June 2008 Archives

The last time I heard someone estimate a release date for Hyper-V, it was pegged at the first week of August. Microsoft beat that by more than a month, releasing the hypervisor software yesterday afternoon.

You can get the details and a download from the Microsoft Web site.

Over at InternetNews.com, Richard Adhikari talks to Microsoft's competition in the virtualization space to get their take as the world's largest software company enters a space where smaller upstarts have been mostly thriving for the past few years.

The Green IT Blog over at EnterpriseITPlanet welcomes Hyper-V as a tool that will help with server consolidation and improve efficiency in the data center.

And here's a link to all of the blog posts we've done on Hyper-V on this blog.

Happy virtualizing!

It's never been easier to get your software program certified for Windows Server 2008, and you don't have to take my word for it. ISVs can get either a "Works with Windows Server 2008" or "Certified for Windows Server 2008" logo. Certification is quicker and less expensive than it used to be, and there's an important deadline just around the corner for the "Works with" designation:

Whereas an average suite of products might have cost $75,000 and several weeks to pass muster on the previous platform, with Windows Server 2008, that cost drops to just $9,000 on average, using automated, free tools and "open-book" testing. The entire process can be completed in 3-5 days, not weeks, and retesting is much less common. And the "Works with" designation is even faster and cheaper, at just a matter of hours and a $500 fee (waived until June 30, 2008).

So if you're interested, get on that.

Microsoft itself gives three reasons (they're in the article) to get certified:

1. The new technologies in Windows Server 2008
2. The low barrier to entry
3. Advertising, marketing and joint launch participation packages.

And you don't have to be a total Windows groupie to get in on the act either:

Some software products bearing the "Works with Windows Server 2008" designation come from a world that has historically maintained separation from Microsoft: open source. Six open source ISVs have completed certification on Windows 2008 thus far, including Aras, Zend, BitRock, Jaspersoft, SpikeSource and Tibco.

Make that the 10 most commonly asked questions and most commonly seen issues. These come courtesy of the Ask the Core Team blog. The RTM release of Hyper-V will be here in no time, so this is a handy reference, which directs you to the Web site, blog, or document that can help answer your question or solve your issue.

Here they are:

1. You don't have mouse functionality in your VM.
2. Hyper-V won't install
   
3. Import isn't working within Hyper-V for your Virtual Server VMs.
4. Hyper-V clustering
5. Snapshotting in Hyper-V
6. Virtual Networks.
7. Using Hyper-V in Windows Server Core
8. Remote Management.
9. Issues deploying virtual machines within a virtualized environment.
10. One other virtualized hardware issue we have seen is SCSI boot.

The Sustainable Computing blog asks if it's time to consider turning off servers the way we turn off laptops and desktops (some of us, anyway). It's an idea that hasn't generated a lot of traction, but things might be starting to change. Here's the rationale behind it:

In general, an idle server consumes about half the amount of power consumed by a server running under high load. Server utilization for most data centers runs in the range of 10 to 20 percent, which means there are a lot of machines idling (systems using energy, but not being used).

Obviously you can't go turning off Web servers and mission-critical applications, but if you look around your data center you'll probably find a couple of instances where you can save power and cooling energy by powering down. The blog has a couple of small case studies that demonstrate what can be done, as well as six tips to get you started in powering off.

Microsoft Research also has a couple of papers on the topic you can download:

• Write Off-Loading: Practical Power Management for Enterprise Storage
• Power-Aware Server Provisioning and Load Dispatching for Connection-Intensive Internet Services

Speaking of sustainable computing, Microsoft recently launched an environment site at www.microsoft.com/environment.

There are a couple of articles you'll want to check out in July's issue of TechNet Magazine if you're working with Windows Server 2008.

First up is an article called "Going Live with IIS 7.0" by Fergus Strachan. Fergus goes into detail about key IIS 7.0 enhancements for IT professionals, and migrating ASP.NET and PHP Web applications. But first, he starts at the beginning by outlining a test lab that resembles a basic production environment.

This is an important task. Before you deploy IIS 7.0 to your production servers, you need to spend time doing thorough testing in a lab environment to ensure your Web apps run smoothly on the new Web server.

Chuck Timon takes a look at the new features of Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering. One important thing to keep in mind if you're accustomed to upgrading clusters from the past:

When upgrading from Windows Server 2000 clusters to Windows Server 2003, many organizations would systematically evict each node in the cluster, do a clean installation of the operating system, and then add the node back into the cluster. This approach cannot be used for migrating to Windows Server 2008, as Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 cluster nodes cannot be part of the same cluster.

TechEd for IT Professionals wrapped up last week, and as you might expect virtualization was a very popular topic. Let's start with storage vendors, a couple of which announced products that will work with Hyper-V last week.

Richard Adhikari has the details on the new products from Double-Take Software and NetApp on Enterprise Storage Forum.

Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Server and Tools Division, also sat down with Forrester analyst Frank Gillett to talk about virtualization, as part of Microsoft's strategy, details on Hyper-V, and compares Hyper-V and VMware products. You can watch the video below.

If you want to see more of Bob Muglia, we've got a Q&A where he talks about Microsoft's interoperability principles and the steps the company is taking to increase the openness of its products.

Dmitry Sotnikov has step-by-step instructions for installing Windows PowerShell on Windows Server 2008 in Server Core mode. Server Core only ships with traditional cmd.exe and not PowerShell. And neither PowerShell or .NET as can be installed on such systems.

Or so you think. Here are the steps you can take to create packages of these tools which can be installed.

One important caveat, of course:

Note that these are in no way official or supported by Microsoft. Microsoft is working on official version of .NET and PowerShell for Server Core installations, so eventually you will be able to get this fully supported. Until then below are the instructions you can use at your own risk, etc., etc.

Enjoy.

Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) lets administrators distribute Microsoft product updates to Windows computers running on their network. If you're new to the world of WSUS, J.C. Hornbeck has a post on WSUS Support Team blog that covers everything you need to know about the product and how to get started.

Even if you've been a WSUS user, J.C. thinks you'll probably learn something new after you give it a read.

He covers installing WSUS on Windows Server 2008 and 2003, deployment, troubleshooting, and administration. Looking for more information or the answers to your questions? There's a WSUS forum as well.

SQL Server 2008 RC0 is now available, and you can now join these two Heroes Happen Here products by installing SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 machine. Andrew Fryer, a SQL Server blogger, jumped right on this, and has the step-by-step guide on his blog to installing SQL Server 2008 on a clean 64-bit Hyper-V virtual machine.

For all of the details on SQL Server 2008, you can read the overview on the Microsoft Web site.

For whitepapers, virtual labs, Webcasts, documentation, and more, visit the SQL Server 2008 site at TechNet.

The operations team that runs the Microsoft.com Web site is using IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008 to help run the site, and now it's made available a side-by-side comparison that shows how the performance stacks up against its predecessor.

In one corner: IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008 RTM. In the other corner: IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 SP2.

During this performance assessment we found that the CPU usage was higher on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 RTM servers, which is driven by the higher number of RPS the servers were handling.  As mentioned below the hardware load balancers are sending more traffic to the Windows Server 2008 RTM servers (31% more RPS) as they are completing the outstanding web requests faster than the W2K3 SP2 server.  A good metric listed below is the “efficiency” or “cost” of the number of requests per CPU cycle (RPS / CPU Utilization %).  Using this metric, IIS 7.0/W2K8 RTM is over 10% more efficient then IIS 6.0/WS03 SP2 in handling live web platform traffic for the www.microsoft.com site.

For all the pretty pictures, including graphs and charts that back up these findings, visit the original post.

Jeff Alexander, an IT Pro Evangelist for Microsoft Australia, has news today of Microsoft Forefront Integration Kit for Network Access Proection. It integrates Microsoft Forefront Client Security with the Network Access Protection security feature of Windows Server 2008.

Here's how NAP fits in: If NAP detects a compliance issue with Forefront Client Security on one of the managed computers, NAP will attempt to remediate the issue or restrict the computer's access to network resources, depending on the health policies.

Forefront Client Security is comprehensive anti-malware software from Microsoft that provides unified protection from viruses, spyware, and other current and emerging threats. NAP is a new feature in Windows Server 2008 that can control network access based on a computer’s compliance with an organization's health policy. NAP uses system health validators (SHVs) to configure the policies that are used to determine if network access is granted. System health agents (SHAs) provide the information needed to make this determination.

We've devoted a lot of time here lately to Hyper-V, clustering, and other topics for enterprise IT professionals. Today we're going to remember the little guys.

Windows Essential Server Solutions are built on top of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and integrate the technologies of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and other Microsoft products and services into all-in-one solutions that are reliable, easy to manage and able to grow with customers.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 is ideal for organizations with up to 50 PCs. You get one-year trial subscriptions to Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server Small Business Edition and the new Windows Live OneCare for Server. Small Business Server 2008 integrates with Microsoft Office Live Small Business to simplify setup and management of professional Web sites and private online work spaces.

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 is designed for the needs of midsize organizations with up to 250 desktops. Windows Essential Business Server combines the technologies of Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, System Center Essentials 2007, the next version of Internet Security and Acceleration Server and, in the Premium Edition, SQL Server 2008 technology.

To keep abreast of what's going on in the world of Small Business Server, you can read the SBS blog.

Not to be outdone, Essential Business Server has an EBS blog of its own.

Taylor Brown, who is a test lead on the Hyper-V team has been posting some Hyper-V WMI scripts he did with PowerShell on the Windows Virtualization blog over the past month or so. Allow me to put them all in one place for you.

In Part 1, you'll learn about basic scripts and tools for gathering some generic information about virtual machines.

Part 2 tackles basic VHD creation and determining if Hyper-V WMI methods are succeeding or failing and what the error message is.

Part 3 covers getting more detailed information about a guest operating system by using the KVP Exchange integration component.  (KVP stands for Key Value Pair this is a service that runs in the guest operating system and allows some limited information to be passed from the guest to the host or parent and vice-versa.)

Part 4 will show how to use the Shutdown IC to initiate a shutdown of a guest using PowerShell.

In Part 5, you'll learn how to create a new virtual switch attached to an external network.

You may remember that over the past couple of months we asked you to nominate and then vote for products as part of the annual Product Excellence Awards for our friends over at ServerWatch.com. Today they revealed the winners.

The winner in the Operating System category was none other than Windows Server 2008.

We'll be honest and say it was this category that surprised us the most. Windows Server 2008 was released on February 27, qualifying for the awards program by mere days. Windows gets a lot of press, but let's face it, it's more often than not press that Microsoft doesn't want.

Yet despite competition from what is often considered hipper and cooler — a leading enterprise-class Linux, a popular up-and-coming variant, a mature Unix distro, and the cultish Leopard — Windows Server 2008 was far and away the favored operating system. If our results are any sort of barometer, the reign of Windows Server 2008 in the data center has just begun.

The other categories and winners were:

• Small Business Server (Dell PowerEdge 2970)
• Midrange Server (Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220)
• High-End Server or Mainframe (HP Integrity Superdome)
• Blade Server (HP BladeSystem C3000)
• Storage System (NetApp FAS2000 Series)
• Virtualization Platform (VMware Infrastructure 3)
• Virtualization Tool (VMLogix LabManager Manager)
• Automation or Compliance Tool (CommVault Simpana Software Suite)
• Green Initiative (The Green Grid)

Check out the article for the runners up and details on each category.

With 407,000 square feet of space, 30 cooling towers, and more than 7,000 cabinets the SuperNAP in the Las Vegas area will be the world's highest density (for the time being) data center. It will eat up more power than three Las Vegas casinos put together, but some innovative power and cooling plans will help keep the center running and cool.

In the coming months, a little known technology giant called Switch Communications will open the SuperNAP. This 407,000 square foot computing compound will house servers and storage systems owned by many of the world's most prominent companies. And, unlike most centers of its kind, the SuperNAP will not rely on raised floors or liquid cooling systems to keep the hardware humming. Instead, it will be fueled by custom designs that allow it to maintain an astonishing 1,500 watts per square foot - or close to three times the industry standard.

As for the cooling innovations:

The facility will make use of a custom Switch concept dubbed the T-SCIF or Thermal Separate Compartment in a Facility. The T-SCIF is sort of like a little shack for hardware. Customers slot their systems into the unit with the front half of the hardware sticking out into the main data center room and the back half sitting inside the T-SCIF. This approach makes sure that only cooled air reaches the front of servers and storage boxes, while all of the hot air is released into the sealed T-SCIF and then expelled through a series of ducts.

A Cisco executive gives Switch some nice props in the article.

Thanks to Alex at the ISP-Planet blog for the tip.