Out of Office–www.ms4u.info-

Hi, I will be away from 21th February 2011 – 7th  March 2011 attending VMM vNext TAP Training and MVP Global Summit @ Seattle, United States. Therefore, I will not blog anything during this period.

What’s MVP Global Summit? To know more, click here

See you after 7th March 2011.

Cheers, Lai

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 has RTM

 

Finally, a long waiting SP1 (RTM) has released to MSDN/TechNet subscriber. Generally public release will be available on 22 Feb 2011. A bit late on announcement as I'm evaluating the RTM version on my lab environment before share with everyone on my findings. For those who did not use Virtualization, then you will not see a deep impact except patching.

Reminder who has install SP1 RC, remember to uninstall the RC before install the RTM version. So what is the changes from RC to RTM.

Well, so far the setting remain the same exactly like RC version. Therefore, let me recompile some related blog and share on some stuff that you need to take note on Dynamic Memory.

0. Backup the VM before patch Hyper V Host. (Important: –In case any failure / problem during the installing of SP1). Once complete the installation, remember to upgrade the IC to the latest on the entire guest VM.

1. Set memory reserve for parent partition. Recommendation: 2 GB

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/11/parent-partition-memory-reserve.html

2. Export VM consideration

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/11/caution-when-export-dynamic-memory.html

3. Dynamic Memory Setting on Beta version vs RC (now RTM)

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/10/dynamic-memory-settings-beta-vs-release.html

4. Hyper V Manager snap in changes in SP1

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/10/hyper-v-manager-snap-in-changes-in-sp1.html

5. What’s Memory Status in Dynamic memory?

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/10/whats-memory-status-in-dynamic-memory.html

6. Dynamic Memory Supported Guest Operating System

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/07/dynamic-memory-supported-operating.html

7. Why Dynamic Memory not working on Standard / Web Edition?

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/10/why-dynamic-memory-rc-sp1-not-working.html

8. Implementing Hyper V SP1 Presentation and demo

Refer to http://www.ms4u.info/2010/12/presentation-implementing-hyper-v.html

Good Luck on your upgrading to SP1 to enjoy Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX features.

[Updated: 23 Feb 2011]

1. Hyper V dynamic memory configuration guide

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817651(WS.10).aspx

2. Deployment guide for SP1

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817650(WS.10).aspx

3. Hyper V Component Architecture (with SP1)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=93c814d0-fe4b-4d5b-b280-1b9807ec9933

Cannot See Storage When Adding Hyper V Host into XenDesktop 5

 

Weird ! Try to add a Hyper V Host into XenDesktop 5. However in Citrix Desktop Studio, I can’t see the storage either Hyper V (stand alone) or Hyper V Cluster. Here is what you should do:-

Resolution:-

a) On Hyper V R2 Stand alone

1. Create a share folder to store the VM on the Hyper V Stand Alone server.

2. Try add a host by selecting the Hyper V server. It will detect the storage as “local” and select the share folder that you’ve shared in Step 1.

b) On Hyper V R2 Cluster using CSV

1. Share C:\ClusterStorage using Advanced Sharing.

2. Try add a host by selecting the Hyper V Cluster server. It will detect the storage as “shared” and it will displayed CSV volume.

If you refer to the XenDesktop 5 documentation library,

Installing and Configuring Your Hypervisor

* Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 on your servers. Note that all controllers in your environment must be in the same forest as the System Center Virtual Machine Manager servers.
* Install the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Console on all controllers in your environment.
* If you are using XenDesktop to create your VMs, rather than selecting an existing catalog, configure your Hyper-V deployment as follows:

o For a single Hyper-V host deployment, create a Windows network share that is writeable by the System Center Virtual Machine Manager administrator account on the Hyper-V server.

o For a multiple Hyper-V host deployment, ensure your Hyper-V hosts are set up in a Hyper-V Failover Cluster with Cluster Shared Volume storage. On one of your Hyper-V servers, create a Windows network share, that is writeable by the System Center Virtual Machine Manager administrator account for the Cluster Shared Volume mount point, typically C:\ClusterStorage.

Note: In both deployments, the Windows Network share is required to allow XenDesktop remote access to storage on the host server, where VMs you create are stored.

Using Synthetic Transaction to Monitor VMM SSP 2.0

 

Further monitoring using synthetic transaction. The goal is to verify that the service is up and running especially on database or website from a client. You need to make sure that the website and database is 100% working. To do that, this is where you need to use a client to simulate a testing and access to the services. In today blog. I'm going to further monitor on VMM SSP 2.0 database and the SSP Portal. The DITSC Database and SSP Portal is critical to make sure Private Cloud is working and accessible by the internal organization.

In SCOM 2007 R2, you will have 7 Management Pack template to allow you to create synthetic transaction.

1. Let start on the database. Click on Authoring | Management Pack Template  | OLE DB Source | Add Monitoring Wizard

2. Select OLE DB Data Source

3. Provide a name and select a new management pack.

4. Define a connection string to SQL server using Build button. Enter a sample query and Execute Test . Make sure the result is successful.

5. On set query performance thresholds, click Next

6. On watcher node, select a client and how often that you want the watcher to perform a testing.

Repeat the same process to create a synthetic transaction on the website using TCP Port.

To verify , use the Monitoring pane and check on Synthetic Transaction. It should reported “Healthy”.

Monitor Private Cloud using SCOM

 

First of all, I wishing everyone “Gong Xi Fa Chai” or “Happy Chinese New Year” to Chinese visitor. Just finished celebrate Chinese New Year and now I'm back. Time to start blogging and fully concentrate on new stuff. On previous month, I've focused on DPM and still there are a lot of stuff to covered in DPM but my roles has switch to focus on SCOM as secondary field besides than Virtualization (primary roles). To start with SCOM, i have created a monitoring IT services on Private Cloud using SCOM.

Let recap. Microsoft Private Cloud is using VMM SSP 2.0. To use SSP 2.0, you need to have

• Active Directory
• Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
• VMM Self Service Portal 2.0 (SSP)
• VMM Library
• SSP 2.0 Database
• Hyper V host

In today blog, i will use SCOM to monitor my end to end Private Cloud solution. In order to monitor all services health, i have create a simple Distributed Application.

1. Click on Authoring, select Distributed Application and select Create a new distribution application.

2. On the wizard, you can select the template either blank or Web. i just select Web template.

3. Using the Distributed Application Designer. You first need to select

a) Add component to add the object

b) Once added the object, you can create the relationship.

Note: To add or see the relevant object, you need to import several Management Pack. I have imported Active directory MP, VMM MP and SQL MP.

4. The final design look like this:-

VMM SSP 2.0 is depend on database, active directory and VMM Library.

5. Once complete, i can view the diagram view from the authoring. This is how it look like. I have expanded until i can see all the object. (To see clearly, pls click on the image.)

6. To simulate failure, i have stop the VMM SSP website services.

On the diagram view, it will let you know that the Web site services is down.

7. To solved that issue, select the failed object and open the Health Explorer. Below diagram showed from the top. It will drill down and you just select the failure. On the knowledgebase, it give the recommended action to resolve the issue. Just click Start the IIS site service from the Resolution to fix the problem. Once you have done that, click Recalculate Health to recheck.

That is my simple test on distributed application on monitor Private Cloud using SCOM. Look great. One Console to monitor my entire private cloud infrastructure. For those who are adventurous, you can try to add Hyper V host object and SAN into the monitoring.