StarWind V8 Release Candidate Is Available Now!

March 11, 2014 by Leave a comment

StarWind Software released the Release Candidate of  StarWind V8. The functionality and architecture of this software is similar to VMware VSAN. It can be installed on both Hyper-V and ESXi and converts local storage to a distributed shared storage.

General availability is expected in Q2 2014

starwind

Download the RC here.

It offers three products that share a common engine:

  • StarWind SAN – a unique system that allows you to create a high-performance and fault-tolerant shared storage on commodity hardware, saving $$$.
  • StarWind VSAN – a virtual SAN sharing a server with Hyper-V on parent partition. Convenient and as easy to manage as any Windows software.
  • StarWind VSA – a virtual storage appliance that merges with VMware and runs in a VM, making your system more efficient and convenient to use.

It is scalable to an unlimited number of nodes, optimized for flash as the primary storage, with its own LSFS and upgraded asynchronous replication.

StarWind SAN, the flagship product, runs on commodity servers’ hardware and converts them into high-performance, fault-tolerant SAN at a fraction of the cost and complexity associated with traditional SAN-based storage infrastructures. With its integrated VSA builder and scale-out architecture, StarWind SAN became the first solution running on Windows that creates clusters of multiple hypervisor hosts without separate physical shared storage (unlike SAS (JBOD), FC or iSCSI). With this release, StarWind supports the latest versions of both VMware and Microsoft platforms.

StarWind virtual SAN (VSAN) is a leading software defined storage for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0. The functionality and architecture of this software is similar to VMware VSAN. It runs inside parent partitions of hypervisor hosts and turns their directly attached storage (DAS) into fault-tolerant SAN. StarWind VSA follows the VMware VSA concept also, and operates inside a VM on the ESXi host, creating a fault-tolerant shared storage of the hypervisor resources.

StarWind V8 RC presents high-performance caching that allows affordable MLC SSDs to be used as level-2 flash cache and fast RAM to be used as level-1 cache. StarWind utilizes solid-state disks / flash cards as the primary storage with a dedicated flash-aware Log-Structured File System (LSFS).

Another major advantage over multiple virtual storage solutions is built-in asynchronous WAN-replication, which ensures effective disaster recovery. StarWind’s support of WAN-acceleration technologies also enables data replication over slow and cheap connections.

StarWind V8 RC includes a set of powerful experimental features including: LSFS, which eliminates the I/O blender effect; synchronous replication for clustered LSFS devices; and in-memory operation, which creates a HA cluster with one node running on RAM-disk.

Filed under Converged storage and compute, Hyper-V, StarWind, Storage, VMware solutions, vSphere 5.5

FreeBSD 10.0 release has built in Hyper-V support

January 21, 2014 by Leave a comment

FreeBSD 10.0 release is the first release which has  native paravirtualized drivers and Hyper-V Integration Services built in the amd64 kernel. In previous releases additional software had to be installed to be able to run FreeBSD on Hyper-V.

Mind these are part of the amd64 GENERIC kernel. For i386 some manual steps needs to be taken.

For instructions see the FreeBSD Wiki page The info below was copied from the Wiki page.

As of FreeBSD 10.0, Hyper-V integration services provide the following functionality:

  1. Support for integrated shutdown from Hyper-V console.
  2. Support for keeping time synchronized between FreeBSD guest and Hyper-V host.
  3. Support for Hyper-V specific IDE and SCSI storage devices.
  4. Support for Hyper-V specific network adapter.
  5. Live migration with and without static IP migration. Note that to enable static IP migration, administrators will need to include the KVP driver and daemon available in FreeBSD 10.0 ports for Hyper-V

 

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions

New Hyper-V + System Center exam plus voucher for free exam

January 2, 2014 by Leave a comment

Microsoft released in November 2013  a new exam named “74-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center“.

The exam requires knowledge of Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V. Also some basic knowledge of Windows Azure, System Center and monitoring is required.

Questions are multiple choice with some drag-and-drop.

The exam details can be found here.

To prepare for the exam a 5 day classroom course is available: 20409A: Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center (5 Days)

Alternatively Microsoft Virtual Academy has a free 15 modules on-line course available.

There is a voucher for a free exam. Register using this link

The MVA course is available here,

Channel 9 has 13 videos online which explains this subject.

The number of free exams is limited, so be sure to schedule your appointment to lock-in your free exam. Vouchers expire and all exams must be taken by June 30, 2014.

Marius Sandbu wrote a blog titled Study resources 74-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center with links to more information to prepare for this exam.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, Windows Server 2012

Veeam releases free RDP Appliance for Hyper-V Server

December 19, 2013 by Leave a comment

Microsoft has a free hypervisor offering called Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 is fully equal to the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2012. The only item not available in the free edition is the free usage rights for virtual machines running on a host installed with Hyper-V. Each virtual machine instance running on free Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 needs to be licensed.

Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 comes as a core installation. This means there is no graphical userinterface available to perform management. Especially connecting to the console of the virtual machine can be a challenge. Hyper-V Manager does not run on the Hyper-V Server itself. Adminstrators needs access to another Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 with   Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) installed to be able to access the console of VM’s.

Veeam to the rescue. The company released a free virtual appliance which is a RDP proxy. The appliance runs CentOS and installs on a Hyper-V host. The appliance can connect to virtual machines using VMconnect. VMconnect is a modified RDP for connection to consoles of virtual machines. VMconnect is able to connect even when the virtual machine does not have an IP-address.

Read more of this post

Filed under Hyper-V, Uncategorized, Veeam solutions, VMware solutions

Free conversion of VMware VMs to Hyper-V VMs with 5nine V2V Easy Converter v2.0

October 23, 2013 by Leave a comment

5nine Software has released the 2.0 version of its free V2V conversion tool ‘Easy converter’. It is able to convert VMware virtual machines to Hyper-V. Other conversion types are not supported.

New is this 2.0 release is added support for Hyper-V 2012 R2 as a target. It also supports simultaneous conversions of multiple VMs.

V2V Converter is a simple to use, basic converter tool targeted at the Small and medium business market. During the conversion process the source VMware virtual machine will needs to be shutdown.

The 2.0 version of 5nine V2V Converter supports conversion of VMware Virtual Machines with Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 (x86 and x64), and most of Advanced Server 2000, Ubuntu and CentOS configurations into VHD and VHDX file formats for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 and Microsoft Hyper-V 2012/R2.

Download 5nine V2V Easy Converter v2.0 from the company website at http://www.5nine.com/vmware-hyper-v-v2v-conversion-free.aspx.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5, vSphere 5.5

5Nine Manager for Hyper-V 3.6 released

October 3, 2013 by Leave a comment

5Nine today announced the release of version 3.6 of Manager for Hyper-V. Manager for Hyper-V is a local management tool for managing the Hyper-V hypervisor.

Microsoft provides a command line tool (SCONFIG) for the basic configuration tasks in Hyper-V server or GUI-less installations, it provides no local GUI for its management, for GUI access, administrators without any third party software have to rely on remote management through Windows Server, System Center Virtual Machine Manager or Remote Server Administration Tools: this is a space well suited for third party solution providers and 5Nine is among them.

 

5nine Manager for Hyper-V v3.6 allows local and remote management of Virtual Networks and Virtual Machines from a single management console and supports multiple versions of Microsoft hypervisors (2012 R2 / 2012 / 2008 R2 SP1).

clip_image001

Version 3.6 provides the following new features as detailed in the release notes:

  • Support of Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Live migration of Hyper-V Virtual Machines between cluster nodes
  • Virtual Machines Guest Connection View (new to the FREE version of the product)
  • Cluster storage information
  • Allows files to be copied to and between Virtual Machines
  • Enhanced Hyper-V system status report

5Nine also provides a free version of the Manager for Hyper-V with reduced functionality compared to the paid version which costs $149 per physical host per year.

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions

Join 5nine Software Free Webinar on Hyper-V Management Best Practices!

August 12, 2013 by Leave a comment

Do you want to learn the best practices for Hyper-V Management with 5nine Software products? Register for the 5nine Software FREE webinar on Hyper-V Management Best Practices which will be held on August 14, 2013 10AM EST and you will learn:

Best practices to manage Hyper-V environments

  • How to migrate VMware VMs to Hyper-V VMs FREE, quickly and easily
  • How to get a convenient local GUI for Core versions of Hyper-V hosts
  • How to perform real-time monitoring with alert notifications of multiple Hyper-V cloud infrastructures

Best practices to protect Hyper-V environments

  • How to increase host performance while increasing VM density using agentless security approach
  • What is CBT technology, and how does it perform VM full system anti-virus scans 70x faster than traditional anti-virus scans
  • How to protect your sensitive data inside Hyper-V VMs from unauthorized access

If you want to learn more about 5nine Security Manager for Hyper-V see this 3 minute video.

5nine

Filed under Hyper-V

PXE boot will be supported on synthetic NIC in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V R2

August 4, 2013 by Leave a comment

When a virtual machine running on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V is booted over the network using PXE, only the legacy network adapter can be used. This legacy adapter is limited to 100 Mbps. The much faster synthetic NIC supporting 10 Gbps does not support PXE. This is not ideal when for example Citrix PVS is used to provision new virtual machines. This means two network adapters need to be configured for the virtual machine. See my post on this restriction here.

This restriction is solved in Windows Server 2012 R2. Server 2012 R2 Hyper-v allows virtual machines to be created using the current Generation 1 type, or using the new Generation 2.

Generation 2 virtual machines only support synthetic network interface cards. New is that the synthetic NIC does support PXE network boot.

However, Generation 2 virtual machines only support 64-bit editions of Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 as guest operating systems.

 

Hyper-V-generation2

 

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions

Gartner: Can you replace VMware with Hyper-V or other competitor?

August 1, 2013 by Leave a comment

Gartner Catalyst Conference is an event for advisors and decision makers in IT. July 29- August 1 2013 the event was held in San Diego having tracks on Cloud computing, mobility, virtual datacenter and big data. An overview of the agenda can be seen here.

One of the sessions was  titled D4 – Rethinking Your Hypervisor Choice: Can You Replace VMware. The session presented by Chris Wolf of Gartner  has been recorded and is available for viewing here. Registration is required but is free and allows you to view up to three sessions for free.

The highlights of the sessions are written in this blogpost.

Gartner compared 5 x86 virtualization solutions: vSphere 5.1, Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), Citrix XenServer and Oracle VM.

Gartner uses their Evaluation Criteria for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure to assess the solutions and to be able to compare them. This helps customers to answer the question “What product is right for my technical requirements?” The Evaluation Criteria complements the Magic Quadrant which helps customers to select vendors for a short list.

Gartner uses in total 241 criteria. Criteria are features on compute, storage, networking, Guest OS support, management, business continuity etc.  70 of those criteria are ranked as required features by Gartner, 117 preferred and 45 are optional. Gartner selects the criteria based on customer requirements they get from Gartner customers. Vendors do not have any influence on the selection of criteria.

Required criteria are features which are essential for the typical large Enterprise. Products that do not meet 100% of the required criteria are considered not ready for large-scale Enterprise production workloads.

Preferred are nice to have features.They improve TCO for instance but are not deal breakers.  Optional features are those needed for selected deployments or use cases. All the results of the product assessments have been checked by the vendors on results being factual correct,

Gartner customers can get an Excel spreadsheet listing all the criteria and  results of the assessment.

The slide below shows the results of the assessment. VMware vSphere is the leader. It is the only solution on the market which scores 100% on the required criteria. Hyper-V is very close behind. Interesting to see is that RHEV scores slightly better than Citrix XenServer.

slide1

 

Results of the product comparison are showed in so called spider graphs or radar charts. The next slide shows the score of the required, preferred and optional features. vSphere is a bullseye. Hyper-V has some small white spaces in Business Continuity and Guest OS support

 

slide2

vSphere and Hyper-V are very close to each other when looking at the  required features. Hyper-V supports less operating systems in the guest. The gap with vSphere is also caused by less support of snapshots of Linux guests by Hyper-V. A Linux guest will be temporary suspended prior to a backup when snapshots are used in a Hyper-V environment.
Another of Hyper-V weaknesses  is lack of central management. Certain tasks can only be done in either Hyper-V manager, SCVMM or Powershell. Gartners says VMware offers the best GUI management solution as basically all operations can be done using  vCenter Server.

Both VMware and Microsoft management tooling is able to manage other hypervisors. However Gartner is not aware of any Gartner customer who is using SCVMM to manage ESXI or using vCenter Server to manage Hyper-V.

vSphere weakness is its costs. Other weaknesses mentioned by Gartner are all shared with the other solutions.

Hyper-V-strengthsHyper-V-weaknesses

An interesting remark by Chris Wolf is  that Gartner does not see large scale clusters being used in enterprises. Typically in enterprises virtualization clusters are 32 nodes or less.

 

The slides below show some of the criteria used by Gartner.

compute-required-capabilities compute-required-capabilities2 network-required-capabilities required-guestos

 

Filed under Gartner, Hyper-V, VMware solutions, Windows Server 2012

MAT (powered by Project Shift) converts from VMware to Hyper-V in less than 5 minutes

July 29, 2013 by Leave a comment

With Microsoft Hyper-V having  a rich feature set and offering a low cost purchase model,  current VMware vSphere customers may be  looking into using Hyper-V as an alternative.

However converting VMware virtual machines to Microsoft Hyper-V can be a complex and time consuming task when many vm’s are involved. One of the challenges is downtime. Because VMware is using a different format for its virtual disks than Hyper-V does, traditional conversion tools need at least one hour to convert, reboot, post processing and create a new VM.  Conversion is done cold, so during the conversion the VM is not available. That amount of downtime can be unacceptable for hosters and enterprises often  having SLA’s with 15 minutes of service windows or less,

If downtime is no issue, many tools are available. 5nine Software for instance has a free V2V conversion tool. Easy Converter can be downloaded here.

Customers of NetApp are lucky. They are able to convert from VMware to Hyper-V (or the other way) in minutes by using free NetApp Powershell tooling. This feature is called NetApp Project Shift and is currently in Tech Preview.

By using  a cmdlet part of the Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit  a 40GB VMDK file is converted  to a VHDx  in about 5 seconds. Then using additional tooling a new Hyper-V VM is created, VMware tools are removed and within 5 minutes the conversion is done using a single reboot. Magic!

Shift  supports bare-metal shifting with P2V &  V2P and cloud shifting or V2V between Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. It only supports NetApp to NetApp conversions as it requires FlexClone which is a feature within Data ONTAP.

More info and a MUST SEE video in a blog written by Vaughn Stewart (Director of technical Marketing at NetApp)  Tech Preview: Shift Cloud Platforms without Migrating Data

Microsoft extended NetApp Shift. It combines  scripts available in the Microsoft Migration Automation Toolkit (MAT) with the Shift technology. Microsoft calls it MAT (powered by Project Shift), a cold conversion technology that operates at warm conversion speed. It can convert most VMs with less than 5 minutes of downtime (and most of that it waiting for VMware tools removal).

MAT (powered by Project Shift) enables an automated conversion of VMware vSphere virtual machines to Hyper-V with less than 5 minutes downtime.

Read more about it here.

Also more on MAt in this NetApp blogpost,  

Download the technology preview of MAT (Powered by Project Shift) here.

Peter Noorderijk of Hyper-V.nu earlier blogged about NetApp Shift here.

More info

Converison VMDK to VHDx or VHD

Project Shift NetApp MAT Microsoft

The Migration Automation Toolkit (MAT) is a collection of PowerShell scripts that will automate VM conversions. This version of MAT is powered by NetApp’s Project Shift (which are powershell cmdlets found in NetApp’s Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit version 3.0. Like the orginal MAT it is back ended by a SQL instance (SQL Express will work). MAT (powered by Project Shift) is able to convert VMs at incredible speeds. Most VMs are fully converted in under 5 mins, so that even customers with very small service windows can use the toolkit.

The MAT (powered by Project Shift) REQUIRES a NetApp storage device that is running ONTAP version 8.2 or later.

Prerequisites: ————–

  1. Data ONTAP PowerShell Toolkit version 3.0 from NetApp
  2. PowerCLI 5.1 from VMware (used to collect VMs)
  3. SQL Express or any other SQL Server Editions
  4. A Windows account with rights to execute MVMC locally
  5.  A Windows account with rights to schedule tasks on remote systems and run MVMC (if using remotes)
  6. A VMware account with admin rights to the ESX server or vCenter
  7. An account with local admin rights to the guest VM (if the above account does not)
  8. A NetApp admin account with rights to the controller

Filed under Hyper-V, P2V, VMware solutions, vSphere 5

Hyper-V again moves closer to vSphere in Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2013

July 2, 2013 by Leave a comment

Gartner published end of June 2013 its annual Magic Quadrant for  x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure. The publication provides an overview of the server virtualization market. Part of the report is a graphic known as the Magic Quadrant. The upper right box is the box vendors want to be listed on.

VMware is still leader in the x86 server virtualization market. They have the largest market share and are leading with technologies. However Microsoft is closing the gap rapidly and even offer features vSphere does not have. Each year Microsoft is positioned closer to rival VMware.

The graphic below shows the Magic Quadrant for 2011, 2012 and 2013. It is clear Microsoft has been consistently moving ‘up’ and to the ‘right’ in the Magic Quadrant graphic . See Microsoft’s comment on this development here.

gartner-hyper-v-mq-2013

I recommend downloading the full report (compliments of Microsoft) and reading it in detail.

For the Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2012 see my post titled Hyper-V moving closer to vSphere in 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, Windows Server 2012

Another update of another update improves cluster resiliency in Windows Server 2012

June 19, 2013 by Leave a comment

Microsoft made available another update of a fix which improves cluster resiliency. I lost count now but believe this is the fourth try of Microsoft to fix a number of issues which are storage related.

One of the readers of my blog applied this latest hotfix KB2848344 and wrote me:

I’ve applied this fix on 2 nodes in a two node HV failover cluster. (LAB based on iSCSI shared storage)
DPM2012SP1 with latest rollups is still not able to backup a single VM on this cluster.
DPM encountered a retryable VSS error…

KB2848344 is titled  Update improves cluster resiliency in Windows Server 2012 and was released June 13, 2013.

I blogged about previous storage issue and the Microsoft attempts to solve this here:
Microsoft releases 2nd bug fix to fix issues on CSV backup of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
here
Storage issues on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Microsoft struggling to fix!
and here
Important update that improves cluster resiliency in Windows Server 2012 is available

I guess you can make your own conclusions on the reliability of the storage integration with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V! Quite a few customers have difficulties to make a proper backup or not able to make a backup at all without the risk of crashing volumes. Not good at all!

For an overview of issues which are backup related see this thread on Microsoft.com

BTW: Microsoft also released a bugfix for Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) issues described in KB2796995.

As stated by Microsoft in this KB:

This update replaces a previous resiliency improvements update that is described in KB 2838669. Additionally, the following issues that you experience are resolved.

 

This article introduces an update for cluster resiliency improvements in Windows Server 2012. After you install this update, the issues that are described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles are resolved:

2801054

VSS_E_SNAPSHOT_SET_IN_PROGRESS error when you try to back up a virtual machine in Windows Server 2012

2796995

Offloaded Data Transfers fail on a computer that is running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012

2813630

Virtual machine enters a paused state or a CSV volume goes offline when you try to create a backup of the virtual machine on a Windows Server 2012-based failover cluster

2824600

Virtual machine enters a paused state or goes offline when you try to create a backup of the virtual machine on a CSV volume in Windows Server 2012

2848727

“Move-SmbWitnessClient” PowerShell command fails in Windows Server 2012

2799728

Virtual machine enters a paused state or a CSV volume goes offline when you try to create a backup of the virtual machine on a Windows Server 2012-based failover cluster

Note This update replaces a previous resiliency improvements update that is described in KB 2838669.
Additionally, the following issues that you experience are resolved.

Issue 1

Assume that you have a Windows Server 2012-based failover cluster. A Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) is moved or is toggled between directed access and redirected access when the performance monitor is running. In this situation, the performance counters no longer function.

Issue 2

Consider the following scenario:

  • You have the Hyper-V server role installed on Windows Server 2012-based failover cluster nodes.
  • Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files of the virtual machines are stored on a scale-out file share.
  • The cluster nodes are under heavy loads.

In this scenario, the cluster nodes may crash, and you may receive a Stop error message that resembles the following:

STOP: 0x000000C2 (parameter1, parameter2, parameter3, parameter4)

Filed under Hyper-V, VMware solutions, Windows Server 2012

Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica

May 24, 2013 by Leave a comment

Microsoft released at May 22 a new tool named  ‘ Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica’
Hyper-V Replica allows administrators to replicate their virtual machines from a primary server/cluster to a replica server/cluster.
The Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica guides the IT administrator to design the server, storage and network infrastructure which is required to successfully deploy Hyper-V Replica.

Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica will create a test VM with a VHD file and will then start replication. Metrics on CPU consumption, WAN consumption and storage usage will be collected during the replication. A report will be presented giving the administrator insights in things like:

Estimated storage to store the initial copy
Additional storage required on the replica server when only the latest recovery point is preserved
Additional storage required per recovery point on the replica server when multiple recovery points are preserved
Average network bandwidth required
Additional space required on the primary storage
Estimated additional IOPS during initial replication
Estimated additional IOPS during delta replication
Estimated memory requirements on the primary and replica servers, by enabling replication
on the selected VMs
Estimated CPU impact on the primary and replica servers, after enabling replication on
the selected VMs.

 

Download and more information here. This tool is being offered ‘as is’ with no official Microsoft support.

Filed under Hyper-V

Disaster Recovery of on-premise Hyper-V virtual machines using Windows Azure Recovery Services

April 8, 2013 by 1 Comment

Update April 11: This new service is not DRaaS. Customers still need two datacenters running Hyper-V and SCVMM 2012. Hyper-V Recovery Manager which runs in Azure does orchestration and testing!

Currently in limited Preview program  is a new service of Microsoft Windows Azure which enables Disaster Recovery Orchestration for Hyper-V. This post will give some details on this new service.

Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps you protect System Center Virtual Machine Manager private clouds in the event of service outage. You can build recovery orchestration plans using this feature and test your plans periodically to ensure high level of preparedness for unplanned downtime or a planned event like data center load balancing.

Introduction
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V has a nice feature called Hyper-V Replica. It enables  replication of virtual machine disk files to another location for disaster recovery purposes. This feature is available at no additional cost, making DR a lot more cost effective compared to using third party tools. The feature is also very simple to setup and use.

One of the services currently in Limited Preview is part of ‘Azure Recovery Services’ and is named  Hyper-V Recovery Manager Vault. It can be enabled by selection of Cloud Services in the Azure Management portal. You cannot use it immediately. There is a queue at the moment.

hyper-v-recovery-manager-vault

Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps you protect System Center Virtual Machine Manager private clouds in the event of service outage. You can build recovery orchestration plans using this feature and test your plans periodically to ensure high level of preparedness for unplanned downtime or a planned event like data center load balancing.

This post at windowsazure.com titled Configure Windows Azure Recovery Services to provide a Hyper-V recovery environment explains how to setup replication.
The text below is taken from the Azure website.

Hyper-V Recovery Manager (Preview)

Orchestrate protection and recovery of private clouds

Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager can help you protect important services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center 2012 private clouds at a secondary location.

Automated protection

System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager private clouds can be protected through automating the replication of the virtual machines that compose them at a secondary location. The ongoing asynchronous replication of each VM is provided by Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Replica and is monitored and coordinated by Hyper-V Recovery Manager.

Orchestrated Recovery

The service helps automate the orderly recovery in the event of a site outage at the primary datacenter. VMs can be brought up in an orchestrated fashion to help restore service quickly. This process can also be used for testing recovery, or temporarily transferring services.

Note: This limited preview program is available to a small group of customers in specific geographic locations1 using Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1. However, we are always on the lookout for additional customers who will provide us with interesting and actionable feedback. If you would like to be considered for this program please complete the Microsoft survey located here. Thank you in advance for your responses! We will only be contacting those of you that have been accepted to participate.

1 Only customers located in the following countries will be considered: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Australia, Japan, India, New Zealand. Data for this Preview feature will be stored only in the Azure datacenters located in the United States

Only customers located in the following countries will be considered: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Australia, Japan, India, New Zealand. Data for this Preview feature will be stored only in the Azure datacenters located in the United States.

Filed under Hyper-V, System Center 2012, Uncategorized, VMware solutions, Windows Azure

Poster: Networking in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

March 30, 2013 by Leave a comment

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 added a lot new networking features. Some of those can be difficult to understand and to configure. Microsoft published a nice poster showing all the network features and configuration steps.

For an overview of blog articles explaining those new features see this post.

This poster for VMM in System Center 2012 SP1 can help you:

  • Plan your VMM networks using a logical view of VM networks, logical networks, and logical switches using a variety of configurations including VLAN-based configuration, no isolation, network virtualization, external networks, and with no virtual networking.
  • Configure networking in VMM using configuration steps by roles including fabric administrators, tenant administrators, or by any user.
  • Understand the network object model with diagrams of objects showing the relationships between objects.
  • Extend VMM with options including using a vendor network-management server with extensions, connect a VM network to other networks by configuring the VM network with a gateway, and load-balance requests to VMs that make up a VMM service tier by adding a load balancer to VMM.

download the poster here.

SCVMM2012SP1-poster

Filed under Hyper-V, SCVMM 2012 SP1, VMware solutions

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