Microsoft has released Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 R2. These Update Rollup 1 is available to the following products:
Data Protection Manager (DPM)
Operation Manager (SCOM)
Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
To know more detail and download, please refer to here.
In our previous post, we look on SCVMM and SCOM integration to enable PRO features, monitoring and reporting capabilities. Next we are going to look on integration with SCOM 2012 R2 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 (SCDPM).
Before integrate, do remember to import these management pack
Once integrated you will gain features such as :-
Centralized Monitoring
From Operation Console, you can view Alerts (disk, tape or azure backup alerts) and State View of DPM components, protected servers, disk, tape and backup workload status from a single pane of glass.
One Operation Console can support up to 100 DPM servers or 50000 protected data sources. You can manage DPM 2012 and DPM 2012 using single console. The supported DPM version are
From the state view, you can have a single view of your backup deployment
Protection Group Tasks
Next is action that you can perform from Operation Console.
For example:- Operation Console received an alert “DPM replica is inconsistent on Exchange Protection Group. Select the alert and then on the right side, you can scroll on Alert Tasks to execute some actions.
a. Click on View Affected Items to read more detail regarding the problem and perform recommended action as suggested by the system
b. If click on “Troubleshoot alert”, Operation Console open DPM Administrator console and will zooming in and isolate data associating with a failure. This is called “Scope Troubleshooting” for ease of highlighting the issue that face by the system.
Consolidated Alerts and Alert Categorization
Do you like DPM Alert notification? If you’re one of the administrator who’s always received DPM alert notification, then most of time you set a rules on Outlook to move to “Delete Folder”. However with SCOM integration, we can ensure one ticket per root cause issue and alert is categorization.
Role Based Access delivered using Operation Console. If you’re using DPM Administrator Console, you cannot set access right and control who can open the console. However with System Center Operation Manager Console we can now set eight different role as listed below.
For example, I’ve assign a user with “Tape Operator right”, this user only can perform all tape related action. If this user trying to perform other job, the system will not allow and prompt an error message as displayed below.
In our previous post, we have talked about integration between SCVMM 2012 R2 and SCCM 2012 R2 to enable for fabric update. This round we are going to integrate with SCOM 2012 R2.
By integration Virtual Machine Manager with Operation Manager, you enable Operation Manager to monitor the virtual environment. This includes all components of Virtual Machine Manager such as VMM Server, SQL database that it uses and any virtual machines, services and clouds that it manages.
Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO)
In addition, by integrating VMM and Operations you can take advantages of Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) features. With PRO enabled management pack, SCOM can detect resource issues or hardware failures in the Virtualization environment.
Through PRO tip, SCOM notifies the operator and recommend an action such as migrating host to a different Hyper-V host.
Check on the result of your test PRO Tip either in the Jobs workspace in the VMM console or in the Operations console in Operations Manager
Virtual Machine Manager Views
There are several views and task become available in Operation Consoles
From here you can view active alerts and health state from a single pane of glass by using Operation Consoles. Use these view to gain a quick view into the health and availability of the VMM environment.
The Managed Resources folder contains several health state that you can view the health of individual VMM components
The Performance folder contains performance view to monitor a component’s current performance and performance over a selected period.
On Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager PRO folder, you can check the result of the PRO test.
Diagram View
Use the diagram view that is located under the VMM View folder to view the overall health of the VMM environment. For example, on below diagram there is an error on VMM environment. Expand the VMM infrastructure component group to view the health of the virtual machine guest, VMM database and any cloud that VMM manages.
Then on alert error, use Health Explorer to troubleshoot failed monitor.
Reporting
After integration, on Operation Console an additional reports (as shown below) are available for Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 Reports:
Here is a snapshot of Capacity Utilization on six server which provides details usage for virtual machine hosts and other objects. This report provides an overview of how capacity is being used in your datacenter. This information can inform decisions about how many systems you need to support your virtual machines
Next , Host Group Forecasting (require SQL Server Analysis) which predicts host activity based on history of disk space, memory, disk IO, network IO, and CPU usage.
Host Utilization report shows the number of virtual machines that are running on each host and average usage, along with total or maximum values for host processors, memory, and disk space.
Host Utilization growth report shows the percentage change in resource usage and the number of virtual machines that are running on selected hosts during a specified time period.
Power Saving report shows how much power is saved through Power Optimization. You can view total hours of processor power saved for a date range and host group, as well as detailed information for each host in a host group. For more information about Power Optimization.
SAN Usage Forecasting report (require SQL Server Analysis) for predicts SAN usage based on history.
Virtual Machine allocation report will provides information about allocation of virtual machine):-
Virtual Machine Utilization report provides information about resource utilization by virtual machines, including average usage and total or maximum values for virtual machine processors, memory, and disk space.
Lastly Virtualization Candidates report helps identify physical computers that are good candidates for conversion to virtual machines. You can use the Virtualization Candidates report to identify little-used servers and display average values for a set of commonly requested performance counters for CPU, memory, and disk usage, along with hardware configurations, including processor speed, number of processors, and total RAM. You can limit the report to computers that meet specified CPU and RAM requirements, and you can sort the results by selected columns in the report.
According to FreeBSD wiki page, starting from FreeBSD 10.0 version onward will include Hyper-V integration services as part of the operating system.
As of FreeBSD 10.0, Hyper-V integration services provide the following functionality:
For those who are interested to test FreeBSD running on Hyper-V, please download the ISO from here.
We have tested FreeBSD 10.0 on our test environment running Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and it’s working fine.
Good luck on your testing….
Microsoft has just released poster and mini poster.These posters provide a visual reference for understanding key private cloud storage and virtualization technologies in Windows Server 2012 R2. They focus on understanding storage architecture, virtual hard disks, cluster shared volumes, scale-out file servers, storage spaces, data deduplication, Hyper-V, Failover Clustering, and virtual hard disk sharing.
Whole Poster
Mini Posters
To download, click here
Recently I’ve been involved in the project which provide me a chance to test on integration of System Center 2012 R2. In today post, we are going to explore on integration between SCVMM 2012 R2 and SCCM 2012 R2. Once you have integrate with SCCM 2012 R2, you can leverage on SCCM to do fabric updates. It is also supported to integrate with WSUS server.
In term of fabric that you can use VMM to perform updates are:-
Once you’ve integrate with SCCM, then do remember to create a collection which contains above fabric. SCCM will do synchronization to get Software Update or you can force manually from VMM Console.
Compliance Scan
By using VMM 2012 R2, you can performance Compliance Scan to detect any fabric which does not has the Updates from the baselines. Below figure is the result of the compliance. Look like we have a “Non Compliance” on our fabric
Remediation
You can perform Remediation to apply patch the system and make it “Compliant”. If you are in the cluster, you can perform live migration or save state on the VM before apply the patch to the Hyper Host.
Let say you’re in the Hyper-V cluster, the VM will move to another Hyper-V Host by using live migration before apply the updates and will reboot the host after apply the updates. The concept is familiar like Cluster Aware Updating (CAU). Once updates applied , the next host which holding the VMs will live migrate VM to the 1st node. Than the process of applying the update and reboot till the cluster is fully “Compliant” and consist of relevant updates according to the baselines that you’ve configured. Final result after remediation:-
Exemption
For those updates which you’ve tested on the development environment and found that it’s harmful (sort of), you can configure exemption as well.
By setting exemption, the updates will not push to the fabric.
Compliance Reports
Besides than action such Compliance Scan, Remediation and Exemption,
let explore on SCCM portions. From here you can view Compliance Report. Here is some sample of the Software Update Compliance Report on the dedicated fabric
Note:- Report indicated 7 servers –Non Compliant with the software updates
Note:- Drill down, you will be able to view a list of servers which are not compliant
Note:- Next is on individual computer, view which updates has installed/ not installed.
Well, that’s the short trip on the integration between SCCM and SCVMM in term of software updates. Do check it out and let us know if this integration useful in your production environment.
Microsoft has just published an updated version of capacity planner for Hyper-V Replica to support both Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. To install this tool, you need to use either these operating systems.
The tool not only support Hyper-V Replica but Extended Hyper-V Replica as well.
Additional an updated capacity also provides:-
To download, click here.
I’ve just received an email mentioned that “Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager” has general availability.
Not sure about what it is? Please visit my previous post from here :
At this moment, you can enjoy Preview price till 28 Feb 2014. Then starting from March 2014, general availability new pricing will take effective. No upgrade is require for existing tester.
Few days ago, I’ve received a question about Storsimple LUN use as DPM Storage Pool”?
There are several supported disk to use as storage pool in DPM:-
Storsimple is an iSCSI Storage device however based on feedback that I received from Technet Forum , it is unsupported. You cannot present LUN from StorSimple to DPM Server for storage pool.
DPM will convert the LUN into dynamic disk and put replica into multiple disk storage pool when creating protection group.
After thinking twice why it is unsupported is probably due to Storsimple is an automated cloud as tier. It will automatically moved cold data to cloud. Won’t really make sense to move few TB (replica to Windows Azure).
So what’s our options?
You can use DPM to backup data to supported disk (short term goal), tape library or Virtual tape library (long term goal) and lastly to Windows Azure.
On Storsimple, you can present a LUN to a file server which use for VTL. Then on Virtual Tape Library (VTL), you can store the media to this file server.
By using Storsimple features “Automated Cloud As Tier”, you can transfer cold data to Windows Azure. This will reduce transportation cost-by introducing Windows Azure as offsite storage, deduplication of VTL files, compression and encrypted with AES 256 bit encryption.
What do you think ? Please feel free to comment and share to us about using Storsimple LUN as DPM storage pool.
Scenario:-
Temporary solution that I’ve tested to make the VM running:-
1. You can remove the VM configuration and re-create VM configuration and map back to existing virtual disk.
2. Able to test boot up the virtual machine without any problem but I need to re-assign back the ip address.
[Updated 17 Jan 2014-Better Solution]
Thanks to Ben, our Hyper-V Program Manager which provide a better solution for granting access to the account
1. Once you have imported the VM and receive an error message as listed above.
2. Open Powershell and execute the following command
Format:-
Grant-VMConnectAccess –Username (user account to boot the VM) –VMName (Virtual machine name)
| Grant-VMConnectAccess –Username administrator –VMName RED-DC01 |
3. Test boot up the virtual machine
I was able to boot up the virtual machine after execute above command.
Do give it a try if you face the similar problem.
hi folk,
We have updated the link on Hyper-V Update on our website (www.ms4u.info). Please browse to right side under “Resources to Learn More”
Let have a quick on update that you should deploy on Hyper-V running Windows Server 2012 R2.
a) General Availability Update Rollup fixed:
Note:- Apply after install RTM version of Windows Server 2012 R2. To download click here.
b) December 2013 Update Rollup fixed
To download update rollup, click here.
Manual download update rollup:-
For latest updated Hyper-V Update Rollup for Windows Server 2012 R2, please visit Wiki page here.
c) Clustering running on Windows Server 2012 R2
For updated Cluster Update for Windows Server 2012 R2, please visit this link here.
Manual download update rollup:-
Advice/ Note:-
Remember to test the update rollup on test environment before full deployment to production environment.
If you have multiple node on the cluster, remember to test on a node before deploy to the entire node in a cluster.
VssDiag is a tool that scans Windows Event Viewer for VSS, VolSnap, Disk, and Hyper-V errors within a 10 minute time window specified.
It will filter out all error and warning entries and display them. This is generally useful when you get VSS errors during backups and you need to find out why they are happening.
It's not the super innovative thing in the world but it saves time and is generally useful for novices, too.
Sample:- Disk error
To try it, please go to http://backupchain.com/VssDiag.html
