge could potentially save you lots of troubles that you really don’t need in the event that your solution goes down and that the support center tells you:

“oh! that’s not a supported configuration. but thanks for calling”

Well I’ve only been back to my role as a Senior Technical Account manager for a couple of months now, and I have had the following question asked by someone at the majority of my customers.

“I’m running (Insert Product Name here) in a (Insert Vendor name here) virtual environment. Am I supported?”

So i did a little digging to see if i could find that was more intuitive than the standard legal verbiage that is normally found.Windows Server Catalog

I found it!!

Microsoft has a Virtualization Support Wizard on the internet that can help you determine if a virtualization configuration is supported without calling Microsoft support.

The URL of the Wizard is http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvpwizard.htm

You pick the product version, virtualization solution, and guest OS and it tells you if it is supported or not. Simple, easy, and quick.

Now if you have any doubt regarding the supportability of your solutions. Do not wait for the problems to come up. Look it up! it easy and fast.

Pierre

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Pierre Roman, MCSE, ITIL| Microsoft Canada Co.| Senior Technical Account Manager | pierre.roman@microsoft.com

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P.S: If you want the legal verbiage, the official Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software can be found here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615) and for more information regarding Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments you can refer to the following article. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006/

Windows 7 on a stick.

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Hello folks,

Since Windows 7 Beta 1 became available i have been slowly upgrading all my machines. It started with my test box A Dell Latitude D830, followed by my production machine a Dell Latitude E4300. I thought to myself, WOW this rocks!!! so i went one step further and upgraded my Media Center PC. Boom, done working perfectly, no driver issues, simply flawless….

Hmmm… which one do I do next? The only two machines left are the family PC in the kitchen, or my wife’s laptop. That decision was very simple. My wife does not respond well to technological change. and i do not want to change anything on her setup these days since she is in the middle of a very important project at work that cannot be late.

Ok my decision was taken, DVD in hand i make my way to the kitchen…. Turn the machine on, hit the DVD button. It will not open!?!… hit the button again…. Still nothing. Logon to Vista, open explorer and right click the drive select “eject”…. Again, nothing. At that point my daughter walks by and says “oh yeah! That stopped working weeks ago”. After further investigation and interrogation it turns out when you forcibly shove the drive door shut when the PC is turned off, bad things can happen.

Anyway back to the topic at hand. What to do now. Hmm. The machine is fairly recent, it should be able to boot from a USB device. GOT IT! Build a image on a USB key to install Windows 7.

It turns out it was very easy to accomplish. let me show you.

Here you have it. Windows 7 on a stick.

go forth and deploy!

Cheers.

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Pierre Roman, MCSE, ITIL| Microsoft Canada Co.| IT Pro Advisor | pierre.roman@microsoft.com
phone: 613-212-2370 | mobile: 613-715-2311

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My Core box. How to turn a near obsolete PC in a Lab Domain Controller.

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Hello folks,

I was reading Mohamud’s post and it made me think of my own lab environment. I had been thinking about writing about it for a while now, but something always came up. So, this morning I gathered the documentation i had kept when i setup my environment (and yes for those who doubt, i do document my setups) and actually got to it.

When i started my preparation for the EnergizeIT demos, and for other screen casts I am planning. I realized I needed to rebuild the domain setup for my lab. I also wanted to check out a few scenarios discussed with TechDays attendees during the “Streamlining Administration of Your Deployments of Active Directory Using Group Policy Preferences, Templates, and Scripting” session.

So I started looking for a spare machine for the DC. I know, I can do all this virtualized, but I wanted to setup a permanent infrastructure I can work with for the long haul. Therefore I was looking for a DC, I could setup in my wiring closet in my home office and leave it there.

I found some pieces from different computers in storage (yes, I’m a pack rat… I never throw out anything.) an ATX case, an ASUS P4B motherboard, a Pentium 4 processor (2.2GHz) and 768MB of memory (1×512 + 1×256) and an old DVD reader. The only part I had to source outside was the HHD. For that I bought a 250GB drive, and I was good to go.

As you can guess the hardware platform is fairly weak. So, a core installation should be perfect, small footprint and more resources dedicated to what it is needed for.

I was off to the races. Booted from the DVD of Windows 2008 Enterprise Server x86, and I proceeded with the installation. I will spare you the details of the initial installation, I believe that most of us can click next… ;)

Ok, now I have a core server. WOOOOHOOOO!!!!

But, at this point, it does nothing!!!!

Here comes the part that is fun. How do I turn this brick into something useful? What will I need it for? Hmmm… Planning… Something I should spend more time doing. Anyway, I need the following:

  1. An Active Directory Domain controller
  2. A File server
  3. A DHCP and DNS servers

Ok. Now that I knew what I needed, I proceeded with the configuration

Find interface index and set IP address

Before anything else i needed to establish connectivity. The following command identified the interfaces currently installed.

netsh interface ipv4 show interface

This returned:

Idx Met MTU State Name
— — —– ———– ——————-
2 50 1500 connected Local Area Connection
1 50 4294967295 connected Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1

I needed to apply the changes to the idx= 2 interface.

netsh interface ipv4 set address name=”2″ source=static address=”192.168.1.50″ mask=”255.255.255.0″ gateway=”192.168.1.1″

now that I have an IP address, I need to define name resolution. Since I will be setting up a DNS server on this box later I configured the DNS settings to point to the following

  1. 127.0.0.1 (local host)
  2. 206.248.154.22 (my ISP DNS)

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver “Local Area Connection” 127.0.0.1
netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver “Local Area Connection” 206.248.154.22 index=2

Enter activation key & Activate Server

In order to enter the proper product key (which I forgot do during the installation) and to activate my server i executed the SLMGR.VBS script from the c:windowssystem32 directory:

cscript slmgr.vbs -ipk ABCDE-FGHIJ-KLMNO-PQRST-UVWXY (enter a new product key)
cscript slmgr.vbs -ato (Activate the server)

Enable automatic updates

To verify the current setting, type:

cscript scregedit.wsf /AU /v

To enable automatic updates, type:

cscript scregedit.wsf /AU 4 (not “/4” like I’ve seen it everywhere documented on the net.)

Rename the computer

To rename the computer from “WIN-GT7XU399GSZ” to “CENTRAL”, type:

Netdom renamecomputer win-gt7xu399gsz /NewName:Central

Restart the computer

I needed to restart the server in order to have the new name active:

Shutdown /r /t 0

Once the server is restarted, it’s now time to install the DNS role, the DHCP role and the Active Directory Domain Services role.

Install DNS service

The command to install the DNS Role is:

start /w ocsetup DNS-Server-Core-Role

Active Directory Domain Services role and create a Domain Controller

The dcpromo command in a server core need to be accompanied by an unattended text file since the dcpromo graphical interface cannot be displayed.

The unattend.txt Content is:

[DCINSTALL]
AutoConfigDNS=Yes
DomainNetBiosName=Homenet
NewDomainDNSName=homenet.local
ReplicaOrNewDomain=Domain
NewDomain=Forest
ForestLevel=3
DomainLevel=3
SafeModeAdminPassword=PassW0rd12#
RebootOnCompletion=No

The dcpromo command is

dcpromo /unattend:c:unattend.txt

I specified “RebootOnCompletion=No” in my unattend.txt file since i want to validate that no error occurred during the dcpromo process. I restarted the server after the verification using the following command.

Shutdown /r /t 0

Once the Domain controller is created and that that server has rebooted, I needed to enable a few items:

Enable remote desktop SCregEdit.wsf /ar 0
Enable Remote Management WinRM quickconfig
Enable firewall for remote management netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Remote Administration” new enable=yes

Enabling the Remote Administration firewall rules allows pretty much any MMC to connect. However, there may be situations where you only want to allow certain MMCs to connect for remote administration. Not every MMC snap-in has a firewall group, here are those that do:

MMC Snap-in Rule Group
Event Viewer Remote Event Log Management
Services Remote Service Management
Shared Folders File and Printer Sharing
Task Scheduler Remote Scheduled Tasks Management
Reliability and Performance “Performance Logs and Alerts” and “File and Printer Sharing”
Disk Management Remote Volume Management
Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Windows Firewall Remote Management

You need to enable these on the DC firewall in order to allow the MMC to connect across the network. To do so, use the following command:

Netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=“<rule group>” new enable=yes

Where <rule group> is the name in the above table.

Install DHCP server

To install the DHCP server on the DC I simply installed the role, set the service to start automatically and started it using the following command:

start /w ocsetup DHCPServerCore

sc config dhcpserver start= auto

net start dhcpserver

Install File Services role

The last role I needed installed is the File service role. This one installed by using:

start /w ocsetup FRS-Infrastructure

Done!

My Core DC is now installed and ready to assist me in testing new scenarios and to build my demos. The only thing remaining is to spin up a Vista or another Windows 2008 box so i can use the management tools to manage my DC remotely.

I hope this is useful for you. If you have scenarios you would like us to try out don’t hesitate to contact me. Now that I have a proper lab…. ;)

Cheers!

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Pierre Roman, MCSE, ITIL| Microsoft Canada Co.| IT Pro Advisor | pierre.roman@microsoft.com

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