Thursday, May 5, 2011

Create networks with VMM 2012

So far, I am really impressed by all the improvements in VMM 2012 when it comes to the deep integrations with hardware resources, hypervisors, and clusters.
The possibility to administer and manage the entire eco system from a single console, is a huge benefit in our day-to-day work.

Another interesting improvement is how you can create logical and virtual networks.

In my last post, I covered the creation process of a Failover Cluster with VMM 2012.
We will now focusing on the creation of both logical and virtual networks.

After the hosts are deployed and configured in VMM 2012, the cluster is created, you need to prepare another resource in the Fabric. – Networking.

In a nutshell, this is what we have to do:

1.       Create a Logical Network in the Fabric
2.       Create a definition – name of the logical network, and select the host groups which it should apply.
3.       Enter valid IP subnets and VLANs to be made available for assignment to the logical network definition (If you don’t have an infrastructure that supports VLAns, use the value of 0 in the VLAN column)
4.       Create IP Pool Name and Address Range. These steps look familiar to a DHCP server configuration with some extra options. You can specify one or more IPs from the IP subnet to be used for creating VIPs or that are reserved for other purpose. You also define default gateway, DNS servers and suffixes, and eventually WINS servers.














We have now configured a logical network, and made it available in the Fabric.
The next steps are to assign these logical networks to our cluster, and create an External Virtual Network.

We will have to repeat these steps for every server.
How to:

1.       Navigate to a host group which contains some servers you want to link with this logical network
2.       Select the ‘Hardware’ tab, and find the physical NIC that is actually connected to this logical network. I am using my management NIC in this example.
3.       Move on to the ‘Virtual Networks’ tab, and Add a new virtual network. Make this an External network, and select the dedicated NIC for this network.
Repeat these steps for every node you intend to use with these networks












We will now assign the networks to our cluster

1.       Navigate to your cluster in the Fabric. Right click, and select properties.
2.       Go to the ‘Virtual Networks’ tab, and create.
3.       Select your Logical network in the drop down list, and name your Virtual Network.
4.       Select ‘Allow hosts to access VMs through this virtual network if you want to share the connection.





 












Your cluster is now ready to deploy VMs as far as networking concern. You can now connect your VMs to your logical and virtual networks, and assign IP configuration from the pool you created in this guide.



Focusing on virtualization

I`ve recently created some webcasts for my friends at Microsoft here in Norway.
It is located on Technet Edge – a resource for the IT-pro to stay updated on the latest technology.
You`ll find much useful information here from other speakers/contributors as well.

Microsoft Norway launched a contest last month where they offer to upgrade your datacenter for an amount of money, if you install and deploy Hyper-V. The only thing you have to do is to capture a screenshot containing your Hyper-V Manager with some running VMs, and mail it to them.
Take a closer look at the contest here: Let Microsoft Pimp your datacenter!
To help the community further, we created some webcast about Microsoft Virtualization (Hyper-V and VMM 2012).
You can check the virtualization content here. (All the slides are in English, but I am talking in Norwegian)


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Create Failover Clusters with VMM 2012

After the Hyper-V hosts are configured and doing well in the Fabric, it`s time to take another step toward the highly available environment that everyone is demanding in today’s businesses. It`s time for Failover Clustering.

Reminder:
Both of my physical servers was installed with Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise SP1
There are 4 NICs pre-configured on the servers, and both servers are joined to my domain.
Both servers are connected to the iSCSI-target (used for CSV in my lab).
I`ve created a RunAs account in the ‘Host computer’ category for managing my physical servers.

We will still be located in the Fabirc, and creates our cluster from here.













You`ll need to provide a name for your cluster. Remember that the credentials for creating the cluster, should be local administrator on both nodes, and have permission to create computer objects in Active Directory.





 
Find the host group you where your available Hyper-V servers are located. You are free to select the number of servers you want to cluster, and add them to the right pane.
















The Hyper-V hosts have 4 NICs installed, and the cluster network would be the same as the management network in my lab. We will configure an IP address that the cluster would use. (The cluster`s DNS name would be super.lab.local with an IP address of 192.168.0.239)

















Since I already have configured my Hyper-V servers with iSCSI, and connected them to the iSCSI target with a prepared disk, it would automatically use this as a witness disk. (in this case the cluster`s quorum would be Node and Disk Majority. We will come back to this point later)
















And again, the summary summarizes the settings you have chosen.

















If we take a look at the Job that VMM is currently processing, we can see the steps that are required to create the Failover Cluster, and can monitor the entire process. (If some of the steps fails, it will notice you in the end, and you can also access the well-known cluster-log in %windir%\cluster\reports).













Remember that the cluster-creation-process default enabled the available disk as a Witness Disk. Since this is a budget-lab, I had to change the quorum to Node and File Share Witness afterwards, so I could be able to enable the CSV feature

We have now successfully created a Hyper-V Failover Cluster with VMM 2012.




Create Hyper-V hosts with VMM 2012

Several new deployment options in VMM 2012 make the life of an IT-pro a bit easier.
VMM 2012 promise a much deeper cluster integration than VMM 2008 R2 provided, and I wanted to test the entire process, from creating Hyper-V hosts, to create a Failover Cluster – everything from my VMM 2012 server.

This post will cover the process of how you enable your physical servers for virtualization.

(Info: In VMM 2012, you are also able to do a bare metal deployment of your Hyper-V servers, but I won’t cover it here in this post).

(Bonus info: support for managing trusted and untrusted Hyper-V host clusters from the same VMM management server is new in VMM 2012. In VMM 2008 R2, two VMM management servers were required; one for trusted domain hosts; and one for untrusted domain hosts.)

Before we get started:

Both of my physical servers was installed with Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise SP1
There are 4 NICs pre-configured on the servers, and both servers are joined to my domain.
Both servers are connected to the iSCSI-target (used for CSV in my lab).
I`ve created a RunAs account in the ‘Host computer’ category for managing my physical servers.

If you`re most likely to have many Hyper-V servers, you should try to segment them into logical groups in VMM 2012. I`ve created a host group called Hyper-V hosts in my VMM server; this is where I want to place my two physical Hyper-V host in this process.
Ok, we start by heading into the fabric, and select our host group. Right click, and select 'Add Hyper-V Hosts and Clusters'


Since both of my servers already have joined my domain - the same domain where my VMM2012 is located, I would select the 'Windows Computers on a trusted Active Directory domain' option.















I will use the RunAs account I created for the ‘Host computer’ category, with permissions to do all the
magic that are going to happen.

















I add an Active Directory query, to list all the available physical servers in my domain, and select the hosts I would use for Hyper-V virtualization.















You`ll be prompted with a message indicating that if the Hyper-V role is not enabled on the servers, it would go ahead and do it for you. It would also require a restart of those servers.











I am placing my servers in the dedicated host group in this step, and leave the other options blank, since I intend to build a cluster in step 2.















The summary summarizes the steps you`ve done, and you`re ready to add your Hyper-V hosts to VMM 2012.
















The job starts, and do the following tasks:

·         Add the Virtual Machine host
·         Install Virtual Machine Agent
·         Refresh hosts
·         Enable Hyper-V





After the job has finished, you will be presented with a lot of detailed information about the deployment. (NIC configuration, storage, CPU, RAM ++)






The new Hyper-V hosts are located in the hosts group in the Fabric. We are now ready to create a Failover Cluster.