Gavin McShera

How to Manage a VMware Infrastructure or VMware vSphere in System Center Virtual Machine Manager

admin — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:53:17 +0000

I am being asked this more frequently. How can you manage VMware environments in System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)? Check out this wiki on the subject : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-manage-a-vmware-infrastructure-or-vmware-vsphere-in-system-center-virtual-machine-manager-sc-vmm.aspx The key points from this wiki are: SCVMM 2008 R2 can manage vSphere 2.x and vSphere 3.x with comparable functionality. SCVMM 2008 R2 can manage vSphere …

Virtualising Exchange 2010 – Database Availability Groups (DAG’s)

admin — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:26:00 +0000

Check out the Best Practises for Virtualising Exchange Server 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R Hyper-v : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8647c69d-6c2c-40ca-977e-18c2379b07ad One of the most common questions I get on this topic is : Are Database Availability Groups (DAG’s) supported in a virtual environment? The answer is YES but with conditions. To quote the guidance: “Exchange server virtual …

Virtualisation shootout, the market has choices and moving to IaaS

admin — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:05:26 +0000

Paul Venezia over at Infoworld wrote an article called “Virtualization shoot-out: Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat, and VMware”. He obviously put a lot of thought and effort into the shoot-out. To be fair to the guy, he tries to be honest and fair in his assessments. What is nice to see is that Hyper-v stands up …

Cannot mount VHD as it conflicts with other disks

admin — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:40:20 +0000

Sometimes you can run into problems mounting VHD’s. I see it when people start testing/developing scripts. The most common error is : Error (13226)Virtual hard disk <path to VHD> cannot be mounted on host myhost.mydomain.local because it conflicts with other disks. All this means is that anothe process as already mounted your VHD. To unmount, …

SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 RTM

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:45:00 +0000

The SP1 version of SCVMM 2008 R2 has shipped. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/virtual-machine-manager.aspx There are some great reasons to go with SP1 for SCVMM 2008 R2 (detailed below). Its not a standalone service pack though so dont get put off by the full installation wizard. It will detect and upgrade your SCVMM instance. As with all upgrades, back-up …

VMM 2012 : How to deploy an application as a Service

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:35:31 +0000

As you know the System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2012 is in beta and available right now. We have a .NET Pet Shop application that you can deploy that shows what SCVMM 2012 can offer. Check out Michael Michael’s blog on how to spin the whole thing up. The .NET Pet Shop : http://blogs.technet.com/b/m2/archive/2011/03/29/how-to-deploy-the-pet-shop-application-as-a-service-in-vmm.aspx

Hyper-V: Real world consolidation and optimisation

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:25:00 +0000

The Microsoft Management summit 2011 was held in March of this year. Putting aside all of the product news, the event provided a practical example of how Hyper-V can help optimise IT environments. Not only that, the process has been refined to further reduce the overall footprint. At the MMS event there are hundreds of …

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) : Load Simulation and Capacity Planning Tools

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 09:50:38 +0000

Remote Desktop Load Simulation Tools The Remote Desktop Load Simulation toolset is used for 32-bit and 64-bit (x86 and x64) server capacity planning and performance/scalability analysis. Download Here. Remote Desktop Session Host Capacity Planning in Windows Server 2008 R2 Use the RD session Host role service to allow multiple concurrent users to run Windows-based applications …

Hyper-V : How many network cards do I need?

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:22:00 +0000

[If you are viewing this from the main page the second table appears to be missing text. Just view the post on its own by clicking the title] [Edit 19/04/2011 - Include more info on Live Migration NIC] [Edit 19/06/2011 - More info on NICs for cluster communications] This is a topic that comes up …

SCOM 2007 R2 : Where are my reports?

admin — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:03:00 +0000

So you have followed the SCOM 2007 R2 installation guides to the letter. You’ve installed SQL reporting services and installed the SCOM reporting feature. However, you just dont have any reports in SCOM. Check your event logs for the following error: Date: date Source: OpsMgr SDK Service Time: time Category: None Type: Error Event ID: …