The HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 is an automated, downloadable tool that provides quick and helpful sizing guidance for “best-fit” HP server and storage configurations running in a Hyper-V R2 environment. The tool is intended to assist with the planning of a Hyper-V R2 virtual server deployment project. It enables the user to quickly compare different solution configurations and produces a customizable server and storage solution complete with a detail Bill of Materials (BOM) that includes part numbers and prices.

The HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 allows users to create new solutions, open already existing solutions, or use other types of performance data collecting tools, such as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP), to build rich Hyper-V R2 configurations based on HP server and storage technology. The tool allows rapid comparison of Hyper-V R2 characterizations using various HP server and storage choices.

HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2: http://g3w1656g-vip.houston.hp.com/sb/installs/Hyper-VR2_Sizer.zip  

Getting Started: Remote Desktop Services

Updated: July 31, 2009

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

The following topics are available in this collection in both a Web version and a download version:

The CoreConfig Team is pleased to announce the latest version of Core Configurator built and designed for Windows Server 2008 R2 Core edition!

It is completely open source so it can be amended and change to fit your requirements, this version has been a year in the making and has been written in powershell with a reference to Winforms so that a GUI format is displayed.

The primary focus of this project is to try and get feedback and contributions back from the community to make this a tool the best/ free tool everyone will want in there toolkit, so if you have some code or features that you might want included then please leave a comment and we will get in touch.

Core Configuration tasks include:

• Product Licensing
• Networking Features
• DCPromo Tool
• ISCSI Settings
• Server Roles and Features
• User and Group Permissions
• Share Creation and Deletion
• Dynamic Firewall settings
• Display | Screensaver Settings
• Add & Remove Drivers
• Proxy settings
• Windows Updates (Including WSUS)
• Multipath I/O
• Hyper-V including virtual machine thumbnails
• JoinDomain and Computer rename
• Add/remove programs
• Services
• WinRM
• Complete logging of all commands executed

Please Download the latest release and run Start_CoreConfig.wsf.  Download: http://www.codeplex.com/CoreConfig

If you require the previous release for Windows Server 2008 R1 then please see the download section for Core Configurator 1.1 as Core Configurator 2.0 requires Powershell 2.0 and NetFx.

The Windows Server Migration team’s been cooking…no, not cranberry sauce and stuffing, but a new Windows Server Migration Utilities download package that lets you use the Windows Server Migration Tools to migrate Hyper-V and Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS). Brand-spankin’-new beta migration guides are available for both Hyper-V and RRAS, with detailed, step-by-step guidance about how to use the Windows Server Migration Tools (after the Utilities package is installed, of course) to migrate to servers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2.

Still not feeling the love? We’ve got new beta migration guides for Health Registration Authority (HRA), Network Policy Server (NPS), and Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 (WSUS). HRA, NPS, and WSUS don’t even require the Windows Server Migration Tools; you can migrate from prep to production, just by following the guides.

Download tools: https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=468&DownloadID=15664

Supported role configurations and settings

This section identifies the configurations and settings that can be migrated by using the migration tools, and the configurations and settings that must be migrated manually. The following table provides a summary:

The following configurations and settings can be migrated automatically:

• Most virtual machine configurations. Virtual machines and their data are moved as part of the migration, but some configurations require manual intervention, as described below.
• Hyper-V settings. These include the system-wide settings and the authorization store.
• Internal and private virtual networks.
• Virtual network adapter settings in the management operating system. When Hyper-V is configured to use a physical network adapter as a bridge that virtual machines can use to access a physical network, a virtual network adapter is created in the management operating system (which runs the Hyper-V role). For this virtual network adapter, the migration process automatically migrates the IP settings, bindings, and MAC address of this virtual network adapter. However, the connection between the virtual network adapter and the physical network adapter must be re-established manually, as described in the migration steps.
• Virtual machine queue (VMQ) and chimney settings for networking.

The following configurations and settings require manual intervention after the migration tools are used:

• Firewall settings. Firewall settings are recreated on the destination server using the default values that Hyper-V is installed with. If you have modified any of the firewall settings from these default values, you will need to make the same modifications on the destination server.
• External virtual networks. The migration tool recreates the virtual networks on the destination server, but recreates external virtual networks as internal virtual networks. You will need to modify each of these networks to connect it to the appropriate physical network adapter on the destination server, as described in the migration steps.
• VFD and ISO files. These files are not migrated because they are not required for the virtual machine to operate and are not supported by the Import and Export cmdlets. To make them available to a migrated virtual machine, manually copy these files to the destination server and then reattach them to the virtual machine after it is migrated.
• Connections to physical disks directly attached to virtual machines. These connections are not migrated because the disk references might not be valid on the destination server. To make a physical disk available to a migrated virtual machine, connect the disk to the destination server and then to the virtual machine after it is migrated, as described in the migration steps.
• Customized remote administration settings. If you have customized Hyper-V for remote access, you will need to perform some additional procedures to recreate the DCOM and WMI Namespace settings. The migration steps identify the point at which you should take perform these procedures, as well as provide a recommended tool or script to complete the procedure.

Migrating Multiple Roles

The Hyper-V role is not dependent on any other roles. As a best practice, we recommend that no other roles are installed on a server running Hyper-V.

Migration scenarios that are not supported

The following migration scenarios are not supported:

• The saved state of a virtual machine under one of the following conditions:
  • When moving from Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • When moving between physical computers that have different processor steppings or vendors—for example, migrating from a computer with an Intel processor to a computer with an AMD processor.
• Virtual machine configuration under one of the following conditions:
  • When the number of virtual processors configured for the virtual machine is more than the number of logical processors on the destination server.
  • When the memory configured for a virtual machine is greater than the available memory on the destination server.
• Consolidation of physical servers to virtual machines, or consolidating multiple instances of Hyper-V to one instance.

The Windows Server Migration team is collecting feedback about the beta guides and the Utilities download package through the end of 2009. You can use the following methods to speak your mind about Migration Guides and the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities Beta package. Share your migration experiences; they’re critical to the quality of the Migration Guides, Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities, and the whole Migration solution for WS08 R2!

• Take the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities Beta Survey. Nothing goes better with a cup of coffee.
• Got an earful about how to improve Migration guides or utilities? Reply to the Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Utilities release announcement on the Windows Server Migration forum.
• Found a bug in our migration guides? Send e-mail to smcpe at Microsoft.com. Include a description of your migration scenario (especially the operating systems that are running on your source and destination servers), and any workarounds that you used to resolve the problem. Unless the problem defied workarounds, of course; in that case, you can just send us a hard luck story and/or flame mail, we still want to hear from you.
• Found a bug in the tools? Send e-mail to smcpe at Microsoft.com. Include a description of your migration scenario (especially the operating systems that are running on your source and destination servers), the steps to reproduce the bug, and the following logs:
  • %windir%\Logs\SmigDeploy.log
  • %windir%\Logs\ServerMigration.log
  • On Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2: %localappdata%\SvrMig\Log
  • On Windows Server 2003: %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\SvrMig\Log

 Visit the Windows Server Migration Portal on TechCenter to see the complete collection of Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration Guides, and a truckload of other migration resources, too.

Hyper-V 2008 R2: News  from the front.

64 logical processor support. This is a 4x improvement over Hyper-V R1 and means that Hyper-V can take advantage of larger scale-up systems with greater amount of compute resources. As our friends at AMD and Intel drive up core counts, we want you to know that Hyper-V is ready to take advantage of the compute resources in your server today and those you’re buying tomorrow.

Support for up to 384 Concurrently Running Virtual Machines & 512 Virtual Processors PER SERVER. (No, that’s not a typo.) Going hand in hand with our support for 64 logical processors, we’re upping the maximum number of concurrently running virtual machines to 384 per server and the maximum number of virtual processors to 512 for the highest virtual machine density on the market. Here are a few examples. You could run:

• 1. 384 single virtual processor vms OR
• 2. 256 dual virtual processor vms (512 Virtual Processors) OR
• 3. 128 quad virtual processor vms (512 Virtual Processors) OR
• 4. any combination so long as you’re running up to 384 VMs and up to 512 Virtual Processors

Live Migration & Processors.

With the addition of Live Migration in Hyper-V R2, one of the immediate questions we’re asked is: “Do the physical processors have to be exactly the same?”

Scenario 1: Suppose you bought three servers for live migration and created a three node cluster. Everything’s working well and a 6-12 months down the road you want to add another couple of nodes to increase the compute resources in your cluster. In the meantime, your OEM has upgraded their server hardware line with new processors, now what do you do?

Scenario 2: You work in a small/medium business or K-12 education and you need to squeeze every nickel you can out of your budget. You want to use virtualization and would love to use Live Migration, but you have a mix of different servers ranging from Pentium 4, Core 2 and maybe next year you’ll get budget to purchase a new Core i7 server.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could Live Migrate virtual machines across different processor generations?

We think so too.

Introducing: Processor Compatibility

With Hyper-V R2, we include a new Processor Compatibility feature. Processor compatibility allows you to move a virtual machine up and down multiple processor generations from the same vendor. Here’s how it works.

When a Virtual Machine (VM) is started on a host, the hypervisor exposes the set of supported processor features available on the underlying hardware to the VM. This set of processor features are called guest visible processor features and are available to the VM until the VM is restarted.

When a VM is started with processor compatibility mode enabled, Hyper-V normalizes the processor feature set and only exposes guest visible processor features that are available on all Hyper-V enabled processors of the same processor architecture, i.e. AMD or Intel.  This allows the VM to be migrated to any hardware platform of the same processor architecture. Processor features are “hidden” by the hypervisor by intercepting a VM’s CPUID instruction and clearing the returned bits corresponding to the hidden features.

Just so we’re clear: this still means AMD<->AMD and Intel<->Intel. It does not mean you can Live Migrate between different processor vendors AMD<->Intel or vice versa.

In addition, you may be aware that both AMD and Intel have provided similar capabilities in hardware, Extended Migration and Flex Migration respectively. Extended and Flex Migration are cool technologies available on relatively recent processors, but this is a case where providing the solution in software allows us to be more flexible and provide this capability to older systems too. Processor Compatibility also makes it easier to upgrade to the newest server hardware. In addition, Hyper-V Processor Compatibility can be done on a per VM basis (it’s a checkbox) and doesn’t require any BIOS changes.

Processor Compatibility In Action

Here’s an example of a cluster we’ve been testing. This is a 4 node cluster using 4 generations of Intel Processors with VT all attached to a small iSCSI SAN over 1 Gb/E. We have a script that continuously Live Migrates VMs from one node to the next every 15 seconds. We’ve been running this test for about a week and have successfully completed over 110,000 Live Migrations.

Time To Get Uber-Geeky

Now that I’ve explained what processor compatibility mode does and the flexibility provides, I’m guessing there are a few propeller heads who want to go further and know exactly what a “normalized processor” means from a processor feature standpoint. Happy to oblige. When a VM in processor compatibility mode is started, the following processor features are hidden from the VM:

FAQ

Q: What happens if a vendor has written an application that uses one of these features that isn’t visible with processor compatibility enabled?

A: Since the feature isn’t exposed to the virtual machine, the application won’t “see it” and it’s up to the application to determine how to proceed; however, there are two likely paths.

Path 1: The application will check to see if a specific processor feature is available and use it if it’s available. If the processor features isn’t available, it will use a different code path. Remember that applications that make use of these advanced processor features are generally written in a flexible fashion to accommodate the servers in market today and there are still thousands of older Xeons and Opterons on the market that don’t have some of the latest processor features.

Path 2: The application requires a specific processor feature and refuses to launch. At this point in time, we haven’t found any application that fall into this category. It’s possible they exist, but we haven’t hit one yet. Since we can’t test every application out there, processor compatibility is defaulted off. (We’re conservative by nature.).

BTW, if there were issues with Hyper-V Processor Compatibility, you’d also see it with other virtualization products which rely on underlying hardware capabilities to mitigate this problem as well.

Q: Does processor compatibility have a hardware requirement? Does it require Intel Flex Migration or AMD Extended Migration?

A: Hyper-V processor compatibility mode has no dependencies on these technologies.

Q: Does Hyper-V processor compatibility allow you to migrate a VM from an AMD host to an Intel host and vice versa?

A: No. Processor compatibility allows you to move a virtual machine up and down multiple processor generations from the same vendor. It does not allow migrating a VM (with or without processor compatibility mode) from AMD based hosts to Intel based hosts, and vice versa.

Read the full story: http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/12/tech-ed-windows-server-2008-r2-hyper-v-news.aspx

Use this guide to quickly find documentation resources and other technical information you need.

Check for updates to this guide: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149222

 What’s New in Windows Server 2008 R2 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139049

Windows Server 2008 R2 Product Information http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135818

Windows Server 2008 TechCenter http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=86041

Windows Server 2008 TechNet Virtual Labs http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90855

Windows Server 2008 R2 Troubleshooting http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=149120

Performance and Reliability http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90924

Print Services http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48553

Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=149218

Security and Protection http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90925

Server Manager http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48541

Server Migration http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=149124

Streaming Media Services http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48551

Web Server http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48558

Windows Deployment Services http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48559

Windows PowerShell http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=108518

Active Directory® Services http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149122

Active Directory Rights Management Services http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48554

Application Server http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48544

Availability and Scalability http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90922

Best Practice Analyzer http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=139051

DNS Server http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48548

File and Storage http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=149123

Group Policy http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90923

Hyper-V http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=149125

Network Policy and Access Services http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48552

Windows Server 2008 R2 Technical Library http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148452

 Security Resources

 Visit these Web sites to find prescriptive security guidance resources, virus alerts, and security bulletins:

Security Support Center http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=29482

TechNet Virus Alert http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=26702

Microsoft Malware Protection Center http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149239

Microsoft Security Bulletin Search http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=24822

Getting Started with Windows PowerShell^TM  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=148916

Script Center http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=63080

TechNet Download Center http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149121

TechNet Products and Technologies http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=26708

 Other Windows Server products

 Visit these Web sites to learn about Windows Server products from the Windows Server Solutions Group:

Windows® Small Business Server 2008 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=148763

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=148764

Windows Home Server http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=148765

Windows HPC Server 2008 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=148766

Windows Server 2008 R2 – DirectAccess Step-by-Step Guide released

DirectAccess is a new feature in the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems that enables remote users to securely access intranet shares, Web sites, and applications without connecting to a virtual private network (VPN). This paper contains an introduction to DirectAccess and instructions for setting up a test lab to demonstrate DirectAccess with a simulated Internet, intranet, and home network using the Release Candidate versions of Windows 7 and Window Server 2008 R2.

• Improve Productivity of Mobile Workforce. DirectAccess provides increased productivity for mobile workforce by offering the same connectivity experience both in and outside of the office. DirectAccess is on whenever the user has an Internet connection, giving users access to intranet resources whether they are traveling, at the local coffee shop, or at home.
• Improved Manageability of Remote Users. Without DirectAccess, mobile computers can only be managed when users connect to a VPN or physically enter the office. With DirectAccess, mobile computers can be managed any time the mobile computer has Internet connectivity, even if the user is not logged on. This allows remote computers to be managed regularly and helps ensure mobile users stay up-to-date with security and system health policies. DirectAccess helps ensure that organizations can meet regulatory and privacy mandates for security and data protection for assets that must roam beyond the corporate network
• Improved security. DirectAccess uses IPsec for authentication and encryption. Optionally, you can require smart cards for user authentication. DirectAccess integrates with NAP to require that DirectAccess clients must be compliant with system health requirements before allowing a connection to the DirectAccess server. IT administrators can configure the DirectAccess server to restrict the servers that users and individual applications can access.

 Get the guide:   http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=8d47ed5f-d217-4d84-b698-f39360d82fac.

DirectAccess Technet site:         http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/dd420463.aspx

DirectAccess Solution site:         http://www.microsoft.com/servers/directaccess.mspx

R2: Clustering Resources for Windows Server 2008 R2

• Blog Guide: Deploying Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
• Blog Guide: Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV): Disk Ownership
• Blog Guide: PowerShell for Network Load Balancing (NLB) in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Blog Guide: PowerShell for Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 R2
• Blog Guide: Live Migration Traffic
• Blog Guide: How to manually defrag or ChkDisk a CSV disk
• TechNet Guide: Using Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2
• TechNet Guide: What’s new in R2 Clustering
• Webcast: Innovating High Availability with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
• Webcast: Failover Clustering Feature Roadmap in WS08 R2
• Webcast: Windows Server 2008 R2 Live Migration
• Webcast: Clustering in a Virtual World
• Website: Clustering Forum (2008 R2)
• Whitepaper: Windows Server 2008 R2 & Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 – Hyper-V Live Migration Overview & Architecture

 Pingback from: http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/04/20/9557017.aspx