The things that are better left unspoken

A Best Practice approach to updating Hyper-V environments

2008-11-28T20:33:32Z

Updating environments with Hyper-V can be more of a challenge compared to updating an environment that consists of mere physical servers. Not only the workloads need regular updating, but also the Windows servers and Hyper-V servers underneath them.

The challenges

Hyper-V relies on a Parent Partition, whether you're using a Full installation of Windows Server 2008, a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 or the stand-alone Hyper-V Server. When you restart the Parent Partition your Child Partitions will also be paused. How to plan your maintenance window?

Updates can result in loss of functionality. Even though updates get tested thoroughly there is a chance a series or combination of updates or an incompatibility with a third party application or service hangs up your server or results in unexpected behavior. When you install any update it's hard to troubleshoot these kinds of situations: which update resulted in the situation?

Some updates address security holes and require immediate installation in some situations: The risk of breaking stuff outweighs the risk of getting compromised.

A Best Practice approach

WSSRA

Within a good design for any environment a difference would be made between physical and virtual machines, safe and unsafe(r) networks, application-, messaging-, directory-, database- and security services.

The Windows Server System Reference Architecture (WSSRA) comes to mind. The basis of this architecture is to unravel an environment into five layers, (network, storage, application, management and security) supplying guidance for meeting the requirements of an enterprise. The purpose of this guidance is to build highly available, secure, scalable, manageable, and reliable enterprise infrastructure.

Virtual environments

The same architectural approach can also be applied to virtual environments. The logical division would be virtual infrastructure, hosts and workloads. In a Microsoft server environment this would mean a divide between:

Level	Description	Examples
1	Virtual infrastructure	Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V Hyper-V Server 2008
2	Hosts	Windows 2000 Server Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008
3	Workloads	Exchange Server 2007 SQL Server 2008 Terminal Services Applications (like Office 2007)

Patching goals

In a reference architecture patching would yield three goals:

Patched systems
Predictable downtime during maintenance windows
Possibilities for investigation of relationships between patches and loss of functionality / availability

Formulating best practices

Patched systems

Not all updates need to be applied immediately

Software products need to be patched to provide security and functionality. Not every patch is important, depending on your situation. When the main focus for some systems is to secure systems you need to apply all security updates immediately. When your systems perform loads of transaction to other countries, you'd better apply all Daylight Savings Time (DST) patches, otherwise you can delay applying the updates a little while.

Microsoft offers three levels of updates: Important, Recommended and Optional.
Decide for yourself which updates need to be applied and when they need to be applied.

Test or delay updates

You'd better test updates in a test environment when systems are mission critical. The dependency on these systems usually justify the cost of a test environment. When you don't have a test environment wait at least until the third Tuesday of every month (a week after Patch Tuesday) and search online for any signs of updates breaking functionality or availability.

Virtualization offers flexible means to test updates. Snapshot functionality even allows a rollback scenario for updates. Remember though problems may occur on physical machines that you might not experience in virtual machines…

Predictable downtime

Automatically applying updates

Windows offers functionality to apply updates immediately. By default updates will be applied at night around 3:00 AM. This may not be an ideal method to apply updates:

A branch office on the other side of the world might be using the system at that time
The updates might be applied during backup, defragmentation or other maintenance

Furthermore this setting doesn't offer much control. In a small environment without a dedicated systems manager the setting would sound logical, but in large environment choosing the setting is illogical.

Windows Server Update Services

A means to gain control over updates and when (parts of) your servers restart (services) to apply updates is to use Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Using Organizational Units and Group Policy Objects (GPOs) you can divide servers into logical groups. Setting the Microsoft products for which to apply updates, setting when to apply updates and whether to restart automatically are examples of how to control updating in your environment.

Optionally you can distribute 3rd party applications and updates through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) by using the Local Publishing feature in the WSUS 3.0 SP1 API.

Even more control can be obtained using System Center Configuration Manager. The WSUS server integration with Configuration Manager 2007 allows to scan all clients in the organization and apply the updates.

Maintenance windows

End users don’t like to be confronted with downtime, but if they do, they prefer it to be announced in advance and have a fair amount of regularity. An IT department, that arranges a default maintenance window on Friday from 18:00 to 21:00 will receive less complaints, less questions and less frustration from end users, compared to an IT department, that organizes maintenance windows irregularly. Good candidates for maintenance windows are:

The company’s weekly happy hour
A departments weekly birthday cake eating hour
Lunch time

Rogue Patch investigation

A critical element in updating your Microsoft environment is investigating which update was responsible for which broken functionality. (if any) This element is more important in virtualized environments, compared to physical environments, since a rogue patch on the Windows Server in the virtualization layer may cause serious problems for all virtual guests residing on the box.

Phased updating

In combination with the suggestion of having a maintenance window every week I suggest updating per logical layer. (virtual environment, virtual hosts, workloads) For instance this would result in a maintenance window for the virtual environment (where all virtual guests will go down temporarily when the virtual host reboots) every first Friday of the month, a maintenance window for all virtual Operating Systems running every second Friday of the month and a maintenance window for workloads running in the virtual guests (for instance Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server) every third Friday of the month. One whole maintenance window remains to do maintenance on the Storage Area Network (SAN), the network, etc.

Depending on your environment you’d place your most critical layer on the second Friday of the month after you’ve tested them, since Microsoft releases updates every second Tuesday of the month. (except out-of-band updates) When you delay your updates (in lack of testing) place your most critical layer on the third Friday of the month.

Using snapshots

Creating a snapshot in Hyper-V before applying updates allows you to rollback updates in case of broken functionality. When everything’s fine you can ‘flatten’ the snapshot by applying the snapshot, shut down the virtual machine and allow sufficient time for the disk changes to be merged into the main VHD.

Note:
Using snapshots may not be a good idea in combination with certain workloads (read: Active Directory Domain Controllers) or availability needs. (with large updates the virtual machine may need to be off for a long period of time)

Concluding

Below are five of my best practices for updating virtual environments to control the updates to your virtual server environment, control the downtime and be able to address issues with rogue updates:

Distinguish a virtualization layer, a virtual guests layer and a workload layer. Plan an update strategy per layer.
Don’t install updates automatically unless it makes sense. (it rarely does)
Use Windows Server Update Services whenever possible.
Test or delay updates.
Plan maintenance windows.

(Manually) Updating Server Core
(Automatically) Updating Server Core
Analyzing the Server Core Updates Estimate

Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 4

2008-11-21T16:33:56Z

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter Edition offers the ability to make virtual machines highly available by leveraging failover clustering. This however is not a good idea in the case of Active Directory Domain Controllers.

In this post I’ll explain why Hyper-V High Availability for Domain Controllers is not a good idea and how to make Active Directory Domain Controllers highly available in a much easier, more cost effective way.

How Hyper-V High Availability works

When combining the Hyper-V Server Role with the Failover Clustering role in Windows Server 2008 you effectively create a High Available solution for virtual machines, stored on shared storage.

In it’s easiest (and most common) form two cluster nodes (“virtual hosts”), installed with Windows Server 2008 (Enterprise or Datacenter Edition), the Hyper-V Server Role and the Failover Clustering Server Role are attached to a shared storage device, where the files for a virtual machine (“virtual guest”) are stored.

One of the cluster nodes (“virtual host”) is the active node and runs the virtual machine (“virtual guest”). The other cluster node (“virtual host”) is the passive node. Both cluster nodes communicate through a heartbeat. That way the passive node can detect when the active node fails and become the active node. This is called a ‘failover’. The failover action can also be triggered manually.

The failover process

When a failover occurs behind the scenes the following actions occur:

The virtual machine (“virtual guest”) is paused on the active node.
The memory is written to *.vsv and *.bin files in the process.
The ownership of the shared storage volume on which the virtual machines files are stored, is transferred from the active node to the passive node. The active node loses its ability to access the files for the virtual machine (“virtual guest”) and effectively becomes the passive node. The former passive node gains control of the shared storage volume and can now access the NTFS file system on the shared storage device.
The virtual machine (“virtual guest”) is resumed on the former passive node.

Another word for this behavior is called ‘Quick Migration’. The downtime for the virtual machine (“virtual guest”) depends on the amount of RAM assigned to the virtual machine (“virtual guest”).

Domain Controller High Availability

Doing it wrong…

The keyword above in light of Active Directory Domain Controller High Availability is paused. As you might remember from Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 2 I gave the advice to:

Never save state or pause a Domain Controller
Always shut down virtual Domain Controllers properly to avoid replication errors.

When you start a Domain Controller, that is in a paused state it will take some time to regain accurate time. When the Domain Controller replicates without accurate time, replication errors occur.

Doing it right!

Within Windows Server 2008 Failover clustering you have granular control over the high availibility settings of each of the virtual machines (“virtual guests”) on each of the cluster nodes. You can choose whether to make a virtual machine highly available on a per virtual machine basis.

Choose not to make an Active Directory Domain Controller virtual machine (“virtual guest”) highly available using failover clustering. Instead deploy Active Directory Domain Controller virtual machines on at least two nodes. For this you don’t necessarily need shared storage.

This is consistent with best practices for physical deployments of Active Directory Domain Controllers: Active Directory uses a scale-out model.

Concluding

When you make Domain Controller virtual machines highly available using Hyper-V Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2008 you risk replication errors. Instead deploy multiple Domain Controller virtual machines and rely on the Active Directory model, like you would in a physical world. (Flexible Single Master Operations roles can be seized in case of emergency.)

Hyper-V R2, available in the Windows Server 2008 R2 timeframe will offer high availability without pausing and resuming virtual machines. (among other improvements)

Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 1
Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 2
Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 3

An early look at new Active Directory features

2008-11-14T18:58:08Z

Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 include new features in Active Directory, that were announced and explained at Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008

Note:
This post represents the plans and progress made for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 during the Milestone 3 timeframe, builds 6801 through 6937.

Active Directory Administrative Center

Windows Server 2008 R2 comes with new administrative tools. These tools offer a new Management experience. Biggest change is the management Console, called the Active Directory Administrative Center. This is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) version 4 console and is task oriented. The Administrative Center replaces the current Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) MMC Snap-in (dsa.msc).

The new Management Console is a graphical shell for Powershell. After clicking together your commands, the administrative center shows the corresponding Powershell command on the screen and then execute it. This is the same way the Exchange 2007 Management Tools and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 work.

A feature called “Progressive Disclosure” is there to limit the information the tool returns to the administrator. This is useful for beginner administrators, but might also prove useful in delegation scenarios.

Best Practices Analyzer

Accompanying the Active Directory Administrative Center is the Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer (ADBPA), which will help Active Directory administrators to correct Active Directory problems proactively and compare Active Directory performance with previously made baselines.

Administrators, managing Exchange Servers will immediately recognize this tool as the Active Directory flavor of the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA), which provides them with help to correct the causes of unexpected behavior. The Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer (ADBPA) is a tool that goes beyond the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA), and integrates with the Server Manager, which in turn in Windows Server 2008 R2 receives a tremendous overhaul. (many roles will receive the ‘BPA’ treatment)

The version of the Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer (ADBPA) included in Windows Server 2008 R2 (version 1.0) focuses mainly on DNS problems, because they cause the most problems for Active Directory environments. Updates to the Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer (ADBPA) can be made available using Windows Update to address problems that might arise during the lifecycles of your Domain Controllers.

Powershell CMDlets

Powershell CMDlets are the basis of the new streamlined management experience. The team said there were approximately 85 Active Directory Services and Active Directory Lightweight Services related CMDlets available, most of them starting with Get-AD and Set-AD. These new Powershell CMDlets replace the current Active Directory command line tools. (dsget.exe, dsmod.exe, dsadd.exe, dsmove.exe, dsquery.exe and others)

The power of Powershell is not to be dismissed in Windows Server 2008 R2. For all you command line avoiders out there: there’s Graphical Powershell. This tool provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI), that allows you to interactively create and debug Powershell scripts within an integrated development environment similar to Visual Studio:

The Powershell CMDlets (and thus the Administrative Center) will use AD Web Services and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) instead of the common RPC and LDAP interfaces we use nowadays. According to the team this is the first step for leaving the RPC model and embracing a web services approach. The Active Directory team has plans to release a download of AD Web Services for previous versions of Windows Server. (Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008)

Since the new AD Web Services require .Net, however, the new AD Web Service will not be compatible with Windows Server 2008 Server Core domain controllers (non-R2), since it lacks .Net framework. The new Active Directory Administrative Center and the Active Directory Powershell CMDlets cannot be used with Windows Server 2008 Server Core domain controllers.

Recycle Bin for Active Directory

Restoring deleted objects from Active Directory Directory Services and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services in current versions of Windows Server, using the Directory Services Restore Mode, is not for the faint of heart. In this time of economic turmoil proposing an expensive 3rd party application for this purpose to the CFO isn’t for the faint of heart either…

Windows Server 2008 therefore comes with a Recycle Bin for Active Directory, that can be enabled. This features enables administrators to quickly undo an accidental deletion from Active Directory. It works like the Recycle Bin on a Windows client and allows an administrator to fully undelete a deleted object, because an object will not get tombstoned (immediately) but made inactive, while all the attributes and values are kept intact for a period of 180 days. After this period it will get recycled for 180 days, which effectively has the same function as the tombstone period.

To make the recycle bin possible a new forest level is introduced.

Managed Service Accounts

The Active Directory team created a new Active Directory object type, called a Managed Service Account. This object type, based on the workstation account allows for easier management of service accounts in Active Directory.

Since the new object type is based upon the computer account it is not hindered by account policies, like the password policy and the account lockout policy. Additionally it doesn’t offer interactive logons, which is an added layer of security. (but can also be a layer of trouble when a service needs to logon interactively)

Managed Service Accounts are related to Computer Accounts. You can add multiple Managed Service Accounts to one Computer Accounts, but you can’t, however, assign a Managed Service Account to multiple Computer Accounts.

The Managed Service Accounts feature requires the Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain level.

Offline Domain Join

One of the new features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is their ability to join an Active Directory domain, without a direct communication path between the client wanting to become a member of the domain and a Domain Controller.

This is achieved through restructuring the way a client joins the domain in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You can use this feature with your existing Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers.

A tool is made available named djoin.exe. It can be used to pre-provision a client at the Domain Controller and create the blob of data required to join a computer to the domain. On Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 clients the same tool can be used to load the blob in a way that it can be used to join the computer to the domain when it is rebooted.

Authentication Assurance

Active Directory Federated Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 includes a new feature known as Authentication Assurance. This feature allows administrators to establish authentication policies for accounts that are authenticated in federated domains. This enables a variety of advanced authentication scenarios, such as smart cards, for example.

In a Windows Server 2008 R2 level domain Administrators can map various properties, including authentication type and authentication strength to an identity and based on information during authentication, these identities are added to Kerberos tickets (such as use of smartcard for logon or the certificate used 2048 bit encryption) to provide access to federated resources. This way authentication methods (and thus identification) get assured.

Authentication Assurance requires the Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Level.

Health model and Management Packs

Monitoring Active Directory with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) has not been easy, with the absence of a specific Management Pack and Health Model. In System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) a Management Pack describes what to monitor and are made of XML files, containing classes, discoveries and monitors. The monitors are part of the Health model, which describes how to monitor.

The Active Directory team is working on completing the Management Pack and Health model to proactively monitor the availability and performance of Active Directory, so problems can be identified faster and resolved more accurately. The Health model is reused in the Best Practices Analyzer. One of the big advantages will be the ability for administrators to drill down in System Center Operations Manager to identify an underlying problem with Active Directory.

Concluding

A lot of advancements are being made to Active Directory management. In Windows Server 2008 R2 not only do we have more reliable authentication and service accounts, but also we can undelete objects in an easier way, join machines to the domains in an easier way and resolve problems more easily and without expensive 3rd party programs.

An early look at new features in Server Core

2008-11-14T18:42:27Z

At Tech∙Ed last week some information emerged on Windows Server 2008 R2. Specifically some information was handed out on the Server Core installation option in the successor to Windows Server 2008. Let’s take an early look at the differences between Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 and Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Note:
This information applies to Windows Server 2008 R2 during the pre-Beta timeframe. In the time up until the Release to Manufacturers (RTM) of the successor to Windows Server 2008, this information may change.

New features

.Net framework available

The first big difference between Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 and Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 is the availability of .Net Framework in the latter installation. The availability of .Net Framework also indicates support for managed code. All rumors indicate .Net Framework will be available as a separate installable role.

.Net Framework 2.0 will be included as well as a subset of .Net Framework 3.x. For .Net Framework 3.x this means the Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow (WF) and Language Integrated Query (LINQ) will be included, but not the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) part.

Powershell included

Microsoft will also support Powershell locally on Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2. Today, in a Windows Server 2008 Server Core installation using Powershell on the console of Windows Server 2008 is not supported. (possible though) Using Powershell to remotely manage Server Core through WMI is possible in both Server Core installations.

Improved Internet Information Services

With the advent of .Net Framework in Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2, the Internet Information Services (IIS) feature set can also be expanded. ASP.Net will be a supported configuration on Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Active Directory Certificate Services Role

James O’Neill mentions on his blog Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 will include the ability to install the Active Directory Certificate Services role, to make a Server Core installation a Certificate Authority. This to me is a huge improvement in the “Server Core as Infrastructure Server” category. I’m very interested to see how this pans out. My main questions at this point are whether a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 can be made an Enterprise Root Certificate Authority (CA) and whether a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition will be able to offer certificate auto-enrollment.

File Server Resource Manager (FSRM)

File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) will be a new role in Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 as well. File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) expands the capabilities of a Windows file server with quota management, file screens and storage reports. This is a huge improvement for administrators wanting to deploy Server Core installations as file servers in their environments.

In-place Upgrade

Another interesting tidbit in Server Core in the Windows Server 2008 R2 timeframe is the ability to upgrade a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 to a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 in-place.

Console tool

Hyper-V Server 2008 (Microsoft’s free and ‘stand alone’ hypervisor) includes a tool named HVConfig.cmd. This tool helped administrators to more easily configure the box.

Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 don’t include a tool like that and several Server Core enthusiasts have created a couple of useful tools to assist you. A similar tool to easily configure Server Core installations will be included in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Architecture

An important thing to remember for Windows Server 2008 R2 is there will not be a 32bit (x86) version. Windows Server 2008 R2 will be 64bit only. Microsoft has announced this architecture focus almost 1½ years ago. I called it Route 64 back then.

Windows on Windows (WoW) support for 32bit applications is included in Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2. Andrew Mason, the Program Manager for Server Core, indicates this support is currently included as an optional component.

Concluding

Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 will provide more features. A trend is set to continue to provide a valuable alternative to Full installations, but it will still take years before any workloads beyond Windows Server Roles can be added in a supported way.

It would be nice to make a Server Core installation your Microsoft Exchange 2007 Edge Transport server, one of the Office Communications Server 2007 Edge servers or even a Microsoft Windows ~~Terminal Services~~ Remote Desktop Services gateway, wouldn’t it?

Making HVConfig work on a normal Server Core installation
About Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
Overview of free Server Core configuration tools
Route 64

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 6 Recap

2008-11-09T10:44:15Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Tech∙Ed has ended, so we’re heading home. I’m writing this blogpost while heading towards Schiphol at an altitude of roughly 30000 feet.

Dave and I are looking forward to meeting our wives again and go on with our ‘normal’ lives. While Tech∙Ed is a great event, getting the most out of the experience isn’t easy. Luckily it’s very rewarding and with the right support from our wives we get through to the other end.

And here it is: the other end of our Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) adventure, that for Dave and I started seven days ago on that early Sunday morning and will end on this Saturday night.

I hoped you liked it, already picked up on some of the information spread out over Dave and me. If you haven’t attended a Tech∙Ed event yet, I hope this series has inspired you to ask your boss to attend one.

Now if you’d excuse me I’m going to finish my tomato juice

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 5 Recap

2008-11-09T10:41:25Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Welcome to the last day of the conference. The last chance to get ahead with sessions, hands on labs, instructor led labs, and networking.

Let’s talk about the information handed out in the sessions, saying goodbye to old and new friends and a thing called sleep deprivation…

Sessions

There were loads of interesting sessions today, but unfortunately you can only attend one at a time…

The first session I attended was Ilse van Criekinge’s session on Certificates in combination with Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and ISA Server 2006 SP1. Ilse gave a good rundown on how to install them, how to use them and the caveats to avoid when working with certificates.

After this session I attended an interactive session led by Chris Jackson and Aaron Margosis on fixing application compatibility. This was a fun session, where Aaron Parker and I sat on the first rows.

During lunch I sat in at Tony Krijnen’s session on Windows Home Server. Tony explained what the current incarnation of Windows Home Server looks like, what you can do with it and why it’s such a fun product. The backup functionality already proved its worth: The hard disk in Tony’s Apple MacBook had died a couple of days earlier and he was able to continue working after purchasing a new hard disk and restoring the box in as little as 45 minutes.

Another interesting session I saw was Jason Langridge’s session on Windows Mobile devices connecting to Exchange servers, debunking the myth on Blackberry security and scalability, and a nice inside story on how Microsoft’s Exchange admins handled the load on their servers during the snow storm late 2006 when most of Microsoft’s Redmond campus connected from home!

The last session Dave and I attended was Mark Russinovich’s session on Windows Security Boundaries. Just like Mark Russinovich’s session yesterday this session provided excellent information on the internals of Windows and why some problems justify ‘important’ and ‘critical’ security updates, while other identified problems remain unsolved, unknown or get dismissed.

Saying goodbye

Mark Russinovich made a sharp remark at the beginning of the session. He said it was the last session of this Tech∙Ed event and the only thing that stood between us and drinks. The first part of his remark is undeniably true. Everyone left the conference center like the plague had just resurfaced. (unlike a VHD file I might add)

With a little hesitation we also left the conference center. Just outside of the center we luckily ran into a couple of people we know. This extended our event a little further and for our colleagues over at OGD comes with a pretty sight:

Ladies and gentlemen: Meet Koen Wijnstok
(Former OGD colleague, now a MCT)

Sleep deprivation

The latter part of Mark Russinovich’s remark is something I didn’t take at heart. Since his session marked the end of this Tech∙Ed event, I decided it would also mark the end of my binge-drinking and late night clubbin’ days in Barcelona.

No more sleep deprivation for this guy. Time to sleep regularly and often again to recharge the battery again. After all: I’m no 20-year old guy anymore and in 6 months time I’ll need all the reserves possible to get through a similar event, which is not limited to a week abroad. (More on that another time though)

Concluding

Suffice to say Dave and I ransacked the local Subway to get some food and drinks on our way to our beds. I guess I set a new world record felling asleep.

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 4 Recap

2008-11-07T23:15:15Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

So you’re still with us? Let’s take a look at Thursday, day 4 of the conference. Highlights: Speaker Idol, Mark Russinovich, great cigars and some great Dutch community ideas.

Sessions

Today's sessions were Anatomy of a Hack (by Jesper Johansen) and Inside Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtualization Improvements and Native VHD Support (by Mark Russinovich). Both sessions were delivered in the Auditorium.

Jesper Johansson showed an deep look into Antivirus XP 2008. You might already be familiar with this specific piece of malware when you’re subscribed to Donna's SecurityFlash. It’s a nasty piece of software, that does a really good job at tricking users into installing it, running it and paying for it. I’ll never look the same at the (Windows) Security Center again.

I attended the session by Mark Russinovich together with Marc van Orsouw. This was a level 400 session on Hyper-V improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2, including live VM migration, hypervisor power management support and new hardware-assisted guest memory management. Windows 7 booting from VHD was a nice feature that was shown, by looking at the way Mark’s currently booted Operating system was actually started from a VHD.

Speaker Idol

Today also featured the finale of Tech∙Ed Speaker Idol. The finale featured four contestants, who all provided an entertaining and compelling five-minute presentation: Rhonda Layfield, Maral Topolian, Alex de Jong and Dimitri Sotnikov.

I found the four sessions were all exceptionally good quality. In the end Alex placed fourth, because of the presence of profanity in his presentation (sh*t happens when you present on something you’re passionate about), Maral and Dimitri placed second (which is the second time Maral ended in second place on Speaker Idol) and Rhonda went home to the USA with the first prize and a ticket to next year’s TechEd EMEA IT Pro. I guess we’ll see Rhonda on stage and between the Speaker Idol judges next year!

International Community Party

Dave and I both attended the International Community Party at the Elephant Club, located on the other side of Barcelona. We used public transportation to reach the location and ended up travelling for a long period of time… again. (Some might think we learned our lesson on Day 0)

The party itself was good fun while it lasted. The organization behind the Springboard Series was busy giving away SWAG (Stuff We All Get), handing out (Cuban) cigars, walking around with plates full of tapas. The place was filled with MCTs, MVPs, Microsoft employees, TechNet Plus subscribers and Springboard Invitees. Dave and I sat with Gerard Verbrugge for a while while we both smoked away a nice Cohiba cigar. We also spoke to some other Dutch people there, like Martijn Bellaard, who has some great ideas on sharing information with the Dutch IT Pro Community. Marco Timmermans is also walking around with some great ideas, so I guess I need to give him a call as well!

Dave left to take the metro back to the hotel, but I decided to stay around and see what’d happen. I couldn’t have imagined what actually happened. At midnight the location invited in it’s normal guests. The locals getting in were actually dressed in tuxedos and fancy dresses. It was a big difference with the party invitees. We were dressed in T-shirts, jeans and clothes like that and we could actually dance. (Well, some of us can) The result was most of the party invitees left the club. I ran into Daniel and Tony again and we decided to go to Shôko again. We were joined by Karen Young and two other MVPs and had good fun. Daniel even participated in a dance-off with some professional break dancers!

Concluding

At 3:00 am I left the club to take a cab to the hotel, where I crashed into the hotel bed.
Five days of conference and every night in between I went clubbin’

Tip!
If you’re planning on attending Tech∙Ed next year: 12 hours of sleep should be enough to keep on going.

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 3 Recap

2008-11-06T14:17:42Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Welcome to day 3 of this great event! A special day because tonight features the Country Drinks. But first, let’s start by having a look at the information from within the sessions, some star wars humor and devil sticks!

Sessions

Today started with a session in the Auditorium by Iain McDonald. If you don’t know the guy, I guess describing him as an Australian rock star does most justice. He’s also the guy to go to when you have questions on Microsofts strategy with Windows Server.

I asked Iain one question: Do you have plans to make it possible to inplace upgrade a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 to a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008 R2? His answer was a short and positive one: Yes.

After the session I walked on over and chatted a little bit with him. I expressed my disappointment on the naming convention for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows 7. Of course these names are great, but I still feel they missed out on a great possibility: They could’ve named these products Windows XP D2 and Windows Vista D2 respectively. That way you can actually have R2D2 on your networks in combination with Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Alas.

Another session I attended was Joachim Nässlanders lunch session on building a failover cluster with Windows Server 2008 Core. This session started out with a clear message on using Server Core, delivered through devil sticks. I remember it as:

It looks hard, but after practicing a month you’ll be doing it without thinking.

Joachim had fully automated scripts that configured two Server Core installations of Windows Server 2008 into a file server failover cluster. A couple of graphical tools were shown, but not used: Joachim did everything on the command line, including the “presentation”. Good fun! After the session Joachim and I chatted for a while. It’s good to meet someone who’s into Server Core and passionate about it. If you haven’t done so already go check out his tool Core Configuration Console.

After Joachims session I attended a session by Edwin Yuen on System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM 2008). Edwin is a good presenter and the information on managing VMWare ESX through Virtual Center is really useful.

The last session was on the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), the database behind a lot of Microsoft products and technologies. It’s used in Exchange Server, Active Directory, DHCP, WINS and Windows Mail. The session was a very technical deepdive into B+ trees and the way changes to the ESE database are made in Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1.

Country drinks

Wednesday evening also featured the Country Drinks. This event provides the ability to network with your fellow attendees from your country and order drinks without having to pay for them (at least till midnight) The Dutch Country Drinks event was located in the Lotus Theater and started at 9pm.

Tony Krijnen and Daniel van Soest had a small little intro and the place was packed with Dutch Tech∙Ed attendees. All the usual suspects were there. I had nice chats with Marc van Orsouw and Helmer Zandbergen. I hugged Koen Wijnstok, who I hadn’t seen for what feels like ages and also had a chat with Robert Bakker and Bas Agbeko, both Microsoft Netherlands guys.

After midnight all drinks had to be paid for, so a lot of my fellow countrymen left the scene. A couple of die hard clubbers remained and we had some good fun on the dance floor.

Concluding

Eventually we took a cab ride to the hotel at 4am. A trend starts to emerge…

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 2 Recap

2008-11-06T13:14:17Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Tuesday was the first ‘normal’ Conference day. Highlights include keeping an eye on my credit card, asking questions to the Active Directory team and enjoying a night at the Hilton next to Steve Riley, Jesper Johansen, Aaron Margosis and Chris Jackson.

Sessions

On Tuesday we had to get up early. I made a promise to Andy Malone to attend his session on identity theft and it started at 9:00 am. Andy was having good fun with credit cards from the audience (including mine), but he didn’t charge anything on it. (at least, my balance is not showing any weird things …yet)

I decided to attend some sessions, so I listened to John Goodman on advanced troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, watched Gershon Levitz take the wraps of Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG), the successor to ISA Server 2006.

After lunch I went to a whiteboard session by Robert deLuca and Alain Lissoir on Active Directory advancements in Windows Server 2008 R2:

Offline Domain Join
Active Directory Administrative Center
Active Directory Powershell cmdlets
Active Directory Best Practices Analyzer
Recycle Bin for Active Directory
Authentication Assurance
Managed Service Accounts

A night at the Hilton

After these sessions Dave and I met up with Sietse Daudey, who is the owner of Let Me Do IT and a former colleague of ours. We had a nice drink in the lobby of the Barcelona Hilton with Zane Adams, senior director of virtualization at Microsoft, who I accidentally ran into again.

Afterwards we enjoyed a dinner at the first floor and talked about various topics. We basically came to the conclusion events like Tech∙Ed are useful for gaining a better understanding of Microsoft products, plotting long term strategies for customers and social networking.

After dinner we went back to the lobby of the Hilton and joined Steve Riley, Aaron Margosis, Jesper Johanssen, Zane Adams, Gerard Verbrugge, Karen Young and a whole bunch of other Microsoft guys and girls. We were watching CNN on a big screen, following the US election, while slamming down Sambucos and Heinekens.

The guys were really nice, explaining to me what the numbers meant, why the numbers are (not) important and how certain states are more interesting to watch than others. When it became clear Obama would be elected as the president of the USA, I decided to bid farewell and hit my bed at the AC hotel, which luckily is only a two minute walk. (if you’re able to walk a straight line)

Concluding

At 4 am I hit the sack. A trend is emerging?

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 1 Recap

2008-11-05T14:55:19Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Yesterday marked the start of the IT Pro Conference and from my perspective was pretty remarkable. Highlights: Brad Anderson’s keynote ‘announcements’, Steve Riley’s advice on raising children, a track owner getting stood up, getting beaten by a girl and clubbing in downtown Barcelona.

Sessions

Today started late with Brad Anderson’s keynote.

Brad talked about:

System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) enabling management through a ‘single pane of glass’.
System Center Operations Manager 2007 interoperability with SUSE Linux, HP-UX, AIX, Red Hat & Solaris through OpenPegasus, OpenWSMan and Windows Remote Management. The demo also featured monitoring of MySQL and Oracle databases.
Virtualization of servers (Hyper-V), desktops (Vista Centralized Enterprise Desktop), applications (App-V) and Terminal Services (to be renamed to Remote Desktop Services)
Mention of Med-V technologies (acquired through Kidaro) , being made available through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)
Extensive deep dive into the Infrastructure Optimization model to:
- Do More with Less
- Get from basic / standardized to rationalized / dynamic
- Gain agility
Quick look at SQL Server “Kilimanjaro” and the new Reporting Services, codenamed “Gemini”. Demo featuring an interface for IT Professionals, that should address the needs of those addicted to mushrooms. Quick mention of PerformancePoint Server.
New stuff in Windows Server 2008 R2
Demo on BrachCache, where a video is played and then cached. Note BranchCache is not a proxy. (authentication traffic is still flowing)
Exchange Online Services and the power of choice. Demo featuring the Exchange Online Migration Wizard.

After Brad’s session I went to see a session, presented by Steve Riley. He had a presentation on ten things to do or else get 0wn3d. A good presentation, a good message, and as is usually the case when Steve presents: a nice piece of entertainment!

The story that’ll stick with me was how he explained to Dylan, his son, the importance of protecting your gear. For his sons HP laptop they both installed the box from scratch with Windows Vista and installed all the other useful programs that allow one to surf the Internet (Adobe stuff). After the box was the way his son liked it, Steve said to him:

We have now spent four hours on installing your laptop. If you do anything that might corrupt your laptop you will be spending the same four hours installing it and I won’t be there to help you.

Now that’s what I call a sound way to raise a child. Way better compared to handing over a laptop that’s completely locked down. Layer 8 security!

After this session I intended to attend a session on Hyper-V Security and Best Practices, but unfortunately the speaker was untraceable at the moment the session needed to start. Arlindo Alves (the track owner for the track the session belongs to) instead improvised the session showing the original slides. Respect!

Speaker Idol

After this session I was called by Neil Palmer and asked whether I’d be able to present at the Speaker Idol 7:00 pm heat. Of course it wasn’t a problem! Actually… nothing’s a problem for me. It’s why I wear my Jamaica sweater.

So I found myself being the third presenter at the Speaker Idol heat after Geert Baeke and Alex de Jong. We all had solid presentations, but the fourth speaker actually won the heat: Maral Topalian. Yes, that’s right! We were beaten by a girl!

It was good fun though and that’s what the community area is all about!

Clubbin’

Around 9:30 pm, when Dave and I were at the hotel room Daniel van Soest called. He was meeting up with a couple of guys from the Netherlands and he wondered whether we fancied joining him. No problem!

After doing a tour with Daniel through the old parts of downtown Barcelona we went to drink some cocktails with the guys in a cocktail bar and had some fun conversations. After what felt like an hour we went on to a club. The first club we visited wasn’t a success. It was totally empty. We took a cab to Vila Olympic and ended up in a club called Shôko.

This club is good fun, even on a Monday night. Loads of people and good music! Daniel was showing some off his moves to try and get other guys engaged in a dance off, but it didn’t work. Daniel attracted a guy with a bottle of red label, though, which led to a little situation, that Daniel easily rectified.

Sleeping?

We went back to the hotel and went to bed at around 4 am. Dave snores, but fortunately I’m a sound sleeper. I didn’t have any trouble falling and staying asleep: My intoxicated head touched the pillow and I was out.

Concluding

Join us again tomorrow!

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 0 Recap

2008-11-03T17:54:49Z

Dave and I are your DirTeam bloggers on Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals in Barcelona (Spain) from November 3rd, 2008 to November 7th, 2008.

Yesterday was the first day of our trip and I would like to take this opportunity to share a couple of things.

Early

Yesterday started early, since we met up at Schiphol airport at 10:00 am. An unchristian time, I agree, on a Sunday morning to make arrangements to take a plane to a foreign place. Taking an early flight however would mean we’d be able to check into our hotel without problems or hassle.

Traveling

Far worse airlines exist, compared to Air France – KLM and the rest of the Skyteam, so our flight was uneventful. We encountered some turbulence though. Not the kind where passengers continue an argument with their fists, but rather the plane shaking, trembling and losing altitude regularly. Some people get travel sickness from these kinds of events, (more on them shortly) but fortunately Dave and I are not that kind of people.

I saw some familiar faces on the plane already!

I received a couple of tips before we went to Barcelona, so I tried to follow these guidelines. Whoever tells you it’s economically sound to use public transportation to get to your hotel, should really take your hourly rate into consideration. After landing at Barcelona Airport, collecting your bags and heading for the exit leading to the trains, you’ll find ourselves in a train station, made up entirely of plastic and steel beams. Not a pretty sight. Trading in a train for a metro, provides an extra surprise: Long damp underground corridors and badly indicated directions.

A cab ride only costs € 24 and will take you to the other side of town in a matter of minutes, where public transportation takes up hours of your time…

AC Hotel Barcelona

After an adventure that lasted 2 hours we arrived at our hotel on the other side of Barcelona: the AC Hotel Barcelona. The tip to book this hotel was way more useful. The hotel is situated next to the location where TechEd EMEA is held and the hotel is of premium quality.

I booked a twin bed room months ago with Grupo Pacifico. Kudos to those guys and girls, because they actually put us up in one of the suites of the hotel. Room to spare!

Live at Tech∙Ed!

After settling in our room we went to register for TechEd, which is a pleasant walk. Dave and I met some MVPs (Marc van Orsouw, Maarten Goet), our Dutch IT Pro Evangelists, Tech∙Ed EMEA TV team and Tech∙Ed Virtual Hosts (Daniel van Soest en Tony Krijnen), a couple of folks from the Tech∙Ed organization (notably Neil Palmer), the Keynote speaker (Brad Anderson), Gerard Verbrugge, (bummed out and still shaking on his feet since he’s the kind of guy that gets travel sickness and he was on the same flight as us) Martijn Bellaard and Arlindo Alves. (Tech∙Ed track owner)

Speaker Idol

Daniel phoned my when Dave and I were in the train. Daniel basically registered me for Tech∙Ed Speaker Idol. Declining wasn’t an option. I told him I didn’t have time to plough through my first meter of books and my boss would gladly pay for a ticket to Tech∙Ed EMEA 2009. So now I find myself registered for Tech∙Ed Speaker Idol…

Concluding

Time for me to prepare my Speaker Idol presentation, look into the last minute changes in the Tech∙Ed timetable and get some sleep. I really need to get some early sleep, because my roommate apparently is an enormous snorer. His wife provided earplugs as a precaution…

Going, going, going … gone!

2008-11-02T10:32:45Z

Schiphol airport, Sunday morning. What am I doing here…

Starbucks, Double espresso. Things starting to appear normal.

Dave, my travelling buddy, making a photo of me in the waiting lounge, waiting for our KLM flight to Barcelona for Microsoft’s Tech∙Ed Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) conference for IT Professionals.

Blogging till the last minute.

The things that are better left unspoken

A Best Practice approach to updating Hyper-V environments

The challenges

A Best Practice approach

WSSRA

Virtual environments

Patching goals

Formulating best practices

Patched systems

Not all updates need to be applied immediately

Test or delay updates

Predictable downtime

Automatically applying updates

Windows Server Update Services

Maintenance windows

Rogue Patch investigation

Phased updating

Using snapshots

Concluding

Related posts

Further reading

Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 4

How Hyper-V High Availability works

The failover process

Domain Controller High Availability

Doing it wrong…

Doing it right!

Concluding

Related posts

Further reading

An early look at new Active Directory features

Active Directory Administrative Center

Best Practices Analyzer

Powershell CMDlets

Recycle Bin for Active Directory

Managed Service Accounts

Offline Domain Join

Authentication Assurance

Health model and Management Packs

Concluding

Further reading

Disclaimer Beta Software

An early look at new features in Server Core

New features

.Net framework available

Powershell included

Improved Internet Information Services

Active Directory Certificate Services Role

File Server Resource Manager (FSRM)

In-place Upgrade

Console tool

Architecture

Concluding

Related posts

Further reading

Disclaimer Beta Software

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 6 Recap

Further reading

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 5 Recap

Sessions

Saying goodbye

Sleep deprivation

Concluding

Further reading

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 4 Recap

Sessions

Speaker Idol

International Community Party

Concluding

Further reading

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 3 Recap

Sessions

Country drinks

Concluding

Further reading

Tech∙Ed EMEA 2008 IT Pro Day 2 Recap

Sessions

A night at the Hilton

Concluding

Further reading