Microsoft Server Virtualization Training: Available Now

Our new Microsoft Server Virtualization training course is designed to give systems administrators a top-tier schooling on the functions of Hyper-V and System Center VMM 2008 R2. An overview of high availability, clustering, and migration of virtual machines from VMware to Microsoft Hyper-V provides a foundation for making under-utilized servers more agile.

The MS Server Virtualization course covers the basic concepts of virtualization, services of Hyper-V and System Center VMM, as well as some coverage for the Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization (70-659) certification exam. You’ll find advanced tutorials on how to store your virtual components with VMM, and use the Self-Service Portal to simplify user access. You’ll also learn how to manage virtualization hosts in one place, reducing work time, space, and kilowatt hours.

Instructor Ed Liberman has made several other Windows Server training courses for TrainSignal, and has been teaching beginner to advanced IT students since 1998. Ed emphasizes real-world application in all of his instruction, so you will see the direct benefits of the course to your work while you learn.

Our MS Server Virtualization training shows you how to use Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager like a real pro. Learn more and watch a demo from the course here.

• VMware uses Virtual Machine Disk Format — with the extension .vmdk
• Microsoft uses Virtual Hard Disk Format — with the extension .vhd

So when you need to convert a VMware VM to Hyper-V, or vice versa, the process becomes a little bit more involved.

However, Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager allows you to easily convert your existing VMware virtual machines to Hyper-V. In this video from my new Microsoft Server Virtualization Training I’ll walk you through the process of converting a VMware virtual machine to a Hyper-V virtual machine using System Center VMM 2008 R2.

For those of you who need to follow along, below is the step-by-step process for your reference.

Converting a VMware Virtual Machine to Hyper-V

Why would you need to convert an existing VMware virtual machine to a Hyper-V virtual machine? Well, maybe you’re in the process of testing the Hyper-V platform or maybe your organization is already migrating from the VMware platform to Hyper-V. Whatever the reason you might have, these step-by-step instructions can guide you through the conversion process.

For this procedure, we’ll be using the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).

1. First, go to your VMM Library and select the virtual machine you want to convert. In the Actions panel on the right, click Convert virtual machine.

2. This will bring up the Convert Virtual Machine Wizard. When you’re asked to select the source VM, click the Browse button.

3. You’ll then see the VM you selected earlier. Select it again and click OK.

4. Once you’re back to the wizard window, just click Next.

In the next window, you’ll be asked what name you’d like to assign to the virtual machine once it gets converted. You may leave it as is, otherwise, if you want a new name, change the name in the Virtual machine name: field.

You may also select an owner for that virtual machine as well as give it a description. When you’re done with those, click Next.

5. In the following window, specify the number of processors and memory size you want to allocate for this new VM. Click Next when done.

6. The next step is to specify a host for the virtual machine. There’s only one in the screenshot below, but you can actually see more if there are any. You can also view each host’s Rating, which is actually a rating VMM uses in evaluating how capable each of these hosts are in taking on the new VM. Naturally, the more stars there are on a host, the more capable it should be.

If you’re interested, you can even see the explanation of a particular host’s rating by navigating to the Rating Explanation tab for that host at the bottom of the page.

Once you’ve selected your desired host, just click the Next button.

7.You’ll then be asked to pick a path for your virtual machine. You can either choose the default path or browse and select a path you prefer. Take note of this path, as you’ll be needing it later when you search your Hyper-V server for files associated with the newly converted VM. After selecting a path, click Next.

8. If the virtual machine will be connected through a virtual network, you can also specify a particular virtual network. Click Next when done.

You will then need to specify a couple of Automatic start actions. That is, you will need to specify what action should be performed when the physical server starts and what action should be performed when the server stops.

For example, a usual choice for the first action is: Automatically turn on the virtual machine if it was running when physical server stopped, while Save State is a typical choice for the second.

Choose your desired actions from the drop-down lists and click Next when done.

11. At this point, you’ll be presented with a summary of all the settings you specified earlier. If everything looks fine, click Create.

12. This will bring up the Jobs window, where you’ll see the actual virtual to virtual conversion. It’s going to take quite a while for that conversion process to complete, so you may go ahead and do some other tasks in the meantime.

13. If everything goes perfectly well, you’ll simply see a Completed notice on the Status column. But since this is not a perfect world, you might actually encounter a Warning like the one below. It says that the task completed but that there’s some information you need to be aware of.

You can see details of that warning as well as some recommended actions.

Although some of these “errors” will require you to rectify the problem and do the entire process all over again, there are also “errors” that may not be too serious and can be remedied by working on the newly created virtual machine.

For example, a problem can occur if you fail to remove the VMware Tools from a VMware virtual machine before that VM is converted. If that happens, a possible solution would be to simply start the machine, get inside, mount the Integration Services CD/DVD and run the required utility from within.

If you’re confident you can easily rectify the problem later, just close the Jobs window and you’ll see the newly created Hyper-V virtual machine.

If you see it there, you can go to your Hyper-V server and navigate to the path that you specified earlier in the conversion process. You should see all the relevant files for that virtual machine in there.

Also, if you run your Hyper-V manager, you should see the newly created virtual machine in there as well.

That completes this virtual machine conversion from VMware to Hyper-V tutorial.

Ever since the late thirties, a computer has been a computer.

Ok, so let’s try to make that statement a little less weird.  Here we go…

Many of us our entire lives have had a very specific idea of what a computer is.  It’s physical parts: a processor, some form of memory, some form of long-term storage and some form of input and output devices that was assembled together.  Software was then installed on it to allow us to have an interface and actually use the hardware.  And it was good.

Then, an interesting phenomenon occurred.  Our hardware capabilities outgrew our software capabilities.  Our servers began to sit, many performing at no more than 15% of their hardware potential.  Company spreadsheet monkeys and environmentalists began to freak out (and that’s ok, they’re just doing their jobs).  There needed to be a way to utilize the unused power of our computer hardware.  Enter virtualization.

Virtualization allows us to create a “pretend” computer that looks real to a network, but is in fact using a “host” server for all of its processing power, memory and storage.  The benefit of virtualization is that it allows us to use all of the hardware power we’ve purchased in our servers while still maintaining separate computers for separate roles, like domain controllers and Exchange servers.

The Product: Microsoft Hyper-V

Since 2004, Microsoft has been in the virtualization arena, and in 2008 released Hyper-V (short for hyper-visor, a virtualization engine). Hyper-V is a free download and can be installed either directly onto a “bare metal” server or onto a server running Windows Server 2008 or higher. 

If you install it onto bare metal, you have the benefit of lower overhead and therefore more resources available for your VMs, but you don’t get a direct GUI for managing the VMs. Conversely, if you install the Hyper-V role in Server 2008, you’ll get a usable GUI, but will be short the license fee for server.

Hyper-V Minimum Requirements

As with anything computer related, these are the bare minimums you have to have it order for Hyper-V to technically work, but having more than the minimum will give you a better experience. 

So, here’s your starting point, remember, the further you go over your minimum, the better the experience:

• 64 bit processor, capable of hardware-assisted virtualization and hardware data execution prevention (aka DEP).  Look for “Intel Virtualization Technology” or “AMD Virtualization”.
• The minimum amount of RAM needed for your host OS + the virtual OS’s you’ll be installing.  If you plan on installing Windows Server 2008 R2 as the host and four virtualized Windows Server 2008 R2 machines, you’ll need – at a bare minimum – 5 GB or RAM – 1 GB for the host, 1 GB each for the four virtualized servers.
• At least one NIC if you want your virtual machines to access the network

How to Install the Hyper-V Role in Windows Server 2008

For this article, we’re assuming you want to install Hyper-V into an already running version of Windows Server 2008 or higher. For the screenshots and demonstration purposes, I’ll be using the full installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.

1. First things first, make sure you have the most up-to-date version of Hyper-V. If you’re still rocking the RTM version of Windows Server 2008, your version of Hyper-V is actually still the beta version.  Thankfully, Microsoft has updated Hyper-V since then, and you’ll need to obtain it either through Windows Update or via direct download here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123539

2. From your desktop, open Server Manager.  You can do this by clicking Start, right-clicking Computer and selecting Manage, or you can simply click the Server Manager shortcut on your taskbar. 

3. Right-click the Roles node and select Add Roles. 

4. This will open the Add Roles Wizard. 

Acknowledge the introduction and click Next.  Here, you will indicate which Server Role you want to install.  We, of course, will choose the Hyper-V role. 

5. Click Next past the Hyper-V Introductory screen, and you should see the Create Virtual Networks screen.  Select the NIC that you’ll want to use for creating the internal network that your host machine will use to forward packets to the virtual machine.  Realistically, you’ll want to install at least one physical card into your host machine for every virtual machine you plan on running. 

6. You’ll next receive a confirmation screen. Look over the settings and verify that they are correct. If you’re satisfied with them, click Install to begin the Hyper-V Role installation. 

Note that your server will need to reboot once installation is complete, so take that into consideration if this server is currently a production server.

7. After your server finishes its reboot cycle, open Server Manager and expand the Roles node  (see step 2).  You should see the final steps of your Hyper-V configuration. 

8. You are now ready to begin managing your very own Hyper-V irtual machines, either through the Hyper-V Manager MMC or through System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

As you can see, setting up Hyper-V on your Windows Server 2008 R2 computer is an extremely simple process, with dividends that will make both your boss and the environment happy. I hope this was a good introduction to Microsoft virtualization – there are lots of cool things virtualization allows us to do!

Veeam’s award winning products include Veeam Backup and Replication, Veeam Reporter and Veeam Monitor, along with a number of great free virtualization tools. Until today, Veeam has focused on supporting VMware infrastructures, developing products that work seamlessly with VMware ESXi and vSphere. But that’s all about to change.

At TechEd 2011 Veeam made a groundbreaking announcement; the #1 virtualization backup tool will soon have support for Microsoft Hyper-V and will include 3 key capabilities that virtualization admins are looking for to speed up recovery and minimize costs:

• Image-based backup and replication for Hyper-V
• Changed block tracking
• Deduplication and compression

Veeam’s support for Hyper-V will help administrator who are faced with managing multi-hypervisor environments, utilizing both VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. Veeam’s Backup and Replication version 6, which will be available in the fourth quarter of this year, will help fill the gap for those using Hyper-V alone or along with VMware ESXi.

Interview with Veeam’s Doug Hazelman

I got a chance to chat with Veeam’s Senior Director of Product Strategy, Doug Hazelman about the upcoming version of Veeam Backup and Replication tool when we met at TechEd. In our interview Doug touches on the big Hyper-V announcement as well as a number of other newsworthy topics, including the new management pack for System Center Operations Manager. Doug also shares some tips on getting started with Veeam’s free and paid tools and why you should try them.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Hyper-V support in Veeam Backup and Replication version 6, check out David Davis’ post Can Veeam do for Hyper-V what Microsoft Can’t? and Doug’s video on the VMware Backup coming to Hyper-V.

This new app is called “XVP Manager and Converter”. The name is deceiving as it doesn’t even mention Hyper-V, but the sole purpose of this application is to allow vCenter to manage Hyper-V servers and virtual machines. While you can’t actually configure the Hyper-V server, you can configure VMs, access the Hyper-V server, view performance stats and logs, and import Hyper-V VMs.

Of course, the true purpose for the XVP Manager is to get those using Hyper-V to move to vSphere — not keep the Hyper-V servers around.

In this video, you’ll see where I download the XVP Manager and Converter, get some idea of how and where it is installed, and see how it can help you by managing Hyper-V servers and VMs through the vSphere Client.

If you have a vSphere with vCenter and a Hyper-V server, you can try XVP Manager for free.

Here is the kicker: It has to be a SCSI hard drive. Why not IDE Disks? Your guess is as good as mine. However, dynamic storage having to be a SCSI drive won’t slow you down; when you create a VM with Hyper-V R2 you get a SCSI controller by default (this wasn’t true in Hyper-V non-R2).

This process really couldn’t be easier:

In the server manager under the Hyper-V node, bring up the settings for the VM you want to beef up.

Then just click on the SCSI Controller so that its properties show up in the right-hand pane. After that it is as easy as clicking Hard Drive and then the Add button.

Next a ridiculously easy wizard comes up and allows you to choose a disk type then give it a name, location, and size.

Now, the question is, can you do it from Starbucks on your iPhone?

I’m not sure if many of you were aware that this certification even exists, since it’s not as popular as the other Windows Server certifications. In fact, only a little bit over 2 thousand people hold the Hyper-V cert, compared to over 37, 35 and 28 thousand for Active Directory, Network Infrastructure, and Applications Infrastructure certifications, respectively.

Note: The above stats are from 9/9/09; to see more current stats go here.

Well, now that you’re aware of the Hyper-V cert let me give you all the info on what you need to do to get it.

Hyper-V Exam 70-652 Details

From what I heard, the number of exam questions is around 50 with approximately 90-120 minutes to complete them all. The passing score was reported to be the usual 700.

I hear that it has a lot more lab questions that any other MCTS exam.  Overall, however, this exam is not too difficult and with solid preparation and lots of practice you are guaranteed to ace it.

As always, I strongly suggest going through all the questions and answering the ones you know how to answer first.  While doing so, mark the ones that will take longer for you to answer as well as the ones you have no clue about. Once you go through all the questions and reach the final one on your first “round” go back and review the marked questions for the rest of the allotted time.

By using this method you will have a chance to answer all the questions you know and then spend the rest of your time on the ones that you might not be sure about. Be aware of changing your answers on the second run, though. Chances are your “gut feeling” was right and the answer you picked the first time is correct.

Trust me on this one, I learned the hard way

Hyper-V Exam 70-652 Topics

There are 4 main topics on the Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring exam:

• Installing Hyper-V (14%)
• Configuring and Optimizing Hyper-V (20%)
• Deploying Virtual Machines (30%)
• Managing and Monitoring Virtual Machines (36%)

Make sure you know how to deploy, configure and manage Hyper-V machines since it accounts for nearly 2/3 of the exam questions.

I also found out through lots of forums and the nice people who shared their exam experiences that you need to be familiar with SCVMM08 (Systems Center, Virtual Machine Manager), clustering/quick migration requirements, how to use snapshots withing Hyper-V, Authorization Manager, iSCSI configuration for failover clustering, and versioning information for both VMs and Host Servers.

More details about the topics covered are included on this Microsoft page.

Where to Start

You need to start with a good source of information for learning the theory behind virtualization. You can either buy a book or get a training video for this.

Next you need to get yourself a testing environment and put the theory into practice. This should be quite easy since all you need is one decent machine on which you can run multiple virtual machines, or should I say, Hyper-V machines.

As far as hardware is concerned, I would suggest getting at least 4GB of RAM and at least 200GB of hard disk space. You want to be able to run a couple VMs at the same time and still have decent speed.

If you decide to prepare with our Hyper-V training, Coach will show you step-by-step how to create multiple virtual machines to use for practice plus lots of other cool stuff.

Don’t I Need Experience?

Microsoft suggests that you have “at least one and a half years of experience working in Windows Server 2003 and/or Windows 2008 Server environments as system administrators.”  In addition it states that you should be familiar with virtualization products and technologies.”

This is a pretty typical suggestion from Microsoft, they want to make sure that you get enough experience with the technology before you start preparing for the exam.

I would like to add to that and say that if you don’t have the 1.5 years of experience you can make up some of the lost time by practicing.

Start by building your own virtual environment and practice, practice, practice. Break your virtual machines, fix them, and learn as much as you can. Remember that re-creating your VMs is a quick and easy fix, but that’s not the true fix; you should be able to fix them without re-creating them. Find out what went wrong so you can be a real professional in a production environment and on the job.

Practice is also the best way to learn the material for the exam, so make sure you’re getting enough of it.

Why Do I Want to Get Hyper-V Certified?

Virtualization is becoming more and more popular, which means Virtualization experts are becoming more and more in demand.

The Hyper-V certification will give you an edge over your competitors in job searching. As I mentioned in the beginning, there aren’t a lot of Hyper-V experts out there and this cert will give you a chance to become one.

By preparing for and passing the 70-652 exam you will be able to show prospective employers that you’re proficient in setting up, configuring and managing Hyper-V, which should also make you eligible for that promotion or raise you’ve been looking to score.

In my previous posts we talked about the usability as well as features of both:  Hyper-V and VMware.  It’s time to talk about the cost of each of these solutions.

A lot of you probably want to know which one is cheaper.  Well, this is not an easy question to answer.  There are a lot of factors that need to be considered when calculating the final cost. The total price for virtualizing your environment will depend on your current infrastructure — what Operating Systems currently run on your servers, how many servers are you going to virtualize, what functionality you’re most interested in, and few others.

A word of caution — the articles and blog posts that make the argument that one solution is cheaper than the other should be taken with a grain of salt. The authors are making a lot of assumptions that may not align with your environment and infrastructure, so don’t take anyone’s word — do your research.

Evaluating Cost of Hyper-V

Hyper-V might be significantly more affordable for a company that already invested into a lot of Microsoft products.  So for example, if all of your servers that will be virtualized have Microsoft Server 2003 and/or 2008 installed on them using Hyper-V is going to be a lot cheaper than using any other virtualization solution.  Hyper-V can be installed on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 for free.

Unfortunately you will still need to invest in the following:

• System Center Server Management Suite
• System Center Configuration Manager
• System Center Operations Manager Server
• System Center Data Protection Manager

Also, keep in mind the limits of Hyper-V when it comes to RAM and processors.  All these items may bring your Hyper-V solution’s costs up.

Evaluation Cost of VMware

If you are downloading the free ESXi version of VMware the cost of your virtualization software is, well free, even for a Microsoft shop.  But as you probably already know, with ESXi you are not getting all the bells and whistles and this solution might not be sufficient for your virtualization needs, especially if you work for a bigger company.

VMware vSphere 4 currently starts at around $1K. The price goes up with the number of different features that are available.

If you are interested in vCenter you need to be prepared to spend around $6K.  The price tag on vCenter might look shocking to some of you but you need to take into consideration all the features that vCenter will provide for you.  Here is a quick list of what is included with vCenter.  For more details and information visit this VMware page.

• Centralized Control and Deep Visibility into Virtual Infrastructure
• Proactive Management of VMware vSphere
• A Scalable and Extensible Management Platform
• Distributed Resource Optimization
• High Availability
• Security

As you can see the price can climb pretty high but it can also be cost efficient when compared to Hyper-V if you are virtualizing hundreds of servers that have multiple OSs.

Conclusions?

You need to keep in mind that with both Hyper-V and VMware you are obligated to buy licenses for every operating system you run on your servers whether it is Windows, Linux, or anything else.

Also, as I mentioned at the beginning, beware of reviews and articles that claim one solution has lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and high ROI (Return on Investment) than the other — this is unique to your situation and it is only up to you to decide.

VMware has an awesome TCO Calculator that will help you calculate your potential cost savings when using VMware virtualization.   It is pretty self explanatory and quite easy to use – try giving it a shot.

What do our Hyper-V and VMware instructors have to say?

Coach Culbertson, who is all about Hyper-V, says:

“I’d take Hyper-V over VMware due to the fact that Microsoft knows Microsoft. In building out virtual networks on Hyper-V, I haven’t encountered any weirdness, and it just works. I have had multiple instances of stuff not working in VMware that work exactly like they should in Hyper-V.

Another benefit to Hyper-V is I don’t have to pay a billion dollars for extra software licensing. With the recent advent of Microsoft releasing Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (LinuxIC), plus the current backwards compatibility for older OS’s, Hyper-V is going to quickly become a one-stop shop for virtualization. For the needs of most sysadmins, Hyper-V will be a cost effective solution that’ll get the job done in less time for less money.

Plus, faster snapshots. Just sayin’.”

David Davis, who loves VMware, says:

“To me, VMware is the winner due to its memory over commitment and ballooning features.  You can get many more guest VMs on a single physical server than you can with Hyper-V. Thus, you will need fewer servers to virtualize the same number of physical servers into guest VMs with VMware, than you would with Hyper-V.

Also, the VMware product is so much more mature. VMware has a 10 year development lead on Microsoft and it shows with so many advanced features — Vmotion, SVMotion, DRS, VMHA, DRS and now new features like FT and Data Recovery. Microsoft is still trying to catch up with the features from ESX 3.0 (and they aren’t really close yet).

PLUS, third party products — there are a zillion of them for VMware and like “none” for Hyper-V.”

Good luck in your decisions.  Feel free to ask questions and I will do my best to help you get the right answers.  Once you are successful in virtualizing your server infrastructure let us know which solution you chose (and why) and how it worked out!

Last week I talked about Hyper-V and VMware usability. In this article I want to talk about all the different features available for both — Hyper-V and VMware. 

Just like in the first article I am not going to suggest which one is better or which one is worse — this is for you to decide. I will just list the features and give you a very quick overview of what they will do for you.

If you’re interested in any of these features I would suggest doing some more research to find out if a specific solution is compatible with your current network infrastructure.

Ready? Here we go.

Hyper-V Features

Here is a list of Hyper-V features on Server 2008:

• Quick Migration – this features will let you, the administrator, to quickly move virtual machines from one host to another which means minimal downtime.
• High Availability – with Hyper-V you will be able to cluster your virtual machines on a specific host.
• Server Core Role – you can install Hyper-V by going to Add Role on Windows Server 2008. This is a very quick and easy installation.
• Integrated into Server Manager – the Hyper-V Manager is integrated into Server Manager providing the typical Microsoft look and feel. You can now add the Hyper-V role from Server Manager as well.
• Live Backups with VSS - this features is also called snapshots. It is provided by Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) Service and it allows you to take a live backup of a running virtual machine.
• VHD Tools – this enables you to do compaction, expansion, and inspection of any Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) that was created with Hyper-V.
• Linux Integration Components – these SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 components enable Xen-enabled Linux for VSP/VSC architecture as well as improved performance.
• VM Manageability – you can now import and export Virtual Machine (VM) settings for backups or for cloning purposes. You can clone the VMs not only on a specific host but across different hosts.
• Improved Performance – Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 now include integration components.
• Improved Access Control with AzMan – Authorization Manager (AzMan) enables Role-Based Access Control which provides better administration of Hyper-V environment with increased security.
• Remote Management – you can now install Hyper-V MMC on a separate management node.
• Increased Virtual SCSI Support – provides support up to 4 virtual SCSI controllers per VM which provides a broader disk support.
• Increased Memory Support – now up to 64GB of memory per VM.
• Quick Reset – you, as the administrator, can now quickly Reset Checkboxes and delete all saved credentials used for connection to VMs.

For all of you who are about to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft also provides the following features:

• Live Migration Feature for Failover Clusters - this feature will allow you to move virtual machines from one host to another without any interruption of service.
• Better Fault Tolerance and Cluster Validation Tool
• Enhancements to the Hyper-V Manager
• Better Virtual Networking – there are few new network technologies improving the overall VM network performance. Two of them are: VM Chimney (a.k.a. TCP Offload) and Jumbo Frames.
• Hot-Switching of VHDs – you can now add and remove VHD files without rebooting your virtual machine. This provides a lot more flexibility when it comes to storage needs and growth.

I think the biggest feature available with Windows Server 2008 R2 is the Live Migration feature. This feature has been available with VMware for quite some time and I know a lot of Microsoft lovers were waiting for it for quite some time.

VMware vSphere Features

VMware vSphere editions offer a different set of features which I will also go over with you.  Based on what features you are interested in you can pick the specific VMware edition

• Thin Provisioning – this feature provides increased storage utilization, enhanced application uptime, and simplified storage capacity management.
• VC Agent – VirtualCenter Agent will allow you to collect, communicate, and execute actions received from the VirtualCenter Server.
• Update Manager - will allow you to automate all patches and updates.
• VMSafe – with VMSafe your virtual datacenter can be more secure than physical environment.
• vStorage APIs – enables backup software to perform scalable, centralized backup of your virtual machines without disturbing your users.
• High Availability (HA) – this feature is slightly different from the Hyper-V HA. VMware offers HA across your entire virtualized environment without the cost or complexity of clusters.
• Data Recovery – this is a disk-based backup and recovery solution that provides quick, simple and complete data protection for your virtual machines.
• Hot Add – will allow you to perform dynamic, on the fly change to Virtual Machine resource.
• Fault Tolerance – This feature, based on vLockstep technology provides zero downtime and zero data loss without the clustering solution.
• vShield Zones – with this feature you will be able to run applications efficiently within a shared resource pool and at the same time maintain trust and network segmentation of users and sensitive data.
• VMotion – this is a VMware version of Live Migration, which will enable you to move a virtual machine from one physical server to another.
• Storage VMotion – this type of Live Migration will allow you to move virtual machine disk files between different physical servers while maintaining service availability.
• DRS+DPM – Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) provides constant monitoring of utilization across resource pools while Distributed Power Management (DPM) optimizes power consumption in your datacenter.
• vNetwork Distributed Switch – will provide a centralized point of controller for cluster level networking. It simplifies and enhances the provisioning, administration, and monitoring of Virtual Machine Networking.
• Host Profiles – this is a new feature included in vSphere that ensures a level of configuration standardization and compliance across your hosts.
• Third Party Multipathing – this feature is provided by Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) that allows workload balancing and high availability.

Now you can go over and see which features you will need or want to use in your environment. You should seriously consider them all before choosing one of these virtualization solutions. 

For more information on Hyper-V features visit Windows Server 2008 site and Windows Server 2008 R2 site. 

If you want to find out more about VMware features visit VMware vSphere Editions Comparison.

Mel and I recently did a bonus video on how to install SQL Server 2008 on Hyper-V for our SQL Server 2008 Administration and Hyper-V trainings and today we wanted to share a short clip from that video.

The complete video on how to install SQL Server on Hyper-V will be available as a bonus video in both the Hyper-V and SQL Server 2008 Administration courses.

So check out the short video clip and let us know what you think!

Which is better — Hyper-V or VMware?

Many will argue one way or another, but there is no real answer. The reality is that both of these are great virtualization solutions and it is up to you to choose the one that works best for your situation.

So today I have decided to do something different. Instead of comparing Hyper-V and VMware with different comparison tables and charts (as many websites have been doing) I want to talk about these two virtualization solutions as two separate entities.

I’m not going to push my opinions on you and tell you that one is superior over the other, instead I’m simply going to help you make the right decision by giving you all the facts.

Before you decide which solution to choose, you need to examine your current infrastructure, find out how many servers you are going to virtualize, what functionality and management options you are looking for, and how much your company is willing to invest in this project.

Once you have all these answers you can then look into the different virtualization solutions and decide which one would best fit your scenario. This is not an easy task so take your time and do your research.

Virtualization may save you tons of money and if done properly you can maximize these benefits, so take advantage — but don’t choose one over the other just because someone said it is “better”.

In today’s article I’m going to talk about Hyper-V and VMware’s usability — how easy it is to use their interfaces, what are some of their benefits, and how much training you are going to need before you’re able to utilize them.

Hyper-V Usability

Hyper-V is quite easy to understand and use, especially for Microsoft people. It has the Microsoft look and feel so you won’t have to get used to a different GUI.

The Hyper-V role is easy to install and the Hyper-V Manager is integrated into Server Manager so, as you can imagine, the look is identical.  You have all your Virtual Machines listed in the middle, followed below by their snapshots and some detailed information about the VMs.  On the right side you get a nice Actions column with all the necessary options.

So really, once you get Hyper-V installed, your virtual machines created, and servers migrated, it shouldn’t take long before you can fully manage your virtual infrastructure, especially if you’re used to Windows Server.

VMware Usability

VMware ESXi and vSphere are a little different and it may take some time to get used to for some people, especially for Microsoft guys and gals. But there is nothing difficult about it — it’s just different.

With ESXi (the free VMware version) you get a very nice window with multiple, easy to read tabs that are quite self explanatory.

As for vSphere you have 3 management options. For those of us who love GUIs, you have vSphere client and vSphere Web Access. They are both very similar and very easy to understand — you get your tabs on top and necessary commands in the right column.

vSphere Client:

vSphere Web Access:

Command-line junkies have their own way of managing vSphere. There is not much I can explain here though — you get a black window with a command prompt.

Once you get them installed and VMs configured you should be able to manage them pretty easily.

Linux/Unix people will probably love the command-line option for managing their VMs and the rest of us will probably pick either the Client or Web Access to do our jobs.

How Much Training Will You Need?

I think it’s a great idea to get some type of training on either one of the virualization solutions you select.  Sure you might be able to “figure things out” but the training will save you a lot of time and money, trust me.

By teaching yourself you will probably need lots of time in your test environment to do “trial and error” type of stuff, figuring things out, how they work, what they do, how the specific settings will affect your network, etc.  You will break things, maybe configure them incorrectly and therefore lose the cost efficiency that you are looking for.

Don’t get me wrong, trial and error and playing around with technology is a great way to learn, but it is much more efficient to have some guidance in the form of training. And I’m not just saying that because I work at Train Signal; I’ve passed my share of certifications and I’ve mastered many different technologies including virutalization.

Getting your hands on some training will eliminate all the frustration and you are not going to waste valuable time. You will get your questions answered and you will find out some awesome tips and tricks.

So get a book or a training video and get it done the right way.  Once you find out how, when, where and why — virtualization will not only be a breeze, it will be your favorite technology to use.

To celebrate the release I’m going to show you how to create a new virtual machine using Hyper-V and Server 2008. Last week I did an installation walk-through to show you just how easy installing Hyper-V on your Server 2008 really is. Today we’ll go a step further and create our very first virtual machine. Don’t worry, this part is easy too — follow my step-by-step instructions and you will have your virtual machine in no time.

Create a Virtual Machine with Hyper-V & Server 2008

1. To start, login to your Server where Hyper-V is installed and open up Server Manager.

2. Next, click on New in the right column.

3. A small pop-up window should show up with three options:

• Virtual Machine…
• Hard Disk…
• Floppy Disk…

Go ahead and select Virtual Machine.

4. The New Virtual Machine Wizard window should pop up.  At this point you have the option to click Finish if you want to create a virtual machine that is configured with default values per Microsoft. 

I’m going to show you how to select your own options, so instead we are going to click Next.

5. In the next window we need to specify a name for our virtual machine. In this example, I’m going to use the name “BaseInstallation2K8″. 

We also need to specify the location where we are going to store our virtual machine. Now keep in mind that if you are going to use the snapshot feature, you will need enough space to store your virtual machine together with your snapshots. 

I would also not recommend storing it on your C:\.  The choice is yours, however, and in this example we are going to select our G:\ drive where there is plenty of space for the VM as well as multiple snapshots. 

After you’ve made your selection, click Next.

6. On this screen we need to assign memory for our new Virtual Machine. Please note that this memory will be deducted from your physical machine’s memory so make sure to leave some memory for your server to operate on. 

I’m going to leave the default of 512MB and click Next.

7. Now we need to select the type of connection we want for this machine.  As you can see the default option is “Not Connected”. 

There is another option that we have — this option was created when we installed our Hyper-V — “NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller – Virtual Network”. 

Let’s select the virtual network and click Next.

8. Next we’re going to create our virtual hard disk. 

Make sure the name, location and size is correct and let’s leave the defaults for now. When ready click Next.

9. And finally we have a few options for installing an Operating System:

• we can install an OS later
• boot from a cd/DVD-ROM or .ISO file
• boot from floppy disk
• or install it from a network

In our example we have created an .ISO image file and we are going to select it for our OS.  Once you have made your selection, click Next.

10. Double check your summary window before clicking Finish. We will also select the check mark next to “Start the virtual machine after it is created” and then hit Finish.

Congrats! Your first virtual Machine in Hyper-V has been created.  Now, wasn’t that easy?

It will take you less than 7 minutes and only 7 easy steps.

And in case you haven’t seen my previous Hyper-V article, check out my 7 Awesome Things You Can Do With Hyper-V.

How to Install Hyper-V on Server 2008

To begin, make sure you are logged in to your Windows Server 2008 machine and your Server Manager is open.

1. Click on Roles and then on Add Roles option in the right column.

2. In the Before You Begin window you can check a box next to Skip this page by default. This is only an informational page and after reading it once you will probably never want to read it again. So to skip it you can check the box here and when ready, click Next.

3. In this step you need to select the role you want to install, which is Hyper-V, then click Next.

4. Read through the information about Hyper-V and when ready, click Next.

5. Our physical machine has two network controllers. What we’re going to do now is select which one is going to be utilized by Hyper-V for our network connectivity.

In my example I’m going to select the first local area connection and then click Next. You should select whatever works best for your network.

6. Make sure all your choices are correct and when ready, click Install.

7. Once the installation is completed you will see your Installation Results page. Go ahead and click Close — your Hyper-V installation has been successful!

Next Time

In my next article I’ll walk you through creating a new virtual machine in Hyper-V.

Today I’d like to talk about a few cool things that you can do with Hyper-V.

1. Consolidate Servers — Decrease Your Hardware Footprint

Have you ever seen a typical data center? No? Check out the image below.

Overwhelming, isn’t it?  All you see are racks with servers and then some more racks with servers.  There are hundreds and sometimes thousands of servers in a single data center. 

Imagine buying all these machines and then getting a big enough room with special a cooling system and security to store them in.  And that’s just the basics.

With Hyper-V you can consolidate all these machines and reduce the space required to store them. By investing in one or a few mega machines (depending on your situation) you can move 5, 10 or maybe even 50 servers onto a single machine. If you purchase the Datacenter edition of Server 2008 you can have unlimited number of virtual machines.

Don’t you think this is a great idea?

2. Save Energy, Save Money!

Once you move from hundreds of servers to let’s say a dozen you will start seeing the real benefits — savings in energy and money.

Since you’re not using as much energy to power up and cool your data center you are helping the environment and saving your company money. Lowering energy consumption should be a goal for every company, and Hyper-V makes this possible.

3. Run Linux/Unix OS on Microsoft Servers

Hyper-V also allows you more flexibility. Having different operating systems on your servers is no longer an issue. Using Hyper-V you can install any type of operating system on your virtual machine, so that you can have a Unix based system inside a Microsoft environment and vice versa.

Hyper-V helps you increase flexibility while minimizing limitations.

4. Create Multiple Testing Environments

One of my absolute favorite things about Hyper-V is that it makes testing so much easier.

Say your company is thinking about getting new software, or a new program for all of the employees and you want to test it to make sure it will work properly. The old way was to find a few machines to install the software or program on and then test it by trying to recreate the production environment as much as possible. Then when something breaks and your computer crashes you have to start over. This is a time consuming process and not an easy one.

Hyper-V allows you to create testing environments within minutes. And before installing the new software or program that you need to test you simply take a snapshot of your machine so that if something goes wrong and it crashes you can go back and try again. Easily and in no time.

Hyper-V makes testing more thorough and more detailed because you can concentrate on the actual testing.

5. Deploy Server in 10 Minutes or Less!

So I know you’re thinking that everyone knows that it takes more than 10 minutes to install ANY operating system. And you’re right; the initial install will take longer — but with Hyper-V you may only have to do that once. Let me explain.

Let’s say you install Server 2008 on your first virtual machine. Before making any changes to that server, simply save it as a base installation and make it a read-only server. Once you have your base install all you have to do is copy it (which takes about 10 seconds) and make changes to it, such as your IP address, computer name, role installs, etc.

Any install you do after that is a copy of your initial install so it takes no time at all.

This must be the favorite of any Server admin.

6. Access Multiple Servers with Minimal Movement

No more running around the data center from one corner to another trying to access different servers.  With Hyper-V you won’t have to move a muscle, well … maybe a muscle or two, but definitely not your legs.  You still need your fingers, sorry. 

You will be able to login to your Hyper-V machine and start, reboot, update, modify all of them from one central location.

7. Improve Business Continuity

With Hyper-V you are able to create and/or improve your disaster recovery solutions as well as high availability of your servers. 

Hyper-V provides both Network Load Balancing as well as Clustering to improve your business continuity. It’s already included — all you have to do is set it up and watch it work.  It will save your company in case of a disaster for no additional cost on your end.

See What Hyper-V Can Do For You

Hyper-V can be extremely beneficial to you, the administrator, as well as your company.  It can help you lower energy consumption and cost, increase the value of your hardware, increase the flexibility of your IT environment, save you time and so much more. Hyper-V gives you the benefits of both Server 2008 and virtualization in a single solution.

Now that you’re aware of the basics, here’s where you can get more information on Hyper-V:

• Hyper-V FAQ
• Hyper-V Getting Started Guide
• Microsoft’s Hyper-V website
• Download Hyper-V

And stay tuned for our awesome Hyper-V Training — coming soon!

If you can’t shell out the dollars for System Center Virtual Machine Manager, this might just be an option for your migration to the wonderful world of virtualization.

If you’re not familiar with Windows Deployment Services or Hyper-V in Server 2008, you might want to check out some in-depth training for it. We’ve also got a few articles covering WDS in case you’re interested and an intro to WDS video.

Enjoy!