SIOS SANless clusters

SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Do Not Support Hyper-V Role While…

by Leave a Comment

… Running On VMware Workstation (At Least On My Laptop)

Unless someone knows a trick that I don’t, it doesn’t appear as if I will be able to test out some of the Hyper-V clustering features unless I identify actual hardware for Windows Server 8. I hoped VMware Workstation 8 would be able to fool Windows 8 into thinking it was actually a physical server, but so far no dice. This article appears to indicate it will work on an Intel Nehalem or Intel Core i7 processor, but my two year old Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 doesn’t seem to be able to do the trick.

I added the hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = “FALSE” to the config file and I changed the CPU settings to use Intel VT –x/EPT as shown below.

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Will Not Support The Hyper-V Role While...

But when I try to enable the Hyper-V role on Windows Server 8…

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Will Not Support The Hyper-V Role While...

Maybe it is time for a new laptop?

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2011/09/17/windows-server-8-developer-preview-will-not-support-the-hyper-v-role-while-running-on-vmware-workstation%E2%80%A6at-least-on-my-laptop/

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Running On VMware Workstation 8

by Leave a Comment

Starting up Windows Server 8

I’m pretty excited that I was able to get Windows Server 8 up and running on my laptop today. I wasn’t really looking forward to having to boot from VHD just to check out some of the features. I really wanted to run multiple copies at the same time so I could check out some of the cool new clustering features, so once again, booting my laptop from a VHD really wasn’t going to give me the experience I needed. I do have some servers running Hyper-V that would have been fine, but I really like having something quick and easy on my laptop that I can fire up anywhere at any time. VMware Workstation has been my go to virtualization platform for my Windows 7 laptop for quite some time due to the lack of a real client based hypervisor alternative from Microsoft.

Getting the VM to work

When I downloaded Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Edition from MSDN earlier this week, I was assuming I was getting an installation ISO. What I discovered was that I actually downloaded a pre-installed VHD. I haven’t gone back yet to check to see if there is an ISO. From reading the blogs it appears there is an ISO available somewhere, so I probably just grabbed the wrong file. Without a Hyper-V player available for Windows 7 (well, maybe VirtualBox?), I decided to get really crazy and try out the free Starwind V2V Converter and turn it into a bootable VMDK file. This way I could still launch it in VMware Workstation.

I found the Starwind V2V Converter to be very straight forward and soon enough I had a VMDK file ready to launch in VMware Workstation. What I found out was that you cannot run Windows Server 8 Developer Preview in VMware Workstation 7. You need the newly released Workstation 8. In VMware Workstation you get a message that begins as follows…

*** VMware Workstation internal monitor error ***
vcpu-0:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903

So, I went ahead and upgrade to Workstation 8 and tried to turn on the converted VMDK file. At first I got a message about hardware being changed and the VM would not start. But after I adjusted the processor so that it match the processor that I have (1 CPU, 2 Core), the VM launched! One other setting you need to make sure to set right is the operating system version. Since Windows 8 is not an option yet, choose Windows 7. Windows 7 x64 doesn’t work – make sure you choose Windows 7!

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Running On VMware Workstation 8

VMware tools didn’t work

I tried to install the VMware tools. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out so well for me. I got a black screen with a pointer after the tools were installed. I would avoid installing the VMware tools for the time being until they come out with VMware tools specific for Windows 8.

Here is my first view of Windows 8. I’ll be writing more about the HA features and Hyper-V next week once I start poking around

Windows Server 8 Developer Preview Running On VMware Workstation 8

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2011/09/17/windows-server-8-developer-preview-running-on-vmware-workstation-8/

Hyper-V Replica Coming In Windows Server “Next”

by Leave a Comment

Watch new feature Hyper-V Replica

Here is an interesting video that demonstrates “Hyper-V Replica”, a new feature coming in the next version of Windows. Skip to the 39 minute mark to see the demonstration.

http://digitalwpc.com/Videos/AllVideos/Permalink/3cb3788c-5c47-4b9e-987c-0dec4194058b/#fbid=slfi0dmNMqP

It looks like a very welcome feature that certainly will make Hyper-V even more competitive when comparing the feature set vs. price between vSphere and Hyper-V, especially with the new pricing announced by VMware.

I’ll be very curious to see if this integrates with Windows Server Failover Clustering to allow you create shared nothing clusters as you can today with 3rd party replication software, which I’ve demonstrated using SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition in an earlier blog post.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2011/07/21/hyper-v-replica-coming-in-windows-server-%E2%80%9Cnext%E2%80%9D/

Is Vmware’s Vsphere Disaster Recovery Options Really The Better One?

by Leave a Comment

Are Vmware’s Vsphere Disaster Recovery Options Really Better Than Microsoft’s Options For Hyper-V?

Every article I read about virtualization and disaster recovery says VMware has a more robust DR solution than Microsoft. Well, I’d like to challenge that assumption. From the view where I sit, this is actually one of the areas where Microsoft has a major competitive advantage at the moment. Here is how I see it.

VMware Site Recovery Manager

This is an optional additional add on that rides on the back of Array based replication solutions. The recovery point objective is good due to the array based replication. The RTO is measured in hours, not minutes. Add in the fact that moving back to the primary data center is a very manual procedure. It basically requires that you re-create your jobs in the opposite direction. The complete end to end recovery operation of failover and failback could take the better part of a day or longer.

Microsoft Multi-Site Cluster

Virtual machine HA clustering is included with the free version of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, as well as with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter editions. In order to do multi-site clusters, it requires array based replication or host based replication solutions that integrate with Windows Server Failover Clustering. With a multi-site cluster, failover is measured in minutes (just about the time it takes to start a VM) and can be used with array based replication solutions such as EMC SRDF CE or HP MSA CLX or the much less expensive host based replication solutions such as SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

Not only is failover quick with Hyper-V multi-site clusters, measured in just a few minutes. Failback is also quick and seamless as well. Add in support for Live Migrations or Quick Migration across Data Centers. I think this is one area that Microsoft actually has a much more robust solution than VMware Vsphere Disaster Recovery Options. Maybe it does not included automated DR tests, but when you consider you can failover and failback all in under 10 minutes, maybe an actual DR test performed monthly would give you a much better indication of what to expect in an actual disaster?

If you want a Hyper-V solution more like SRM, then there is an option there as well. It is called Citrix Essential for Hyper-V. But much like SRM, it is an optional add-on feature. It really doesn’t even match the RPO and RTO features that you can achieve with basic multi-site clusters for Hyper-V.

What do you think? Am I wrong or is there something I just don’t get? From my view, Hyper-V is heads and shoulders above Vsphere Disaster Recovery Options. 

Reproduced with permission by https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2010/03/10/are-vmware%E2%80%99s-vsphere-disaster-recovery-options-really-better-than-microsoft%E2%80%99s-options-for-hyper-v/

Hyper-V Live Migration Across Data Centers

by Leave a Comment

There has recently been a lot of press, about executing virtual machines live migrations across long-distanced data centers, that herald VMware’s limited support for vMotion across Data Centers, or “long-distance vMotion” as I have seen it called. The details of the solution can be found on Cisco’s website here. While I think that is just great, I’d like to remind people that Microsoft Hyper-V has this same functionality today and has a lot less requirements and restrictions than VMware’s long-distance vMotion.

Where VMware has VMwareHA, vMotion and Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to take care of virtual machine availability, Microsoft provides the same functionality with Windows Server Failover Clustering and in fact in some cases goes beyond what VMware can provide in terms of virtual machine availability as I described in a previous post.

What I’d like to focus on today is Microsoft’s competitive offering to “long-distance vMotion”. To achieve the same functionality in Hyper-V, you simply deploy a multi-site Hyper-V cluster using Windows Server Failover Clustering and your favorite host or storage based replication solution that is certified to work in a Windows Server 2008 multi-site cluster. By doing this, you can use your existing network infrastructure and your existing storage infrastructure to do Live Migrations across data centers. As far as requirements, they really are the same as any multi-site cluster, except I would recommend that you span your subnets to avoid client reconnection issues that occur when moving a virtual machine to a new subnet, as the clients could cache to old IP address until the TTL expires.

A demonstration video of Live Migration across data centers using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition can be seen here.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2009/09/17/hyper-v-live-migration-across-data-centers/