Export Hyper-V Configuration Using PowerShell

When Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 were released, we also received a new PowerShell module. Within this module are many cmdlets that are designed to make it easy to manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines directly from PowerShell. Many of these cmdlets and command line versions of functionality that exists within the graphical Hyper-V manager. But sometimes, even these cmdlets may not meet your needs. As a case in point, consider the Export-VM cmdlet. This cmdlet will export a virtual machine to disk including its disk files and snapshots. In other words, a backup.

Using PowerShell to Export a Hyper-V Configuration

I'm assuming that if you are running Hyper-V in a production environment, then you probably have invested in a backup solution. What I want to demonstrate in this article isn't intended to replace those products, but rather supplement them. If you run a smaller shop, a lab environment, or client Hyper-V on a Windows 8 or later desktop, then this article may be especially handy.

The problem is that when you use the Export-VM cmdlet, you get everything and given the size of the virtual machine hard drives and snapshots, this process may take some time to complete. But perhaps you only want to export the configuration itself? I was working on this problem when I came across someone with this exact issue. He wanted to export the virtual machine configuration so that he could import it later.

The configuration that you see when you run Get-VM or look at a virtual machine settings in Hyper-V Manager are stored in an XML file. The file location is included in the virtual machine object.


The name of the file is the same as the virtual machine's id.


It is pretty easy to get that file with PowerShell.

The file should exist in a sub-folder called Virtual Machines, but sometimes it is not. There is also a possibility there might be multiple XML files, so I do this to get the full file name.



Next, I need to create the destination folder and copy the xml file to it.


In terms of a quick and easy export or backup that's all there is to it. But I'm always thinking about what other requirement someone might have. Assuming you might import the configuration file, it might be helpful to provide a new name for the virtual machine. Or remove hard drive references so that if you import on a different Hyper-V host you don't get ugly errors. Or remove snapshot references. Plus, you most likely want to do this from the comfort of your desktop. So I created a PowerShell function called Export-VMConfiguration.

#requires -version 3.0

 

Function Export-VMConfiguration {

 

<#

.Synopsis

Export Hyper-V configuration file.

.Description

This command will export a Hyper-V virtual machine's configuration file to a new location. You can use this as an alternative to Export-VM which will also export hard drives and snapshots. Sometimes you just want the configuration file.

 

The command has options to provide a new name, as well as remove hard drive or snapshot references. This can be helpful if you plan on importing the configuration later as the basis for a new virtual machine.

 

The path must exist and is relative to the computer. The command will create a subfolder for each virtual machine under this path. The path must be a local, fixed drive. You cannot specify a UNC or shared drive.

.Example

PS C:\> get-vm chi* -computername chi-hvr2 | export-vmconfiguration -path d:\exports -verbose

 

This command will export, or backup, the configuration files for all virtual machines that start with CHI* to a new location on CHI-HVR2.

.Example

PS C:\> Export-VMConfiguration chi-test01 -Path E:\exports -Verbose -NewName CHI-TEST2 -RemoveDrives -RemoveSnapshots

 

This command will get the CHI-TEST01 virtual machine on the local host and export its configuration. The new configuration will reflect a new name and remove existing drives and snapshots.

.Notes

Last Updated: October 13, 2014

Version     : 1.0

 

Learn more:

PowerShell in Depth: An Administrator's Guide (http://www.manning.com/jones6/)

PowerShell Deep Dives (http://manning.com/hicks/)

Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (http://manning.com/jones3/)

Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches (http://manning.com/jones4/)

 

 

  ****************************************************************

  * DO NOT USE IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT UNTIL YOU HAVE TESTED *

  * THOROUGHLY IN A LAB ENVIRONMENT. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.  IF   *

  * YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS SCRIPT DOES OR HOW IT WORKS, *

  * DO NOT USE IT OUTSIDE OF A SECURE, TEST SETTING.             *

  ****************************************************************

 

.Link

Get-VM

Export-VM

#>

 

[cmdletbinding(DefaultParameterSetName="Name")]

 

Param(

[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Enter the name of a virtual machine",

ValueFromPipeline=$True,

ParameterSetName="Name")]

[alias("vmname")]

[ValidateNotNullorEmpty()]

[string[]]$Name,

[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$True,ValueFromPipeline=$True,

ParameterSetName="VM")]

[Microsoft.HyperV.PowerShell.VirtualMachine[]]$VM,

[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Enter the destination path")]

[string]$Path,

[Alias("cn")]

[Parameter(ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]

[ValidateNotNullorEmpty()]

[string]$Computername = $env:computername,

[Alias("rename")]

[string]$NewName,

[alias("NoDrives")]

[switch]$RemoveDrives,

[alias("NoSnapshots")]

[switch]$RemoveSnapshots

)

 

Begin {

    Write-Verbose -Message "Starting $($MyInvocation.Mycommand)"  

    Write-Verbose "Using parameter set $($PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName)"

} #begin

 

Process {

 

#create a scriptblock so this can run remotely

$sb = {

[cmdletbinding()]

Param(

[string]$VerbosePreference

)

#$VerbosePreference = "continue"

    if ($using:vm) {

     Write-Verbose "Processing VM: $($using:VM.Name)"

     $myVM = $using:vm

    }

    else {

     Write-Verbose "Processing $using:name"

     #get the virtual machine

     Try {

        $myvm = Get-VM -Name $using:name

     }

     Catch {

        Write-Warning "Failed to find virtual machine $using:name on $($env:computername)"

     }

    } #else

 

    if ($myVM) {

 

    foreach ($v in $myVM) {

        #proceed if we have a virtual machine object

        #create the target configuration path

        $config = dir $v.configurationlocation -filter "$($v.id).xml" -recurse | Select -first 1 -ExpandProperty fullname

        Write-Verbose "Processing configuration file: $config"

        If ($config) {

        

            #define the target path

             #use the New name if specified

            if ($NewName) {

              $vmname = $NewName

            }

            else {

              $vmname = $v.name

            }

            $destination = Join-path $using:path "$vmname\Virtual Machines"

            Write-Verbose "Testing $destination"

            if (-Not (Test-Path -Path $destination)) {

                #create the folder

                Try {

                    Write-Verbose "Creating $destination"

                    New-Item -Path $destination -ItemType directory -ErrorAction stop | Out-Null

                }

                Catch {

                    Throw  

                }

            } #if destination doesn't exist

 

            if (Test-Path -Path $destination ) {

                Write-verbose "Exporting $config to $destination"

                Try {

                    Copy-item $config -destination $destination -errorAction Stop -passthru

                }

                Catch {

                    Throw

                }

                

                #post processing

                Write-Verbose "Post processing"

                $newConfig = Join-Path -Path $destination -ChildPath "$($v.id).xml"

                [xml]$new = Get-Content -path $newConfig

 

                $prop = $new | select-xml -XPath "//properties/name"

                

                #insert a note

                Write-Verbose "Inserting a note"

                $notes = $new.selectNodes("//notes")

                $noteText = @"

Exported $(Get-date) from $($prop.node.innertext)

$($notes[0].InnerText)

"@

                $notes[0].InnerText = $noteText

 

                if ($NewName) {

                    #rename

                    Write-Verbose "Renaming to $Newname"

                    $prop.node.InnerText = $NewName                    

                } #if new name

 

                #remove drives

                if ($RemoveDrives) {

                    Write-Verbose "Removing drive references"

                    $drivenodes = $new | Select-Xml "//*[starts-with(name(),'drive')]"

 

                   foreach ($item in $drivenodes) {

                      $pn = $item.node.parentnode

                      $pn.RemoveChild($item.node) | Out-Null

                    }

 

                } #remove drives

 

                #remove snapshots

                if ($RemoveSnapshots) {

                    Write-Verbose "Removing snapshot references"

                    $snapnodes = $new | Select-Xml "//snapshots"

                    $snapnodes.node.RemoveChild($snapnodes.node.list) | Out-Null

 

                    $pii= $new | Select-Xml "//parent_instance_id"

                    $new.configuration.properties.RemoveChild($pii.node) | Out-Null

 

                } #remove snapshots

                #save revised configuration

                Write-Verbose "Saving XML to $newconfig"

                $new.save($newconfig)

 

            } #if destination verified

        } #If configuration file found

        else {

            Write-Warning "Failed to find a configuration file for $($v.name)"

        }

      } #foreach

    } #if VM

   } #close scriptblock

  

   Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $sb -ComputerName $Computername -ArgumentList $VerbosePreference  

} #process

 

End {

    Write-Verbose -Message "Ending $($MyInvocation.Mycommand)"

}

Microsoft’s View on Hyper-Convergence

What is Hyper-Convergence?

The traditional deployment of a vSphere or Hyper-V farm has several tiers connected by fabrics. The below diagram shows a more traditional deployment using a storage area network (SAN). In this architecture you have:

    Storage trays
    Switches (iSCSI or fiber channel)
    Storage controllers
    Virtualization hosts (application servers)



In the Hyper-V world, we are able to do a software-defined alternative to a SAN called a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS), where:

    RAID is replaced by Storage Spaces
    Storage controllers are replaced by a Windows Server transparent failover cluster
    iSCSI and fiber channel are replaced by SMB 3.0

But for the most part, the high-level architecture doesn't really change:



In the world of hyper-convergence, we simplify the entire architecture to a single tier of servers/appliances that run:

    Virtualization
    Storage/cluster network
    Storage

I say "simplify" but under the covers, each server will be running like a hamster on a wheel … on an illicit hyper-stimulant.

What Microsoft Says About Hyper-Convergence

Hyper-convergence is a topic that has only been getting headlines for the last year or so. This is mainly thanks to one vendor that is marketing like crazy, and VMware promoting their vSAN solution. I had not heard Microsoft share a public opinion about hyper-convergence until TechEd Europe 2014 in October.

The message was clear: Microsoft does not think hyper-convergence is good. There are a few reasons:

The method of growing a hyper-converged infrastructure is to deploy another appliance, adding storage, memory, processor, and license requirements. This is perfect if your storage and compute needs grow at the same scale, but this is about as rare as gold laying geese. Storage requirements normally grow much faster than the need for compute. We are generating more information every day and keeping it longer. Adding the costs of compute and associated licensing when we could be instead growing an affordable storage tier makes no sense.
Performance: Hyper-converged storage is software defined. Software-defined storage, when operated at scale, requires compute power to manage the storage and perform maintenance (such as a restore after a disk failure). Which do you prioritize in a converged infrastructure: virtual machine computational needs, or the functions of storage management, which in turn affect the performance of those same virtual machines?

This is why Microsoft continues to push solutions based on a storage tier and a compute tier, which are connected by converged networks, preferably leveraging hardware offloads (such as RDMA) and SMB 3.0. The recently launched Dell/Microsoft CPS is such a solution.

6 Hyper-V Predictions for 2015

It's time once again for every tech author to make dauntless divinations about what will happen in the IT industry in the following year. Hopefully I will take delivery of my robot chauffeur and moon buggy soon, but in the meantime much like like I did last year, I'll make some predictions about what I think will happen in the world of Microsoft virtualization in 2015. I sure hope I do better this time around than I did for 2014!

1. Docker Hype

We're going to be hearing a lot about a technology called Docker. This snowball started to roll in recent months when Microsoft announced Azure support for Docker via a partnership with the company. Docker can work in Azure right now through a command-line interface (CLI) that was launched for Windows clients, and we know that Docker is coming to Windows Server in the future.

Docker is more so an addition to Azure or Hyper-V, rather than being viewed as a distinct competitor. In machine virtualization we have isolation between machines, with each machine having its own operating system. This security boundary contains an OS, libraries, and typically one application. Containerization is done on a per application deployment basis. A Docker engine runs on a single operating system. Containers for different applications are deployed on shared libraries that are hosted by this shared operating system. The Docker engine could be installed on a physical server, or it could be run in the guest OS of a virtual machine (Azure or Hyper-V).

The benefit of Docker is that you can deploy applications nearly instantly from a library of containerized apps. This is a great benefit in a private deployment where change is frequent, such as in a DevOps environment. For example, a farm of a few virtual machines could run lots of application instances.

I think we are going to hear a lot about Docker in 2015, with the trickle becoming a torrent. But I don't think many IT pros will use Docker in 2015, as it will be early days, and I think Docker's market is geared toward larger organizations that demand a pace of change that even a flexible private/public cloud can offer.

2. Windows Server Licensing Will Switch to Per-Core

At the moment, we purchase Windows Server (and therefore Hyper-V virtual machines running Windows Server) on a per-physical processor basis. Each Windows Server license covers two physical processors, no matter how many cores are in each processor. If you license a physical host with two Intel E5-2699 v3 processors (18 cores each = 32 total cores or 64 logical processors), then you can license that host for an unlimited number of virtual machines with just one copy of Windows Server Datacenter Edition, which costs $6,155 with Open NL licensing. Remember that this license can be installed on the host and you can enable Hyper-V for free.

Here's the issue: Just a year ago, you most likely required four processors and two datacenter licenses to get a host with that sort of core density. Microsoft would have made $12,310 on Open NL license fees. Intel continues to increase the core density of hosts, and this is reducing Microsoft's earning power in larger host deployments.

I believe that Microsoft will switch from a per-pair of processors licensing model to a per-core pricing system with the release of Windows Server vNext. I can understand why because newer processors will reduce their earnings. Hopefully Microsoft will calculate the per-core pricing based on the typical processor (6 -8 cores) that most of us still use. This would mean that we wouldn't necessarily see a price rise

3. Windows Server vNext Release Details

I could be lazy and tell you that Windows Server vNext will arrive in the second half of 2015, but everyone in the business knows that. Instead, I will take some chances. I am guess-timating that general availability (not RTM) of Windows Server will be in September.

Microsoft typically uses the same naming system as games by EA Sports. The reasoning for this is simple — Microsoft's financial year starts in July, so anything released after July uses the following year. The next version of Windows Server will be released in Microsoft's financial year of 2016 and will be called Windows Server 2016.

4. Microsoft Azure Momentum

If you attend any Microsoft events or you have any dealings with a Microsoft employee, then expect to hear a lot about Azure in the first six months of 2015. Microsoft is going to be doing a lot get you hooked on their public cloud. Microsoft wants customers to try out their public and hybrid offerings. If you've got an on-premises environment, then they'll be making big pushes with online backup and disaster recovery in the cloud. Services such as site-to-site VPN and ExpressRoute have had recent upgrades, and the number of WAN partners will continue to grow. Microsoft Ignite (the super conference in Chicago in May 2015) will seem like a great big cloud conference!

No matter what you might think of the public cloud (and I was a skeptic of Microsoft's offerings!) you cannot get over:

    The pricing
    The incredible rate of improvement of their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings
    The hybrid offerings that supplement (not replace) on-premises hardware.

A lot more IT pros will be managing some services in Azure by the end of 2015 than at the end of 2014, but the focus will remain on hybrid cloud.

5. You Still Won't Be Using PowerShell

This is a depressing prediction by me. Most of you reading this article will not be using PowerShell to simplify management, deployment, and operations and enable automation. I am not a programmer, but I've taken to PowerShell, where I used it to drive the demos from my presentation at TechEd Europe 2014. I use PowerShell to rebuild my demo lab at work. I use PowerShell scripts to provision large numbers of virtual machines in Hyper-V or Azure. And I use PowerShell to get predictable and fast results. There was a certain time investment to get all that stuff right, but as all scripters know, we start off by blatantly copying and pasting from other people's work from the many available online resources and tweak from there. The investment, even in small deployments, is recouped later on when that script, a function, or a cmdlet is reused over and again.

But no matter what I say, no matter what Jeffrey Snover says, and no matter what anyone in Microsoft says, most of you will ignore our advice on using PowerShell and will continue to use a subset of the product that they have purchased by not adventuring beyond the GUI.

6. Hyper-Convergence Was the Rubik's Cube of 2014

A number of hyper-convergence specialist companies have been shouting very loudly and very expensively about the benefits of their kind of compute and storage deployment. I get the feeling (my opinion and not the official view of Petri.com) that these companies are more successful at getting investment and the attention of the media than at selling their products.

I think hyper-convergence will go the way of tab, parachute pants, leg warmers, Furby, the Rubik's Cube, and music on MTV, and we'll get back to operating compute on one tier and storage on another, connected by a high-speed fabric.

How Do I Manage Hyper-V?

Just like with other virtualization and cloud platforms, there are many ways to manage Hyper-V. The choices depend on how big your installation is, what licensing you have purchased, how much automation you want to use, and if you have leveraged self-service. I will explain different administration options that are available from Microsoft in this article. Please note that other companies such as 5nine and Veeam also offer administration tools for Hyper-V.

Hyper-V Management Basics for Small to Medium Deployment

Hyper-V Manager is the basic administration tool that is included in Windows Server and Windows 8/8.1 Pro/Enterprise. We normally use Hyper-V Manager for the following scenarios:

• Managing a small number of hosts
• Configuring host settings
• Creating and managing virtual machines on non-clustered hosts
• Troubleshooting a host

It's typically bad practice to regularly log into hosts to manage them. You should enable Hyper-V Manager on your PC to manage your hosts. Not only is this a better practice, but it also makes administration quicker and easier. If you're working in a business that's using old technologies, such as Windows 7, then you can deploy a Windows Server 2012 RDS server, install Hyper-V Manager on it, and publish the application to Hyper-V administrators. This makes deploying Windows 8.1 for IT seem much easier and more economical.

Using Hyper-V Manager to control host settings.

Note: You must use a version of Hyper-V Manager that is compatible with the hypervisor version. For example, you cannot use Hyper-V Manager for Windows Server 2008 R2 to manage Windows Server 2012, as there is a mismatch of WMI versions. However, you can use the Hyper-V Manager in Windows 8.1 to manage Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Highly Available Virtual Machines

If you deploy clustered hosts, then you will actually need to use two tools. If you want a virtual machine to be highly available (HA), then you will deploy and configure that virtual machine using Failover Cluster Manager. Similar to Hyper-V Manager, you should not use Failover Cluster Manager on the hosts. Instead, you should install it on your PC.

Unlike Hyper-V Manager, you will have to download the Remote Server Administration Toolkit for your version of the Windows client OS. Note that you must run Windows 8.1 on your PC to remotely manage Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 or 8 to manage Windows Server 2012, and Windows 7 to manage Windows Server 2008 R2.

You will continue to use Hyper-V Manager to configure host settings, with one exception; Live Migration settings are configured in Failover Cluster Manager. Non-clustered hosts require a bit more security work to enable Live Migration, but a cluster has its own security boundary that makes Live Migration almost a click-and-go experience.

Using Failover Cluster Manager to manage highly available virtual machines.

Creating virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager on a Hyper-V cluster is a mistake that is commonly made by people that are new to Hyper-V. The resulting virtual machine is not HA, but you can fix this with the following steps:

1. Using Live Storage Migration to move the virtual machines files to the cluster's storage if required.
2. Using Configure Role to add the existing virtual machine to the management scope of the cluster. No restarts are required of the virtual machine.

Prior to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, a common mistake was to configure virtual machine settings in Hyper-V Manager. Those settings would be lost if the virtual machine moved nodes because the settings were not saved in the cluster's database. If you forget to use Failover Cluster Manager you can update the settings of the virtual machine in the cluster. Note that Windows Server 2012 prevents you from editing the settings of HA virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager.

Managing Hyper-V in Medium to Large Deployments

There are several different scenarios where you will purchase System Center with per-host licensing and use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage Hyper-V, including:

• Scale: You need a solution to centrally manage lots of hosts/clusters.
• Cloud: You will be deploying public or private clouds.
• Deployment: You need faster host, storage, virtual machine, or service deployment.
• Delegation: You want to enable delegation of administration, enabling some administrators to manage some hosts.

Managing a cloud fabric using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

Although SCVMM can be used to deploy Hyper-V clusters in theory, I still prefer to configure and manage clusters using Failover Cluster Manager, where I use SCVMM's bare metal deployment to create the hosts. I have found that SCVMM is not so hot in this department.

Note that SCVMM is just one of eight products in the System Center license suite. You will choose from the System Center menu to enable other elements of management, protection, and automation.

Hyper-V Automation

PowerShell… yes, I said it. If you want to do things at scale, get repeatable and predictable results, and do it quickly, then invest some time in Windows PowerShell to get the job done. And you'll also get access to deeper features that are not otherwise revealed in a GUI. You can use cmdlets from Hyper-V, Failover Cluster Manager, and SCVMM to write your scripts in the easy to use Integrated Scripting Editor (ISE).

Configuring Hyper-V host networking using a PowerShell script.

Using Hyper-V, System Center, and Windows Azure Pack

You will deploy a cloud whenever you want to enable self-service deployment of virtual machines and services. The front-end of a Microsoft cloud based on Hyper-V and System Center is the Windows Azure Pack (WAP). There are two portals:

• The administrative portal: Used to manage the cloud
• The tenant portal: Used by users of the cloud to deploy virtual machines and services

Note that you will continue to use System Center to manage and monitor the fabric of the cloud.

5 Hyper-V Skills

1. Hyper-V Deployment

I do not argue that Hyper-V still has a smaller total market share than vSphere. But we have evidence from IDC that Hyper-V continues to grow while vSphere is shrinking. And outside of the USA, at least here in Europe, Hyper-V has a much larger presence than in the USA, possibly because we Europeans were slower to adopt virtualization. It's for this reason that IT pros should start to learn how to deploy Hyper-V… correctly.

I work for a distributor, so I am normally one-step removed from working on customer sites; I sell to the resellers, I teach the resellers, and from time-to-time, I help the resellers or my local Microsoft office out when there is an issue with a project. When I am called into a Hyper-V project it is more often than not because a VMware consulting company has been trying to deploy Hyper-V with a design that they would normally use for vSphere. My Hyper-V MVP colleagues from around Europe have a plethora of stories of when they've been called to undo the damage done in Hyper-V deployments by vSphere experts.

Let me ask you a simple question: would you use the same techniques for a gasoline engine as you would for a diesel engine? Of course not, so why would anyone assume that the way to design vSphere is universally correct? I would not assume that how I would deploy Hyper-V is universally correct. If you are going to be working with Hyper-V then you need to learn how to deploy Microsoft hypervisor correctly, including Failover Clustering, Windows Server networking, Windows Server storage, and more.

2. Learn System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

If you are going to deploy a larger Hyper-V farm, then you should strongly consider deploying System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). For you vSphere folks, SCVMM is not Microsoft's answer to vCenter; it is much more than a central console for hosts and virtual machines. I believe SCVMM should be renamed to System Center Fabric Manager because it is the tool that Microsoft envisions owners of larger systems will use to manage storage and networking, deploy bare-metal hosts and Scale-Out File Servers, and provision highly-available services with deep integration into any available load balancers.

In my experience, SCVMM is underused by those customers who do buy System Center licensing. Yes, Hyper-V Manager, Failover Cluster Manager, and PowerShell can do a lot, but SCVMM brings more to the table, especially in environments where change is frequent. There are three kinds of Hyper-V customers who buy System Center:

    Sites that deploy other parts of System Center, typically SCOM and SCCM, but not SCVMM and miss out on lots of functionality.
    Customers that do have SCVMM installed, but use it as nothing more than a centralized Hyper-V Manager.
    The minority of sites that do make great use of SCVMM.

Not everyone can afford System Center, and there are those that have concerns with the complexity of SCVMM. But for those of you that do have that licensing, my advice is that you learn the tool and make better use of it. If you are in the role of service delivery (internal or external customers), then SCVMM is the starting point for build a Windows Azure Pack (WAP) powered private or public cloud.

3. Understand SMB 3.0

If you read my posts then it should be no surprise that I am advocate of using Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) storage for Hyper-V virtual machines. SOFS was the first technology to make real use of Microsoft strategic data transmission protocol, SMB 3.0. In the role of storage connectivity between hosts and a file share, SMB 3.0 competes against the likes of iSCSI, fiber channel and fiber channel over Ethernet (FCoE). However, Microsoft had bigger plans for SMB 3.0. In Windows Server 2012 R2, SMB 3.0 can be used for Live Migrations running at speeds of 10 Gbps or faster. In Windows Server vNext, SMB 3.0 expands again for synchronous and asynchronous replication between Windows servers.

SMB 3.0 is here to stay. There are three components or concepts you need to learn:

• SMB Multichannel: What NICs are selected and how to control this
• SMB convergence: How to design converged networks with bandwidth controls
• SMB Direct: You are going to be pushing huge amounts of data, so you need to learn about hardware offloading via Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) via iWarp, RoCE, or Infiniband

4. Study Windows Server Converged Networking

For those of you running more than a few hosts, you need to release that death grip on 1 GbE networking. 10 GbE is here, and for some of you, you need to be looking at 40 Gbps, 56 Gbps, or even faster! This isn't because of Hyper-V; this is because you are creating larger virtual machines, generating more data, and retaining data for longer than ever before. Stuff needs to move across networks, and it needs to happen quickly.

This typically requires investing in expensive switches, where the NICs don't actually have to be that expensive if you shop wisely, so you need to make the very most of every switch port. This is why we deploy converged networking, once the reserve of hardware solutions, such as those found in blade server enclosures.

Right now, many people are deploying Hyper-V hosts with lots of 1 GbE NICs, or they're using very expensive converged-networking hardware. Those who use 1 GbE networking have bandwidth limitations for individual services or virtual machines. And most of those who are using Windows Server 2012 R2 on blade servers have grown frustrated with Emulex, who have near-monopoly status in this market, taking a year to resolve outage issues with the firmware and drivers of their converged networking NICs.

I have been an advocate of using the features of converged networking that are free in Windows Server. Place a pair of 10 GbE or faster NICs into your host, team them, create a Hyper-V virtual switch that connects to that team, and connect the host and virtual machines to ports on the virtual switch. Now the host and virtual machines have access to 10 Gbps networking while consuming just two top-of-rack (TOR) switch ports. Don't get caught up in CAPEX costs. Remember that the cost of powering six to 10 x 1 GbE posts per host is probably much more than powering two x 10 GbE switch ports per host. OPEX cost savings over three years must be accounted for, too!

4. Embrace Microsoft Azure

2015 will be the year that you finally have to admit that you're going to do some stuff in the cloud. I came to that realization in early 2014 after very successfully ignoring Office 365 and Microsoft Azure for a long time. Your bosses are going to be hearing a lot in the media and directly from Microsoft about the cloud. Pressure will build, and if you won't do it, they'll find someone who will.

There are easy ways to embrace the cloud to supplement your on-premises environment. Everyone struggles with the costs of disaster recovery. Maybe Azure Site Recovery will give you an reasonably-priced solution for disaster recovery in the cloud? I hated working with tapes and tape drives, so maybe backup to Azure will service your needs for off-site backup and archiving? Do you need a hybrid web presence? If so, check out Azure website hosting plans, starting with free offerings. Or do you need a test/dev lab for IT or for the developers and testers? If so, why spends money on hardware when you can pay for what you use in Azure with supervision and enforcement by IT?

5. Learn PowerShell

You're using just 40% of the product you've invested in if you refuse to consider using PowerShell. Most of the magic that I show and talk about is driven by PowerShell and does not have a UI. I guarantee you that this percentage will decrease in the next version of Hyper-V. If you worked for me, I'd fire you. Harsh words, but sometimes a kick in the rear is required.

2015 will be a year of disruption in the world of Hyper-V. There will be the release of Windows Server vNext in the second half of the year. Azure will be purchased by more and more CIOs, with or without the cooperation of their IT departments, but there'll be no choice about deploying services in the public cloud. And storage and networking will continue to evolve. You can prepare yourself for a very interesting year by spending some time learning the above technologies.

About Hyper-V Virtual Processor Limitations

I was reviewing older posts on the Petri IT Knowledgebase when I noticed an article called Virtual Processor Limitations in Hyper-V. It occurred to me that I should write an updated post that covers a few related topics. In this article, I will clear up a few myths about Microsoft guidance and talk about support virtual processor maximums in Hyper-V.

Virtual Processors versus Logical Processors

Consider a physical computer for a moment. This machine has one or more CPUs or sockets. Each CPU has a number of cores. Most Intel desktop or server processors feature something called hyper threading. This is a design that improves parallelization, enabling a single core to process two threads of execution at once. This isn't truly a doubling of processing horsepower, but it does improve capacity when using modern software on a modern processor. In virtualization, it is important to understand how many logical processors a host has. If you have an AMD 8-core CPU, then that CPU has 8 logical processors (LPs). If you have an Intel 8-core CPU, then it will have 8 LPs if hyper threading is disabled and 16 LPs is hyper threading is disabled.

Each virtual machine you create also has one or more single-core virtual processors. Each virtual processor executes on a host's LPs. What does this mean? If a host has 16 LPs, then the most number of virtual processors (vCPUs) that can be executing on the host hardware at once is 16. I've tried to use precise wording here because there is a subtlety; I can actually overcommit my processors by having lots more virtual machines in a running state. The hypervisor will swap virtual machines in and out on the physical processors based on demand and resource control.

Let's make this clear with a few examples.

• I have a host with 16 LPs.
• At any one point in time I can have 8 virtual machines with 2 vCPUs executing on the physical processors. Or that might be 16 x 1 vCPU virtual machines, or 4 x 4 vCPU VMs, or any mix that makes up to 16 vCPUs.
• However, I might have 50 virtual machines with one or more vCPUs actually running on that host. The hypervisor will swap them in and out of the physical processor, so I don't notice the over-commitment.

That might sounds scary if you're new to virtualization, but we've been doing that sort of thing for decades with software, and it's been the norm for the last 10+ years of machine virtualization.

Maximum Processor Counts

There are four factors to consider:

    How many logical processors are supported by your specific version of Hyper-V?
    What are the maximum number of vCPUs supported on a host?
    How many vCPUs are supported per LP on the host?
    What are the performance requirements of your guests' services?

The first two questions are easy to answer with a search engine by querying 'Hyper-V 2012 R2 Maximums.' In the case of Windows Server 2012 R2 (WS2012 R2) Hyper-V, a single host can have up to 320 logical processors and can support up to 2048 vCPUs on 1024 virtual machines running on a single host.

Note: When you log into a host and run Task Manager, you will see a maximum of 64 logical processors on the host; rest assured that all the logical processors are there and used by the virtual machines it's just that a single install of Windows Server can only use up to 64 logical processors.

In the case of Windows Server 2008 R2 (W2008 R2) Hyper-V, a host can have up to 64 logical processors, and a single host can support up to 512 running vCPUs on 384 running virtual machines.

Older versions of Hyper-V applied a vCPU:LP ratio. In the case of server workloads, Microsoft supported 8 server vCPUs per LP in the host to be running at any one time. So if my host had 8 LPs, Microsoft would support me having 32 x virtual machines, each with a 2 vCPUs. For VDI workloads, we had a 12:1 ratio. That would mean my 8 LP host could run up to 96 virtual machines with a single vCPU each. Microsoft dropped this ratio with the release of Windows Server 2012 (WS2012) Hyper-V, which is because of the fourth question above.

In reality, all these ratios and counts are theory for exams. There is no "you can run X virtual machines" on a host rule in Hyper-V. Virtual machines on all platforms are just like physical servers in terms of resource requirements. Some services are heavy consumers of cores, some services require lots of cores for multi-threading, and some services are lightweights. Microsoft's guidance is quite realistic: you can fit as many virtual machines onto your hardware as your hardware can support, and this is dictated by the workloads that you will run in those virtual machines. In the real world, you'll hit a performance ceiling long before you hit the theoretical maximums of supported vCPUs per host.

Hyper-V Virtual Processor Best Practices

Microsoft does not have and never has had a general rule of having one LP per vCPU. However, some products from Microsoft have issued support guidance. Some products will support 2 vCPUs per LP, and some want a 1:1 assignment. This is a per-product guidance and affects only those virtual machines running those products. You can use Resource Control to enforce this guidance.

Another best practice is to not go crazy with assigning vCPUs. The MSDN Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2012 R2 advises that you should only assign enough vCPUs to a virtual machine to meet the needs of that machine's services. Wastefully assigning vCPUs will reduce the performance of the host and other virtual machines.

A related tip is to monitor the processor queue length within the guest operating systems of your virtual machines, especially mutli-threaded ones such as those running SQL Server. If this metric rises beyond acceptable levels then assign more virtual CPUs to the virtual machine.

Using Internet Explorer 11 Edge Mode in Windows 10 Technical Preview

In August 2013, Microsoft announced that document modes would be deprecated starting with Internet Explorer 11. IE in the Windows 10 Technical Preview is the only version that currently includes Edge Mode, and any sites that need one of the deprecated document modes to render correctly will have to be recoded to adhere to web standards going forward.

Enabling Edge mode on the new Experimental Features dashboard in Internet Explorer 11 on the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

At the time of writing, Edge Mode is only enabled by default for a small percentage of Windows Insider users who have downloaded the Windows 10 Technical Preview. But Edge Mode can also be enabled and disabled manually.

What is Edge Mode?

The concept for Edge Mode comes from the interoperability strategy deployed in Mobile IE in Windows Phone 8.1 Update, where prior to the update it was found that either mobile versions of sites weren't displayed or sites didn't display correctly.

In the updated IE11 on Windows Phone, changes were made to ensure that sites render in a similar way to how Safari and Chrome users see them on iOS and Android devices, even if that meant implementing changes that didn't adhere to standards.

The IE11 Windows 10 Technical Preview has an interoperable User Agent (UA) string to help ensure that the browser is provided with site mark-up that uses modern web standards and not IE-specific code. Edge Mode will be the new default setting in IE12 and is designed to replace all previous document compatibility modes.

New HTML5 Feature Support

The Windows 10 Technical Preview supports some new HTML5 features that are currently in development, including:

• WAV lossless PCM audio
• ECMAScript 6 Features
• Gamepad API to give JavaScript access to game controllers over USB
• Content Security Policy 1.0
• CSS Interaction Media Queries (Level 4) for responsive input on different device types

Content Security Policy 1.0 Support for a Safer Browsing Experience

One of the most interesting features for IT administrators is support for Content Security Policy 1.0, which when defined in the HTML code, instead of complying with the web's same origin policy, trusting everything that a web server delivers, a whitelist of trusted content sources can be specified to help prevent cross-site scripting attacks. Content Security Policy can contain one or more directives that determine where trusted content can be downloaded. IE10 and later already include limited experimental support for Content Security Policy 1.0 using the X-Content-Security-Policy header.

Enable Edge in IE11 on Windows 10 Technical Preview

Edge can be enabled in the new experimental features dashboard. To get to the dashboard, open Internet Explorer by clicking the icon on the desktop taskbar, type about:flags in the address bar, and press ENTER.

Check Enabled, under Enable Experimental Web Platform Features, and then restart the browser. Now you will be using Edge Mode, and you can always disable the feature if you run into any problems.

Updating the Windows 10 Technical Preview to the Latest Build

In this article, I'll teach you how to upgrade to the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build and learn about the two update tracks Microsoft is offering within Windows Insider program.

Yesterday Microsoft released Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860, and in this Ask the Admin I'll show you how to perform an upgrade. Before starting, be aware that there is no .iso for this build. I suspect that Microsoft might not release another .iso for Windows 10 until the consumer preview arrives in early 2015. Assuming that it will be possible to upgrade to the latest builds without applying every preceding update, the lack of .iso shouldn't be much of a problem.

Slow and fast track updates

After the upgrade to build 9860, there is the option in PC Settings to choose between two different update tracks. Internally, Microsoft has three tracks: Canary for daily builds, Operating System Group (OSG) once approved by the Canary track, and then Microsoft as a whole once the build has been approved by OSG.

Once a new build has been validated by Microsoft employees, it's released to the Windows Insiders 'fast track' first, and at a later stage to the Windows Insiders 'slow track.' Users running the Windows 10 Technical Preview will be able to choose between slow and fast tracks in build 9860 and later. Although regular updates might be interesting to investigate for IT professionals, it will be more important to see how Microsoft decides to cope with delivering frequent builds via Windows Update.

Update to the latest build

There are nearly 7,000 improvements in build 9860, including features borrowed from Windows Phone 8.1, such as Action Center and Battery Saver. If you'd like to know more about these and other new features in Windows 10,

To update to build 9860, log in to Windows 10 and follow the instructions below.

• Open PC Settings from the Start menu. PC Settings is listed in the Quick Links section of the Start menu by default.
• In PC Settings, click Update and recovery on the left.
• In the left of PC Settings, click Preview builds and then the Check now button on the right.

Checking for a new preview build in Windows 10 Technical Preview.

• If a new preview build is available, click Download now on the right in PC Settings.
• Once the build bits have downloaded, in PC Settings click Install now.

Installing a new preview build in Windows 10 Technical Preview.

The install process for build 9860 takes much longer than a clean install of Windows 10 Technical Preview using the .iso, so be prepared to wait.

• Once the initial phase of the upgrade has completed, you'll be prompted to restart the PC. You can opt to restart right away or at a later stage. Select Now from the Restart and update menu and click OK.

Rebooting your PC to update Windows 10 Technical Preview.

The PC might start several times during the update process. When the update has finished, log on to the PC. They will be another delay while Windows reinstalls your Universal apps. Users of Windows Phone 8.1 will be familiar with this process.

Log in to Windows 10 Technical Preview after updating.

Configure new update options in PC Settings

Now that the new build has been installed, you can choose between fast and slow track updates. The slow track is the default track.

• Open PC Settings from the Start menu.
• In PC Settings, click Update and recovery on the left.
• Under Update and recovery, click Preview builds.
• On the right side of PC Settings under Preview builds, select Fast or Slow from the drop-down menu.
• Click Check now if you want to check for new builds right away.
• Close PC Settings.

Select your preferred update track after updating to build 9860.

In the final version of Windows 10, Microsoft has promised that there will be three update tracks: Consumer, Near Consumer and Enterprise. But that could change between now and RTM.