Building Clouds Blog

Deployment–PDT update for System Center 2012 R2 now available

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 00:59:46 GMT

PDT has been updated to support the general availability release of System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2. PDT 2.5.2507 is available here.

Note that Downloader.ps1 is no longer able to download evaluation versions of System Center 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2, or Windows Server 2012. You should manually copy the installation media for those to the appropriate folders in your source location before running Downloader.ps1, e.g.:

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\AppController

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\ConfigurationManager

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\DataProtectionManager

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\OperationsManager.en

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\Orchestrator

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\ServiceManager

C:\Temp\SystemCenter2012R2\VirtualMachineManager

C:\Temp\WindowsServer2012

C:\Temp\WindowsServer2012R2

For Windows Server, it is not necessary to copy the entire media – just setup.exe from the root folder, and the entire sources\sxs folder are required.

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT Overview Video

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 23:15:00 GMT

If you’re been reading the papers, most of them will tell you that in the next few years, hybrid cloud is going to be the prevalent architecture for enterprise IT. Is that the case now? Probably not. Not many people have a real private cloud, one that supports the five essential characteristics cloud computing. You might not even be on track for a private cloud right now, but are realizing the benefits of a highly virtualized infrastructure using Hyper-V and System Center VMM. Regardless of whether you have a private cloud or a virtualized datacenter, what you’ll probably want to do is integrate your current IT environment with a public cloud infrastructure service provider, such as Microsoft’s Windows Azure, to get the benefits of hybrid cloud, or if you don't have a private cloud, hybrid IT.

As a member of an enterprise IT organization, your first question is probably going to be “where do I start”? Well, you could start by getting to know about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services and what it can do for you. Then you can then kick the tires on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services by creating an Azure Virtual Network, creating a virtual machine and placing it on the Azure Virtual Network. Then you could create some more virtual machines and load balance them. Heck, you can create several virtual machines and configure them to auto-scale, so that you have true elasticity – just like what I talked about in my cloud architecture talks at TechEd

Yet, after your initial investigation of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services and playing around with some of it’s features, what’s next? What approach should you use to plan, design, and implement the core infrastructure that you can use to support hybrid services that have components that run both on Windows Azure and on-premises? How are you going to address the key availability, scalability, performance, manageability and security questions that need to be answered before you even consider moving production applications to a hybrid environment?

That’s where the Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT comes in. This “solution” is given to you in a document set that includes the following:

I could go into all the details on what each of these guides are about – but you’ve read enough already. If you think the solution might be useful to you and want to know more before diving in, then watch this 8 minute video where Jim Dial informs you on what the Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT has to offer.

<A href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/overview-of-hybrid-cloud-solution-for-enterpriseit?videoid=f59ae210-ef8f-4343-bd93-3f841114ec19&amp;from=shareembed-syndication" target="_new" title="Overview of Hybrid Cloud Solution for Enterprise IT"> Overview of Hybrid Cloud Solution for Enterprise IT</A>

HTH,

Tom

Tom Shinder
tomsh@microsoft.com
Principal Knowledge Engineer, SCD iX Solutions Group
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tshinder
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tshinder

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Exchange Server 2013 CU2 Service Templates for Virtual Machine Manager

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 11:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the latest blog post about System Center service templates!

When we asked our field what needed to be developed next, a very common ask was for a service template to deploy Exchange. This blog post is intended to teach you how to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager and a feature named Service Templates to deploy VM's and automatically install Exchange Server 2013 CU2, with minimal post-installation tasks left to complete to configure the unique settings for your environment.

If you are “the Exchange person” and you want to have the ability to easily provision a live environment to validate change management work such as Security Updates, then I have just the solution for you. If you are a hoster and among all the 1,000’s of things you are thinking about, provisioning Exchange for new tenants is one of them, I have a solution for you. If you are a developer and you need to manage a virtual sandbox environment based on Exchange for testing your latest innovation, I have a great solution for you. If you are “on the server team” and your round table discussion on DR uncovered that rebuilding from scratch takes too long, or you want to provision 20 additional HA servers at a departmental scope on VM’s as a “just in case”, do I ever have a solution for you!

… and best of all we are going to use new features of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2.

Blog Series: Table of Contents

Part 1 – Philosophy/Overview – Define scope and assumptions.

Part 2 - Prerequisites – Document any unique pre-work and link to all downloads that should be ready before getting started.

Part 3 - Setup the Service Templates in VMM and Best Practices – Document the process to setup and configure the service templates in VMM.

Exchange Server 2013 Service Templates for System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Quick Video Demo

I really want to motivate you to complete the walk through, which is not totally simple. Here is a 120 second “TV commercial” style video to explain what results this effort will yield using Single Server Architecture as an example. This gives you an idea of the big picture.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

You might notice, I added the option to choose your network on the fly after this was created. To review this and other technical details, check out the full length walk-through at the very bottom of the post.

If you are really serious, read this first!

I mean it. This is a very thorough overview that documents more than I could begin to in a blog post. Virtualization best practices, why and how to use System Center, and much, much more. I highly recommend it. Store it on your Windows Phone device now and read it at your convenience! There are 3 pages of links to more information!

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/A/C/4AC32FD3-220E-45DC-AA97-DBDBE19C15B2/Best_Practices_for_Virtualizing_and_Managing_Exchange_2013.pdf

Philosophy

If this topic is of interest to you also consider:

Service Template for Active Directory

Service Template for SharePoint 2013

Let’s define scope before we get started. This is a case where it becomes tempting to keep adding on. “We can automate it all!” Well yes, you can, but for the sake of sanity I think we should componentize. Let’s start off with the assumption that we already have an environment where we utilize System Center Virtual Machine Manager as a provisioning engine either by itself or together with additional tools. We will define the prerequisite work separately and link to more information where detail is not given. Then walk through each template architecture setup and I will even do a detailed video walk-through for each.

The first question, I know, will be how many users. That is a bit like saying how much wind does it take to push over a building without providing any more detail. You need to know a LOT more information. Hardware, networking, storage, co-location of other VM’s, activity profile of the user, etc, etc. In the end you have to validate your environment. I highly recommend Jeff Mealiffe’s post on Exchange capacity planning and doing more to guestimate performance rather than me making an off-the-cuff blog remark.

Sizing Exchange 2013 Deployments
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/05/06/ask-the-perf-guy-sizing-exchange-2013-deployments.aspx

I am including service templates for both “Single Server Architecture” and “Multiple Server Architecture” in the download. As you might expect by their names, SSA is for a single server multi-role design and MSA is a two-tier design with options for scale-out using VMM. It is up to you which design better fits your environment. There is nothing at all wrong with using them together so you might as well load them both.

The second question will be what we are doing special to make Exchange a service template. There is no magic going on here. We are simply staging the prerequisites and the CU2 installation bits then running setup using the documented parameters for unattended installation. There is purposefully no scripting magic at all so it should be very easy for you to make changes according to your goals. Just for reference, here is the command we run to install Exchange in the single server architecture:

setup.exe /mode:Install /OrganizationName:@Organization@ /role:ClientAccess,Mailbox /Iacceptexchangeserverlicenseterms /MDBName:%ComputerName%_Default /DbFilePath: D:\DB\%ComputerName%_Default.edb /LogFolderPath: D:\Logs /UpdatesDir:".\Updates"

You might think of additional customizations. This is your template to customize as you see fit. There is a page on TechNet providing all the unattended parameters and how they are used.

Install Exchange 2013 Using Unattended Mode
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997281(v=exchg.150).aspx

Use Case Scenarios

There are many scenarios you could consider for deploying Exchange via service template. Let’s face it, there are only a limited number where you really NEED automation. If you are building 1 server and will probably never build another, then you probably don’t need to automate it. If you are considering this scenario as it relates to deployment of Exchange in a streamlined and repeatable process then a service template is definitely something to consider.

New or existing forests, isolated or not isolated? Answer is all of the above! This is not a result of anything I had to do in the service template itself, it is a KUDOS to the Exchange team for having a great design. Exchange stores information about the Exchange org in Active Directory. If you are provisioning the first server in the forest you have decisions to make, but you don’t have to change the Setup.exe parameters. Same goes for existing forests. Setup will identify the Org and add to it as long as you provide the right name. Building isolated or not is another KUDOS but to the Virtual Machine Manager team. VMM can handle either scenario and will make sure the custom resources you create will be available to the VM even in isolated virtual networks.

At the beginning of the post I listed a few scenarios. To add some additional thinking about why you might use a service template:

Test labs (aka Sandbox aka Dev/Test) – For Exchange admins, a service template would give you the ability to quickly replicate a functional dev/test environment where you could validate changes before introducing them in to production. This is also perfect for software development projects that integrate with Exchange to test against.
Disaster Recovery Planning – In the worst of worst scenarios, you might someday need to rebuild your environment from scratch. Having a service template ready would give you the ability to create a new Exchange environment where you could restore from off site backup, even if it is only a temporary solution to get up and running until you can completely restore service.
High Availability Options – It could be that you already have an Organization but you are thinking about extending a Database Availability Group to include additional standalone servers, potentially offsite, in case the platform where your existing servers are running has an issue.
Quickly Adding Remote Sites – If you need the ability to provision server nodes across a high number of remote sites, you could automate the installation using service templates.
Hosting – Whether you are a large enterprise thinking about isolating departments or a service provider, you have a lot to think about. Unattended installation does not a service provider make, but a service template provides one additional step you can include in automating creation of a new tenant.

A similar scenario I can see is the case of a consultant who wants to automate setup so he or she can go from environment to environment and reduce the total amount of clicks and eliminate the chances of human error. For that case, there is a lot to be learned by going through the motion of building a service template but there is a detailed post in the TechNet Gallery that I recommend reading through on scripting an install specifically focused on that scenario.

Exchange 2013 Unattended Installation Script
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Exchange-2013-Unattended-e97ccda4

Michel de Rooij who posted the script has a full step by step walkthrough here:

Exchange 2013 Unattended Installation Script (Updated)
http://eightwone.com/2013/02/18/exchange-2013-unattended-installation-script/

Always read and test a script of course but he covers so many aspects of the process, I would be remiss not to link him up.

Get Started

Please proceed to the next part in the blog series to setup your prerequisites! Thank you for sticking with the entire walkthrough. I know it is a lengthy post but details count. If you feel lost, I have recorded a full length walk-through. I would recommend you skip to the place where you would like a visual aid. I have included bookmarks to help.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

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Exchange Server 2013 CU2 Service Templates - Prerequisites

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 11:00:00 GMT

This blog post is part 2 of 3 in a series.

This series of posts details how to deploy Exchange 2013 CU2 using Service Templates in Virtual Machine Manager. If you are just landing on this subject I recommend starting with Part 1. This page will focus on what you need to do in advance to prepare your environment.

Blog Series: Table of Contents

Part 1 – Philosophy/Overview – Define scope and assumptions.

Part 2 - Prerequisites – Document any unique pre-work and link to all downloads that should be ready before getting started.

Part 3 - Setup the Service Templates in VMM and Best Practices – Document the process to setup and configure the service templates in VMM.

Exchange Server 2013 Service Templates for System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Prerequisites

There are pre-requisite downloads to build out everything you need, and then you need to pre-stage that content inside a VHDX file in the VMM library so that it can be used by the template. Unfortunately this is not a 1-click import. We are going to walk through every step together in detail but as a result, this is a long article. Don’t be afraid!

Working Assumptions

Before we get started, I want to be clear about the groundwork. I am working under the assumption that you have Hyper-V, XenServer, or VMware, and you have System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 installed with a Library available and a VM template based on Windows Server 2012 RTM. If not, I would direct you to the TechNet resources for VMM as a starting point. Adding those steps would force me to more or less re-create their documentation!

Virtual Machine Manager
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610610.aspx

I am creating your go-to source here, so you can always come back to 1 place if you need to rebuild.

First - Download Files

You need to download 2 prerequisite executables from the Microsoft Download Center.

Unified Communications Managed API 4.0 Runtime
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34992

Office 2010 Filter Packs (64 bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17062

You also need Exchange 2013. You can download the RTM build from MSDN, but I recommend going directly to the Cumulative Update 2 installation. It can be used either as an upgrade or as a full install, so you might as well build on the latest code. I am linking you to the Exchange CAT team’s blog that references the download so that if they ever need to make a correction, you are going to the guys in the know.

Now Available: Updated Release of Exchange 2013 RTM CU2
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2013/07/29/now-available-updated-release-of-exchange-2013-rtm-cu2.aspx

Finally, there is a security update available for CU2. The Exchange setup.exe understands how to patch the installation prior to install. All you have to do is copy the update to a folder. Again, let’s start with the latest code.

Security Update For Exchange Server 2013 CU2 (KB2874216)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39904

Second - Create a formatted, fixed size VHDX file

We need to create a blank virtual hard disk to home the installation files, the Exchange DB, and logs. If you want to review storage practices (and if you are building more than a test lab, you should) I recommend the TechNet article below as well as the PDF linked at the beginning of the article, which goes in to great detail. Even in a Single Server Architecture, storage will be key to performance.

Exchange 2013 Virtualization – Exchange storage requirements
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj619301(v=exchg.150).aspx#BKMK_ExchangeStor

I recommend a Fixed Size VHDX. You can do this via Disk Manager in Windows or via PowerShell if you have the Hyper-V cmdlets available. To keep things moving, I will provide the workflow from the UI.

Process to create a new blank VHDX file:

Run - DiskMgmt.MSC

Action Menu - Create VHD

Populate the form according to your environment but make sure you choose Fixed Size, NOT Dynamically Expanding. I would recommend 40 GB at minimum but you may require much more if this environment will host production Exchange DB and Logs. I also recommend VHDX as the format.

Right click on the new disk and choose Initialize Disk. MBR is fine.

Right click on the shaded portion of the new disk item and select New Simple Volume…

Walk through the wizard selecting the full size of the disk, assign a drive letter, and perform a Quick Format.

Third - Add the files you downloaded to the new virtual hard drive

I have tested this solution in many different permutations. Unless you plan to use UCMA or the Office filters for other applications (in which case a VMM custom resource would be in order) and since we are already planning to have a data drive for the servers, my recommendation is to just stage the installations in the VHD for the data drive and call them from there. In 2012 you can mount the VHD file and modify it easily. Simply double click on it and it should launch a new window. To detach it you can open Explorer, right click on the drive icon and select ‘Eject’.

For the folder and files, please create this structure and stage each set of content so that the parameters in the template do not require modification:

<driveletter>:\Exchange2013CU2\
<driveletter>:\UCMA\
<driveletter>:\FilterPack\

Then create a new subfolder under Exchange 2013CU2 named “Updates”.

Copy the content you downloaded in to each respective folder. You should have something like this:

The last step is to copy the new VHDX file to the VMM library in the folder of your choosing.

You only have to do that once! Now that you have a prepared VHDX file you can use it for any Exchange servers you create using the service template.

FINALLY - Refresh your VMM library

This is just a good idea to move things along after you have added the item above. Note that you need to run this from the VMM shortcut to PowerShell so the VMM cmdlets will be available.

001	Get-SCLibraryShare \| Refresh-SCLibraryShare

You now are prepared to import the service templates for Exchange! Please proceed to Part 3 – Setup and Best Practices. I know it is a lengthy post but details count. If you feel lost, I have recorded a full length walk-through. I would recommend you skip to the place where you would like a visual aid. I have included bookmarks to help.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

<<PREV

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Exchange Server 2013 CU2 Service Templates - Setup and Best Practices

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 11:00:00 GMT

This blog post is part 3 of 3 in a series.

This series of posts that detail how to deploy Exchange 2013 CU2 using Service Templates in Virtual Machine Manager. If you are just landing on this subject I recommend starting with Part 1. This page will focus on what you need to do import and configure the service templates, as well as best practices you should follow if considering deployment in production environments.

Blog Series: Table of Contents

Part 1 – Philosophy/Overview – Define scope and assumptions.

Part 2 - Prerequisites – Document any unique pre-work and link to all downloads that should be ready before getting started.

Part 3 - Setup the Service Templates in VMM and Best Practices – Document the process to setup and configure the service templates in VMM.

Exchange Server 2013 Service Templates for System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Before you begin - Make a decision about how you will extend Active Directory

Run As Account

VMM needs an account to run the commands for installing Exchange. What account you select depends on your scenario so let’s be a little bit careful here.

Question – will your forest and domain already be prepped for the new Exchange Org using the Exchange 2013 CU2 Schema Extensions?

If the answer is YES, then the Run As account will only need to be a domain account with permissions to write to the directory to add references to the Exchange server object. This is similar to permissions that would allow for joining the computer to the domain. You probably already have that setup in VMM for provisioning new VMs to automate the OS installation process, in which case you can select that account and move on (if your directory permissions are granularly delegated, you may need to consult your Directory Services administrator to agree on which account should be used for this process).

If the answer is NO, you have a decision to make. Exchange setup will attempt to extend the schema during install if it has not already been completed, unless you suppress it. You need to decide whether you will want to create a Run As account with this level of permission. In enterprise scenarios, you are almost certainly not going to allow this in production as schema extensions should be carefully planned and executed under change management process. In a test lab, it is very possible that you are fine with it. In a tenant provisioning process, you might have the ability to temporarily utilize such permissions during build and then revoke access before data is introduced.

The direction you proceed pivots on the scenario you are trying to build. I can however guide you through the technical process.

Open the VMM console and connect to the VMM server where you will import the service template. Click on the Settings button on the bottom left corner and then expand out Security. Click Run As Accounts and review what you already have in place. If a new account is needed, click the Create Run As Account button and complete the form. When you are done click OK.

Setting Up The Service Templates In VMM

Download the service templates from TechNet Gallery and extract the contents of the ZIP file. Here you will find the XML files and a ReadMe.txt that references this site. The resources for each template are the same, so I am only providing one walk-through of import and domain settings. Even though the screenshots reference the SSA, the same process is true for MSA. The application settings are slightly different. Details are explained in the application settings section.

First - Import the Files

Launch the VMM console and click on the button in the bottom left corner for Library, then expand Templates on the left pane and select Service Templates, and then click the button on the ribbon Import Template. Now browse to the location of the XML file. There are no sensitive settings in the XML so you can ignore the checkbox and click Next.

On the next page you will see a series of warning signs as well as a red X. As IT Pro’s we have a well developed synapse that triggers a gut reaction that everything is broken. Relax, nothing is broken. Take a sip of coffee as we prepare to edit each line and map the template to the resources in VMM created during the prerequisite section.

Click the pencil icon next to each line and map to the item you created in VMM. To simplify as much as possible, here is a reference table to assist.

Resource Name	Mapping
Data.vhdx	Map this to the formatted Data.VHDX file you created and stored in the library.
WindowsServer2012Template	Map this to the VM Template for Windows Server 2012 (created independently of this guidance).
ExchangeInstallAccount	Map this to the Run As Account you created that will be used to install Exchange.
NT AUTHORITY\System	Map this to the Run As Account by the same name in VMM. This should exist by default without creating anything new.

When complete, click Next.

Finally, review the settings that will import the ST. You may also want to click on “View Script” so you can see exactly how you would do this using PowerShell if you were to automate such a workflow in the future. Click Import and you are done!

Second – Configure Your Domain Settings

OK, that was not the end of the world, was it? We went through a lot of steps. Hang in there. We are going to add the finishing touches so the VM joins a domain.

Right click on the new service template and select “Open Designer”. This will give you the view below.

Right click on the center box and select Properties (for MSA you will see two boxes). This is your opportunity to customize anything you feel comfortable with according to your environment. Browse through the Hardware Configuration and validate the configuration. Pay special attention in the OS Configuration tab to customize the fields in the list below:

Identity Information – this is defaulted to “EX” followed by a 2 digit counter supplied by ##. Does this comply with the standards you have in mind?
Admin Password – set this according to the password standards for your environment.
Domain / WorkGroup – to make the import go smoothly this is set with a placeholder in the Workgroup field. Switch to the Domain radio button and provide the full DNS name for your domain and either enter stored credentials or select a Run As Account.

Third – Configure Your Application Settings

This is the one area I want to fork and explain SSA and MSA a little bit differently per workflow. I made the conscious decision to make the SSA backwards compatible with VMM 2012 SP1. It is a simple workflow, and 2012 SP1 can handle it with no problem. On the other hand, MSA is more interesting because you have multiple servers all coming online at about the same time. The first server is going to extend the Active Directory schema and the others should wait for it to finish. If you have multiple Mailbox servers across fault domains, that creates a minor race problem. Never fear. There are new capabilities in service templates for VMM 2012 R2 that make this a breeze and actually make a difference in how we work with more advanced application installs going forward.

Part 1: Customize Application Settings for Single Server Architecture

Select the Application Configuration tab. You will notice three Script items. This is the set of commands that the service template is going to run in order. Review script items Pre-Install 1 and Pre-Install 2. These should not require any editing but if you click on the Advanced tab you can review the configuration including the location where logs will be written within each VM during installation.

Now select Pre-Install 3. This script is where we actually run Exchange Setup unattended. We really don’t need to make any changes but I want to call attention to 2 items.

Place your mouse cursor in the Parameters: field. Ctrl-A to select all and copy the full string to Notepad. Verify the install string. You will notice @Organization@. This creates a mandatory parameter you can enter at run time. The value is used to name the Exchange Organization. If this will always be the same, you can replace it with something static.

Note that the database name is based on the server name so it is unique per server. See comments at the end of the post regarding impact of database name when considering database availability groups.

Review the value in the field Run As Account. If a change is required, select the account to run the Exchange install.

Part 2: Customize Application Settings for Multiple Server Architecture

If you are a frequent user of VMM 2012 SP1 and ready to move to VMM 2012 R2, take a look at the graphic below. Specifically, check out the application section. There is a new Script Application type in R2!

Right click on the each server role box (the large two in the middle) and select Properties. In the above section we validated the Parameters string and the Run As Account. For each server role in this case, please do the same. You just want to make sure these align with how Exchange should be installed in your environment.

Note the Specify a script block section. If you require something more advanced to be run during install such as looking up values and passing them in as parameters, VMM now allows you to do this directly.

There is also a Timeout (seconds) value. This is the duration of time that the script is given to execute before VMM cuts it off and considers the job to have failed. I have set this to an hour. If for any reason you need more time, or if you believe that is too long, this is a new ability to tweak the setting.

Looking specifically at the Mailbox Server role, in the Application Configuration dialogue, you will see I have a third pre-install script with a unique title. Another new feature of VMM 2012 R2 is the ability to execute a script only for the first VM, or only on VMs other than the first VM. The same is true for deleting VM’s should you ever decide you need a “cleanup” task.

I have utilized this functionality to separate out the action of extending the schema for Active Directory. This will occur only prior to creation of the first VM.

Fourth - Save and Validate

You can browse the remaining tabs and click OK. You may wish to further customize the template and that is OK. This is yours now! You may wish to utilize Quota Points, Custom Properties, etc, in self-service scenarios or in the case of additional automation.

Don’t forget to click “Save and Validate” in the top right hand corner to save your changes.

Finally - Deploy the Service Template

Everything is setup and you are ready to deploy. I am not going to recreate the TechNet documentation here. If you are unfamiliar with the process please visit the link below.

How to Deploy a Service in VMM
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg650471.aspx

I do want to post a reference just so you have a complete walk-through. You will need to select the Virtual Network when you create the deployment configuration and provide a name for your organization. The organization field is mandatory before you will be able to deploy the service. The space to enter the value is in the lower left hand corner of your screen.

Follow Best Practices (VERY IMPORTANT FOR PRODUCTION SERVERS)

There are post-installation tasks I consider requirements for production. The service template deploys the Exchange application but if you plan to introduce the new server or servers in to production, you should think about how this fits in to your normal Exchange configuration workbook. You can reference the Exchange documentation on TechNet as well as the tool the Exchange team has provided to serve as a checklist. These additional items would be suitable for Orchestrator or SMA if your are deploying at scale.

Exchange 2013 Post-Installation Tasks
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124397(v=exchg.150).aspx
Microsoft Exchange Server Deployment Assistant
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/jj657516

Install production certificate, assign services, update URLs

If you deploy a new server in to an AD site where there are production users and do not complete the unique configurations for your environment, you could disrupt users by prompting them regarding an invalid certificate, and eventually lead to errors occurring in the Outlook client.

Make sure you read over the URL configuration and SSL certificate sections on this page!
Configure Mail Flow and Client Access
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj218640(v=exchg.150).aspx
Digital Certificates and SSL (specific to Exchange 2013)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351044(v=exchg.150).aspx

This would be a great way to extend the service template provided here to include unique information about your environment. In an automation platform where VMM is combined with Orchestrator/SMA, this would also be an excellent task to occur next in a production-targeted workflow.

Move the Data VHDX to a different spindle than the OS VHDX

The Exchange guidance clearly indicates that the best practice for virtualization is to put the OS and Data on different spindles (different hard drives). The service template creates separate Virtual Hard Disk files but does NOT automatically guarantee that they will be located on different storage. This creates one post-install task you should take as the admin, that is to consider your storage configuration and determine if you are using a large storage array and the files will already benefit from spreading disk IO across spindles or if you are using something like direct attached storage. If so, you will want to Live Storage Migrate the Data.VHDX file to a separate drive from the VHD where your OS virtual hard disk lives. The key word here is Live so it will not require downtime but you should complete the activity prior to using the VM as anything more than a test server.

Live migration of storage between two locations on a stand-alone host
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj860434.aspx#BKMK_Storage

Consider whether you will add additional databases

While reading various posts and talking to people about this project I learned it is not unusual to create a new database after install. To automate the process I have set the unattend parameters to create a default database using the naming convention “<ServerName>_Default”. Especially if this server will be part of a Database Availability Group that will be replicated across servers, it will make sense to create a new database for user accounts with a standardized naming convention that suits your environment.

Manage Mailbox Databases in Exchange 2013
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj150580(v=exchg.150).aspx

Create a Database Availability Group
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351172(v=exchg.150).aspx

Summary

You now have service templates for Exchange! Thank you for sticking with the entire walkthrough. We have deployed all prerequisites, configured the service template at import, and configured the unique settings in Designer. I know it is a lengthy post but details count. If you feel lost, I have recorded a full length walk-through. I would recommend you skip to the place where you would like a visual aid. I have included bookmarks to help.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

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Installing & configuring Service Reporting for IaaS usage and metering

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 22:59:00 GMT

This is the last blog post in a series on how to enable usage and metering for IaaS using System Center and Windows Azure Pack.

The series includes the following posts:

Service Reporting is a new components in System Center 2012 R2, and in this blog post I’ll go over how you can install and configure it by doing the following:

Installing Service Reporting
Configure Service Reporting to extract data from Windows Azure Pack
Verifying data gets processed in the cubes
Make a simple dashboard in SharePoint.

The following things must be configured before starting on this guide

Completing all steps and pre-requisites from the previous blog posts:

Additional to the two prerequisites described above, the following components are needed:

SQL 2012 SP1 or higher running Analysis Services
SharePoint 2013 Enterprise with PerformancePoint enabled.

The Environment:

Operations Manager Server:	OM01.contoso.com
Operations Manager DB Server	DB03.contoso.com
Operations Manager DW Database Server:	DB04.contoso.com
VMM Server:	VMM01.contoso.com
SPF Server:	VMM01.contoso.com
WAP Server:	WAP01.contoso.com
Service Reporting Server:	DB06.contoso.com
Service Reporting Database:	DB06.contoso.com
SharePoint Server:	SP01.contoso.com

Installing Service Reporting

The Service Reporting component will extract data from WAP Usage Service, transform the data and load it into the UsageAnalysis db.

Service Reporting is made up of three databases that are used for the ETL process:

UsageETLRepositoryDB

UsageStagingDB

UsageDatawarehouseDB

The following requirements should be verified before starting the Service Reporting installation.

Verify that SQL Services (SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services & SQL Server Agent) are running under a Domain account and that this domain account has the required access to the UsageDatawarehouseDB databases instance where Service Reporting DB will be implemented. Also make sure that this domain account has read access to the System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager databases.

To verify the SQL Service Accounts settings do the following:

1. Logon to the server where Service Reporting databases will be installed.

2. Launch SQL Server Configuration Manager

3. Under SQL Server Services, verify that the following services are running under a domain account.

To verify that the Service Account(s) has access to the database instance do the following:

1. Open SQL Management Studio as Administrator

2. Specify the server name for the Service Reporting SQL Database Server

3. Verify there is a login user for the service account (SQL Server & SQL Analysis Services) also verify that this user has the needed rights on the instance.



Note: It might be necessary to modify the access after the install of Service Reporting, for the user to have the needed access to the UsageDatawarehouseDB if this is not granted at the instance level.

4. Do the same for the database server holding the Operations Manager Databases

5. Verify that the SQL Agent Service Account has read access to the Operations Manager Databases.

To install Service Reporting do the following:

1. Login as an administrator that has Sysadmin rights on the database server where Service Reporting component is to be installed.

2. Mount the Orchestrator 2012 R2 media on the server

3. Run SetupOrchestrastor.exe

4. Select Service Reporting under the Service Management Section



5. Click Install

6. Click Accept and click Next to License Terms

7. Verify that all prerequisites are “passed”

8. Specify a path for the installation folder and Click “Next”

9. Specify the Database server and instance for Data Warehouse databases and click “Next”



10. Specify the SQL Analysis Server where Service Reporting is to be installed and click “Next”

11. Click Next to Microsoft updates and review Installation Summery, if ok, click “Install”

12. Verify that the install goes well.

Configure Service Reporting to extract data from Windows Azure Pack

The Service Reporting component will extract data from the WAP Usage REST API. To get access to the data a user and password needs to me configured on the WAP Usage Server. To do this do the following:

1. Logon on to WAP Server and Start Windows PowerShell as Administrator

2. Load the WAP PS Module:

    Import-module MgmtSvcAdmin

3. Set the User Name for the WEB Service:

    Set-MgmtSvcSetting -Namespace UsageService -Name Username -Value '<User Name>'

    Exmaple: Set-MgmtSvcSetting -Namespace UsageService -Name Username -Value 'SC'

4. Set the password for the user: Set-MgmtSvcSetting -Namespace UsageService -Name Password –Value ‘<Password>' –Encode

    Example: Set-MgmtSvcSetting -Namespace UsageService -Name Password -Value 'Password1' –Encode

We have now created a user name and a password for the WAP Usage REST API, so Service Reporting will be able to extract usage data from WAP Usage Service. The next step is to configure Service Reporting to connect to the WAP Usage REST API. To do this do the following:

1. Login as an administrator on Service Reporting server.

2. Edit MaintenanceConfig.xml file under <InstallationDrive>:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Service Reporting\Maintenance folder

3. Update OM SQL Server Name and Database and WAP Usage Service in the XML file

Example:

<DataExtraction>

<ExtractSystemName>Service Reporting DW System</ExtractSystemName>

<ExtractProcessGroup>SR Data Extraction</ExtractProcessGroup>



<OperationsManagerSQLServers>DB03</OperationsManagerSQLServers>

<OperationsManagerDBs>OperationsManager</OperationsManagerDBs>





<WAPUsageServiceURI>https://wap01.contoso.com:30022/usage?</WAPUsageServiceURI>

4. Open Windows PowerShell as an administrator.

5. Navigate to the <InstallationDrive>:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Service Reporting\Maintenance folder. For example, type cd “c:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Service Reporting\Maintenance” and then press ENTER

6. Run the following command to configure Service Reporting to talk to Operations Manager and WAP Usage REST API:

.\PostDeploymentConfig.ps1 –User <User from previous command> –Password <Password from previous step>

Example: .\PostDeploymentConfig.ps1 –User SC -Password Password1

Verifying data gets transferred from WAP and processed in the cubes

1. Logon to the Database Server that hosts Service Reporting Databases as an administrator

2. Start SQL Management Studio and connect to the Database Instance holding the databases.

3. Go to Databases folder, expand it and verify you can see the following Databases:



4. Select SQL Server Agent > Jobs

5. Verify that the following jobs shows:



6. Right Click on the Service Reporting DW System Job and select “Start Job at Step..”

7. Click Start

8. Verify that the job completes successfully (This can take some time to complete)



9. Go to Databases folder, expand it and expand UsageDatawarehouseDB > Tables

10. Right clink on CloudDim and select “Select top 1000 Rows”

11. Verify that data shows in the table that is similar to below Picture

12. Click on “Connect” in the ribbon bar and select “Analysis Services”

13. Give the name on the server where Analysis Services is holding the Service Reporting Cubes and click “Connect”

14. Go to Databases folder, expand it and verify you can see the following databases



15. Right click on each Database and select “Process”

16. Click “Ok”

17. Verify that the processing goes well.



18. Click “Close” and close SQL Management Studio

Make a simple Dashboard in SharePoint

In order to show the data in the Data Warehouse we are using SharePoint 2013 PerformancePoint.

I will not explain how to install SharePoint, but will walk over the configuration of SharePoint PerformancePoint to connect to Data Warehouse.

I will give a few hints and tips. In this scenario I’m using SQL 2012 SP1 and SharePoint 2013

Remember to install ADOMD.NET to allow SharePoint 2013 to connect to SQL from here
Specifying Your ADOMD.NET Data Provider Version
Configure a new site with Business Intelligence (PerformancePoint)
Remember to configure a secure store with a user that has access to Data Warehouse

To create a sample Dashboard in SharePoint do the following

Create a data connection

1. Start a browser on the SharePoint Server and go to the new PerformancePoint site created for Usage & Metering

2. Select PerformancePoint Content and click on PERFORMANCEPOINT in the top menu and click “Dashboard Designer”



Note: If Dashboard Designer is used for the first time, the designer will install (Click Run) and console will launch.

3. Right Click on Data Connections and select “New Data Source”

4. Select Analysis Services and click “Ok”

5. Specify the server that holds the Analysis Services for Service Reporting

6. Click on the Database field and select UsageAnalysisDB from the list

7. From Cube select SRUsageCube

    Note: Cubes must have been processed at least once to show in this list

8. Click Test Data Source and verify that connection is successful

9. Right Click on the New Data Source Rename and save the Data Connection

Create Reports

1. In Dashboard Designer console select “PerformancePoint Content”

2. Right Click on “PerformancePoint Content” and select “New Report”



3. In the “Report Template” select “Analytic Chart”



4. Select the Data source that was created earlier

5. Give the Report a name e.g. “VM Runtime QTR”

6. Select “VM Runtime QTR” in the Workspace Browser

7. In the Details Pane Select “Measures”

8. In the Details Pane Select “Measures”

9. Expand “Measures” and scroll down until “Hourly VM RunTime Total” shows in the list

10. Select “Hourly VM RunTime Total” and Drag and Drop it over to the “Series” Box in the lower central pane

11. Go back to the details view and Extend Dimensions > Date > Calendar Quarter

12. Drag and drop this into the “Bottom Axis”

13. You should now see Data in the central window showing “Hourly VM RunTime Total” at the bottom of the Report

14. Repeat step 4-12 using the following details:

Name of Report Series value (Measures) Bottom Axis (Dimensions)

Core Allocations QTR Daily Core Allocated Date Calendar Quarter

Disk Space QTR Daily DiskspaceAllocated
Daily DiskspaceUsed Date Calendar Quarter

15. There should now be 3 reports in the Performance Content View

Create a Dashboard

1. In Dashboard Designer console select “PerformancePoint Content”

2. Right Click on “PerformancePoint Content” and select “New > Dashboard”

3. In the “Select a Dashboard Page Template” select “3 Columns” and click “Ok”

4. Give the Dashboard a name E.g. VM Dashboard under “Workspace Browser windows”

5. Click on Name (Page 1) and Rename it to VM Dashboard.

6. In the Details pane extend “Reports” > “PerformancePoint Content”

7. Select “Hourly VM RunTime Total” and drag and drop it into “Dashboard Content” > “Left Column”

8. Do the same for “Core Allocations QTR” and drag & drop this in the “middle Column”

9. Drag and drop “Disk Space QTR” to the “Right Column”

Publish a Dashboard to PerformancePoint

In order to publish the dashboard in SharePoint, do the following

1. Right Click on the dashboard just created and select Deploy to SharePoint

2. If prompted Select SharePoint Server and Version and Click “Ok”

3. A browser windows will open and show the Dashboard inside PerformancePoint

The Dashboard should look similar to the one below:

To drill Down on data do the following:

1. Click on VM Runtime QTR

2. Right click on one of the graphs and Select Drill Down To > Cloud

You can now see the number of VM hours pr cloud in the window.

If you hover over one of the pillars you can see the number of hours for a cloud for a given period of time.

3. Right click on one of the graphs and Select Drill Down To > Virtual Machine

This will show you which Virtual Machine with the most VM Runtime hours within a give Cloud.

I hope this introduction to Usage and Metering using System Center and Windows Azure Pack will help you better utilize these new functions in R2.

Please let me know if you have any feedback on this series!

Happy Usage and Metering using System Center and Windows Azure Pack.

Document your Orchestrator Runbooks with the updated “Visio and Word Generator”!

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 02:30:52 GMT

Following a few customer enquiries, I am happy to post an update to the “Orchestrator Visio and Word Generator” tool.

The very first version of the tool was published nearly 3 years ago as a way to export and document Runbooks details in Visio, under the name “Opalis VSD Generator”… Wow, that doesn’t make me younger!

Since then, features were added to the tool along the way, including Orchestrator support and the option to generate a Word document as well.

This new version (1.5) adds support for Visio 2013 and Word 2013, as well as more detailed output in the Word document generated (including details on the published data being used in the activities). It also supports the ability to use a SQL Server listening on a non-default port, and a few bug fixes (for example, it now correctly excludes deleted activities from Visio exports)

This post merely contains a few explanations about what the tool does, and where to download it. You can also refer to past posts for more details, or to the documentation included in the package.

What do you get when running the tool?

The user interface looks like this. You can browse the folder hierarchy and select the Runbook you wish to generate documentation for:

In the screenshots below, you can see a Runbook and the associated Visio export generated by the tool:

It does work with more complex Runbooks too! And this examples also shows the Word document automatically generated by the tool:

Here’s the download link

Actual requirements to run the tool are in the documentation included in the package, but in a nutshell you will mainly need network access and rights to an Orchestrator server and its database (System Center 2012 or higher).

Note : Version 1.5 only supports Orchestrator and Visio 2013 / Word 2013. If you need to export Opalis Integration Server policies or use Visio 2010 / Word 2010, you can still use version 1.31, also available on CodePlex.

Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy the tool!

Automation–Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution–Version 1.2!

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Hello Readers/Viewers!

Remember back in January of this year when I published the Automation–Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution post over here on the Building Clouds Blog? It was a re-introduction of the content I originally posted many moons ago on my old Blog D’Joy TechNet Blog (I will not expect you to remember that far back!) ;)

Either way, an update to this Integration Pack has been a long time in the making. In fact when I posted about it earlier this year, I had some really great feedback (thank you Greg Bray!) on how to improve and add some really great functionality to something that has already been installed many, many times. I have now taken that feedback, plus one additional “feature” and am proud to release the Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution 1.2!

So, this blog post will be a short recap of what is already in the updated documentation (available in the new download) – but first…

…the Download!

The download includes the following (2) files:

ExecutePS_1.2.oip (System Center 2012 SP1 – Orchestrator Integration Pack)
Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution 1.2 - User Guide.docx (updated documentation)

Download the Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution 1.2 from TechNet Gallery here:

What’s New in Version 1.2?

The following list outlines the three main updates for version 1.2 of the Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution.

New IP Connection - Authentication Method - CredSSP
For more information about CredSSP, please review the following:

New IP Global Connection / Activity Functionality - Get Host Name from Activity
This requirement came directly from comments/suggestions in the original blog post here: Automation–Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution

IMPORTANT: Because the existing Global Configuration field for “Host Name” changed to “Host Name from Global Config”, existing configurations will need to be updated before their respective activities will function as expected.
New IP Activity Execution Option - Execute Asynchronously
While investigating Timeout Configuration for the IP, I came across yet another option for the execution of scripts within the runspace(s) created during exection. This option is now offered during design time (default is set to “False”, which imitates existing functionality pre-option). The options pertain to the following Methods:

Runspace.OpenAsync Method (new option)
Runspace.Open Method (existing functionality – default)

NOTE: Each of the new features/enhancements are detailed within the updated documentation available in the new download.

System Requirements

System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SP1+)
System Center 2012 Orchestrator Integration Toolkit (SP1)
Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework
PowerShell 2.0+
winrm quickconfig command executed on local and target machines where PS Scripts will be executed
Enable-WSManCredSSP for Client and Server roles as needed if CredSSP functionality is desired

Upgrading (from Version 1.1)

Via the Orchestrator Deployment Manager…

Uninstall the existing Integration Pack (version 1.1) from any and all machines where it has been installed (both Runbook Designer and Runbook Server machines)
Unregister the existing Integration Pack (version 1.1)
Register the new Integration Pack (version 1.2 - ExecutePS_1.2.oip)
Deploy/Install the new Integration Pack (version 1.2 - ExecutePS_1.2.oip) to any and all machines where it is needed (both Runbook Designer and Runbook Server machines)

Pre-System Center 2012 SP1 – Orchestrator Notes

As you likely know, a new version of the Orchestrator Integration Toolkit (OIT) shipped with SP1. This new Integration Pack was created with this new OIT, and likely will not be compatible with older versions of Orchestrator (due to Microsoft.SystemCenter.Orchestrator.Integration.dll changes).

If you will not be installing/using System Center 2012 SP1 Orchestrator and would like an older copy of the DLL for this IP that will work for older deployments, please find it here: http://sdrv.ms/10dEvfQ and reference the comments in the original blog post here: Automation–Orchestrator Integration Pack for PowerShell Script Execution

That’s it - thanks for checking it out!

And for more information, tips/tricks, and example solutions for Orchestrator, be sure to watch for future blog posts in the Automation Track!

enJOY!

Configuring SPF and Windows Azure Pack for IaaS usage and metering

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:55:00 GMT

After configuring VMM and OM for IaaS usage and metering in the previous blog post (here) it’s now time to configuring SPF and Windows Azure Pack to import Usage data from Operations Manager Data Warehouse into Windows Azure Pack (WAP) Usage Database.

The series includes the following posts:

Service Provider Foundation has a usage module that WAP uses to collect data from Operations Manager data warehouse. In this blog post we will go over how to configure the following:

Configure SPF to extract data from Operations Manager Data Warehouse
Configure WAP to connect to SPF Usage Service
Verify that Data is being stored in the WAP usage database

The following things must be configured before starting on this guide

Completing all steps and pre-requisites from the previous blog post: Configuring VMM and OM for IaaS usage and metering

The Environment:

Operations Manager Server:	OM01.contoso.com
Operations Manager Database Server:	DB04.contoso.com
VMM Server	VMM01.contoso.com
SPF Server	VMM01.contoso.com
WAP Server	WAP01.contoso.com
WAP Database Server:	DB02.contoso.com
Service Reporting Server	VMM01.contoso.com
Service Reporting Database	DB06.contoso.com
SharePoint Server	SP01.contoso.com

Configure SPF to extract data from Operations Manager Data Warehouse

The usage module in SPF needs to be configured using PowerShell. With SPF there is a set of commands that enables you to configure settings in SPF. By using these commands you can tell SPF where the Operations Manager Server and Data Warehouse database are located.

To configure SPF Usage do the following:

1. Logon to the SPF server as an Administrator

2. Open IIS Manager Console

3. Select Application Pools

4. Check the identity for the Usage Application (eg. Contoso\!spf)

5. Close the IIS console

6. Open Computer Management Console > Local Users Groups > Groups

7. Verify that the SPF Usage Application Identity user is member of the local SPF_Usage users group, if not add the user to the group

8. Open PowerShell console with administrative privilege

9. Run the following commands (change values in “<>” with your own values):

Import-module spfadmin

# Provide server name to the OM DW SQL instance

$OMDWSqlServer = "<SCOM DW DB SQL Server>”

Example: $OMDWSqlServer = "DB04.contoso.com"

# Provide server name to the OM RMS Server

$OMServer = "<SCOM RMS Server Name>"

Example: $OMServer = "OM01.contoso.com"

# Register the SCOM Data Warehouse instance to SPF usage metering

$stamp = Get-SCSPFStamp;

$server = New-SCSPFServer -Name $OMServer -ServerType OMDW -Stamps $stamp[0];

For SPF Preview use the following command:

$setting = New-SCSPFSetting -Name $OMDWSqlServer -SettingString "Data Source=$OMDWSqlServer;Initial Catalog=OperationsManagerDW;Integrated Security=True" -SettingType DatabaseConnectionString –Server $server

For SPF RTM use the following command:

$setting = New-SCSPFSetting -Name $OMDWSqlServer –Value "Data Source=$OMDWSqlServer;Initial Catalog=OperationsManagerDW;Integrated Security=True" -SettingType DatabaseConnectionString –Server $server

Example:

To verify if the setting has been applied to SPF run the following command:

Get-SCSPFSetting

10. Logon to the SQL Server that hosts the SCOM DW DB as SQL Admin

11. Start SQL Management Studio

12. Select Security > Logins

13. Right Click on Logins folder and select “New Login”

14. Add the SPF Usage Application Identity user for Login name. eg. Contoso\!spf

15. Select User Mapping under “Select a page”

16. Select OperationsManagerDW and select OpsMgrReader under “Database role membership”

17. Click Ok

18. Right Click OperationsManagerDW under Database and select Properties

19. Select Permissions and pick the user just added under User and Roles.

20. Verify that the user has Execute permission on the database, if not assign this permission as shown below.

21. Close SQL Management Studio

Configure WAP to connect to SPF Usage Service

The Usage module inside WAP uses SPF to collect data from Operations Manager Data Warehouse. For WAP usage to collect this data we need to tell WAP where the SPF Usage service is located.

To enable this in WAP do the following

1. Start a browser that has access to the WAP Admin Portal and login in as administrator

2. Select VM Clouds from the main menu

3. Select the VM Clouds Configuration from the VM Clouds menu

4. Select Register Service Provider Usage

5. Provide information for each field as given in the example below and Click Ok.

NB: Remember to add /Usage after the port number for the SPF usage service.

Verify that Data is being stored in the WAP usage database

To verify that IaaS data is being stored in the WAP Usage Database do the following:

1. Logon the WAP Database as Administrator

2. Start SQL Management Studio

3. Select Databases > Tables

4. Right Click on Usage.Records and select “Select Top 1000 Rows”

5. Verify that the result returns Data with ResourceId “VM Utilization”

6. Close the SQL Management Studio Console

Now that we see data in the WAP Usage DB, we have successfully integrated SPF and Windows Azure Pack.

This will now enable us to configure Service Reporting and using billing adapters against Windows Azure Pack.

In the next blog post I will go through how Service Reporting can be configured.

Installing & configuring Service Reporting for IaaS usage and metering

My colleague KR Kandavel is working on a series of blog posts explaining how you can build a billing adapter.

Link to blog post coming soon

See you next time for more blogging about Windows Azure Pack & System Center 2012 R2 :-)

free eBook: Microsoft System Center – Designing Orchestrator Runbooks

Sat, 28 Sep 2013 10:59:00 GMT

Hi, I’m Andreas Rynes, Lead Architect on the Datacenter Program Team, Microsoft Services HQ working on datacenter solutions focusing on automation and management.

Today I’d like to introduce you to a free eBook that we recently released to the public and share with you a few thoughts about the concepts and patterns, as well as the rationale behind writing this book. We believe that orchestration and automation are becoming increasingly important to IT organizations of all sizes and across all infrastructure types ranging from on premise, public cloud, and hybrid cloud scenarios.

My team and I have personally had many discussions with customers that have installed Orchestrator, started building out Runbooks, and started their automation solution without spending a lot of time on the design and architecture of their System Center Orchestrator environment. Very often they find themselves in situations where they are locked in with their production Runbooks, need to implement changes or extend them, but realize that this would mean a complete rewrite of all of their Runbooks to implement the improvements or updates.

The objective of this book is to avoid those situations for our customers. It provides a framework for designing Runbooks and IT process automation to help the IT Pro get the most out of their System Center 2012 Orchestrator implementation and help them to utilize Orchestrator in a very modular approach, focusing on small, focused pieces of automation. These modules then being used to build into larger and more complex end-to-end process automation scenarios. Leveraging this guide provide the framework you need to build a scalable and extensible library of automation pieces that you can extend easily in the future.

By introducing different types of Runbooks, such as Component Runbooks and Control Runbooks, we also cover the specific challenges that many of you might have already come across using Orchestrator. We cover concepts such as how to deal with remote PowerShell scripts (providing a workaround for a current limitation of Orchestrator dealing with 64-bit modules) and how to deal with file-based variables or validations. We’ll don’t just cover theories or concepts, we also share some scripts and templates that you can use in your own environments and labs to get you started on building out your own IT process automation Runbooks.

To get access to this great content, please download the free eBook “Microsoft System Center – Designing Orchestrator Runbooks”, co-authored by David Ziembicki, Aaron Cushner and Andreas Rynes.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2013/09/18/free-ebook-system-center-designing-orchestrator-runbooks.aspx

Enjoy reading it!

Andreas Rynes

Lead Architect

Datacenter Program Team

Microsoft Corporation

Configuring VMM and OM for IaaS usage and metering

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 15:00:00 GMT

In the previous blog post (here) I explained how usage and reporting works in Windows Azure Pack and System Center 2012 R2.

As a follow up, I will take a deeper look into how usage and reporting can be configured step by step, This should allow the reader to setup this scenario without having to jump around to too many different links and references.

The series includes the following posts:

There are a list of things that must be done as pre-requisites in WAP & System Center components for usage and metering to work. The following things must be configured before starting on this guide.

Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 Server and Console is installed and managing at least one Hyper-V Server.
Operations Manager 2012 R2 Server, Data Warehouse and Console is installed and running.
Operations Manager Console and Agent is installed on the Virtual Machine Manager Server and OM Agent installed on the Hyper-v host managed by VMM.
SPF is installed with a Web App Service Account that has Admin access to Virtual Machine Manager. (link to documentation here)
VMM Console is installed on the SPF Server.
Windows Azure Pack (Admin & Tenant) is installed and connected to SPF (link to documentation here).
In WAP Admin portal having at least one plan offering Virtual Machines service. (link to documentation here).
In WAP have one Tenant subscribed to the above plan and have at least one Virtual Machine running under that subscription.
SQL Server running with Analysis services installed.

In this blog post I will walk through the configuration that needs to be done in Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager. This blog post is based on the expectation that the reader has no previous experience with Virtual Machine Manager or Operations Manager. The link on TechNet for “How to Connect VMM with Operations Manager” can be found here.

The Environment:

Operations Manager Server:	OM01.contoso.com
Operations Manager Database Server:	DB04.contoso.com
VMM Server:	VMM01.contoso.com
SPF Server:	VMM01.contoso.com
WAP Server:	WAP01.contoso.com
Service Reporting Server:	VMM01.contoso.com
Service Reporting Database:	DB06.contoso.com
SharePoint Server:	SP01.contoso.com

For Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager to integrate the following are the main items to configure:

VMM and dependent Management Packs needs to be imported into Operations Manager
OM and VMM service accounts needs to be added as Admins in VMM and OM.
Configure OM settings in VMM
Verify that the integration between Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager is working

VMM and dependent Management Packs needs to be imported into Operations Manager

For Operations Manager to monitor and discover Clouds, hosts and VMs, the VMM Management Packs (MP) needs to be imported into Operations Manager. The VMM Management Packs has a list of management packs that it depends on such as SQL, IIS and Windows Server. These MPs needs to be imported before the VMM Managements packs.

The following MP needs to be imported

"Windows Server Internet Information Services Library",
"Windows Server Library",
"SQL Server Core Library",
"Windows Server 2008 Operating System Discovery",
"Windows Internet Information Services 2003",
"Windows Internet Information Services 2008"

To do this, do the following:

1. Open Operations Manager Console as an administrator

2. Select Administration > Management Packs

3. Click Import Management Packs from the Action Menu.

4. Click “Add” and select “Add from catalog” (requires internet connection)

5. Search for the MP name as shown above and click add to import

6. Click Ok

7. Click Install.

OM and VMM service accounts needs to be added as Admins in VMM and OM

To make sure OM and VMM can exchange information between the two systems they need admin access between them . To verify that the service accounts has the right access do the following:

1. Open Services Console on VMM and OM servers

2. On the VMM Server verify the user for System Center Virtual Machine Manager is running under domain account (eg. CONTOSO\!vmm)

3. On the OM Server verify the the user for System Center Data Access Service is running under a domain account (eg. CONTOSO\!om_das)

4. If OM Administrators are managed through AD group then add the VMM Service Account to the OM Admin Security Group using Active Directory Users and Computers console Eg. Add CONTOSO\!VMM user to the OM Admins Security Group

Similarly, if VMM Administrators are managed through AD group then add the VMM Service Account to the OM Admin Security Group

Configure OM settings in VMM

1. Open VMM Console

2. Select Settings > System Center Settings

3. Give the FQDN of the OM Server

4. Use default Service Account suggested, Click Next

5. Specify the Service Account for Operations Manager added to the VMM Admin user role earlier, click Next

6. Click Finish to enable the integration.

Verify that the integration between Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager is working.

To do so, perform the following items

1. Open VMM Console as an administrator

2. Select Settings > System Center Settings

3. Double click on Operations Manager Server

4. Verify that connection Status is OK

5. Select Management Pack and verify that the list of MP is Version 3.1.6011.0 or higher.

6. Open Operations Manager console as Administrator

7. Select Monitoring > Monitoring > Virtual Machine Manager Views

8. Wait for the Diagram to show and extend Managed Resources > All Clouds

9. Verify that the list of Clouds that are showing in VMM is represented in the diagram.

To verify that performance data is flowing from Virtual Machine Manager to Operations Manager Data Warehouse perform the following items.

Note: Data will not show in OM DW before min 60 min after the integration is completed between OM and VMM.

1. Open Operations Manager Console

2. Select Reporting > Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 Reports

3. In the Reports view Open “Virtual Machine Utilization”

4. Click Add Object

5. Click Search

6. Mark one or more items from the search result and click Add and Click Ok.

7. Click Run from the ribbon bar

8. Verify that data is shown in the report, should look similar to the example below:

Now that we see data in the Operations Manager DW DB, we have successfully integrated Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manger, so they can exchange data between the two components.

This will now enable us to configure SPF and Windows Azure Pack.

In the next blog post I will go through how SPF and Windows Azure Pack can be configured.

A quick overview of the blog series

IaaS Usage and Service Reporting using System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack
Configuring VMM and OM for IaaS usage and metering. (This blog post)
Configuring SPF and Windows Azure Pack for IaaS usage and metering.
Installing & configuring Service Reporting for IaaS usage and metering.

Stay tuned!

Application Management - Service Template – Active Directory (STAD)

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 15:59:00 GMT

For those of you using some of the Application Management Track Service Templates in our blogs likeJim Britt’s awesome SharePoint Service Template or my own Service Template Example Kit (STEK), you might have noticed an underlying theme. The theme is rapid deployment of manageable, repeatable and consistent environments, which in my opinion play very nicely in a developer’s world of needing systems to build and test on. Whether on purpose, as in many templates we create, or not, these templates can and are a great base for self-service development and test labs. By using network isolation and automation the IT Admins could easily provide them “as a service” to developers and test teams and let them build or test rapidly, new application designs and concepts to run the businesses.

Here we’ll discuss how to create an Active Directory service template with minimal resources and minimal work. We are using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and Windows Server 2012 as our base. Later posts will show incorporating these components into a fully deployable service that will include multiple tiers like web front ends and SQL servers to build against.

Why an Active Directory or Domain Controller service as a SCVMM Service Template?

2 very easy and basic reasons. First you may be offering cloud based services to companies who desire their own cloud based Domain Controller instead of managing one on premise themselves. Second maybe even more basic, you may have teams that need to build and test against an AD that is not currently live and in production.

For example, if you need to repeatedly offer Exchange services to developers building collaboration tools in a sandbox, you will most likely want to sandbox the Active Directory component as well to prevent problems.

Quick note on best practices:

For those wanting to make sure you align to best practices in virtualizing Active Directory and Domain Names Services I suggest you take a look at this TechNet postinghttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd723681(v=WS.10).aspx or others like it. You’ll find it is a popular subject and very dependent a number of variables specific to your needs. I will meet best practices as needed and as required for my purposes but I also do not want to complicate things beyond usefulness in a lab where rapid repeatable deployments out-way the need for a five 9 service level uptime. Of course you need to review your own requirements and come up with your own models for deployment and you can easily customize this template to your needs.

Requirements:

Hopefully the first goes without saying, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 or R2 and a desire to learn are basic requirements. I’m also making the assumption, similar to my past template blogs, that you have become familiar with navigating around SCVMM console and familiar with the fabric configurations in SCVMM.

OS Virtual Hard Drive	Sys prepped Windows 2012 VHDX. I used Convert-WindowsImage.ps1 PowerShell to create mine. (No roles and features selected)
VHDX of blank Data Drive	PowerShell New-VHD can be used. Read here on TechNet to find out more..
Network Virtualization	When deploying multiple Domain Controllers there are specific network requirements, I found Nigel’s to be one of the best post to describe SCVMM Networking.

Let’s get on with it!

Active Directory Service Template w/DNS

The download includes a custom resource folder named ‘ActiveDirectoryScripts.cr’ the PowerShell script which is used to enable Active Directory on the server. This script name is ‘ad-dc-dns_config.ps1’. One of the optional parameters controls whether or not DNS will be installed as part of the ADDSForrest install. Here we set it to true.

Here is the heart of the PowerShell script:

 1: if((New-Object System.IO.DriveInfo($driveLetter)).DriveType -ne 'NoRootDirectory')

 2: {

 3:     $dataDrive = $driveLetter + ":\Windows\"

 4: }

 5: else

 6: {

 7:     $dataDrive = "c:\Windows\"

 8: }

9:

 10: $databasePath = $dataDrive + "NTDS"

 11: $sysvolPath = $dataDrive + "SYSVOL"

12:

 13: Import-Module ADDSDeployment

 14: $result = Install-ADDSForest `

 15: -CreateDNSDelegation:$false `

 16: -safemodeadministratorpassword (convertto-securestring $pass -asplaintext -force) `

 17: -DatabasePath $databasePath `

 18: -DomainMode "Win2012" `

 19: -DomainName $domain `

 20: -ForestMode "Win2012" `

 21: -InstallDNS:$true `

 22: -LogPath $databasePath `

 23: -NoRebootOnCompletion:$false `

 24: -SYSVOLPath $sysvolPath `

 25: -force:$true

The PowerShell script takes 2 required arguments and 1 optional.

.\ad-dc-dns_config.ps1 <Local Admin Password> <Domain Name> [Data Drive]

The first of the required arguments is the local administrators’ password which needs to match what is set as the local administrator’s password for the VM. It becomes the domain administrators password for login after Active Directory sets up. This is the password that is configured as part of the service template shown in the following screenshot and as a default I used Pass@word1. To change this you simply need to open the template in template designer, right click the on the Active Directory server and select properties. Select the OC Configuration and make changes. Yes, I know we could spend tons of cycles talking about security and such but that's beyond the scope of this post. Let’s just say that depending on the real world use case I would suggest additional thought be taken in the account creation and password space.

The second argument is the domain name, which is used to create the domain controller and accompanying DNS server. The domain names needs to be FQDN in the form name.com or name.local. The final optional argument is used when you have a data drive in use. In this particular template we use a separate VHDX file to make a small expandable data drive to meet some best practice guidelines. The script uses the data drive to store the SYSVOL and NTDS files. My recommendation would be to extend this further and use SCSI and/or separate onto multiple drives but this is simply a decision needing to be made based on requirements that need to be met versus resources used to accomplish.

As with many of my scripts this one does include some basic logic to log failures and completions in the application event log and also includes a little logic to test that the drive letter you selected as a data drive does exist. If given time I would extend this logic to test that the drive is writable and of proper size available to do the job.

Install Steps:

1. Download compressed template from here

2. Extract the custom resource folder, ‘ActiveDirectoryScripts.cr’, to your VMM library under a folder named ‘Active Directory 2012’

3. Import the XML file as a template being sure to map correctly the resources you have in place of the template VHD’s

During the import you’ll be asked to map some of the resources to your local resources.

The PowerShell used to import is as follows: you’ll need to make changes to the $allMappings as required.

Import-Module –Name VirtualMachineManager

  

$package = Get-SCTemplatePackage -Path "C:\Active Directory.2012 with Data Drive.xml"

$allMappings = New-SCPackageMapping -TemplatePackage $package

  

Import-SCTemplate -TemplatePackage $package -Name "Active Directory Test" -PackageMapping $allMappings -Release "2012 with Data Drive" -SettingsIncludePrivate

If there are no errors and it doesn’t say ‘needs attention’ in the library list all you need to do is select it and then select configure deployment. Before deploying you’ll need to create a network where this Domain Controller will be deployed. This may require an isolated network depending on your requirements. For more information on virtualizing networks in SCVMM 2012 SP1 I suggest you read this series of post from Nigel Cain found here. http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/archive/2013/01/08/virtual-networking-in-vmm-2012-sp1.aspx

When you start Configure Deployment of the Active Directory template the first thing you see is the select name and destination dialog box you are familiar with but with a twist. This template will ask you to select a network to deploy to since the @Network@ parameters was added to the template.

Select the browse option next to the network value box to choose an existing network and then select ok which will open the configure deployment dialog. In the following dialog you will enter the parameters needed to complete the deployment. Here it will require a domain name, password used for local administrator and of course the name you wish to assign to the Active Directory server.

If deployed correctly you should see the following in the data drive attached to the newly deploy VM.

Final steps are now to do any out of band configurations you have like adding users and computers.

Stay tuned for further blogs about use cases and additional workloads from the building clouds bloggers. Again my hopes are that this helps moves you along the Cloud path and also helps give you back some time in the process so use it in good health and enjoy a round of golf.

Windows Azure Hybrid Cloud Book by Danny Garber, Jamal Malik and Adam Fazio

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 15:32:00 GMT

What is hybrid cloud or hybrid IT? Hybrid cloud is when you connect resources hosted on different clouds. Hybrid IT is a bit broader in its scope, because you can connect a traditional on-premises datacenter infrastructure to resources hosted in a cloud environment, typically a public cloud service provider. Hybrid IT also applies to when you connect an on-premises private cloud to a public cloud provider’s resources.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with hybrid cloud/hybrid IT this year and the results of that time spent can be found in the Hybrid IT Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT guidance set on TechNet. In that guidance set we pulled information from TechNet, TechReady, TechEd, feature PMs and the guys with their boots on the ground in Microsoft Consulting Services so that we could provide you a lifecycle approach on how to begin your journey into a hybrid cloud/hybrid IT infrastructure.

We never could have completed such as large and complex project without the help of some really brilliant people! Two of those people are Jamal Malik and Adam Fazio. These guys are the masters of hybrid cloud/hybrid IT – and what it treat it was to find that after we published the Hybrid IT Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT guidance set on TechNet they published their book Windows Azure Hybrid Cloud.

While they were writing the book I had the chance to review some of the chapters and I can tell you that not only will you learn a lot by reading Windows Azure Hybrid Cloud, you’ll also enjoy the learning process. Danny, Jamal and Adam have a great writing style that engages you so that you’re looking forward to the each and every paragraph. I think they are to accomplish this by providing the types of insights you see only from people who have been there, felt the pain, learned the lessons, and applied those lessons to be a success time and time again.

Here’s an example:

“I recently had the opportunity to work with a large organization who is far down the path of consuming public cloud services primarily as a development platform. These cloud services are procured directly from the cloud provider by the application development teams. Meanwhile, the IT organization is also running a large amount of legacy infrastructure for these same development teams. IT is now wide awake to the fact that they simply must bring cloud capabilities to the on-premises infrastructure and enable the same ease of use and ease of procurement that the development teams have with the pubic cloud. On the other hand, the many thousands of public cloud instances are simply not managed at the same level as the on-premises infrastructure and the development teams realize they need IT’s help to ensure SLAs are met. It was as if this organization was made for my book, if only I could pitch it as part of my day job!”

This book is an essential resource for those responsible for strategizing, architecting, implementing or managing a cloud infrastructure. It helps readers understand what is hybrid IT and how it's applicable (and inevitable) in today's world of emerging cloud. The book focuses on the Microsoft concept of a private/public cloud, deploying a private cloud fabric, deploying services, and building a private cloud, as well as integrating it with Microsoft's public cloud to create a cross-premises or public cloud.

What is Hybrid IT? - There is a lot of misunderstanding about what hybrid IT really is. There is no single definition of hybrid IT as each implementation will depend on the requirements specific to each enterprise. There is no one-size-fits-all hybrid solution.

Why is Hybrid IT important to my business? Do you really even know where to start when it comes to figuring out what benefits your business will achieve from adopting Hybrid Cloud? Discover methods, process and tools will assist you in building the right Cloud Strategy for your organization.

Project Planning – Once the direction is set for your Cloud Strategy understanding immediate next steps and prioritizing tasks can still be a challenge. Who owns the Architecture, Design and Deployment of the system when working with a Service Provider?

What do you need to know about the Azure Platform – Windows Azure is a core of Microsoft’s Cloud OS, which provides a consistent platform across private, hosted and public clouds and aims to be the modern platform powering the world’s applications. Windows Azure in combination with Windows Server make up the core backbone – engine – of the Cloud OS. Understanding the principal Windows Azure components and services is fundamentally essential for anyone who is on journey to build Hybrid cloud solutions.

Private Cloud Components and Services that help to build Hybrid Clouds – What is a Cloud Management Platform and why do I need it? We cannot simultaneously advance the maturity of IT operations and create pools of silo’d capacity. Our technology and service management tools must stretch across private and public cloud assets creating a unified operating model.

Hybrid Options in Windows Azure - There are different kind of solutions for different kind of problems. Shows how to take what we've learned about Azure services and components and apply them to solve the problem IT faces on a daily basis.

Designing for Resiliency and Scalability - Focuses on approaches and considerations for ensuring resiliency, availability and scalability when designing hybrid solutions to prevent system failure and data loss.

Optimizing for Performance - Covers available options to optimize performance of hybrid cloud including network performance, virtual machine performance, data access performance, as well as overall improving overall end user experience.

Monitoring and Management - Typically, with any hybrid IT environments there is a lot of moving parts. However, the good news that there are quite a bit of built-in and third party management and monitoring tools that will you to manage/monitor the availability, health, and performance of the hybrid cloud.

This book will help you better understand the hybrid IT environments, how and why hybrid cloud environments should be implemented, as well as an impact it can have in a business.

Hope you enjoy the book and leave comments on what you think of it!

HTH,

Tom

Oracle Self Service Kit : See it in action in this video

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 22:04:09 GMT

As a follow up to this series of posts introducing the Oracle Self Service Kit, here is a video going over a quick overview of the kit, as well as a demonstration (deploying a new database on a new dedicated server).

Oracle Self Service Kit Overview and Demonstration

Thanks for watching!

Mobile Application Delivery with System Center Configuration Manager and Windows Intune - Part 1 of 5

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 17:46:00 GMT

Hi again, it’s Jeff Buller. I am a Program Manager on the Windows Server and System Center CAT team. This is part 1 of a 5 part series on mobile application delivery, using System Center Configuration Manager and Windows Intune. This post will provide some background on the key concepts for application delivery and enhancements first introduced in Configuration Manager 2012. Parts 2 - 5 will build upon part 1, providing more detail on how to use Configuration Manager and Windows Intune to deliver applications to users across mobile devices. Here is a table of contents for the full series.

Table of Contents

· Part 1: Introduction

· Part 2: iOS application delivery

· Part 3: Windows 8 and Windows RT application delivery

· Part 4: Windows Phone 8 application delivery

· Part 5: Android application delivery

New Application Model

Configuration Manager 2012 significantly enhanced the ability to deliver applications with its new application model. The new application model enabled the capability to intelligently deliver an application to a user, based on the device they are using and other conditions (e.g. HW/OS attributes, registry settings, AD query). This capability provides new possibilities in application delivery that can assist organizations in addressing the user’s need of anywhere access to applications.

Key Building Blocks

Some of the key building blocks of Configuration Managers new application model include:

· User Device Affinity: Associates a user with a device, providing the ability to deliver applications in the most appropriate way, based on the user’s relationship with the device (e.g. Primary PC or Non-primary PC).

· Applications: Contain the files and information necessary to deploy a software package to a computer or a mobile device.

· Deployment Types: Applications contain deployment types that define the files and commands necessary to install the software.

· Requirement Rules: Define conditions that specify how an application is deployed to a client device.

· Deployments: Are used to distribute applications and target Configuration Manager User and Device Collections.

Let’s review an example of how these building blocks work together.

Contoso Corporation has the following application delivery requirements: They need to distribute a full install of an application to the user’s primary device and make the application available on non-primary devices the user logs into (e.g. shared computer).

In this example, an administrator for Contoso Corporation would use the Configuration Manager Management Console to create an application and two deployment types for that application, one for MSI and one for APP-V. The MSI deployment type would have a requirement rule that would only deliver the application via MSI if the user was using their primary Windows PC. The APP-V deployment type would have a requirement rule that would only deliver the application via APP-V if the user was using a non-primary PC. This would allow the user to move between Windows PCs (primary and non-primary) within their organization and always have their application available to them and delivered in the most appropriate way, based on Contoso’s requirements.

Enterprise App Store

In addition to Configuration Manager 2012s new application model, an enterprise app store (called Application Catalog) is also provided, where applications can be published from Configuration Manager and made available to the users. For example, users can access the enterprise app store using a web browser on their Windows PC, view the applications that are available and select an application to install. Configuration Manager would determine in real time on the client, the most appropriate way to deliver the application, based on the deployment type requirement rules that were defined.

Configuration Manager 2012 Application Catalog

Application Delivery to Mobile Devices

Application delivery capabilities were enhanced significantly again in Configuration Manager 2012 SP1. Enhancements included integration with Windows Intune (Microsoft’s cloud based client management solution), Application Deployment Types for mobile platforms (Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, iOS and Android) and publishing applications to Windows Intune’s enterprise app store (called Company Portal). With these enhancements, a user can not only move between their Windows PCs, but now on mobile devices as well and have access to their application available via the enterprise app store and delivered appropriately.

Management Console Create Application Wizard in Configuration Manager 2012 SP1

Recent Customer Experience

So you might be asking yourself, “How this could apply to my environment?” Let me share a recent customer experience that may help answer that question.

A few months ago I was meeting with a large Food Company in the Midwest, discussing their plans to move to Windows 8 in support of their tablet mobility efforts. During our discussions, they mentioned an important requirement they had defined, which was for their users to have a consistent application delivery experience across their mobile devices. This requirement was so important that it had driven their decision to purchase a new Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution. I asked the customer if they had considered leveraging their existing Configuration Manager 2012 environment with Windows Intune as an application delivery solution for their mobile devices and it was clear that not everyone was aware of its new application delivery capabilities. As you can imagine, the customer was very interested in learning more about these capabilities and the potential benefits of leveraging their existing Configuration Management infrastructure (instead of building new) to address their application delivery needs, such as consistent application delivery experience across their devices.

We also identified an opportunity to increase synergy between their IT and development resources related to mobile application delivery and management. For example, they had two teams responsible for delivering and managing applications using different tools. One team (Mobile Application Development Team) was responsible for the delivery and management of mobile applications and the other team (Configuration Manager Team) was responsible for delivery and management of Windows PC applications. By using Configuration Manager and Windows Intune for application delivery across their Windows PCs and mobile devices, they saw the opportunity to use a single toolset across both teams.

Upcoming Enhancements and Posts

Application delivery continues to improve with the upcoming release of Configuration Manager 2012 R2 and Windows Intune. Some enhancements include more flexibility in the applications it can deliver (e.g. Web Applications) as well as introducing a native Company Portal application for iOS. In the next part of this series we will discuss how to deliver iOS applications to users utilizing Configuration Manager 2012 R2 and Windows Intune.

Talk to you soon,

Jeff

Oracle Self-Service Kit : Provisioning Oracle Database components using the System Center stack

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:50:00 GMT

With the recent announcements from Oracle and Microsoft, many of you are getting in touch with us to understand how you can deploy and manage Oracle workloads on Hyper-V.

This post is the opportunity to highlight one of the items we have on that front, called the “Oracle Self-Service Kit”.

A picture being worth a thousands words, this solution helps you achieve the following process, fully automated with System Center:

Now, this is actually only one of the 4 deployment use cases being handled by this solution. This post will be an overview of what the “Oracle Self-Service Kit” contains and what you can achieve with it, with deeper dive posts also available.

Oh, and did we mention this solution is actually available as a downloadable package?

Make sure you go through the 2 deep-dive posts, including “Gimme the details (part 2)”, which covers the installation and configuration instructions for this sample solution.

You can also watch an overview video with a demonstration, in this post.

What do you get, and how is each deployment type handled?

The package you will download includes different components:

At the fabric level, 15 Orchestrator Runbooks cover 4 different deployment scenarios on Windows Server on premise:

“Server” scenarios	(1) Deploying a new standalone virtual machine with database software only, as part of an “Oracle virtual farm” Under the hood, Orchestrator leverages a VMM service template. A “farm” of Oracle Database 12c instances is created if it does not exist yet, otherwise it is scaled out.
“Database” scenarios	Deploying a new (2) database or (3) schema on an existing “shared” infrastructure of Oracle Database 12c servers (4) Deploying a new database on a new dedicated Oracle server Under the hood, Orchestrator leverages Oracle Database 12c unattended installs and PowerShell commands, to create a database/schema on an existing or new virtual machine

At the process level, an optional Service Manager management pack showcases self-service, a configurable approval process, and automatic user discovery for notifications.

You can choose to just use the fabric components (Runbooks and service template), and integrate them with your own self-service. The Service Manager integration has been crafted so that it has no hard dependencies : Should you wish to use them, the SM-enabled Runbooks monitor service requests of a specific type and in a specific condition, update these requests and/or call Orchestrator Runbooks. You can read more details on what the SM integration adds into the solution, in the second deep dive post.

Overall flow


Service Manager Requests Offerings	Orchestrator Runbooks	VMM Service Template

I want to learn more!

Fear not! Here are two additional posts going over more details regarding the Oracle Self-Service Kit:

Gimme the details (part 1)
- Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated Oracle database
- Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new schema on a shared environment
Gimme the details (part 2)
- More details on the Runbooks
- What’s in the VMM Service Template?
- What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?
- Using the package : Installation and configuration

Supported versions

These deployment scenarios were tested with Oracle Database 12c running on Windows Server 2012.

System Center 2012 SP1 was used, including the Orchestrator, Virtual Machine Manager and Service Manager components.

Wrap-up / Looking ahead

Feel free to share your experience using this sample solution!

This is an ongoing effort and we plan to update the solution to cover additional scenarios, including support for Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) 12c support, support for Systm Center 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V and for added best practices/features from Oracle Database 12c. Be sure to check back with us !

Oracle-Self Service Kit : Gimme the details (part 2)

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:35:00 GMT

This is the second of two posts getting into more details about the “Oracle Server Self-Service Kit”. It goes through 2 sample uses, to highlight how the solution works and what the outputs are.

Table of content of the full series

Introduction post
- Overview and scenarios
- Download link
- What you get, and how each deployment type is handled
- Supported versions
- Looking ahead
Gimme the details (part 1)
- Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated Oracle database
- Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new schema on a shared environment
Gimme the details (part 2)– this post
- More details on the Runbooks
- What’s in the VMM Service Template?
- What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?
- Using the package : Installation and configuration

More details on the Runbooks

The solution includes 15 Runbooks, classified in different subfolders depending on their roles

The “SM integration” folder contains Runbooks used to monitor and update Service Manager requests, should you choose to integrate with Service Manager. See more details about these Runbooks in the next section.

The “End to End Process” contains one Runbook, doing the main routing between Self-Service and the actual placement/deployment/validation/notification. It is either called directly by the “SM integration” Runbooks, or called manually or from another system

“Placement” subroutines determine where to create databases, schemas or servers. In the solution, these Runbooks return variables, but they have been created as subroutines so you could easily customize them (query a CMDB, lookup a custom table, etc.)

“Deployment” subroutines handle actual deployment of databases, schemas or servers. They usually copy files, customize response files, execute setup, and delete the response files afterwards

“Validation” subroutines connect to deployed components and execute Oracle commands like LSNRCTL and SQLPLUS, to gather the output and send them to the requesting user as part of the notification email

“Other” subroutines include the email notification Runbook (sends email as HTML, see this post from my colleague Jim Britt to customize it further), the logging Runbook (logs in Orchestrator and in a text file controlled by a variable, although you could customize it as needed), and the Desktop Experience Runbook. When deploying new servers, this last Runbook is only executed if the associated variable is set to “True”. It Installs the “Desktop Experience” feature on the operating system, should you wish to access Enterprise Manager locally on that server (EM uses Flash, which requires Desktop Experience on a server). This is not enabled by default, assuming that EM would likely be access remotely.

So, a typical end to end deployment would start with the “SM integration” Runbooks calling the “End to End Proces” Runbook, this one calling the appropriate placement/deployment/validation/notification subroutines.

What’s in the VMM Service Template?

The VMM Service Template deploys a sysprepped Windows Server 2012 machine, and then goes through the different steps to prepare and install Oracle Database 12c (database software only). It has a few Global Settings that are being populated by Orchestrator, either based on user input, or on Orchestrator variables. If you use the Service Template without the Runbooks, you would have to manually enter these parameters at deployment time. As mentioned earlier, note that the Service Template only deploys the database software and runs the Network Configuration Assistant (NETCA). Creation of databases and/or schemas is handled through the Runbooks, providing a flexible approach when deploying a new database or schema on an existing server deployed outside of VMM.

Properties of the single tier in the VMM Service Template

What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?

When using the Oracle Self-Service Kit, you could just use the Runbooks and template/scripts as the foundation and plumbing for Oracle Database 12c provisioning.

The thinking behind providing the additional management pack for Service Manager was just to showcase the end to end scenarios including a portal, and highlight how you could easily plug another ITSM solution there, depending on the tools and processes in your IT organization. This is why ITSM requests are “monitored” by Orchestrator Runbooks, vs a more classic connector approach from Service Manager to Orchestrator.

Features of the Service Manager Management Pack

First, the integration adds entries in the Service Manager service catalog, each ITSM process consisting an approval activity and a manual activity. The “manual” activity is the one which will be ultimately automated by Orchestrator.

Then, it also adds a few Runbooks:

Auto-approving service requests – requests are only auto-approved if the associated Orchestrator variables are set to “True” (“Service Manager – Auto-approve dedicated requests” and “Service Manager – Auto-approve dedicated requests”)

Monitoring requests ready to be deployed (after manual or automated approval)

Updating status in ITSM (if ITSM integration was used)

And the management pack is also able to automatically pass along useful data like the user requesting the new Oracle component, and Runbooks automatically use that information for notifications and logging purposes.

Using the package : Installation and configuration

1. Check prerequisites

Oracle Database 12c installation files. They should be available on a file share on the network. The path you will configure later in the Orchestrator Global Variables should be the root folder containing SETUP.EXE.
Windows Server 2012 sysprepped image in the VMM library – which you will be able to map to the virtual hard drive in the VMM service template.

2. Download the ZIP File

In addition to a readme file, the package contains three files and one folder:

3. Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) configuration

Copy the “Oracle” folder and subfolder (only one subfolder in this version) in your Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Library, and refresh the library or make sure the library has already refreshed before importing the VMM Service Templates in the next steps
- The scripts and response files located in this custom resource will also be leveraged by Orchestrator Runbooks. As explained later in these configuration steps, it will be important to configure the “Deployment – Network share for scripts” variable in Orchestrator, to point to the share in the VMM library, or another share accessible from the machines where Oracle Database 12c will be deployed.

Note : For initial testing, you should not need to change the content of these scripts, since most of the “dynamic” value would come from Orchestrator variable. Orchestrator sets them as Global Settings when deploying the service template or calling the scripts. If you use the service template without the Runbooks, you can set the VMM global settings manually at deployment time. More details on the VMM Service Template are provided earlier in this post.

That doesn’t mean you will not want to update the Oracle Database 12c response files at some point : The response files provided in this sample solution are still very generic. You will probably want to optimize performance and implement best practices like separating data files and logs, etc. This hasn’t been done in these files, because the actual best option depends on how you will ultimately lay out the virtual hardware for best performance, and also because the first goal was to showcase the automation of deployment.

Import the VMM Service Template file “Oracle Farm.new.xml” and map the appropriate resources in the wizard, including the RunAs account (need to be a local administrator on the deployed VMs to install Oracle Database 12c), your Windows Server 2012 image, and the custom resource “OracleStandalone.cr” you added to the library in the previous step)
You will also need to update the VMM Service Template with your network information, the domain name, and the account used to join the domain. Note : If you can change the naming pattern for the VMs, make sure you also update the Orchestrator global variable named “Placement – Dedicated-NoHA-Instance – VM Prefix” as well.
Finally, after importing the VMM Service Template, you will need to open its properties and update the "OracleUserPass" service setting, to ensure it is configured as "Mandatory" and "Encrypted". If you forget to do so, VMM application scripts will be unable to update the response file with password information, and Oracle Database 12c will fail, resulting in a VM deployment failure.

Note : The Service Template disables the “Smart Screen” feature in Windows Server 2012, to ensure that it can run the installation executables even without any internet connectivity (as will likely be the case on servers in the datacenter). This is achieved as part of the application scripts, by implementing the “disable_ss.reg” file. Should you wish to re-enable the Smart Screen feature as part of the Service Template or afterwards, a similar registry file is provided (“enable_ss.reg”) but not added to the Service Template by default.

4. Orchestrator configuration

You will need to enable the Orchestrator Runbook Server(s) to act as a “CredSSP” client(s), per this article (look for the part with the cmdlet “Enable-WSManCredSSP”)

Note : You do not need to configure any servers as a “CredSSP” server, since the Runbooks actually do that for you.You could modify the Runbooks to NOT enable the “CredSSP” server option if you prefer to configure or tune it outside of the Oracle Self Service Kit.

Make sure the Integration Packs for Virtual Machine Manager and Service Manager are installed in Orchestrator
Import the Runbooks

Note : If you need to fill again the properties of the VMM activity used in the “\Subroutines\Deployment\Deploy New Standalone VM with Oracle” Runbook (when changing the connection properties after import), here is how it is setup:

Update the Global Variables – The description mentions the purpose of the variable, and if updating them is optional or not.

5. (Optional) Service Manager configuration

Import the management pack
Customize the approvals, if you plan to use them
Make sure you start the two monitoring Runbooks in Orchestrator : “Auto-Approve Shared Requests” and “Monitor SM requests”.

Go back to the main post

Oracle Self-Service Kit : Gimme the details (part 1)

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:34:00 GMT

This is the first of two posts getting into more details about the “Oracle Server Self-Service Kit”. It goes through 2 sample uses, to highlight how the solution works and what the outputs are.

Table of content of the full series

Introduction post
- Overview and scenarios
- Download link
- What you get, and how each deployment type is handled
- Supported versions
- Looking ahead
Gimme the details (part 1)– this post
- Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated Oracle database
- Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new schema on a shared environment
Gimme the details (part 2)
- More details on the Runbooks
- What’s in the VMM Service Template?
- What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?
- Using the package : Installation and configuration

Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated Oracle database

(Note : This specific scenario is also the one outlined in this video).

It all starts with the service request (optional integration with Service Manager):

The end to end process Runbook then goes through that branch, to successively deploy a new virtual machine (through VMM, including the OS and Oracle database software only), deploy a new database, connect to the database to collect diagnostics data, and notify the user:

This is the Runbook handling the actual new server deployment:

Since the Oracle Database “farm” already existed, the service is just being scaled out to accommodate for a new dedicated server, which will then host the database software and the database:

During the scripts being run by VMM, we can see the response files being copied and modified (notice how the timestamps are close to the timestamp of the folders copied just before). These response files are deleted after the installation and configuration.

The log file shows all the details (by default, this is also logged in the Orchestrator events):

A notification email is then being sent to the user. It includes details on the new database and its server location, the SYSTEM password, and the output from LNSRCTL/SQLPLUS commands:

Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new schema on a shared environment

First, we start with the service request:

This time, the end to process Runbook goes through that branch:

Placement is determined by this Runbook, which is basically an “empty shell” returning a global variable. It has been designed as a full subroutine, so you can choose to customize it as needed, to return something computed in the Runbook, rather than the variable:

Once placement has run, actual schema deployment subroutine looks like this – it creates or reuse the database on the determined server:

In this case, since it is the first schema in the shared database, the database needed to be created first, as the log shows:

When the database and the schema have been created, the user receives a notification, with details and diagnostics:

The full log shows all the steps:

Go back to the main post

Deployment–Minor PDT update 2.5.2502 available

Sat, 14 Sep 2013 14:57:09 GMT

This release corrects a bug in the Windows Azure Pack configuration, and updates the download for SharePoint 2010 Foundation to SP2 since the original release is no longer available.

Download here.

Automation–MVP Example Solution Spotlight–Orchestrator Integration with Office365 and SharePoint 2013

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 11:54:00 GMT

Hello Readers/Viewers!

Today’s post is just a quick cross-post and spotlight on an example solution walkthrough.

Who?

The below referenced content was created by Microsoft Virtualization MVP,

Nathan Lasnoski

Nathan Lasnoski is the Team Lead of Concurrency’s Infrastructure Practice, a Microsoft Virtualization MVP and a recognized leader in Core Infrastructure Design, SharePoint Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Unified Communications technologies.

Find Nathan on: Linkedin Twitter

What?

“The SharePoint and Office365 platform is Microsoft’s home for providing collaboration, portal, content, and enterprise communication. I find that in Service Manager and automation projects we need to be able to interact with SharePoint in order to provide a seamless user experience and provide user interaction which feels complete.

Continue reading here.”

Where?

Office365 and SharePoint 2013 integration with System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 and Service Manager 2012 R2

Thanks for your time and attention! For more information, tips/tricks, and example solutions for Orchestrator, be sure to check out the other blog posts from Building Clouds in the Automation Track!

enJOY!

Application Management - Clustering SQL Guest Instances in R2

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 23:49:00 GMT

With the preview release of System Center 2012 R2, there are a few additions to VMM that make clustering with Windows Failover Clustering in guest VMs significantly easier. In this post, I’d like to highlight a few of those improvements as they relate to services.

Clustering Guests the Old Way

To be clear, Windows Failover Clustering doesn’t really work any differently on a physical host or a VM. As long as your VMs have connectivity to each other and access to shared storage, the process of clustering VMs isn’t any different. The big hurdle with a VM is shared storage.

Previously, it’s been possible to use iSCSI to provide shared storage. The general process required for this is as follows:

Provision iSCSI target and prepare storage
Configure target to allow connection from VMs
Deploy VMs
On all VMs, configure their initiators for the target
On one VM, online, partition, and format the drives
On one VM, create a cluster
Install any clustered applications

One might imagine that this can be a bit of a headache for repeated deployments of a clustered service. Doing this manually is prone to all sorts of error. It’s perfectly feasible to author a runbook to take care of the first two steps and deploy a service from a template for the remaining steps. Note that the scripts within the service template will need extra logic to discern which commands to run on which VM.

The New, Easier Way

The first new component to discuss is Shared VHDX, which is an easier way to share storage in VMs.

Shared VHDX

Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 provides a means to share a single VHDX file across a tier within a service. This means that when the VMs in that tier first boot, all the storage provisioning has been completed and the disk appears to all VMs without any additional configuration. At this point, the first VM can online, partition, and format the disk in preparation for its use as a clustered volume.

Note: The same disk access patterns apply for shared VHDX as for shared storage. That is, simultaneous writes can corrupt data and the disk access must be controlled by some clustering mechanism (for example, Windows Failover Clustering).

There are a few requirements for using shared VHDX within a service template. The service template must be marked as highly-available. The VMs in a highly-available service template can only be deployed to clustered hosts. Also, the disk cannot be an OS disk (sharing OS disks is never supported). It’s also worth mentioning that shared disks can be formatted, and contain data.

From within service templates in VMM, you’ll find the shared VHDX option within the Hardware Configuration of a machine tier’s properties. A VHDX that is attached to a SCSI adapter can be set to be shared amongst all VMs in that tier. After deployment, the shared disk will appear in all VMs as attached storage just as an additional VHDX should. From here, cluster configuration can begin.

When deploying multiple VHDX images to a machine for clustering (for example a witness disk and a data disk), the same disk image cannot be used within the library. For each VHDX image deployed to the same tier, you’ll need a separate VHDX file in the library. For example, if each VM in a tier had two VHDX disk images that are shared across the tier and an OS image, a total of three disk images will be required in the library (one with the Sysprep’d OS and the other two for cluster).

To simplify some of the logic in cluster configuration, VMM 2012 R2 has provided additional script hooks that can assist with cluster deployment logic. I’ll discuss the four new hooks next.

New Script Hooks

When clustering, there’s usually a need for asymmetric provisioning: treating the first node differently from the remainder of the nodes. Before, this required complicated script logic. Now, we can simplify efforts by using the new script hooks provided in VMM 2012 R2.

The first new script hook is Creation: First VM. When the first VM in a service tier is created, the specified script will run on this VM and only this VM. All of the operations that are performed once (disk formatting, cluster creation), can be included in this script. Now, subsequent VMs can make simple assumptions about the current state of the environment and simply join the existing cluster.

For those other VMs, there’s a script hook for those scripts, which is Creation: VMs After First. This script will run on other VMs created and not the first VM.

Now, this fixes the problems with creation and with scaling out, but what about scaling in? Two other hooks were added for this purpose. When scripts are marked Deletion: VMs Before Last, all but the last VM run this script. That is, if you decide to scale-in a tier in a service from two VMs to a single VM, this script will run on the second VM prior to its deletion. Any actions such as removing a node from a cluster can be performed during this operation.

Likewise, a script marked as Deletion: Last VM will run on the last VM when the service is scaled to zero for whatever reason. Using this hook, scripts can perform clean-up operations so that the corresponding Creation: First VM scripts will run as if in a clean environment.

With a combination of shared VHDX and the new script hooks, deploying clustered services is easy.

Obligatory Example

Explanation and conjecture is nice, but nothing speaks for new functionality like a cold, hard demo. As such, I’ve put together a simple example of a clustered service. In this example, we’ll have a two-node guest cluster running SQL installed as a failover cluster instance.

Process

First, we should outline the process of deploying a SQL Failover Cluster Instance on physical machines, and then we can convert it to template logic. The process is as follows

Configure first server

Install OS
Setup roles and features

Failover Clustering
Failover Cluster Management Tools
Failover Clustering Module for Windows PowerShell

Join server to a domain
Create a new Windows Failover Cluster
Partition and format disks in cluster
Run the SQL installation as a first node in a new failover cluster

Configure second server (and any subsequent servers)

Install OS
Setup roles and features

Failover Clustering
Failover Cluster Management Tools
Failover Clustering Module for Windows PowerShell

Join server to a domain
Join existing Windows Failover Cluster
Run the SQL installation as a new node in an existing failover cluster

One might notice that this fits very well within the confines of the new script hooks. The only steps that differ are italicized and the machines are otherwise identical. To convert this to a service template, we can use a single tier service and take care to specify which scripts run when.

Scripts

Clustering on the First Node

We’ll need two clustering scripts: one to create a cluster and one to join an existing cluster. To create the cluster, we can use the New-Cluster cmdlet. After the cluster has been created, disks may be added to the cluster. This can be done by getting the disks available to the cluster with the Get-ClusterAvailableDisk cmdlet and then piping that into the Add-ClusterDisk cmdlet.

There is one caveat to mention here: cluster disk ordering. Disks don’t necessarily appear to the operating system in the same order as they appear to a Windows Failover Cluster. That is, the PowerShell cmdlet Get-ClusterAvailableDisk may return a disk number 5 as ‘Cluster Disk 1’ and disk number 1 as ‘Cluster Disk 2’. Now, the New-Partition cmdlet expects the drive number as it appears to the operating system (as in the Get-Disk cmdlet). So, if the drives are formatted sequentially, this may correspond to ‘Cluster Disk 1’ being G: and ‘Cluster Disk 2’ being D:, which provides some complication to specifying cluster disk name and drive letter during a SQL installation.

As a possible alternative, consider first bringing online and partitioning the disks without formatting them (this will allow the disks to be detected by the cluster). Next, run the Get-ClusterAvailableDisk cmdlet to get a set of Name/Number pairs. Now, use the Set-Partition cmdlet to assign drive letters. Lastly, you can use the Format-Volume cmdlet, specifying the driver letters. This will provide you with a deterministic ordering to the cluster disk name and driver letter pairs. A script example below should make this clear.

Next, the cluster quorum settings can be set via Set-ClusterQuorum and cluster validation can be run with Test-Cluster. Note that, by default, SQL installation will not proceed on an a cluster that has not been validated. Putting this all together, the cluster script for the first host may look something like this:

Param($clustername,$clusterIP);

functionTime {
    return[System.DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyy.MM.dd hh:mm:ss");
}

functionLog($out) {
    $out=[System.DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyy.MM.dd hh:mm:ss") +" ---- "+$out;
    Write-Output"$out"
}

if($IP) {
    Log"Creating cluster $clustername on $env:COMPUTERNAME with IP $clusterIP";
    New-Cluster-Name$clustername-Nodelocalhost-StaticAddress$clusterIP|Out-Null;
} else {
    Log"Creating cluster $clustername on $env:COMPUTERNAME using DHCP";
    New-Cluster-Name$clustername-Nodelocalhost|Out-Null;
}

Log"Getting available disks...";
$disks=Get-Disk|where {$_.FriendlyName -eq"Microsoft Virtual Disk"};

foreach($volin$disks) {
    $num=$vol.Number;
    Log"Starting with drive $num";
    Log"Bringing drive online...";
    Set-Disk-Number$num-IsOffline$False;
    Log"Initializing partition table as MBR...";
    Initialize-Disk-Number$num-PartitionStyleMBR;
    Log"Creating single partition...";
    New-Partition$num-UseMaximumSize|Out-Null;
    Log"Done with drive $num";
}

$clusterdisks=Get-ClusterAvailableDisk|SelectName,Number;
Log"Formatting disks and assigning drive letters...";
$letters=69..90|%{[char]$_};
foreach($diskin$clusterdisks) {
    $num=[int]($disk.Name -replace'Cluster Disk ','');
    $letter=$letters[$num];
    $drivenum=$disk.Number;
    Log"Formatting Cluster Disk $num (Drive $drivenum) and assigning drive letter letter...";
    Set-Partition$disk.Number -PartitionNumber1-NewDriveLetter$letter|Out-Null;
    Format-Volume-DriveLetter$letter-FileSystemNTFS-Confirm:$false|Out-Null;
}

Log"Adding disks to cluster...";
Get-ClusterAvailableDisk|Add-ClusterDisk;
Log"Assigning witness disk";
Set-ClusterQuorum-NodeAndDiskMajority'Cluster Disk 1';
Log"Validating cluster...";

$results=Test-Cluster-WarningActionSilentlyContinue;
if(Select-String'<div class=3D"error">'$results) {
    Log"Cluster Validation errors...";
    Write-Error"Validation failure. See '$results' for details.";
    exit-1;
}
Log"Validating cluster complete";

The Log function in this script is useful for standardizing log output for troubleshooting template deployment failures. Note that an argument to this script is $clusterIP, which allows for deployment in a static IP environment. VMM is not able to allocate additional IP addresses from a static IP pool for objects like cluster names and SQL cluster names, so these can be supplied as service settings in a service template. At deployment, the static IP can either be manually assigned from the static IP pool in VMM with cmdlets, or pre-allocated and deployed with a runbook. Although it is possible for this script to contain the logic to request an IP address from the VMM server, the script would need the name of the VMM server and there would need to be connectivity to the VMM server from within the VM.

Clustering on the Other Nodes

This is very straightforward. The only thing the other nodes need to do is join an existing cluster. Piping Get-Cluster into Add-ClusterNode is only a single line of code. Very simple, generally. There may be some other considerations, however. For example, DNS propagation delay may cause hiccups to this deployment. You might work around this by adding a block to wait on DNS, and then subsequently wait on the cluster name, for whatever reason. You’ll want to make sure that in doing this, however, you avoid two things: waiting forever or wasting CPU cycles. The solution is to set an appropriate timeout for the script and sleep in between checks. Even adding this, the script is still fairly small:

Param($clustername);

functionTime {
    return[System.DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyy.MM.dd hh:mm:ss");
}

functionLog($out) {
    $out=[System.DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyy.MM.dd hh:mm:ss") +" ---- "+$out;
    Write-Output "$out";
}

while(!$([System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($clusterName))) {
    Log"Waiting for DNS...";
    [System.Threading.Thread]::Sleep(20000);
}

Log"Adding localhost to $clustername";
Get-Cluster-Name$clustername|Add-ClusterNode-Namelocalhost;

Log"Validating cluster...";

$results=Test-Cluster-WarningActionSilentlyContinue;
if(Select-String'<div class=3D"error">'$results) {
    Log"Cluster Validation errors...";
    Write-Error"Validation failure. See '$results' for details.";
    exit-1;
}
Log"Validating cluster complete";

In some environments, you might consider pre-creating the DNS entries to avoid long delays. Since the drives have already been brought online and formatted, no further action is necessary on the other nodes. Note that the first node has already finished its complete deployment (including the SQL installation) prior to the other nodes running any of their scripts.

SQL Installation Configuration Preparation

Be sure to checkout Bruno Saille’s post for more guidance on provisioning SQL as a service in a System Center stack. I’ll just be covering a simple example as it relates to running SQL in a Windows Failover Cluster. As we will need to be running the SQL installation entirely without user interaction, you might want to read this article about commandline installation of SQL. There are many options and you’ll want to customize your deployment for your environment.

One way to easy the pain of all these options, especially if you’re more familiar with installing SQL with a GUI, is to work your way through the GUI install and then cancel before actually installing. When the SQL installer prepares an installation, it will save a settings file for the configuration and supply its location. I’ll do a quick walkthrough of generating a settings file.

First, start begin the installation as if creating a new failover cluster, and work through all the steps as usual (you’ll need an existing cluster to pass all the checks to generate the configuration).

Now, on the final page of the installer before beginning installation, take the given file that is referenced and use that as your configuration. Simple, and painless.

You’ll do the same process for the add node configuration, and everything should be done.

Doing things this way is probably the easiest way to generate a base configuration you can work with.

SQL Installation on the First Node

As the configuration file is already generated, it’s a simple matter of referencing that file when starting the install and providing any additional parameters (user names, passwords, IP addresses). For ease of deployment, you might consider two options for your configuration files.

The first option is to have a partial configuration file INI with all the static components saved within the custom resource. When running the install, this file could be referenced and additional options can be supplied as parameters to the installer.

The second option is to generate the entire configuration from within the script. This may be the most flexible of options, but requires a bit of work to ensure that everything works as expected.

You might come up with other ways to accomplish the task, as well. The key is that all the SQL installation components be on the system during deployment. The easiest way might be to add the SQL installation directory to the OS disk image, and perhaps delete that directory as the last deployment step, if desired. You might also consider pointing to UNC paths for some deployments. The details will, of course, depend on your environment. For this example, I chose to add the SQL installation directory to the OS disk image so I can reference it easily within deployment scripts.

My deployment is using DHCP and a very simple configuration, so I don’t need any special scripts at this point. My INI file looks like this:

[OPTIONS]
ACTION="InstallFailoverCluster"
ENU="True"
QUIET="True"
UpdateEnabled="False"
FEATURES=SQLENGINE,REPLICATION,FULLTEXT,DQ
UpdateSource="MU"
HELP="False"
INDICATEPROGRESS="False"
X86="False"
INSTALLSHAREDDIR="C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server"
INSTALLSHAREDWOWDIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server"
INSTANCENAME="DEMO"
SQMREPORTING="False"
INSTANCEID="DEMO"
ERRORREPORTING="False"
INSTANCEDIR="C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server"
FAILOVERCLUSTERDISKS="Cluster Disk 2"
FAILOVERCLUSTERGROUP="SQL Server (DEMO)"
FAILOVERCLUSTERIPADDRESSES="IPv4;DHCP;ClusterNetwork1"
FAILOVERCLUSTERNETWORKNAME="SQLCLUSTERDEMO"
COMMFABRICPORT="0"
COMMFABRICNETWORKLEVEL="0"
COMMFABRICENCRYPTION="0"
MATRIXCMBRICKCOMMPORT="0"
FILESTREAMLEVEL="0"
SQLCOLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS"
INSTALLSQLDATADIR="F:"
SQLUSERDBLOGDIR="F:\MSSQL11.DEMO\MSSQL\Data"
SQLTEMPDBDIR="F:\MSSQL11.DEMO\MSSQL\Data"
SQLTEMPDBLOGDIR="F:\MSSQL11.DEMO\MSSQL\Data"
FTSVCACCOUNT="NT Service\MSSQLFDLauncher$DEMO"

With this, I can simply run

C:\SQL\Setup.exe /ConfigurationFile=first.ini /IAcceptSQLServerLicenseTerms /AGTSVCACCOUNT=@Agent Account@ /AGTSVCPASSWORD=@Agent Password@ /SQLSVCACCOUNT=@SQL Account@ /SQLSVCPASSWORD=@SQL Password@ /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS=@SQL Admins@

Now, each of those can be service settings supplied at deployment time. You can see that this is easily customizable for your deployment environment.

SQL Installation on the Other Nodes

The process is similar for other nodes, but the generated configuration INI is a bit different, as the action is different and fewer inputs are needed:

[OPTIONS]
ACTION="AddNode"
ENU="True"
QUIET="True"
UpdateEnabled="False"
UpdateSource="MU"
HELP="False"
INDICATEPROGRESS="False"
X86="False"
INSTANCENAME="DEMO"
SQMREPORTING="False"
FAILOVERCLUSTERGROUP="SQL Server (DEMO)"
CONFIRMIPDEPENDENCYCHANGE="False"
FAILOVERCLUSTERIPADDRESSES="IPv4;DHCP;ClusterNetwork1"
FAILOVERCLUSTERNETWORKNAME="SQLCLUSTERDEMO"
FTSVCACCOUNT="NT Service\MSSQLFDLauncher$DEMO"

We refer to rest.ini instead of first.ini, and the SQL installation is otherwise the same.

Other Considerations

By default, a FCI install of SQL is not allowed on a cluster that has not been validated. Whenever significant cluster configuration changes occur, the cluster validation must run again. As such, cluster validation is run with the addition of each node. However, cluster validation can only be conducted on one node at a time.

More than just this limitation of cluster validation, it’s also important to note that SQL’s AddNode is not supported in parallel. If you write in complicated script logic to handle the cluster validation limitation, you should also handle running the SQL installs in a serial manner.

Because of these two points, and the fact that a tier with three nodes will deploy the second and third nodes in parallel, deployment is almost guaranteed to fail for more than two nodes. As a result, the tier should only be configured to deploy a default of one or two instances. After two instances have been deployed, the tier can be scaled out, one node at a time.

In some environments, a runbook offers great advantages. The runbook can obtain static IP addresses from VMM, pass them as parameters to the template service settings deployment, deploy the first two nodes, and then scale to any number of nodes in the tier in a serial manner.

In other environments, you might consider only using two VMs and scaling in/out as dictated by performance monitoring.

Conclusion

With the new additions in VMM 2012 R2, clustering applications within the guest has been greatly simplified. In this post, I’ve done my best to get you enough information to get started. Note that configuring a SQL cluster as a single tier has implications for simplifying more robust service templates, as well. Templates that include a web application with a SQL backend can now be deployed with a clustered SQL instance that is scalable, independent of the web frontend.

SQL Server Self-Service Kit : Gimme the details (part 2)

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 11:14:24 GMT

This is the second of two posts getting into more details about the “SQL Server Self-Service Kit”.

Table of content of the full series

Introduction post
- Overview and scenarios
- Download link
- What you get, and how each deployment type is handled
- Supported versions
- Looking ahead
Gimme the details (part 1)
- Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated instance without high availability
- Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new highly-available database on a shared environment
- Sample execution #3 : Requesting a “SQL Server-enabled” environment
Gimme the details (part 2) – this post
- What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?
- Using the package : Installation and configuration
- Some tips and tricks worth highlighting

What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?

When using the SQL Server Self-Service Kit, you could just use the Runbooks and template/scripts as the foundation and plumbing for SQL Server provisioning.

Features of the Service Manager Management Pack

Then, it also adds a few Runbooks:

Auto-approving “shared” requests

Monitoring requests ready to be deployed (after manual or automated approval)

Updating status in ITSM (if ITSM integration was used)

And the management pack is also able to automatically pass along useful data like the user requesting the new SQL Server component, and Runbooks automatically use that information for notifications and DB/instance delegations.

Using the package : Installation and configuration

1. Check prerequisites

SQL Server installation files. They should be available on a shared on the network. The path you will configure later in the Orchestrator Global Variables should be the root folder containing SETUP.EXE.
Windows Server 2012 sysprepped image in the VMM library – which you will be able to map to the virtual hard drive in the VMM service template.
If you want to leverage the “SQL Server-enabled environment” deployment scenario, you should make sure you download and configure the Service Template Example Kit (STEK) from my colleague Shawn Gibbs.

2. Download the ZIP File

The package contains three files and two folders.

3. Deployment scripts

Copy the “SQLProvisioning” folder to a share on the network, that can be accessed via the machines acting as the “shared” SQL Server Fabric (standalone servers and/or cluster nodes)
Update the INI files to suit your account needs (in bold are the only mandatory updates)
- FIRST.INI and REST.INI are used to deploy SQL Server on cluster nodes. In these files, you should look at these properties to ensure they match your needs : AGTSVCACCOUNT, SQLSVCACCOUNT, FTSVCACCOUNT as the accounts used to configure clustered instances ; SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS as the group which will be assigned SYSADMIN rights on any deployed instance ; INSTALLSHAREDDIR and INSTALLSHAREDWOWDIR if you usually install SQL Server in a different directory. The PID parameter can be set to specify a non-evaluation version. You should not need to touch the instance or disk data as they are passed automatically when running setup, based on the user request
- STANDALONE.INI : you should update these properties as needed : AGTSVCACCOUNT, SQLSVCACCOUNT, FTSVCACCOUNT as the accounts used to configure standalone instances ; SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS as the group which will be assigned SYSADMIN rights on any deployed instance ; INSTALLSHAREDDIR and INSTALLSHAREDWOWDIR if you usually install SQL Server in a different directory. The PID parameter can be set to specify a non-evaluation version. You should not need to touch the instance data as they are passed automatically when running setup, based on the user request

Note : The SQL Server INI files provided in this sample solution are still very generic. You will probably want to optimize performance and implement best practices like separating data files and logs, etc. This hasn’t been done in these files, because the actual best option depends on how you will ultimately lay out the virtual hardware for best performance, and also because the first goal was to showcase the automation of deployment.

Note : Full reference on the SQL Server unattended files can be found here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144259.aspx

On any of the machines which will serve as the “Shared” SQL Server Fabric and where you will deploy instances, you should enable CredSSP authentication, using this command in PowerShell : “Enable-WSManCredSSP –Role Server –Force”. This needs to be done on both standalone servers and cluster nodes. This is not needed on “shared” machines where only databases would be created. Note : You will also need to enable the Orchestrator Runbook Servers to act as CredSSP client, per this article : http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2012/11/14/enable-powershell-quot-second-hop-quot-functionality-with-credssp.aspx

4. Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) configuration

Copy the “SQL” folder and subfolder (only one subfolder in this version) in your Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Library, and refresh the library or make sure the library has already refreshed before importing the VMM Service Templates in the next steps
Update the files: In “INSTALL.CMD”, you will need to update the path where the SQL Server installation files are located. The “CONFIGURATIONFILE.INI” could be a copy of the “STANDALONE.INI” file from the scripts folder.
Import the VMM Service Template file “SQL Server Farm.new.xml” and map the appropriate resources in the wizard, including the RunAs account (need to be a local administrator on the deployed VMs to install SQL Server), your Windows Server 2012 image, and the custom resource “SQLStandalone.cr” you added to the library in step 3 as part of the “SQL” folder)
You will also need to update the VMM Service Template with your network information, the domain name, and the account used to join the domain. Note : If you can change the naming pattern for the VMs, make sure you also update the Orchestrator global variable named “Placement – Dedicated-NoHA-Instance – VM Prefix” as well.

5. Orchestrator configuration

Make sure the Integration Packs for Virtual Machine Manager and Service Manager are installed in Orchestrator
Import the Runbooks
Update the Global Variables – The description mentions the purpose of the variable, and if updating them is optional or not.

6. (Optional) Service Manager configuration

Import the management pack
Make sure you start the two monitoring Runbooks in Orchestrator : “Auto-Approve Shared Requests” and “Monitor SM requests”.

Some tips and tricks worth highlighting

That was already a lot of information! So, instead of going through a boring description of every activity and script from the Runbooks, here are a few highlights of some of the hurdles/tips/tricks maybe worth mentioning, and how they were solved:

SQL Server unattended vs SQL Server image preparation : Instead of SQL Server imaging capabilities from VMM , unattended files were used in this solution to deploy SQL Server for several reasons:
- The need to potentially deploy a named instance (As of today, sysprepped SQL Server are prepared for a specific instance name that cannot be changed after image preparation)
- Consistency between the different deployments : A similar unattended deployment is used when deploying SQL Server on a new dedicated VM, or on an existing “shared” server

Note : If you only use default instances (MSSQLSERVER), you could simplify the process to use the built-in SQL Server imaging support from VMM, at least for new dedicated VMs

Handling the side of SQL Server media files : The initial thought was to add these into the VMM library. The drawback in doing back was the time it would take for VMM to create the ISO file when pushing the unattended installation as a script. Having the SQL Server media on the network makes it more flexible in this case.
Working with cluster disks drive letters : When deploying instances on a shared cluster, the Runbook is trying to find the first available disk in the pool, to use it as shared storage. There was a little trick in finding the attached disk letter, to pass it to SQL Server unattended setup afterwards. Symon’s script was the solution : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2009/10/16/9908325.aspx
Passing instance name data : When deploying the instance on a new dedicated VM, it would have been nice to supply the instance name as a Global Setting in VMM, but unfortunately in our use use, Global Settings are positioned at the tier level and not at the VM/Computer level. So there is logic in the Runbook to pass a file with the instance name, and the VMM script parses the data and passes it to the SQL Server unattended setup
The PowerShell scripts also show a few interesting scenarios, which could be useful when working with VMM automation in general:
- Use of ”CredSSP” authentication to enable “double hop” to a second machine. For example, this was necessary when launching the new instance installation on a cluster, where some work/checks have to be executed by the first node on the second node.
- Assigning Global Settings values to Service Templates : This was needed when deploying the Service Template Example Kit (STEK), where an IIS website name is asked.
- Deploy or Scale out a Service Template : This is a very classic use case of PowerShell with VMM. There are ways to do it using the activities of the Orchestrator integration pack, but this shows you how to do it in a single PowerShell script.

Also and finally, when testing this multiple times, classic issues you may face could be exhausting your DHCP pools, or hitting the limit on the number of computers your test account or cluster computer account could add to the domain (10 computers by default, unless you give them enough rights in Active Directory, like the “Create Computer Objects” permission).

SQL Server Self-Service Kit : Gimme the details (part 1)

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 11:13:02 GMT

This is the first of two posts getting into more details about the “SQL Server Self-Service Kit”. It goes through 3 sample uses of the SQL Server Self-Service Kit, to highlight how the solution works and what the outputs are.

Table of content of the full series

Introduction post
- Overview and scenarios
- Download link
- What you get, and how each deployment type is handled
- Supported versions
- Looking ahead
Gimme the details (part 1) – this post
- Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated instance without high availability
- Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new highly-available database on a shared environment
- Sample execution #3 : Requesting a “SQL Server-enabled” environment
Gimme the details (part 2)
- What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?
- Using the package : Installation and configuration
- Some tips and tricks worth highlighting

Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated instance without high availability

User experience in the Service Manager service catalog (optional)

Log entries in Orchestrator events

Farm was scaled out in VMM

Success email sent to the user

Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new highly-available database on a shared environment

For this example, let’s also look at which Runbooks are called one after another, so you can familiarize with how things are being called under the hood.

It all starts with a request, in my case using the Service Manager portal

The end to end process Runbook will go through that branch, first starting with placement (determining where to create the DB), then deployment (creating the DB) and then delegation (assigning rights to the requesting user)

Placement : The Runbook handling the placement is just using a variable to determine the target cluster. You can choose to customize this variable – as explained in the installation and configuration steps – or you could choose to customize this “empty shell” Runbook to include your own placement logic, querying another database or CMDB for example.

Deployment : This Runbook uses SQLPS cmdlets to create the DB, and just includes some specific logic to do it differently, depending on the target being a cluster or a standalone server (the same Runbook is called for the two deployment types)

Delegation : This very simple Runbook also uses SQLPS cmdlets to assign DB ownership to the requesting user. The user details were provided as input parameters in the main end to end process, either “manually”, or automatically when Service Manager or another ITSM solution is being used as the frontend for the process. When deploying instances, the user is given sysadmin rights on the instance.

Email output

Logs in Orchestrator (notice how the ITSM request was auto-approved in that case, since it was a “shared” request and not a dedicated one)

Sample execution #3 : Requesting a “SQL Server-enabled” environment

This is leveraging the “STEK” multi-tier deployment.

Service Request in Service Manager

End to end process when deploying a SQL Server-enabled environment

Subroutine handling the actual service template deployment via PowerShell

SQL Server Self-Service Kit : Provisioning SQL Server as a Service with the System Center stack

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 11:11:00 GMT

“Can I use System Center to provision SQL Server components?”… “Can I provide database as a service to my business users or application owners?”…

The ability to automate SQL Server provisioning is probably one of the top customer requests I’ve heard about over the last 12 months!

The goal of this post is not only to confirm that System Center can indeed provide this capability, but also to provide a downloadable sample solution – the “SQL Server Self-Service Kit” - that you can reuse and adapt to your own needs.

Overview and Scenarios

A typical SQL Server component request might consist of a combination of these:

SQL Server database or SQL Server instance
Dedicated or not (i.e. do you want this to run on your own isolated machine/VM, or on a “shared” environment)
Highly available or not (i.e. should the component be deployed on a cluster)

Alternatively, someone may also be interested in getting a multi-machine environment including SQL Server, where an application could be dropped.

Taking into account all the combinations, this leaves us with a certain number of deployment types, 9 of them actually!

The downloadable solution associated to this blog post covers these scenarios, and we’ll now explain how they work, and the prerequisites to use them in your own environment.

Beyond automating the deployments themselves, you might also be interested in the self-service functionality, and the solution also provides an optional example in that area.

Get the sample solution!

Make sure you go through the 2 deep-dive posts, including “Gimme the details (part 2)”, which covers the installation and configuration instructions for this sample solution.

What do you get, and how is each deployment type handled?

The package you will download includes different components:

At the fabric level, 18 Orchestrator Runbooks cover 7 different deployment scenarios:

4 “Shared” scenarios	Deploying a new DB or instance on a shared existing standalone server or cluster Under the hood, Orchestrator leverages SQL Server unattended installs and PowerShell commands, to “drop” a DB or instance on an existing standalone machine or an existing cluster. When deploying an instance on a cluster, the Runbooks use the available disks in the cluster as a “pool”
2 “Dedicated” scenarios	Deploying a new dedicated instance or DB on a new standalone VM, as part of a “SQL Server virtual farm” Under the hood, Orchestrator leverages a Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) service template and SQL unattended installs to create and scale out a farm of SQL Server instances. The “farm” is created if it does not exist yet, otherwise it is just scaled out. In the case of a database, the instance is deployed first, and then the DB is created.
1 “SQL Server-enabled environment” scenario	This deploys multiple VMs including SQL Server Under the hood, Orchestrator leverages the STEK template from my colleague Shawn Gibbs. You can then deploy an application in this “SQL Server-enabled environment”.

At the process level, an optional Service Manager management pack showcases the following scenarios:

•Service catalog webparts for self-service

•An approval process for “dedicated” scenarios (Runbooks automatically approve “shared” requests)

•Automatic discovery of user executing the request, for notifications and granting user rights to deployed DB/instances

Alternatively, you can choose to just use the fabric components (Runbooks and service template), and integrate them with your own self-service. We will see that the Service Manager integration has been crafted so that it has no hard dependencies : Should you wish to use them, the SM-enabled Runbooks monitor service requests of a specific type and in a specific condition, update these requests and/or call Orchestrator Runbooks. You can read more details on what the SM integration adds into the solution, in the deep dive posts (see links below).

Runbooks

Service Template

Service Requests

Note : As a careful reader, you may have noticed that I mentioned 9 deployment scenarios, and 7 are covered in the solution. The 2 deployment types not handled today by the solution are deploying deploying a DB or instance on a new cluster. We plan to add these 2 scenarios in a refresh of the solution by the time Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 are generally available, as it will be the opportunity to leverage new service template features in Virtual Machine Manager (you can actually read Kurt Scherer’s post to understand these new features). For now, the current solution sends an email to the requesting user, redirecting him/her to an operations team handling complex/custom installations. This also highlights how you can adapt the Runbooks to map your processes, since you may elect to support only some of these deployment types, depending on your uses cases.

I want to learn more!

Fear not! Here are two additional posts going over more details regarding the SQL Server Self-Service Kit:

Gimme the details (part 1)
- Sample execution #1 : Requesting a new dedicated instance without high availability
- Sample execution #2 : Requesting a new highly-available database on a shared environment
- Sample execution #3 : Requesting a “SQL Server-enabled” environment
Gimme the details (part 2)
- What do I get if I use the Service Manager integration?
- Using the package : Installation and configuration
- Some tips and tricks worth highlighting

Oh, and we also have a video for you, going through a use case (new database on
a new dedicated server):

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Supported versions

These deployment scenarios were tested with Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012.

System Center 2012 SP1 was used, including the Orchestrator, Virtual Machine Manager and Service Manager components.

Note that similar principles should apply to earlier versions of SQL Server too, with a different set of unattended (INI) files for examples.

Wrap-up / Looking ahead

Feel free to share your experience using this sample solution!

As mentioned earlier in this post, I am planning a refresh of this solution in a couple weeks when System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 become generally available, to include feedback/updates, new scenarios (deploying an instance or DB on a new cluster, possibly AlwaysOn additions), and ideally some Windows Azure Pack (WAP) and Service Management Automation (SMA) support.

Evaluating Windows Server and System Center on a Laptop (or two, or three) – Failover Clustering (part 2)

Wed, 04 Sep 2013 08:58:15 GMT

How to build a Failover Cluster on a couple of laptops

This is a continuation of our playing with (learning) Failover Clustering for our evaluation of Windows Server and System Center.

Note: This is NOT best practice deployment advice. This is “notes from the field”. This is how to get by with what we have.

If you have been following along, you have a couple of domain joined Windows Server machines running Hyper-V and have a Failover Cluster running on one of them. Our Failover Cluster is pretty basic as it currently stands – two virtual machines accessing shared VHDX files.

Before we continue, did you get to “play” with your Failover Cluster?
Did you try adding another Network Adapter (and configure a Heatbeat network)?
Adding disks to Clustered Shared Volumes?
How about adding more disks and messing with Storage Pools?
Two and Three-way mirrored Virtual Disks?
Creating a File Server? A Scale-Out File Server?
An SMB Share (for Applications)? SQL Server anyone?
Anyone brave enough to add another node??

Let’s build a Failover Hyper-V Cluster on laptops

OK, lots of ways to skin this – and all depending on what hardware you have access to. I’ll do it with two laptops, a gigabit switch, four USB to Ethernet dongles and a bunch of cables. If you have three laptops, just put the Domain Controller and the Storage onto the third one. If you don’t have any USB to Ethernet dongles, you can do this with just the one network. Three laptops is the best solution, as it will let you “kill” a cluster node and watch everything fail over automatically (you can do this with two laptops – you just need to be careful as to which one to switch off).

Compute

We already have two domain joined laptops, running Windows Server with the Hyper-V role enabled, so let’s start from there. We also have a Domain Controller running. So, that’s the compute part of our environment sorted.

Network

We are already using the laptop’s Ethernet port for both the Management network and as the Hyper-V virtual switch for our VMs to communicate over.

We need another network for the Cluster Heartbeat and another one for Live Migration.

In the “real world” we’d also have either Fibre Channel, or SAS to the storage OR more network interfaces for iSCSI.

And we would be using NIC Teaming and/or Converged networks for high availability (I’ll post something on both of these at a future date as they are both “laptop-able”).

I’m going to use two USB to Ethernet dongles in each laptop (Heartbeat and Live Migration).

It is a best practice to name your network connections – it makes your life so much easier.

I’ve configured my Heartbeat network to have 10.0.0.0/24 addresses and Live Migration has 20.0.0.0/24

Storage

This is definitely NOT a best practice and is really only for our evaluation purposes. Mind you, if you have a third laptop (or old PC or Server), then you could continue to run like this (with separate storage). If you only have two laptops, then your clustered storage will have to be on one of them – and that means the path to your storage has to go out over the network, through a virtual machine and through Hyper-V before it hits the disks (which means that it is not optimal).

There’s an easy way to do this and a hard way – we’ll do both!

Easy is a File Share, hard is an iSCSI Target.

You would think that in both cases you’d just enable that storage on one of the laptops – you would be wrong!

Failover Clustering is clever enough to realise that the SMB File Share is on one of the nodes (and that it is therefore NOT shared storage) – try it if you like, just to see the error message.
The iSCSI initiator can be configured to loopback onto itself, but it really doesn’t work very well at all (so I’m not going to tell you how to do it)!

You’re going to need another Virtual Machine – I’ve called mine \\STORAGE and have added the File Server and iSCSI Target Server roles.

Ideally put \\STORAGE on some fast disk – SSD or external caddy.

The easy way (an SMB File Share)

On \\STORAGE create a share (c:\VMs). Give full control to both the laptop machine accounts.
In Failover Cluster Manager, create a cluster.
- Add the nodes
- Give it a name (HV-Cluster)
- Give it an IP address if not using DHCP
- Make sure you un-check the Add all eligible storage to the cluster box
- Click Next

Your cluster is built – but has a warning about the Witness

Configure the cluster (in Failover Cluster Manager)
- Go into Networks and rename them – to match the names we gave them earlier
- Specify whether they are to be used for cluster communications and/or client
  - Click on the Network Connections tab at the bottom of the page – it all makes sense!

Right click on Networks and configure Live Migration Settings

Configure Cluster Quorum Settings
- In Failover Cluster Manager, Right click your cluster (HV-Cluster.contoso.ie), select More and Configure Cluster Quorum Settings
- Select Advanced quorum configuration
- And Configure a file share witness and point it to the Share you created at the beginning of this section (\\STORAGE\VMs)
Your Hyper-V Failover Cluster is ready (patients – we’ll play soon…)

The hard way (an iSCSI Target)

There is some preparation work to do before we can create our cluster:

In Server Manager on \\STORAGE go into File and Storage Services –> iSCSI and start the New iSCSI Virtual Disk Wizard
- Enter a custom path (create a new folder to keep things tidy – c:\iSCSI)
- Create a 1GB Quorum disk (go for Dynamically expanding – we’re using laptops)

The wizard will then guide you through creating a New iSCSI target

Give it a name (Storage)
Add both the laptops as iSCSI initiators
- Do it by IQN (as it will work 100% of the time – I’ve had “issues” with both IP Address and DNS Name)
For our evaluation, leave the Authentication alone (we don’t need it)
Click Create (ignore the error)

Create a second iSCSI Virtual Disk (30GB, Dynamically expanding)
- c:\iSCSI\VMs
- Assign it to the existing iSCSI target (that we created earlier)

We can now get our Hyper-V hosts to connect to the iSCSI Target

On BOTH laptops, start the iSCSI Initiator
- Say Yes to have the service start automatically
- Type the name of the iSCSI server into the Target box (storage) and click Quick Connect
- Assuming all is well (and it connects) click on the Volumes and Devices tab and click Auto Configure

You should see two entries in the Volume List (these are the two virtual disks that the Target is presenting)

On one of the laptops, go into Disk Management and online and initialize the two disks then create NTFS volumes (don’t assign drive letters to them).

C:\ & D:\ are the two internal SSD drives in my laptop. Disk 2 & Disk 3 are my iSCSI attached drives.

You are now ready to create your Failover Cluster

The process is exactly the same as “The easy way” above – except DO check the Add all eligible storage to the cluster box

Configure your Failover Cluster as “The easy way” above, but in addition:
- In Disks, you should see that the smallest shared disk has already been configured as the Disk Witness in Quorum (the 1GB drive)
- Right click on the other drive (Available Storage) and Add to Cluster Shared Volumes (this makes it available for Application and Hyper-V servers to use)
- Optionally rename the disks (as it just makes your life easier)

Let’s create highly available Virtual Machines

If you already have a bunch of VMs running on your hosts, you can make one of them highly available. You won’t be able to do it to your Guest Cluster nodes (not yet anyway – try, just to see the error) and I don’t suggest you do it to your Domain Controller as it will make things awkward later on.

In Hyper-V Manager, right click the VM you want to make highly available and select Move
Select to Move the virtual machine’s storage and then to Move all of the virtual machine’s data to a single location

Your VM can be running – this is a Live Storage Migration

If your cluster is built with iSCSI, then the location for the virtual machine’s items is C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\(optional sub folder)
If your cluster is built with an SMB File Share, then the location is \\STORAGE\VMs\(optional sub folder)

Now you can run the Failover Clustering High Availability Wizard

In Failover Cluster Manager, right click Roles and select Configure Role
Select Virtual Machine
And then select the Virtual Machine who’s storage is now on the shared storage (iSCSI or File Share)
Confirm and Finish

Your Virtual Machine is now running as a Failover Cluster resource and all management should now be done from within Failover Cluster Manager.

To build a highly available VM from scratch, select New Virtual Machine from within Failover Cluster Manager. Select the host where it will start its life and run through the New Virtual Machine Wizard. Make sure you select the shared storage for both the Location of the virtual machine and its virtual hard disk.

You now have a two –node Hyper-V Failover cluster running on two laptops. And have at least one highly available virtual machine.

Let the learning begin! Right click the Virtual Machine and see what you can do to it (e.g. Move, Live Migration vs Quick Migration).

Enjoy,

@DaveNorthey

Part 1 in this series is here: Introduction

Part 2 in this series is here: Fabric

Part 3 in this series is here: Failover Clustering (part 1)

Part 4 in this series is here: Failover Clustering (part 2)

Name of Report	Series value (Measures)	Bottom Axis (Dimensions)
Core Allocations QTR	Daily Core Allocated	Date Calendar Quarter
Disk Space QTR	Daily DiskspaceAllocated Daily DiskspaceUsed	Date Calendar Quarter