Archive for the ‘Windows Server 2008 R2’ category

UK Tech.Days 2011: Delivering IT as a service with the Microsoft private cloud

May 24th, 2011

The Full Circle (www.thefullcircle.com) is a Microsoft Partner for both Online Services such as Office 365 (Public Cloud), and Virtualisation using Hyper-V with System Center (Private Cloud).

As part of this commitment we regularly attend Microsoft training and events, and over the course of this week there are a number of ‘Tech Days’ covering various industry hot topics – Cloud, Mobile, Web, Client and Server aimed at two distinct audiences – IT Pro’s and Developers.

Just over a year ago we attended the Virtualisation Summit TechDays event as covered in http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-techdays-virtualization-summit-from-the-desktop-to-the-datacenter/
Today’s topic from the Vue Cinema in Fulham, West London (around the corner from the office Smile ) is a continuation of last year’s theme – Private Cloud – running your own utility based compute platform using Microsoft technologies, namely Hyper-V for virtualisation and System Center for management.

This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the latest technical updates for your datacentre & infrastructure investments. This event will share more expert knowledge and information than ever – with deep dive sessions on the Windows Server 2008 R2 platform, Hyper-V virtualization capability, and System Center end-to-end service management capabilities.

For more information, please visit: http://uktechdays.cloudapp.net/techdays-live/delivering-it-as-a-service-with-the-microsoft-private-cloud

Transforming your Datacentre

Kevin Sangwell

Virtualisation + Fabric Management + Mature Operations and Service Management + Cloud Principals = Private Cloud

a lot of benefit is based on stove pipes of provisioning teams – racking team handing off to system build, waiting on networks for VLANS, then storage team for LUNs, etc. to give the average time from order to service ready of a new server being c.12 weeks start to end.

In reality do many large IT shops still behave this way? unfortunately for a lot of enterprise shops the answer is yes, this, is of course, fortunate for us! Smile

Building the foundation: Server Virtualisation and Management

Julius Davies & Clive Watson (Data Centre Technology Specialists)

Evangelising Hyper-V, also introduced Hyper-V Server as ‘Enterprise’ but cut-down without GUI, same capabilities… in terms of CPU (64 Cores), Memory (1TB), etc. and the difference being that Enterprise and Data Center have licensing rights to run more VMs… this took me by surprise and at the break discussed with Stuart Leddy, old friend of ‘The Circle’ and Microsoft Core Infrastructure Marketing Lead – Server & Tools Business Group.

Hyper-V R2 Server is akin to Enterprise but cut-back, rather than the original Hyper-V Server which was more like Server Core with Standard constraints (32GB, etc.)…
since R2 – 1TB memory, 64 CPU cores – see:

Q. Are there any limitations to the number of processors and/or cores that Microsoft Hyper-V Server can utilize?

A. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 supports systems with up to 64 logical processors on the physical machine.

Q. Are there any physical memory limitations to Microsoft Hyper-V Server?

A. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 supports up to 1 TB of physical memory.

Teaming Support provided by NIC vendor

Intel = PROSet, Broadcom = BACS, HP = NCU
Best practise: :install/enable Hyper-V, then install networking utilities…. ???? WTF? perhaps before configuring networking? surely you present a Teamed NIC to Hyper-V rather than abstract post event

Hyper-V Networking for Clusters – guide at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff428137(WS.10).aspx

Best practise suggesting 5 separate networks!! host mgmt, heartbeat, CSV’s, live migration, VM traffic, if iSCSI x2 with MPIO! (interestingly their demo platform used 3 – Corpnet (External), Live Migration, and Storage

How can we better manage?

Clive talked about SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1… but not much SCVMM 2012… a shame!

interesting use of the term ‘evacuate virtual machines to another host’ (implementing a PRO Tip), and ‘rehydrating’ back onto a host once fixed. Usual demo of Self Service and breaking VM’s – audit trail, etc.

ahha..a little bit about v.Next / 2012 – its all about Fabric Management!

VMM Self-Service Portal 2.0 – bringing business requests and IT service delivery/provisioning together.

HP Hyper-V Reference Architecture

Adam Richardson, HP & Neil MacCuish, CSC

Adam dot Richardson @HP.com – a sales guy, but a good sales guy. Talking about the shape of HP customers and their agility, or rather, in a lot of cases lack of… 1 customer who took 18months to deploy a mail platform – yikes!

Some ‘Hyper-Customers’ – in excess of 100,000 servers installed – Microsoft is one of them.

Hyper-V Cloud Reference

Virtualisation at the Royal Mail

Customer Profile
The government owned Royal Mail Group (RMG) is responsible for universal mail collection and delivery in the United Kingdom and delivers more than 70 million items every working day.
Business Situation
RMG needed to improve the resilience and flexibility of its IT infrastructure to prepare the company to meet the challenge of a changing market for postal services.
Solution
The company looked to CSC as its IT outsourcing and systems integration partner to virtualise its servers using the Hyper-V feature of Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter.

Summary / Headlines

9 months to platform ready
up to 720 Guest VM’s over 2 x HP 16 slot blade enclosures
Delivered against plan** (of course, it evolved)

Key Points & Learnings

Issues not really technology based – people change are harder
** Build it and they will come! – once the business realises you’re faster they will come to you
Keeping it green, Service Integration
One team – HP/CSC/Microsoft – go to meetings together, share the issues, share the plan

Managing your infrastructure with System Center

Ellis Paul & Paul Collins

Presenting your business case for Private Cloud

Adam Collins, Risual

Cloud, over time will allow a closer alignment between IT and the business by giving back time to focus on more strategic objectives and decision making. Understanding how to position with the business, build a technology roadmap and deliver long term value from your current and future investments is a critical task that can’t be put off any longer. Within this session you will be presented with the necessary tools to support you in taking advantage of Cloud solutions from both an experienced IT consultancy in Risual and a global customer in Paul Smith.

Very interesting session starting with the driver being ‘ensure predictable IT costs’ with five pillars to support:

Business
Service Delivery
Sustainability (Green IT) –
Contract Management –

Assumed Benefits – Financial, Operational Efficiency, Governance, CSAT, Innovation, Agility, Sustainable IT

Hyper-V and System Center- Competitive Comparisons

Matt McSpirit

You’ll learn more about the different components within the Hyper-V and System Center, but more specifically, how they can provide a greater level of comprehensive management, choice, and advanced automation.

Matt McSpirit for one of his last UK presentations before jumping to Redmond for a career in Corp. with Andrew Fryer doing his ‘Pap’ impression but with a gagging order this week.. Winking smile

As usual a great presentation from Matt who gave a deep (and broad!) session on why Hyper-V isn’t just a viable alternative to VMware, but a serious contender. In a lot of cases not just a better value proposition (not difficult) but also more performant (not so easy!), and with independent 3rd party evidence to back up the claims e.g. TS workloads on VMware, Hyper-V R2 SP1, and XenServer (Virtual Reality Check – Phase II version 2.0) and more at http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net (same as http://www.projectvrc.nl)

There was a lot of myth busting around the issue often cited that Hyper-V is fundamentally flawed because it sits on top of Windows – of course there is Hyper-V Server (think Server Core), but what isn’t common knowledge is how many patches there have been for VMware and some pretty high profile issues, and as per Microsoft many require guest or host restarts – its not just Microsoft platforms that require reboots!

And, of course Matt plugged http://virtualboytv.com for great content including video walk-through’s and more e.g. bare-metal to live migration in under an hour!! – I’ve used Matt’s site as a handy reference and basic training tool many times and highly recommend as well worth your time.

What next?

For more information on what The Full Circle can do to help you find your way in the clouds, see http://www.thefullcircle.com/whatWeDo/Pages/Cloud.aspx

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Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, System Center, Systems Management, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Hyper-V Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Microsoft private cloud SCVMM

Hyper-V P2V using Windows Server Recovery (WinRE)

May 21st, 2011

A few weeks ago I posted about using Disk2VHD see http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2011/05/02/hyper-v-p2v-using-disk2vhd/, however disk2vhd does have limitations e.g 137GB volume size, and you can get errors such as disk too large for dynamic disk, etc. (covered at the end of that post).

Another way of getting a physical host converted to a VM is to back it up, create a VM container, and restore into the new virtual machine, then go through the steps to strip back the hardware and system drivers as normal.

First you’ve got to get a good bare metal recovery backup and for the purposes of this post I’m just going to cover a Windows Server 2008 R2 source/physical server.

Bare Metal Backup on Windows Server 2008 R2

Obviously you need the backup components installed – Add/Remove Features – Windows Server Backup, or scripted using start /w ocsetup WindowsServerBackup

Launch Windows Server Backup and select ‘Bare metal recovery’ – all components to support a bare metal recovery will be checked, if you’ve installed any programs to another disk other than the %HOMEDRIVE% you may find you need to backup more than one disk volume..

Once the backup is running you can monitor from the GUI or command line… e.g.

C:>wbadmin get status
wbadmin 1.0 – Backup command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corp.
The backup of volume System(C:) successfully completed.
The backup of volume Data(D:) successfully completed.
Creating a backup of volume Logs(E:), copied (12%).

You can also check on how many versions of backups are available e.g. which one you intent to restore into a VM by using the wbadmin get versions command:

C:>wbadmin get versions
wbadmin 1.0 – Backup command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corp.

Backup time: 17/05/2011 00:00
Backup location: Network Share labeled \thefullcircle.localBackups
Version identifier: 05/16/2011-23:00
Can recover: Volume(s), File(s), Application(s), Bare Metal Recovery, System State

If the backup drive is an external drive such as a USB this would be reported as:

Backup target: 1394/USB Disk labeled X:

Restore using Windows System Image Recovery

In this case again we are using Windows Server 2008 R2 boot media but this can also be performed using a Windows 7 or ERD Commander WinPE environment, of course technically this is WinRE.

1) Boot from your media, make any language, locale, and keyboard selections

2) Rather than Install now, select Repair your computer

3) Select Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier.

4) If you’re quick enough skip trying to find an image, but more likely you will get a dialogue advising that Windows cannot find a system image on this computer, that’s fine – click Cancel, then Next.

5) At the re-image your computer prompt, select Advanced…

6) You can then search your network for an image, or you may need to load drivers (should be unlikely with the driver support of Windows Server 2008 R2 as shares codebase with Windows 7 – pretty good driver support!)

7) Clearly you do want to connect to the network (if you have DHCP enabled happy days, if not take a crash course in netsh commands to set an IP address)

Choose your network location..

9) Enter credentials – there is no point trying to save them, you’ve probably booted from an ISO or DVD-ROM anyway..

10) Select your backup, click Next, then select your volumes

11) Choose any additional restore options such as Excluding disks, loading additional drivers, or under Advanced – restart options when complete, checking disk errors – checked/yes by default

12) A final confirmation of what will be restored, and then ‘another’ final check, Yes is the only option unless you’ve changed your mind about doing a restore today…

Wot no disk partitions, volumes, or anything to restore to?

Then you may get this message..

or this one

which takes you back to..

and you can get busy with diskpart, etc. from within a Command Prompt (surely that’s a Command Shell?)… select the disk, create a primary partition, make it active, and then start again..

or just let the machine do the work.. click Restart and start again.. (again!)

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Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: disk2vhd hyper-v p2v wbadmin Windows Server Recovery WinPE WinRE

Windows 2008 R2 (& Windows 7) SP1 RTM – upgrading a cluster, standalone, and VMs..

February 18th, 2011

As a Microsoft partner www.thefullcircle.com specialising in Audit, Collaboration, and Cloud solutions using the Microsoft stack we keep up to date with the latest developments in this space. One development that could be very significant for Microsoft virtualisation is Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, and we’ve been using this since early beta’s over 6 months ago. We started testing this back in June 2010 (see http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2010/07/22/hyper-v-r2-sp1-beta-testing-dynamic-memory/) and now it’s ready for general release.

This fortnight saw the Release to Manufacturing of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 7 SP1. SP1 will be made generally available for download on 22 February

Update 23rd Feb – Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 is ready with new virtualization tools, web resources, management enhancements, and Windows 7 integration. You can also evaluate the SP1 edition with the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 trial. Also, see the Service Pack 1 evaluation resources

So a quick check of the ‘New Downloads’ section of the MSDN download site, and sure enough it was published for MSDN subscribers and partners a couple of days ago on the 16th.
First issue you may face is which file to download, as when I counted there were 13 different files with Service Pack 1 in their name inc. some slipstreamed media for various Windows Server 2008 builds.

But for most that will be the top of the list at time of writing:

1.90GB!!??!! that’s almost the size of the original product!, however the download contains 3 versions for x86 (Win7), x64 (Win7 & WS2008), plus Itanium

Its as easy a 1-2-3… or is it!?

Screen clipping taken: 18/02/2011 22:22

on Windows 7 a little different splash screen

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Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Hyper-V Failover Cluster Hyper-V R2 SP1 Beta WS2008 R2 SP1

War On Cost II, The Churchill War Rooms, London

November 5th, 2010

Today I’m in London for what I expect will be one of the most valuable events of my calendar – Inframon’s now annual War On Cost event, this year held at The Cabinet War Rooms in London’s Westminster.

Inframon, headed by Gordon McKenna and Sean Roberts are old friends of ‘The Circle’ since we attended their System Center Train the Trainer workshop in November 2008. Since then we’ve kept in touch at various events & launches, and when they are hosting they always deliver a cracking event.

Indeed, a fair summary as I wrote to some colleagues only a few weeks ago..

Coming up on the 5th November is Inframon’s War on Cost which is basically a 1-day systems management focussed preview of TechEd Europe which starts the following week in Berlin.
A whole bunch of senior Redmond folk come over the week before TechEd to present at this event, hit the town for a few beers (limited for me am afraid this year), stay the weekend in London before going on to Berlin for yet more & possibly better beer!

So, click on http://www.waroncost.com/ to register – I’ll absolutely guarantee you, if you have an interest/responsibility in managing a Microsoft estate then you will get a load of value from this event.

The official agenda is below, and if I made notes I’ve added them in-line with the agenda:

Event Schedule

Inframon, the UK’s leading specialist in the Microsoft System Center suite present "War On Cost 2010", a very exclusive event which will be taking place in the Cabinet War Rooms in the heart of London, an historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War.

The aim of this event is to give you valuable information on how you can help your organisation drive down the cost of managing your Windows and Non-Windows based infrastructure using the Microsoft System Center Suite of products.

Featuring two dynamic tracks aimed at both Business and Technical decision makers, to give you the knowledge you need to make a difference in your organisation.

09:00 – 09:30 INFRAMON KEYNOTE

Introductory keynote from Gordon McKenna, CEO at Inframon setting the scene for our theme "The War on Cost"

Unfortunately I missed the start of Gordon’s keynote as I was unable to enter the Cabinet War Rooms due to an ‘entry lockdown’ whilst waiting for the PM to arrive and enter the building… okay I was slightly late in the first place… but no, not a Churchill impersonator, but Mr David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister!
‘Dave’ as he’s known to his mates was at the war rooms for an interview with ITV – maybe related to the recent UK Government spending cuts and the UK’s War on Cost…?

David Cameron speaking about The War On Cost..?

I eventually got in the building to then wander around the maze that was the cabinet war rooms and haunt of another famous conservative PM.. a certain Sir Winston Churchill! to eventually find the Inframon team, Gordon, Sean and the guys in a War on Cost bunker that looked like it certainly did cost! great venue!

Gordon McKenna ..it was this BIG!!!

Partners (allies) in the battle of the war on cost…
ComTrade – MPs for Citrix & Seibel
Silect Software – MP Studio, CP Studio, ConfigWise
Flexera – Win7 migration application challenges (packaging & sequencing)
Savision – Live Maps & Vital Signs for System Center (extends SCOM with mapping and real-time performance dashboards)
BridgeWays – helps you convert from VMware… Also free Hyper-V MP @….
Odyssey Software -

prize draw for an Windows Phone 7 device, the HTC HD 7 – went to European Market Oct 21st, won’t be in the US till Nov 8th! and they are as rare as rocking horse sh1t in the UK with one distributor saying to me on Friday 5th Oct “Unfortunately we are not likely to be able to supply the HD7 as all three of the new HTC devices are going to be network exclusives.”

ROOM 1: 09:30 -10:30 MICROSOFT KEYNOTE – RYAN OHARA: DATACENTER TO THE CLOUD

Join us in the main auditorium for a first keynote from Microsoft’s Senior Director of System Center Product Marketing, Ryan O’Hara who will be giving us an insight on how Microsoft’s Datacenter and Cloud strategy can help you in the battle your organisation faces around reducing the cost of managing your IT infrastructure whilst trying to increase efficiency. Learn also how System Center can be a key business enabler in both on-premise and off-premise scenarios.

Ryan O’Hara & Justin Buffington (AKA The Professor)

Google, Salesforce, Amazon – don’t provide services that can run in your Data Center / stand up within your service offering

Ryan reckons that MS is the only single vendor that provided the widest reach of cloud based services to provide ‘IT as a service’

Self Service Portal for VMM – version being shown today along with VMM vNext. Capability for business process owners (application owners) to request and provision new data center services through a web portal.

VMM 2012 CTP demo
Moving from a server centric model to a service model – detaching the application from the O/S.

Create Cloud Wizard! what’s your job? I’m a cloud creator!

Demo of service maps – Opalis 6.3 available at the end of the month to all data Center management suite registered customers… & partners?

Acquisition of AVIcode allows 360 degree monitoring in delivering IT as a service. Black box & White box monitoring… Wazzthat then?

OpsMgr watcher nodes running outside your environment

SCOM2012 / OM10 – now with dashboards and can manage network infrastructure (at last! )

ROOM 1: 10:50 -11:50 MICROSOFTKEYNOTE – ANDREW CONWAY: DESKTOP AND SECURITY CONVERGENCE

With end users increasingly mobile, consumerization impacting IT, and security and compliance needs converging on the business you are likely considering options for desktop virtualization, endpoint protection, cloud management and application delivery. IT has an opportunity to simplify their investments, tools and processes in order to be ever more responsive to the changing face of their customer. In this session, we’ll focus on effective solutions that will help you in the War on Cost – we’ll do this and take a forward look at upcoming System Center and Forefront technologies

ROOM 2: 10:50 -11:50 BREAKOUT – SEAN ROBERTSSIMON SKINNER INFRAMON: MICROSOFT PRIVATE CLOUD STORY

Join Sean Roberts and Simon Skinner of Inframon for a walk through Microsoft’s new private cloud story. Learn how to build your own, internal private cloud solution with Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager and the new Self Service Portal 3.0. See how you can drive more efficient use of your IT infrstructure using batch processing and chargeback reporting putting you back in control of your costs.

Sean Roberts & Simon Skinner …how many MVP’s needed to… don’t ask! Winking smile

ROOM 1: 11:50 – 12:50 BREAKOUT – JUSTIN INCARNATODANIEL SAVAGE MICROSOFT: OPERATIONS MANAGER R2 AND V.NEXT

This session will cover updates to Operation Manager 2007 since the release of R2, including the latest new features included in R2 CU3. We will also go over the next major release of Operations Manager including the vision and product demonstrations. This will be a demo packed session with plenty of time to interact and ask questions

OpsMgr R2 Sizing Helper

OpsMgr R2 Core MP updates

Service Level Dashboard 2.0

Cumulative Updates 3 (CU3) for OpsMgr 2007 R2

OpsMgr Sizing
OpsMgr sizing helper to address the unknown around sizing – ‘ask 5 MS engineers an OpsMgr sizing question and you’ll likely get 5 different answers…’

target environments:

Small to Medium deployment – 250-1000 computers

Large deployment – 1000-10000 computers

Use in conjunction with the OpsMgr design guide, an introduction is at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735403.aspx

OpsMgr R2 Core MP updates

Cumulative Updates 3 (CU3) for OpsMgr 2007 R2

Get it from the download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f1e1154-52ae-42df-aeea-b3ee83247e6a&displaylang=en

The KB article describing the fixes, changes, and instructions is at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2251525

The high-level fixes are:

Feature Addition: Azure Application Monitoring

Feature Addition: Parameter Extraction in Web Application Synthetic Transactions

Multi-selection in the alert view is not maintained during a view refresh

Upgrading MPs that include new properties may not recreate views correctly

The Operations Manager Console stops working when a high number of instances of State Views / Alert Views are left open for extended durations

The Operations Manager Console stops working when creating an override on the cluster resource group monitor

When using a remote console the notification wizards does not work in certain situations

The SDK Services stops working due to an unhandled exception, and the operations console becomes unresponsive

The SDK service may stop working due to an arithmetic overflow error in very rare circumstances

The notification scheduler does not compensate correctly for different time zones

Alerts using the “Specific Time Period” criteria are not included during automatic alert view refresh

Generic performance reports consume a large amount of temporary database space and can fail for Windows Server 2003 Computer Groups

SCOM 2007 SP1 Reports do not run after a shared Data Warehouse is upgraded to SCOM 2007 R2

Monitoringhost.exe does not work reliably on Windows 2003 SP2 X64 Domain Controllers

The total transaction response performance counter in URL monitoring is not accurate

MPs with empty knowledge elements cannot be imported in Operations Manager 2007 R2

Language packs authored for a previous version of an MP cannot be imported once an updated MP is released

Language Pack import fails if the MP contains strings which are not contained in the English Management Pack

When Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) is set up to use SharePoint, reports from Watson are blocked

Some ACS reports do not work as expected with Windows Server 2008

ACS forwarders with 15 character names in workgroups are unable to communicate with the ACS collector

CU4 should be out at the end of Jan’11 – plan is to have quarterly updates

There is a great post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/10/04/opsmgr-2007-r2-cu3-rollup-hotfix-ships-and-my-experience-installing-it.aspx which covers in-depth on CU3 and its deployment – essential reading!

OpsMgr v.Next 2012, Daniel Savage, Senior PM Operations Manager

Support for network device monitoring

Support for Java EE (J2E) Web Service Monitoring – server level, not currently site/app level

Release roadmap – Public Beta in Q2 CY11, RC Q3 CY11, RTM Q4 CY11

ROOM 2: 11:50 – 12:20 BREAKOUT – ODYSSEY SOFTWARE: ATTACK THE COSTS AND COMPLEXITY OF MANAGING MOBILE DEVICES IN YOUR ENTERPRISE WITH ATHENA TM DEVICE MANAGEMENT EXTENSIONS FOR SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER 2007

In this session we will demonstrate how to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of managing deployments of Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Windows CE, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, Android and Symbian devices through comprehensive, centralized management of these devices utilizing Odyssey Software’s AthenaTM device management extensions for System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

ROOM 2: 12:20 – 12:50 BREAKOUT – BRIDGEWAYS SOFTWARE: HETEREOGENEOUS MANAGEMENT WITH OPERATIONS MANAGER 2007

Learn how you can extend your Operations Manager 2007 platform beyond the Windows stack with Bridgewys cross-platform extensions and connectors, allowing you to manage platforms such as VMWare and Oracle from the same familiar console as the rest of your devices allowing you to consolidate your management tools, driving down your infrastructure costs,

12:50 – 13:50 LUNCH

Join us for lunch in our partner pavillion, where you can network with other delegates and meet our ISV partners and speakers

ROOM1: 13:50 – 14:50 BREAKOUT – JEFF WETTLAUFER MICROSOFT: SYSTEM CENTER CONFIGURATION MANAGER V.NEXT HIGHLIGHTS

The next generation of the world’s leading systems management technology is now in Beta! As we enter a new era of work styles, with people working in new ways from new locations on new devices, the System Center flagship product is evolving. In this session we present a demo rich technical highlight of the next release of ConfigMgr. We will focus on our continued vision of User Centric client management, highlight new improvements to core capability, infrastructure simplification and more.

ROOM 2: 13:50 – 14:50 BREAKOUT – SEAN CHRISTENSEN MICROSOFT: SERVICE MANAGER THE BETTER TOGETHER STORY

Breakout two, takes us on a journey into the world of IT service management with one of the newest members of the System Center family, Service Manager. Learn how you can pull together your IT resources with industry standard best practices, bringing disciplines like incident and problem and change and release management to your organisation allowing you to drive more efficient working processes across your organisation.

ROOM 1: 15:10 – 16:10 BREAKOUT – JASON BUFFINGTON MICROSOFT: INTELLIGENT DATACENTER APPLICATION PROTECTION

This session will focus on leveraging Data Protection Manager’s protection and recovery capabilities in large datacenters. We will look at how Data Protection Manager protects and recovers critical application workloads such as SQL, Exchange and SharePoint – as well as virtual machines within Hyper-V. The session is full of demonstrations, including the new self-service restore capability for database administrators. We will also look at combining on-premise and off-premise protection using both Data Protection Manager’s built-in replication mechanisms as well as cloud-based Data Protection Manager-partner repositories.

One stat to take away… up to 60% of corporate data does not reside in the datacenter… Yikes!!!

therefore backing up the client machines, with policies to not backup the junk, movies, music, etc.

ROOM 2: 15:10 – 16:10 BREAKOUT – ADAM HALLGREG CHARMAN MICROSOFT: DATACENTER IT PROCESS AUTOMATION

In one of the final sessions of the day we bring you the one solution that will probably give you the biggest set of tools in fighting the War on Cost. Microsoft’s newest addition to the System Center suite is Opalis, a robust and multi functional IT orchestration toolkit that can help drive incredible efficiencies in your organisation by automating many of your time consuming, day to day IT processes. This is not a session to be missed.

16:10 – 16:30 CLOSING KEYNOTE

Proceedings end with a closing keynote from Inframon CEO Gordon McKenna.

16:30 – 17:00 TOUR OF VENUE

Finally you are invited to take a tour of this very historic venue.

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Posted in Cloud, Data Protection Manager, Green IT, Microsoft, SCE 2010, System Center, Systems Management, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Inframon Microsoft system center war on cost

Windows Server 2008 R2 & Windows 7 SP1 Release Candidate (RC v.721)

October 29th, 2010

This morning I opened up an email from Microsoft UK entitled ‘TechNet Newsletter – 28 October - Windows 7 SP1 RC | SQL Server 2008 R2 Migration’ – the main interest for me here is the SP1 RC, not so much the Windows 7 reference, but as Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 x64 share the same codebase this Service Pack is immediately applicable to the server O/S also.

A couple of months ago I’d posted on SP1 beta (http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2010/08/24/a-tale-of-4-betas/), and having suffered a few minor issues of running a service pack beta I was keen to upgrade. The main issue experienced was on my test Hyper-V Server R2 build and VM’s loosing external network connectivity under high load/stress requiring the host to be restarted to resolve – not ideal for the a production domain controller, my main Windows Home Server and my Vail test box..

Anyway back to SP1 RC..

there are 3 methods of install… ISO image/DVD, architecture specific executable, and via windows update (with a modification/additional code)

If you have the SP1 beta installed you must first uninstall it before attempting SP1 RC install, I’d recommend wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:976932 as this covers both Server Core / Hyper-V Server and full installations.

Windows 7 x86 upgrade via Windows Update

links and resources re-posted:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2010/10/27/download-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1-rc.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/ff183870.aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproSP/threads

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Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, Virtualisation, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Dynamic Memory Win7 SP1 RC Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC WS2008 R2 SP1 WS2008 R2 SP1 RC

A tale of 4 beta’s – Vale refresh, Hyper-V Server R2 SP1 v178 beta, Fabulatech USB over network beta, MS ISCSI Target 3.3 beta

August 24th, 2010

A tale of 4 beta’s – am I mad!?!? well maybe, but here goes..

But first to cut to the chase.. As I mentioned to a colleague only today – the Vail refresh ROCKS!!, it needs Silverlight 4 for the integrated media controls to make video, music, photos, etc. super sexy and prompts to install if you haven’t got it – Silverlight’s awesome also!

Microsoft Windows Home Sever codenamed Vail – TP refresh install

So it is R2 after all (I always thought it would be but quite a lot of folks who should know better referred to it as Windows Server 2008 – fundamentally different than Windows Server 2008 R2!)

Screen clipping taken: 23/08/2010, 19:38

Screen clipping taken: 23/08/2010, 21:47

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A lovely Vail splash screen, configure a few tasks:

Shutdown with 28 updates later..

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Posted in Hyper-V, Media Center, Microsoft, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows Home Server, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Vail Windows Home Server Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta

Hyper-V R2 SP1 Beta testing & Dynamic Memory

July 22nd, 2010

So this week Microsoft released the beta code of SP1, this was one of the many anticipated announcements at the Worldwide Partner Conference this week.

As our business (The Full Circle – www.thefullcircle.com) is a Microsoft Gold Partner that has been involved in Microsoft virtualization since the beginning I thought it was time we were testing Hyper-V with Dynamic Memory! Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s memory over commit allows Hyper-V to dynamically allocated memory to a guest machine from a pool of available memory. This doesn’t allow you to over specify what physically isn’t available (a safer option than over-commit), but it does allow a group of VM’s to more efficiently use memory resource where it is needed – just what is needed for Microsoft to get serious in the VDI space.

From Microsoft’s own words:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V introduces a new feature, called Dynamic Memory, in the Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta releases. It allows customers to achieve increased density when they’re consolidating physical servers into a virtual realm, providing them with predictable performance and linear scalability. With Dynamic Memory, IT administrators are able to pool available memory on a physical host and then dynamically dole that memory out to virtual machines running on the host, based on current workload needs.
For a technical overview of the new Dynamic Memory feature, download the Dynamic Memory Technical Overview whitepaper.

So a quick 1.2GB download later (to support Win7 x86 & WS2008R2 IA64 & x64) and you’ve got an ISO to unpack or burn.

1st hurdle on my test install of Hyper-V Server R2 is.. a language blocking issue with the installer reporting ‘Hyper-V Service Pack 1 install has detected unsupported language files’ reporting that Chinese (Traditional) is not supported..

Did I install Chinese? I don’t think so.. well, not intentionally anyway! but checking both our test and live Hyper-V cluster systems revealed that the ‘Chinese (Traditional)’ display language was installed (by default) per:

Fortunately this is a simple fix, as shown in the picture - at a command line (or Task Manager Run) you can access the Region and Language settings control panel by executing ’intl.cpl’, goto Keyboards and Languages, hit the Install/uninstall languages button, and finally select Chinese (Traditional), Next. After a few moments the progress should report ‘Uninstall complete’ and you can close and OK out of the Control Panel app.

Once the language support (or lack of if you wanted Chinese!), re-running setup should run through as below:

And eventually, after the mandatory reboot checking out the Windows version (Task Manager, About, no more winver from the command line in Hyper-V Server or Server Core) should report – Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Build 7601: Service Pack 1, v.178 – yikes that’s a lowish version, and the Build number is significant up from 7600 (more accurately version 6.1.7600), anyway we are only on test system at the minute! (and without EAP support I think that’s about as far as it should go! )
(more on EAP’s and The Full Circle’s involvment in the development of Hyper-V 2008 R2 at http://blog.thefullcircle.com/2009/11/05/the-full-circle-secures-ascom-network-testing-for-windows-server-2008-r2-early-adopter-program/)

next on to the changes within Hyper-V and hopefully dynamic memory!

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta adds Dynamic Memory host memory management and RemoteFX to enhance VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) implementations. The beta release of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 introduces new ways to manage virtual machine memory, graphics and peripheral devices that add new dimensions to the usefulness of Hyper-V.

These features, including Dynamic Memory, RemoteFX and improvements to USB redirection, will require IT manager attention as plans are made for server and remote desktop implementations over the next several years. IT managers who are considering data center virtualization projects should put the Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack beta on their immediate evaluation shortlist. The beta is stable enough for use in a test environment.The SP1 beta became available in July and is offered as a no-charge download from Microsoft. I tested the SP1 beta on our test rig HP ProLiant ML110 G5 with a single dual core Intel 2.33Ghz cpu, 8GB of memory, and 2 mirrored arrarys (2x250GB system, 2x1TB data), it does not have a sufficiently powerful graphics card to test RemoteFX but I’ll be sourcing one!

This system, and all the virtual server instances that I created in my test environment, were running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 beta version 178.

It’s clear that with SP1, Microsoft is signaling that the server hardware of tomorrow will need to be equipped much differently than it is today if certain workloads, including those that vary significantly in memory usage or desktop graphics support, are destined for the data center.
Buyers that are accustomed to buying server hardware with only minimal graphics capabilities will need to become much more savvy in the ins and outs of specifying high-end graphics cards for data center servers that are destined to host sophisticated virtual desktop implementations. This is on top of the growing RAM requirements of dense virtual environments.

Dynamic Memory

The SP1 beta includes Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s memory management system. In Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 this feature is called Dynamic Memory. I used the Dynamic Memory feature to balance the memory automatically between my VMs based on preset limits. As with most management systems, Dynamic Memory uses policy set in a period of calm to determine how scarce resources (in this case RAM) will be divvied up when in times of tumult and contention.

When I created my VMs, I specified several RAM memory parameters including Startup, Maximum, Buffer and Priority. These parameters make sense in that they specify the minimum amount of RAM needed to start a system, the maximum I would ever want it to consume, a buffer measured as a percentage and the priority of this workload in the overall scheme of business operations.

In my tests, the VMs performed as expected. When I beefed up operations on a high priority VM, the other VMs were starved in order to keep my priority system running at top performance. When RAM requirements on my priority system fell, this resource was reallocated among the other VMs on the test system.

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Posted in Hyper-V, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: 7601.16562.100603-1800_Update_Sp_Wave0-B1SP1.0_DVD Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Hyper-V R2 SP1 Beta Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta

Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2010: Manage the Future – Desktop to Cloud

May 18th, 2010

Location:	100 Victoria Street London SW1 5JL United Kingdom

Start Time:	18 May 2010 09:30 GMT, London
End Time:	18 May 2010 17:30 GMT, London

Language(s):

English.

Product(s):

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager,Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager,Microsoft System Center Essentials,Microsoft System Center Operations Manager,Other.

Audience(s):

Infrastructure Specialist,IT Decision Maker,IT Implementer,IT Manager.

Event Overview

Best of MMS UK 2010 will provide the best possible opportunity to learn about the latest IT Management products, solutions and technologies from Microsoft and how to apply them in your organisation. With a number of significant management product releases and announcements planned from Microsoft in the coming year, including some early Beta releases, this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss!

This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the latest technical updates on Desktop, Datacenter and Cloud management features and solutions from Microsoft. The event will share more expert knowledge and information than ever, covering current System Center products as well as Windows platform management solutions for virtualization of servers, desktops and applications.

Please mark your calendar for Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) UK 2010 on Tuesday 18 May 2010 in London.

Join us and interact live with Microsoft, key partnerships and early adopter customers in this informative event near you. (Twitter – #mmsuk2010)

*TIME*	*AGENDA*
08.30	Registration
09.30	Session 1 (Keynote): Virtualization 360: Microsoft Virtualization Strategy, Products, and Management Solutions for the New Economy
10.30	Session 2: Configuration Manager v.Next: Overview
11.30	Break
12.00	Session 3: What’s New Since the Release of Operations Manager 2007 R2
13.00	Lunch
14.00	Session 4(A): Opalis IT Process Automation: Introduction & Technical Overview	Session 4(B): Introduction to Systems Management in Midsized Organizations with System Center Essentials 2010
15.00	Break
15.30	Session 5: Technical Introduction to Data Protection Manager 2010
16:30	Session 6: Service Manager Integration with System Center
17.30	Networking & Close

Abstracts:

Session 1:

Learn about the Microsoft virtualization strategy from the datacenter, to the desktop, to the cloud, and how it will help you cut costs and build value. In this session we review and demonstrate Microsoft virtualization products and discuss how you can use them to solve today’s IT issues (cost cutting, consolidation, business continuity, green IT), develop new computing solutions (VDI) and build a foundation for a more dynamic IT environment, including cloud computing. The session reviews all of the latest Microsoft virtualization products, including Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server, as well as the System Center management platform (including Virtual Machine Manager 2008). Learn about the innovative pricing and licensing structure that allows further savings to lower both acquisition and on-going ownership costs. Learn how you can enable IT to become a cost cutting mechanism with Microsoft virtualization and management technologies.

Session 2:

The next release of Configuration Manager is coming! For over a decade, Systems Management Server and Configuration Manager have been used by thousands of customers and partners to deliver classic management capabilities to clients and servers. As we enter a new era for IT Administration, the System Center flagship product is evolving. In this session we present our vision for user-centric client management, and demonstrate improvements from Configuration Manager 2007. This session promises to be very interesting. We demonstrate a functioning product to showcase some of these major improvements, so you know you can’t miss it!

Session 3:

Join us to learn about developments which have taken place since the R2 release of Operations Manager 2007, including cumulative updates for SP1 and R2, new tools for diagnosis and troubleshooting, and new support for monitoring in the cloud.

Session 4A:

This session will walk you through the Opalis workflow designer demonstrating along the way how to integrate System Center products with other IT tools to create automated processes. You will also see how Opalis customers have automated best practices for incident management, provisioning and change management.

Session 4B:

For organisations up to 500 PCs and 50 servers, Microsoft is releasing System Center Essentials 2010 (SCE) to provide service monitoring, software deployments and updates, and management of physical and virtual machines. This single product is designed for midsized organizations, so this session will be full of demonstrations as we look at each of the major aspects of SCE 2010, including server and client monitoring, software deployment and patching, virtualization management and migration, and how to get started with easy setup and configuration. Come see it here first.

Session 5:

Data is core to a Service Management solution. Learn how to architect and extend the CMDB schema, how to set up and extend connectors, create new connectors, and lastly how the data moves to the Data Warehouse to deliver IT business intelligence.

Session 6:

The release of DPM 2010 is just a few weeks after MMS 2010 in Las Vegas, so this session will cover installing a new DPM 2010 server, and then provide an overview of the core capabilities and enhanced protection/recovery scenarios.

notes from the day..

OpsMgr 2007 R3 – a first R3 release for Microsoft

ConfigMgr 2007 -> ConfigMgr v.Next – embracing user centric targeting

SCE 2010 notes to follow..

DPM 2010, Anthony Tyler, Storage Strategy Architect (aka Foggy, and an old team mate of mine from PSS some 12 years ago!)

Backup to pretty much anything inc. “SAN in a can” but nothing seen as a removable device (so no USB unless you use iSCSI or a.n.other mapping technology)

tactical deployment in line with MS application deployment

i365 EDPM appliance – supports hetrogenius environments via eVault

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Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, Systems Management, Tech, Virtualisation, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Best of MMS 2010 DPM 2010 SCE 2010 VMM

Microsoft Techdays: Virtualization Summit – From the Desktop to the Datacenter

April 12th, 2010

Full agenda below, but key points for me:

VDI & App-V – still virtualise your apps when using VDI to leverage further coat savings & ROI

Win2008 R2 SP1 – Hyper-V gets ‘Dynamic Memory’ not same as memory over-commit but shares a pool of real server memory across VDI VM’s
‘Remote-FX’ – graphics rich across TS/RDP/VDI using server graphics capabilities – putting high-end GPU’s in the server!

‘Private Cloud’ & ‘Partner Cloud’ – enabling cloud based computing without the budget of Azure or Amazon Web Services!

Using optimised desktop for on-demand application provisioning & apparent coexistance of non-compatible apps

One image per major hardware type – more emphasis on process for application delivery & customisation/personalisation of the desktop.

Deploying Personal Virtual Desktops by using Remote Desktop Services Web Access step-by-step guide

VDI using Dynamic (“Non-Persistent”) Virtual Desktops
- master VDI image then pesonalisation & customisation streamed to image delta – discarded at logoff, roaming profile intact

Pooled VDI experience vs. RDS architecture (Shared Session Virtualisation)

giving a video interview with Stuart Leddy for TechNet Flash

Having an insightful chat with David Overton (SBS Guy) around the prospective launch date of SBS2008 R2.. we think that the announcement won’t be until WPC in July, and then tabled for release in the last calendar quarter of 2010 and very likley post Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1… hmmm!

Formal / published event information below..

Event Overview
Looking at virtualization but unsure about your options? Thinking about Windows 7 migration? Interested in VDI and server virtualization? Want to save on costs but wondering about ROI? Have more questions than answers on the topic?

This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the key products & technologies enabling seamless physical and virtual management, interoperable tools, and cost-savings & value. Microsoft Virtualization provides a completely virtualised infrastructure for your organisation, from the datacenter to desktop to the cloud. Please mark your calendar for Microsoft Virtualization Summit on Monday 12 April 2010 in London. Join us and interact live with Microsoft, key partnerships and early adopter customers in this informative event near you.

For all the latest agenda and speaker information, please visit our UK Techdays website: www.microsoft.com/uk/techdays

• Virtualization Summit -
From the Desktop to the Datacentre

Vue Cinema Shepherds Bush, Screen 9.

Looking at virtualization but unsure about your options? Thinking about Windows 7 migration? Interested in VDI and server virtualization? Want to save on costs but wondering about ROI? Have more questions than answers on the topic? This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the key products & technologies enabling seamless physical and virtual management, interoperable tools, and cost-savings & value. Microsoft Virtualization provides a completely virtualized infrastructure for your organisation, from the datacenter to desktop to the cloud. Please mark your calendar for Microsoft Virtualization Summit on Monday 12 April 2010 in London. Join us and interact live with Microsoft, key partnerships and early adopter customers in this informative event near you.
8.30am – 9.30am Registration
9.30am – 10.30am Virtualization 360 to End-To-End Virtualization
Dai Vu, Director, Microsoft Corp

Organisations today face many challenges and have certain priorities they must address. With Microsoft Virtualization they can address these challenges and concerns with the essential capabilities Microsoft delivers through the products they already own. When you couple Microsoft Virtualization solutions with integrated management to bring it all together you now have the visibility into your environment, while increasing your capability to respond to the ever changing business requirements. Also, learn how Microsoft Desktop Virtualization can help organisations with their access, data security, and compliance concerns while also providing anywhere access for their users. Learn how Microsoft Virtualization solutions in the datacenter help IT save money, increase availability and improve agility through the dynamic platform and management capabilities we provide to our customers. This allows IT to be more service-centric in how they provide to their customers. This vision of Virtualization will show that Microsoft today has the capabilities you need today with a path to the future.
10.30am – 11.30pm Next Generation Optimised Desktop
Keith Baker, Datacenter Technology Specialist

Many organisations are using Windows 7 migration as an opportunity to change how they provision and manage their desktops. The Windows Optimised Desktop is a vision for how organizations can bring down the costs of client computing while maximising flexibility, security, and manageability. Learn about the next generation of the Windows Optimised Desktop, which includes new technologies in Windows 7, Desktop Virtualization, Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP) and System Center.
11.30pm – 12.00pm Break
12.00pm – 1.00pm Implementing a Comprehensive VDI Solution
Matt McSpirit, Partner Technology Advisor – Virtualisation & Management

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is one of the hottest topics in IT today and is an important cornerstone of the Microsoft’s Optimised Desktop strategy. Desktop Virtualization offers new and powerful opportunities for IT to deliver and manage corporate desktops and to respond to various user needs in a flexible way. For organisations to realise the full benefits of VDI, they need to ensure they choose a solution that addresses the key issues they face today. This session helps outlines the Microsoft VDI offering and benefits of an integrated and comprehensive approach toward desktop flexibility and manageability.
1.00pm – 2.00pm Extended Break – Time to grab a bite nearby
2.00pm – 3.00pm Physical to Virtual Management with System Center
Julius Davies & Clive Watson, Datacenter Technology Specialists

Virtualization has transformed how IT can deliver the applications and services to their customers in a very dynamic climate. But not all applications and machines are great candidates for virtualization, and it will take some time for IT to move all of the applications that can be converted to virtual machines. This session will discuss how an IT organisation can leverage System Center, a comprehensive set of integrated management tools, allowing you to keep complexity to a minimum and streamline operations. A common management environment reduces training, ensures uniform policy application and simplifies maintenance by leveraging your existing software, personnel, and most importantly, your existing IT management process.
3.00pm – 3.30pm Break
3.30pm – 4.30pm Deploying Business Critical Workloads and Applications
Dai Vu, Director Microsoft Corp

This session will cover how Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V provides an optimal platform for running your business critical workloads like Exchange, SQL and SharePoint as well as other various applications and workloads, including best practices, key concepts and other considerations.
4.30pm – 5.30pm Building a Foundation for Your Private Cloud
Sohbat Ali, Solution Architect

Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Microsoft System Center family of products are enabling customers to build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure by using the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (availability scheduled in the first half of 2010). This free, partner-extensible toolkit will provide you architectural roadmap, deployment guidance, best practices, and familiar tools to create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. This session will provide more information on the toolkit components, and how you can improve your datacenter efficiency by lowering the overall costs of on-boarding, deployment, and management.

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Posted in Hyper-V, Microsoft, Systems Management, Virtualisation, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

Tags: Dynamic Memory Microsoft Virtualisation Microsoft Virtualization Virtualisation Virtualization

Migrating away (up!) from SBS2008 – licensing alerts

February 24th, 2010

Recently replied to an old EBS2008 TAP friend and good mucker re: his plans to migrate away from EBS2008 and thought this post might help someone out there…

I’ll start by saying – no we haven’t done this with EBS!

But concur I’d be cautious on licensing. We did something similar with our own production environment with that other license limited server product.. SBS2008.

With SBS2008 upgrading the domain/forest, and schema to R2 didn’t appear to be an issue but transferring the FSMO roles was. SBS was soon (e.g. 24hrs) sending alerts stating “The FSMO role does not comply with the license policy“ – I’m pretty sure eventually seizing them back!!??!!

e.g.

-----Original Message-----
From: SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com [mailto:SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com]
Sent: 10 December 2009 19:37
To: +sysadmin
Subject: Windows Small Business Server 2008: Critical Event Notification

An alert was detected on your network. Further investigation into the issue is recommended.

Computer: SBSSRV01
Date/Time generated: 10/12/2009 15:50:24
Title: The FSMO role does not comply with the license policy
Source: License Compliance service
Description:
The FSMO Role Check detected a condition in your environment that is out of compliance with the licensing policy. The Management Server must hold the primary domain controller and domain naming master Active Directory roles. Please move the Active Directory roles to the Management Server now.

-----Original Message-----

From: SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com [mailto:SBSMonAcct@thefullcircle.com]

Sent: 10 December 2009 12:02

To: +sysadmin

Subject: Windows Small Business Server 2008: Critical Event Notification

An alert was detected on your network. Further investigation into the issue is recommended.

Computer: SBSSRV01

Date/Time generated: 10/12/2009 11:50:25

Title: Forest trust licensing error

Source: License Compliance service

Description:

The Forest Trust Check in the Licensing component did not pass because error 0x8007054b occurred in function f1 [BXHE].

The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.

Make sure that your DNS server can be contacted and the following services are running on it: Active Directory Domain Services (NTDS), DNS Server (DNS), Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC). This server will be automatically shut down if the issue is not corrected.

Computer: SBSSRV01

Date/Time generated: 10/12/2009 11:50:25

Title: The FSMO role does not comply with the license policy

Source: License Compliance service

Description:

The FSMO Role Check detected a condition in your environment that is out of compliance with the licensing policy. The Management Server must hold the primary domain controller and domain naming master Active Directory roles. Please move the Active Directory roles to the Management Server now.

I found very little info on this last year, and in between adding R2 DC’s, Exchange 2010 (fun with mail routing), and adding SCE2010 Beta then RC into the network we ended up leaving the virtualised SBS2008 box in play – other priorities (customers!) have been more important.

Somewhat useless with helping find the cause – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd443466%28WS.10%29.aspx

very little info on it too -

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=The+FSMO+role+does+not+comply+with+the+license+policy&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=&fp=b432878984070c8a

Hope this helps, if just a little!