The latest version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit—version 6.5—is now available for beta download. The MAP toolkit is an agentless inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that can securely assess IT environments for various platform migrations—including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, Windows Azure, and Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track.
Key Features and Benefits of MAP 6.5 beta
Discover Oracle instances on Itanium-based servers for migration to SQL Server.
MAP 6.5 Beta adds to the heterogeneous database inventory and reporting capability with Oracle compete and the discovery of Oracle instances on Itanium-based servers with HP-UX to assist in the planning of migration to SQL Server. Reporting also provides an estimate of the complexity of migration and suggests candidates for migration to SQL Server. Use this information to determine total cost of ownership for maintaining Oracle and the potential return on investment (ROI) from switching to SQL Server.
Accelerate planning for the private cloud with Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Onboarding.
Planning your private cloud just got easier. Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Onboarding, an updated assessment available with MAP 6.5 Beta, provides consolidation guidance and validated configurations with preconfigured Hyper-V Fast Track Infrastructures including computing power, network, and storage architectures. Get a quick analysis of server consolidation on Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Infrastructures to help accelerate your planning of P2V migration to Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track. Each assessment also provides guidance on next steps using Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track.
Assess your software usage and evaluate your licensing needs. NEW!
The Software Usage Tracking feature in MAP 6.5 includes enhancements in terms of product coverage and the ability to track devices. The Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) scenario measures server and client usage for the FEP product, a recent addition to the Microsoft Core Client Access License (CAL) Suite. Active Devices is a new inventory scenario that allows organizations to report Windows devices that are active on the network. This information is useful in Enterprise Agreement scenarios as well as for maintaining Active Directory information for the environment.
http://connect.microsoft.com/site297
The client logs are located in the %WINDIR%\System32\CCM\Logs folder or %WINDIR%\SysWOW64\CCM\Logs (for x64 OS).
The SCCM server log files are located in the\Logs or SMS_CCM\Logs folder. IIS logs can be found in %WINDIR%\System32\logfiles\W3SVC1 folder.
Client Log Files
- CAS – Content Access Service. Maintains the local package cache.
- Ccmexec.log – Records activities of the client and the SMS Agent Host service.
- CertificateMaintenance.log – Maintains certificates for Active Directory directory service and management points.
- ClientIDManagerStartup.log – Creates and maintains the client GUID.
- ClientLocation.log – Site assignment tasks.
- ContentTransferManager.log – Schedules the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) or the Server Message Block (SMB) to download or to access SMS packages.
- DataTransferService.log – Records all BITS communication for policy or package access.
- Execmgr.log – Records advertisements that run.
- FileBITS.log – Records all SMB package access tasks.
- Fsinvprovider.log (renamed to FileSystemFile.log in all SMS 2003 Service Packs) – Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) provider for software inventory and file collection.
- InventoryAgent.log – Creates discovery data records (DDRs) and hardware and software inventory records.
- LocationServices.log – Finds management points and distribution points.
- Mifprovider.log – The WMI provider for .MIF files.
- Mtrmgr.log – Monitors all software metering processes.
- PolicyAgent.log – Requests policies by using the Data Transfer service.
- PolicyAgentProvider.log – Records policy changes.
- PolicyEvaluator.log – Records new policy settings.
- Remctrl.log – Logs when the remote control component (WUSER32) starts.
- Scheduler.log – Records schedule tasks for all client operations.
- Smscliui.log – Records usage of the Systems Management tool in Control Panel.
- StatusAgent.log – Logs status messages that are created by the client components.
- SWMTRReportGen.log – Generates a usage data report that is collected by the metering agent. (This data is logged in Mtrmgr.log.)
Server Log Files
- Ccm.log – Client Configuration Manager tasks.
- Cidm.log – Records changes to the client settings by the Client Install Data Manager (CIDM).
- Colleval.log – Logs when collections are created, changed, and deleted by the Collection Evaluator.
- Compsumm.log – Records Component Status Summarizer tasks.
- Cscnfsvc.log – Records Courier Sender confirmation service tasks.
- Dataldr.log – Processes Management Information Format (MIF) files and hardware inventory in the Configuration Manager 2007 database.
- Ddm.log – Saves DDR information to the Configuration Manager 2007 database by the Discovery Data Manager.
- Despool.log – Records incoming site-to-site communication transfers.
- Distmgr.log – Records package creation, compression, delta replication, and information updates.
- Hman.log – Records site configuration changes, and publishes site information in Active Directory Domain Services.
- Inboxast.log – Records files that are moved from the management point to the corresponding SMS\INBOXES folder.
- Inboxmgr.log – Records file maintenance.
- Invproc.log – Records the processing of delta MIF files for the Dataloader component from client inventory files.
- Mpcontrol.log – Records the registration of the management point with WINS. Records the availability of the management point every 10 minutes.
- Mpfdm.log – Management point component that moves client files to the corresponding SMS\INBOXES folder.
- MPMSI.log – Management point .msi installation log.
- MPSetup.log – Records the management point installation wrapper process.
- Ntsvrdis.log – Configuration Manager 2007 server discovery.
- Offermgr.log – Records advertisement updates.
- Offersum.log – Records summarization of advertisement status messages.
- Policypv.log – Records updates to the client policies to reflect changes to client settings or advertisements.
- Replmgr.log – Records the replication of files between the site server components and the Scheduler component.
- Rsetup.log – Reporting point setup log.
- Sched.log – Records site-to-site job and package replication.
- Sender.log – Records files that are sent to other child and parent sites.
- Sinvproc.log – Records client software inventory data processing to the site database in Microsoft SQL Server.
- Sitecomp.log – Records maintenance of the installed site components.
- Sitectrl.log – Records site setting changes to the Sitectrl.ct0 file.
- Sitestat.log – Records the monitoring process of all site systems.
- Smsdbmon.log – Records database changes.
- Smsexec.log – Records processing of all site server component threads.
- Smsprov.log – Records WMI provider access to the site database.
- SMSReportingInstall.log – Records the Reporting Point installation. This component starts the installation tasks and processes configuration changes.
- SMSSHVSetup.log – Records the success or failure (with failure reason) of installing the System Health Validator point.
- Srvacct.log – Records the maintenance of accounts when the site uses standard security.
- Statmgr.log – Writes all status messages to the database.
- Swmproc.log – Processes metering files and maintains settings.
Admin Console Log Files
- RepairWizard.log – Records errors, warnings, and information about the process of running the Repair Wizard.
- ResourceExplorer.log – Records errors, warnings, and information about running the Resource Explorer.
- SMSAdminUI.log – Records the local Configuration Manager 2007 console tasks when you connect to Configuration Manager 2007 sites.
Management Point Log Files
- MP_Ddr.log – Records the conversion of XML.ddr records from clients, and copies them to the site server.
- MP_GetAuth.log – Records the status of the site management points.
- MP_GetPolicy.log – Records policy information.
- MP_Hinv.log – Converts XML hardware inventory records from clients and copies the files to the site server.
- MP_Location.log – Records location manager tasks.
- MP_Policy.log – Records policy communication.
- MP_Relay.log – Copies files that are collected from the client.
- MP_Retry.log – Records the hardware inventory retry processes.
- MP_Sinv.log – Converts XML hardware inventory records from clients and copies them to the site server.
- MP_Status.log – Converts XML.svf status message files from clients and copies them to the site server.
Mobile Device Management Log Files
- DmClientHealth.log – Records the GUIDs of all the mobile device clients that are communicating with the Device Management Point.
- DmClientRegistration.log – Records registration requests from and responses to the mobile device client in Native mode.
- DmpDatastore.log – Records all the site database connections and queries made by the Device Management Point.
- DmpDiscovery.log – Records all the discovery data from the mobile device clients on the Device Management Point.
- DmpFileCollection.log – Records mobile device file collection data from mobile device clients on the Device Management Point.
- DmpHardware.log – Records hardware inventory data from mobile device clients on the Device Management Point.
- DmpIsapi.log – Records mobile device communication data from device clients on the Device Management Point.
- dmpMSI.log – Records the MSI data for Device Management Point setup.
- DMPSetup.log – Records the mobile device management setup process.
- DmpSoftware.log – Records mobile device software distribution data from mobile device clients on the Device Management Point.
- DmpStatus.log – Records mobile device status messages data from mobile device clients on the Device Management Point.
- FspIsapi.log – Records Fallback Status Point communication data from mobile device clients and client computers on the Fallback Status Point.
Mobile Device Client Log Files
- DmCertEnroll.log – Records certificate enrollment data on mobile device clients.
- DMCertResp.htm (in \temp) – Records HTML response from the certificate server when the mobile device Enroller program requests a client authentication certificate on mobile device clients.
- DmClientSetup.log – Records client setup data on mobile device clients.
- DmClientXfer.log – Records client transfer data for Windows Mobile Device Center and ActiveSync deployments.
- DmCommonInstaller.log – Records client transfer file installation for setting up mobile device client transfer files on client computers.
- DmInstaller.log – Records whether DMInstaller correctly calls DmClientSetup and whether DmClientSetup exits with success or failure on mobile device clients.
- DmInvExtension.log – Records Inventory Extension file installation for setting up Inventory Extension files on client computers.
- DmSvc.log – Records mobile device management service data on mobile device clients.
Operating System Deployment Log Files
- CCMSetup.log – Provides information about client-based operating system actions.
- CreateTSMedia.log – Provides information about task sequence media when it is created. This log is generated on the computer running the Configuration Manager 2007 administrator console.
- DriverCatalog.log – Provides information about device drivers that have been imported into the driver catalog.
- MP_ClientIDManager.log – Provides information about the Configuration Manager 2007 management point when it responds to Configuration Manager 2007 client ID requests from boot media or PXE. This log is generated on the Configuration Manager 2007 management point.
- MP_DriverManager.log – Provides information about the Configuration Manager 2007 management point when it responds to a request from the Auto Apply Driver task sequence action. This log is generated on the Configuration Manager 2007 management point.
- MP_Location.log – Provides information about the Configuration Manager 2007 management point when it responds to request state store or release state store requests from the state migration point. This log is generated on the Configuration Manager 2007 management point.
- Pxecontrol.log – Provides information about the PXE Control Manager.
- PXEMsi.log – Provides information about the PXE service point and is generated when the PXE service point site server has been created.
- PXESetup.log – Provides information about the PXE service point and is generated when the PXE service point site server has been created.
- Setupact.log Setupapi.log Setuperr.log Provide information about Windows Sysprep and setup logs.
- SmpIsapi.log – Provides information about the state migration point Configuration Manager 2007 client request responses.
- Smpmgr.log – Provides information about the results of state migration point health checks and configuration changes.
- SmpMSI.log – Provides information about the state migration point and is generated when the state migration point site server has been created.
- Smsprov.log – Provides information about the SMS provider.
- Smspxe.log – Provides information about the Configuration Manager 2007 PXE service point.
- SMSSMPSetup.log – Provides information about the state migration point and is generated when the state migration point site server has been created.
- Smsts.log – General location for all operating system deployment and task sequence log events.
- TaskSequenceProvider.log – Provides information about task sequences when they are imported, exported, or edited.
- USMT Log loadstate.log – Provides information about the User State Migration Tool (USMT) regarding the restore of user state data.
- USMT Log scanstate.log – Provides information about the USMT regarding the capture of user state data.
Network Access Protection Log Files
- Ccmcca.log – Logs the processing of compliance evaluation based on Configuration Manager NAP policy processing and contains the processing of remediation for each software update required for compliance.
- CIAgent.log – Tracks the process of remediation and compliance. However, the software updates log file, *Updateshandler.log – provides more informative details on installing the software updates required for compliance.
- locationservices.log – Used by other Configuration Manager features (for example, information about the client’s assigned site) but also contains information specific to Network Access Protection when the client is in remediation. It records the names of the required remediation servers (management point, software update point, and distribution points that host content required for compliance), which are also sent in the client statement of health.
- SDMAgent.log – Shared with the Configuration Manager feature desired configuration management and contains the tracking process of remediation and compliance. However, the software updates log file, Updateshandler.log, provides more informative details about installing the software updates required for compliance.
- SMSSha.log – The main log file for the Configuration Manager Network Access Protection client and contains a merged statement of health information from the two Configuration Manager components: location services (LS) and the configuration compliance agent (CCA). This log file also contains information about the interactions between the Configuration Manager System Health Agent and the operating system NAP agent, and also between the Configuration Manager System Health Agent and both the configuration compliance agent and the location services. It provides information about whether the NAP agent successfully initialized, the statement of health data, and the statement of health response.
System Health Validator Point Log Files
- Ccmperf.log -Contains information about the initialization of the System Health Validator point performance counters.
- SmsSHV.log – The main log file for the System Health Validator point; logs the basic operations of the System Health Validator service, such as the initialization progress.
- SmsSHVADCacheClient.log – Contains information about retrieving Configuration Manager health state references from Active Directory Domain Services.
- SmsSHVCacheStore.log – Contains information about the cache store used to hold the Configuration Manager NAP health state references retrieved from Active Directory Domain Services, such as reading from the store and purging entries from the local cache store file. The cache store is not configurable.
- SmsSHVRegistrySettings.log – Records any dynamic changes to the System Health Validator component configuration while the service is running.
- SmsSHVQuarValidator.log – Records client statement of health information and processing operations. To obtain full information, change the registry key LogLevel from 1 to 0 in the following location:HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMSSHV\Logging\@GLOBAL
Desired Configuration Management Log Files
- ciagent.log – Provides information about downloading, storing, and accessing assigned configuration baselines.
- dcmagent.log – Provides high-level information about the evaluation of assigned configuration baselines and desired configuration management processes.
- discovery.log – Provides detailed information about the Service Modeling Language (SML) processes.
- sdmagent.log – Provides information about downloading, storing, and accessing configuration item content.
- sdmdiscagent.log – Provides high-level information about the evaluation process for the objects and settings configured in the referenced configuration items.
Wake On LAN Log Files
- Wolmgr.log – Contains information about wake-up procedures such as when to wake up advertisements or deployments that are configured for Wake On LAN.
- WolCmgr.log – Contains information about which clients need to be sent wake-up packets, the number of wake-up packets sent, and the number of wake-up packets retried.
Software Updates Site Server Log Files
- ciamgr.log – Provides information about the addition, deletion, and modification of software update configuration items.
- distmgr.log – Provides information about the replication of software update deployment packages.
- objreplmgr.log – Provides information about the replication of software updates notification files from a parent to child sites.
- PatchDownloader.log – Provides information about the process for downloading software updates from the update source specified in the software updates metadata to the download destination on the site server.
- replmgr.log – Provides information about the process for replicating files between sites.
- smsdbmon.log – Provides information about when software update configuration items are inserted, updated, or deleted from the site server database and creates notification files for software updates components.
- SUPSetup – Provides information about the software update point installation. When the software update point installation completes, Installation was successful is written to this log file.
- WCM.log – Provides information about the software update point configuration and connecting to the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server for subscribed update categories, classifications, and languages.
- WSUSCtrl.log – Provides information about the configuration, database connectivity, and health of the WSUS server for the site.
- wsyncmgr.log -Provides information about the software updates synchronization process.
WSUS Server Log Files
- Change.log – Provides information about the WSUS server database information that has changed.
- SoftwareDistribution.log – Provides information about the software updates that are synchronized from the configured update source to the WSUS server database.
Software Updates Client Computer Log Files
- CAS.log – Provides information about the process of downloading software updates to the local cache and cache management.
- CIAgent.log – Provides information about processing configuration items, including software updates.
- LocationServices.log – Provides information about the location of the WSUS server when a scan is initiated on the client.
- PatchDownloader.log – Provides information about the process for downloading software updates from the update source to the download destination on the site server. This log is only on the client computer configured as the synchronization host for the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates.
- PolicyAgent.log – Provides information about the process for downloading, compiling, and deleting policies on client computers.
- PolicyEvaluator – Provides information about the process for evaluating policies on client computers, including policies from software updates.
- RebootCoordinator.log – Provides information about the process for coordinating system restarts on client computers after software update installations.
- ScanAgent.log – Provides information about the scan requests for software updates, what tool is requested for the scan, the WSUS location, and so on.
- ScanWrapper – Provides information about the prerequisite checks and the scan process initialization for the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates on Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 clients.
- SdmAgent.log – Provides information about the process for verifying and decompressing packages that contain configuration item information for software updates.
- ServiceWindowManager.log – Provides information about the process for evaluating configured maintenance windows.
- smscliUI.log – Provides information about the Configuration Manager Control Panel user interactions, such as initiating a Software Updates Scan Cycle from the Configuration Manager Properties dialog box, opening the Program Download Monitor, and so on.
- SmsWusHandler – Provides information about the scan process for the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates on SMS 2003 client computers.
- StateMessage.log – Provides information about when software updates state messages are created and sent to the management point.
- UpdatesDeployment.log – Provides information about the deployment on the client, including software update activation, evaluation, and enforcement. Verbose logging shows additional information about the interaction with the client user interface.
- UpdatesHandler.log – Provides information about software update compliance scanning and about the download and installation of software updates on the client.
- UpdatesStore.log – Provides information about the compliance status for the software updates that were assessed during the compliance scan cycle.
- WUAHandler.log – Provides information about when the Windows Update Agent on the client searches for software updates.
- WUSSyncXML.log – Provides information about the Inventory Tool for the Microsoft Updates synchronization process. This log is only on the client computer configured as the synchronization host for the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates.
Windows Update Agent Log File
- WindowsUpdate.log – Provides information about when the Windows Update Agent connects to the WSUS server and retrieves the software updates for compliance assessment and whether there are updates to the agent components.
Available System Center 2012 Products:
- System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
(English) System Requirements > - System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
(English) System Requirements > - System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
(English) System Requirements > - System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
(English) System Requirements > - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
(English) System Requirements > - System Center App Controller 2012 Beta (Coming Soon)
- System Center Service Manager 2012 Beta (Coming Soon)
The Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit is the technical reference for the product. This book extends the product planning, deploying, and managing documentation in the Lync Technical Library. This book serves as a companion to the product documentation to learn how the product works under the hood.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=22644
Here is a great opportunity for those of you who use Lync Server 2010. This training includes deep technical content covering a variety of workloads, including deployment, management, voice, conferencing, high availability and monitoring. Sign up for one of the live online sessions below!
By Jason Perlow | September 14, 2011, 3:40am PDT
Summary: While Windows Client is getting all of the attention at Microsoft’s BUILD conference, a powerful Cloud enabled operating system waits patiently in the wings with Server 8.
Since last Thursday, I was ordered under strict nondisclosure to keep my mouth shut. And that was really hard for me to do because I could barely contain my enthusiasm for what is probably the most significant server operating system release that Microsoft has ever planned to roll out.
Nothing from Microsoft, and I mean literally nothing has ever been this ambitious or has tried to achieve so much in a single server product release since Windows 2000, when Active Directory was first introduced.
As of 6AM EST, the NDA I signed with Microsoft has been lifted. And now I am free tell you all about it.
Last week, a group of about 30 computer journalists were invited to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond to get an exclusive two-day preview of what is tentatively being referred to as “Windows Server 8″.
So much was covered in those two days that the caffeine-fueled and sleep-deprived audience was literally sucking feature and functionality improvements through a fire-hose.
We weren’t given any PowerPoints or code to take home — that material will be reserved for after the BUILD conference taking place in Anaheim this week, and I promise to get you galleries and demos of the technology as soon as I can.
Still, I did take enough notes to give you a brief albeit nowhere near complete overview of the Server OS that is likely to ship from Microsoft within the next year. And it will definitely make huge waves in the enterprise space, I guarantee.
It’s not fully known if “Windows Server 8″ is just a working title or if it is the actual product name, but what was shown to us in the form of numerous demos and about 20 hours of PowerPoints will be the Server OS that will replace Windows Server 2008 R2.
Server 8 will unleash a massive tsunami of new features specifically targeted at building and managing infrastructure for large multi-tenant Clouds, drastically increased scalability and reliability features in the areas of Virtualization, Networking, Clustering and Storage, as well as significant security improvements and enhancements.
Frankly, I am amazed by the amount of features — numbering in the hundreds — that have been added to this product, and how many are actually working right now given the Alpha-level code we were shown. In all the demos, very few glitches occurred, and much of the underlying code and functionality appears to be very mature.
It’s if we were shown were features that have been developed for several years, possibly going back as far as the Windows Vista release timeframe, which leads me to believe that a great deal of stuff was dropped on the cutting room floor in the Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 releases and was left out until it was truly ready for prime time.
We did see some new UI improvements — namely the new Server Manager, which has been designed to replace a lot of the MMC drill-down and associated snap-ins and is targeted towards sysadmins that need to manage multiple views of a large amount of systems simultaneously, based on actual services and roles running on the managed systems, using a “Scenario-Driven” user interface.
However, a lot of what we saw in terms of actual look-and feel was just standard old-school Windows UI, and a lot of PowerShell.
In fact, I would say that Microsoft is pushing PowerShell really hard to sysadmins because you can actually get some very sophisticated tasks done in only a single command, such as migrating one or multiple virtual machines to another host, or altering storage quotas.
Thousands of “Commandlets” for PowerShell have already been written, so as to take advantage of the scripting functionality and heavy automation that will be required for large scale Windows Server 8 and Cloud deployments.
This is not to say Windows 8 Server will be going all command-line Linux-y. There will be new significant UI peices, but Microsoft appears to have done their software development in reverse this time around — build the API layers and underlying engines first, and then write the UI layers to interface with it afterwards.
They’ve got a year now to polish the UI elements, a number of which we were told had some commonality with the “Metro” UI shown at BUILD for the WIndows 8 client. As I said, we didn’t get to see them at the special Reviewers Workshop, but I’ll show them to you as soon as I am able.
Microsoft also stressed that many of the APIs for various new features, including their entire management API will be opened for third party vendors to integrate with and so they could write their own UIs.
One of the ways they are going to do this is by releasing a completely portable, brand-new Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) CIM server called NanoWBEM for Linux, written by one of the main developers of of OpenPegasus, which has been designed to work Windows Server 8’s new management APIs, so that various vendors can build in the functionality into their products via a common provider interface.
While not strictly Open Source per se, NanoWBEM will be readily licensable to other companies, which is a big step for Microsoft in opening up interfaces into Windows managment.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) has also been enhanced considerably, as it now is capable of talking to WSMAN or DCOM directly. This makes it much easier for developers to write new WMI providers.
As to be expected of a Cloud-optimized Windows Server release, many enhancements are going to come in the form of improvements to Hyper-V. And boy are they big ones.
For starters, Hyper-V will now support up to 32 processors and 512GB of RAM per VM. In order to accomodate larger virtual disks, a new virtual file format, .VHDX, will be introduced and will allow for virtual disk files greater than 2 terabytes.
Not impressed? How about 63-node Hyper-V clusters that can run up to 4000 concurrent VMs simultaneously? No, I’m not joking. They actually showed it to us, for real, and it was working flawlessly.
Live Migration in Hyper-V has also been greatly enhanced — to the point where clustered storage isn’t even required to do a VM migration anymore.
Microsoft demonstrated the ability to literally “beam” — a la Star Trek — a virtual machine between two Hyper-V hosts with only an IP connection.
A VM on a developer’s laptop hard disk running on Hyper-V was sent over Wi-Fi to another Hyper-V server without any downtime — all we saw was a single dropped PING packet. We also observed the ability of Hyper-V to do live migrations across different subnets, with multiple live migrations being queued up and transferring simultaneously.
Microsoft told us that the limit to the amount of VM and storage migrations that could run simultaneously across a Hyper-V cluster was governed only by the amount of bandwidth that you actually have. No limits to the number of concurrent live migrations in the OS itself. None.
It should also be added that with the new SMB 2.2 support, Hyper-V virtual machines can now live on CIFS/SMB as well as NFS shares. The NFS server within Server 8 has also been completely re-written from the ground up.
Another notable improvements to Hyper-V will include “Hyper-V Replica” which is roughly analogous to the asynchronous/consistent replication functionality sold with Novell’s Platespin’s Protect 10 virtualization disaster recovery product. This of course will be a built-in feature of the OS and will not require additional licensing whatsoever.
The list of Hyper-V features goes on and on. A new Open Extensible Virtual Switch will allow 3rd-parties to plug into Hyper-V’s switch architecture. SR-IOV for privileged access to PCI devices has now been implemented as well as CPU metering and resource pools, which should be a welcome addition to anyone currently using them in existing VMWare environments to portion out virtual infrastructure.
VDI… Did I mention the VDI improvements? Windows Server 8’s Remote Desktop Session Host, or RDSH (what used to be called Terminal Server) now fully supports RemoteFX and is enabled by default out of the box.
What’s the upside to this? Well now you can put GPU cards in your VDI server so that your remote clients, be it terminals or tablets or Windows desktops that have the new RemoteFX-enabled RDP client software running can run multi-media rich applications remotely with virtually no performance degradation.
As in, completely smooth video playback on remote desktops, as well as the ability to experience full-blown hardware-accelerated Windows 7 Aero and Windows 8 Metro UIs with full DirectX10 and OpenGL 1.1 support on virtualized desktops.
This will work with full remote desktop UIs as well as “Published” applications, a la Citrix. And no, you won’t need Citrix Presentation Server in order to support load balanced remote desktop sessions anymore. It’s all built-in.
RemoteFX and the new RDSH is killer, but you know what’s really significant? You can template virtual desktops from a single gold master image stored on disk and instantiated in memory as a single VM and then customize individual sessions to have roaming profiles with customized desktops and apps and personal storage using system policy. That conserves a heck of a lot of disk space and memory on the VDI server.
Can you say hasta la vista, Citrix? I knew that you could.
One of the demos we saw using this technology was a 10-finger multitouch display running RDP and RemoteFX, with the Microsoft “Surface” interface virtualized over the network. It was truly stunning to see.
A number of network improvments have also been implemented that improve Hyper-V as well as all services and roles running on the Server 8 stack, which includes full network virtualization and network isolation for multi-tenancy environments.
This includes Port ACLs that can block by source and destination VM, implementations of Private VLANs (PVLAN), network resource pools and open network QoS as well as packet-level IP re-write with GRE encapsulation and consistent device naming.
Multi-Path I/O (MPIO) drivers (such as EMC’s PowerPath and IBM’s SDDPCM) when combined with Microsoft’s virtual HBA provider can also now be installed as virtualized fiber channel host bus adapters (HBA) within virtual machines, in order to take better advantage of the performance of enterprise SAN hardware and for VMs to have direct access to SAN LUNs.
Windows Server 8 will also include improved Offloaded Data Transfer, so that when you drag and drop files between two server windows, the server OS knows to transfer data directly from one system to another, rather than passing it through your workstation or through another server.
“Branch Caching” performance has also been improved and reduces the need for expensive WAN optimization appliances. Microsoft has also implemented a type of Bitorrent-like technology for the enterprise in branch offices that enables client systems to find the files they need locally on other client systems and servers instead of going across the WAN
Server 8 will also include built-in NIC teaming, a “feature” that has always been a part of Windows Server but has been provided in the past by 3rd-party vendors. With the new NIC teaming feature, network interface boards from different vendors can be mixed into bonded teams of trunked interfaces which will provide performance improvements as well as redundancy.
No more need for 3rd-party utilities and driver kits to do this.
Storage in Server 8 has also been greatly enhanced, most importantly the introduction of data de-duplication as part of the OS. Based on two years of work at Microsoft for just the algorithm alone, de-duplication uses commonality factoring to hugely compress the amount of data stored on a volume, with no significant performance implications.
Naturally, this also allows the backup window for a server with a de-duplicated file system to be reduced dramatically.
Oh and chkdsk? Huge storage volumes can be checked and fixed in an on-line state in a mere fraction of a time that it took before. Like, in ten percent of the time it used to.
Server 8 will have built in support for JBODs, as well as new support for SMB storage using RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) networks, allowing for large storage pools to be built with commodity 10 gigabit ethernet networks rather than much more expensive fiber-channel SAN technology. Microsoft also demonstrated the capability for Server 8 to “Thin Provision” storage on JBODs as well.
Clustered disks can now be fully encrypted using BitLocker technology and the new Clustered Shared Volume 2.0 implementation fully supports storage integration for built-in replication as well as hardware snapshotting.
And we saw a bunch of new storage virtualization stuff too. I didn’t take good notes that day, sorry.
I’m sure I’m leaving out a large number of other important things, including an all-new IP address managment UI (appropriately named IPAM) as well as some new schema extensions to Active Directory that greatly improves file security when using native Windows 8 servers. And all of the new stuff that’s been added to IIS and Windows’s networking stack in order to accomodate large multi-tenant environments and hybrid clouds.
By the end of the second day at the Windows Server 8 Reviewer’s Workshop I was literally ready to pass out from the sheer amount of stuff being shown to us, and my brain had turned to mush, but all of this should whet your appetites for Server 8 when I finally have some code running and can actually demonstrate some of this stuff.
While Microsoft has certainly gotten its act together with its last two Server releases in terms of basic stability, has brought it’s core OS up to date with Windows 7 and has made a good college try at virtualization with early releases of Hyper-V, I haven’t been truly excited about a Windows Server release in a long time.
Call me excited.
In my opinion, Server 8 changes everything, particularly from a complete virtualization and storage value proposition. CIOs are going to be very hard pressed to resist the product simply from all the stuff that you get built-in that you would otherwise have to spend an utter fortune on with 3rd-party products.
Are these new features worth the wait? Should Microsoft’s cloud and virtualization software competitors be worried? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
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